The sound of breaking through undergrowth was followed by rapping at the hermit's door.
"What do you want, boy?" said the pious man to the ragged figure in the dark.
"Messer Alessandro, my reverend—Messer Alessandro at once."
"Are you come about the Jew? He will bear no more. He is eating. He tells me he knows more about the Jew than he does about our holy religion—which is a dangerous state of things, except that he is sick to death of him."
"It is not about the Jew, father," said Silvestro, out of breath. "Tell him it is about—Ippolita."
"Va bene," said the hermit. "Stay where you are."
Messer Alessandro dropped his tools with a clatter, wiped his mouth, beat his breast, and began to walk up and down the cell.
"Send him in, hermit, send him in! Forty ducats if he has any news, ten ducats in any case for bringing my thoughts from Jews on earth to Ippolita in Paradise. Despatch, despatch, send me the goatherd."
The pale apparition of a fair-haired boy, timid in rags, cloaked in rusty black, with bandaged legs, and his old felt hat crushed against his breast, stood in the doorway.
"Oh, boy!" cried Alessandro, gesticulating with one hand, "may you be my Hermes, my swiftfoot messenger. Tell me what you know of the divine Ippolita."