The great stag had seen him, and gave a spring. Julian discharged his last bolt at him. It struck his forehead and remained fixed there.
The great stag did not seem to feel it; striding over the dead he kept advancing, was about to charge down upon him and disembowel him; and Julian drew back in unspeakable terror. The prodigious animal halted; and with flaming eyes, solemn as a patriarch or a justiciary, while a bell tolled in the distance, it thrice repeated:
“Accursed! Accursed! Accursed! Some day, ferocious heart, thou wilt murder thy father and mother!”
It bent its knees, closed its eyelids gently, and died.
Julian was stupefied, then overcome by sudden fatigue; and an immense disgust, an immense sadness, took possession of him. With his head in both his hands, he wept a long time.
His horse was lost; his dogs had left him; the solitude which enfolded him seemed all menacing with vague perils. Then, seized with fright, he took a way across country, chose a path at hazard, and found himself almost immediately at the castle-gate.
That night he did not sleep. Under the swaying of the hanging lamp he continually saw the great black stag. Its prediction obsessed him; he fought against it. “No, no, no! I cannot kill them!” Then he thought, “But what if I wished it?” And he was in dread lest the Devil should inspire him with the desire.
For three long months, his mother prayed in anguish at his pillow, and his father walked continually up and down the corridors in anguish, groaning. He summoned the most famous master-leeches, who ordered quantities of drugs. Julian’s malady, they said, was caused by some noxious wind or some amorous desire. But to all questions the young man shook his head.
His strength came back to him; and they walked him out in the courtyard, the old monk and the good lord each supporting him by an arm.