"
"Well, the poor old fellow is ill, you see. And then, no doubt, the
sight of the body brought back out of the forest made a terrible
impression on him. The extreme seclusion, tranquillity, and monotony
of his life here, the absence from year's end to year's end of any
sort of emotion of any kind, would naturally have the result of
increasing the painful effect which such an event and such a sight
would have upon him. My own notion is that there is nothing further
to be got out of him."
"There is our friend the lay-brother sitting in the sunshine just
where we left him. We might as well just see what he can tell us
before going back to the city."
"He seems very ill, the padre," pursued the Commissary, addressing
himself to brother Simone, as he and the lawyer lounged up to the
spot where he was sitting; "the fever must have laid hold of him
very suddenly; for it seems he was well enough yesterday morning."
"That is the way with the maledetto morbo," returned the lay-
brother; "one hour you are well--as well, that is to say, as one can
ever be in such a place as this--and the next you are down on your
back shivering and burning like--like the poor souls in purgatory.
Doubtless the more of it one has had, the less there is to come.
That's the only comfort."
"The padre's mind seems to have been very painfully affected by the
sight of the body of the woman, who was murdered in the forest, as
it was being carried back to the city.
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