“There are no pilgrims here, my son,” said the priest.
“Not?” I cried, and cold horror descended upon me. “But they should have come. This is Holy Friday, father.”
“Nay, my son, Holy Friday was a fortnight ago.”
I stared askance at him, in utter silence. Then I smiled half tolerantly. “But father, yesterday they were all here. Yesterday was...”
“Your yesterday, my son, is sped these fifteen days,” he answered. “All that long while, since the night you wrestled with the Devil, you have lain exhausted by that awful combat, lying there betwixt life and death. All that time we have watched by you, Leocadia here and I and the lad Beppo.”
Now here was news that left me speechless for some little while. My amazement and slow understanding were spurred on by a sight of my hands lying on the rude coverlet which had been flung over me. Emaciated they had been for some months now. But at present they were as white as snow and almost as translucent in their extraordinary frailty. I became increasingly conscious, too, of the great weakness of my body and the great lassitude that filled me.
“Have I had the fever?” I asked him presently.
“Ay, my son. And who would not? Blessed Virgin! who would not after what you underwent?”
And now he poured into my astonished ears the amazing story that had overrun the country-side. It would seem that my cry in the night, my exultant cry to Satan that I had defeated him, had been overheard by a goatherd who guarded his flock in the hills. In the stillness he distinctly heard the words that I had uttered, and he came trembling down, drawn by a sort of pious curiosity to the spot whence it had seemed to him that the cry had proceeded.
And there by a pool of the Bagnanza he had found me lying prone, my white body glistening like marble and almost as cold. Recognizing in me the anchorite of Monte Orsaro, he had taken me up in his strong arms and had carried me back to my hut. There he had set about reviving me by friction and by forcing between my teeth some of the grape-spirit that he carried in a gourd.