“Father Fabiano is not much fit to speak to anybody; the cold fit of the ague is very strong upon him.  But if you choose to go up to him you can—­specially as there is nothing to stop you.  He is in the right-hand cell on the first landing-place up that staircase,” said the lay-brother, feebly pointing to the entrance, from which he had come out.

The lawyer and the police official followed the indications thus given them, and found, as old Simone had said, that there was neither bolt, lock, nor latch to prevent any creature that could push a door on its hinges, from entering the little bare-walled room in which the friar lay beneath a heavy quilted coverlet on a little narrow pallet.

There was not so much as a single chair in the room.  The walls were clean, and freshly whitewashed; and the brick floor was also clean.  There were a few pegs of deal in the wall on the side of the cell opposite to the doorway, on which some garments were hanging; and on the wall facing the bed there was a large, rudely carved, and yet more rudely painted crucifix.  By the side of the bed nearest the door there hung, on a nail driven into the wall, a copper receptacle for holy water, the upper part of which was ornamented with a figure of St. Francis in the act of receiving the “Stigmata,” in repousse work, by no means badly executed.  And pasted on the bare wall, immediately above the pillow of the little bed, was a coloured print of the cheapest and vilest description, representing the Madonna with the seven legendary poignards sticking in her bosom, and St. Francis, supported on either side by a friar of his order, kneeling at her feet.

These objects formed absolutely the entire furniture of the cell.  There was nothing else whatsoever in the room; neither the smallest fragment of a looking-glass, nor any means or preparation for ablution whatsoever.

The old monk lay on his back in the bed, wit his head propped rather highly on a hard straw bolster; and the extreme attenuation of his body was indicated by the very slight degree in which the clothes that covered him were raised above the love of the bedstead.  On the coverlet upon his chest, there was a rosary of large beads turned out of box-wood.  The parts of each bead nearest to the string and in contact with each other were black with the undisturbed dirt and dust of many years.  But the protuberant circumference of each wooden ball was polished to a rich shining orange-colour by the constant handling of the fingers.

It seemed both to Signor Fortini and to the Commissary, that there could be no doubt about it, that the old man was really ill.  He was lying in his frock of thick brown woollen, and the cowl of it was drawn over his head.  He seemed to be suffering from cold, and his teeth were audibly chattering in his head; and his thin, thin claw-like hands shook as they clutched his crucifix.  His face was lividly pale, and his eyes gleamed out from under the cowl with a restless feverish brightness.