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Updated: May 9, 2025
If this should be a sign such as that!" She clasped her hands together fervently. "I must see this friar ere he departs again," she said to the staring, dumbfounded Fra Gervasio. At last, then, I understood her emotion.
Both stared at me in utter amazement at the suddenness of my consent following upon information that, in their minds, could have no possible bearing upon the matter at issue. "Is he quite sane, do you think?" cried Galeotto gruffly. "I think he has just become so," said Fra Gervasio after a pause. "God give me patience, then," grumbled the soldier, and left me puzzled by the words.
"A good return, Madonnino!" I smiled back at them, and in the eyes of more than one I detected a look of commiseration. Once I turned, when the end of the quadrangle was reached, and I waved my cap to my mother and Fra Gervasio, who stood upon the steps where I had left them. The friar responded by waving back to me. But my mother made no sign.
I hope that, hereafter, when you come to realize to the full your deed, you will be able to give your conscience peace." "My first duty is to God," she answered; and to that pitiable answer there was nothing to be rejoined. So I turned my shoulder to her and stood waiting, Fra Gervasio beside me, clenching his hands in his impotence and mute despair.
He said it in a tone of indescribable passion, shaking his clenched fist at the ceiling. The miracle did not come to pass. Two days later, in the presence of Galeotto, Bianca, Fra Gervasio, who had been summoned from his Piacenza convent to shrive the unfortunate baron, and myself, Ettore Cavalcanti sank quietly to rest.
Looking at the Lord of Pagliano, who sat at the table's head, I observed that his glance was dark as it kept watch upon his daughter that chaste white lily that seemed of a sudden to have assumed such wanton airs. It was a matter that stirred me to battle, and forgotten again were my resolves to seek Gervasio, forgotten all notion of abandoning the world for the second time.
"My good Leocadia, have you the broth? Come, then, let us build up this strength of his. There is haste, good soul; great haste!" She bustled at his bidding, and soon outside the door there was a crackling of twigs to announce the lighting of a fire. And then Gervasio made known to me the stranger. "This is Galeotto," he said. "He was your father's friend, and would be yours."
"If the call were strong enough within him, a convent..." She left her sentence unfinished, and looked at me. "Go, Agostino," she bade me. "Fra Gervasio and I must talk." I went reluctantly, since in the matter of their talk none could have had a greater interest than I, seeing that my fate stood in the balance of it.
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.
There was something here that I did not understand at all. And in like case, it seemed, was Fra Gervasio, for he passed a hand over his brow, as if to clear thence some veils that clogged his understanding. "He was to have come?" he echoed. "To shelter?" he asked. "Nay," said she quietly, "to death. The papal emissaries had knowledge of it and would have been here to await him."
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