Another time again they shut him up in prison, and the next morning when they came to look for him they found nothing but an ass’s head in his place, which he had left there just to show his contempt for them.
One day a zealous friar met him and warned him to repent. ‘What have I to repent of?’ said he. ‘I can hear mass better than you, for I can hear mass in three places at once.’ Then he went away and made the Devil take him to Constantinople and Paris to hear mass at each while all at one and the same time he was hearing one at Rome too! Then he came and told the friar what a grand thing he had done. But the friar told him it was worse than not hearing mass at all to attempt to use diabolical arts in that way.
After that one day he was going up past the church of SS. John and Paul[4] when the Devil met him.
‘Now,’ said the Devil, ‘you have had your swing long enough; I have come to fetch you!’
When Pietro Bailliardo, who had set all the world at defiance all his life, saw the Devil and heard him say he had come to fetch him, he was seized with such terror that he began to repent, and ran inside the church. The Devil durst not follow him thither, but waited outside thinking he would soon be turned out.
But Pietro Bailliardo took up a great stone and went and kneeled down before the crucifix and smote his bare breast with the big stone, saying the while, ‘Behold! merciful Lord, I beat my breast with this stone till Thou bow Thy head in token that Thou forgive me.’
And he went on beating his breast till the blood ran down, and at last our Lord had compassion on him and bowed His head from the cross to him, and he died there. So the Devil did not get him.
2
‘You have told me so many stories, why have you never told me anything about Pietro Bailliardo—don’t you know about him?’