The Leper turned his head.
“Undress yourself, so that I can have the warmth of your body!”
Julian stripped off his garments, then, naked as at the day of his birth, got into bed again, and against his thigh he felt the Leper’s skin, colder than a serpent and rough as a file.
He tried to cheer him, and the other answered panting:
“Ah, I am dying!... Come close to me, warm me! No, not with your hands! No, with your whole body!”
Julian stretched himself full length upon him, mouth against mouth and breast against breast.
Then the Leper caught him in his embrace, and his eyes all at once assumed the brightness of stars; his hair lengthened out like sunbeams, the breath of his nostrils had the sweetness of roses; a cloud of incense rose from the hearth; the waves sang. There at a fulness of delight, a joy more than human, descended like a flood upon Julian’s fainting soul; and he whose arms clasped him grew greater and greater; till he touched either wall of the hut with his head and feet. The roof flew off, the firmament opened wide,—and Julian mounted up to the azure spaces, face to face with Our Lord Jesus, who bore him away into Heaven.
Such is the story of Saint Julian Hospitator, almost exactly as it is to be seen in a church-window in my native province.