It was a week later before we returned to the subject.
Meanwhile, the good priest of Casi and Leocadia had departed, bearing with them a princely reward from the silent, kindly eyed Galeotto.
To tend me there remained only the boy Beppo; and after my long six months of lenten fare there followed now a period of feasting that began to trouble me as my strength returned. When, finally, on the seventh day, I was able to stand, and, by leaning on Gervasio's arm, to reach the door of the hut and to look out upon the sweet spring landscape and the green tents that Galeotto's followers had pitched for themselves in the dell below my platform, I vowed that I would make an end of broths and capons' breasts and trout and white bread and red wine and all such succulences.
But when I spoke so to Gervasio, he grew very grave.
“There has been enough of this, Agostino,” said he. “You have gone near your death; and had you died, you had died a suicide and had been damned—deserving it for your folly if for naught else.”
I looked at him with surprise and reproach. “How, Fra Gervasio?” I said.
“How?” he answered. “Do you conceive that I am to be fooled by tales of fights with Satan in the night and the marks of the fiend's claws upon your body? Is this your sense of piety, to add to the other foul impostures of this place by allowing such a story to run the breadth of the country-side?”
“Foul impostures?” I echoed, aghast. “Fra Gervasio, your words are sacrilege.”
“Sacrilege?” he cried, and laughed bitterly. “Sacrilege? And what of that?” And he flung out a stern, rigid, accusing arm at the image of St. Sebastian in its niche.
“You think because it did not bleed...” I began.