Did you see it too?" asked
the lawyer, observing the friar narrowly, as he spoke.
"Si, Signor, I saw it too, and a piteous sight it was. Father
Fabiano and I were both out here on the piazza when the body was
carried past. For I was just coming from the belfry yonder, where I
had been to ring Compline; and the padre was at the same time coming
out of the church, where he had been as usual with him at that hour,
at his devotions before the altar of the Saint."
"Then at the hour of Compline the father had not yet been taken
ill?" observed the Commissary. "Scusi, Signor; I think he had been
struck by the fever at that time. He fell a-shivering and a-shaking
so that he could hardly stand, when the body was carried past. But
that is the way the mischief always begins. Ah, there's never a
doctor knows it better than I do, and no wonder."
"You don't think then," said the lawyer, "that it was the sight of
the dead body that moved him so?"
"Why should it?" said the lay-brother, in the true spirit of
monastic philosophy; "why should it? all flesh is grass; there is
nothing so strange in death. He sighed and groaned a deal, but that
is often Father Fabiano's way when he comes out from his exercises
in the church. He seemed as if he could hardly stand on his legs:
but, bless you, that was the fever.
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