“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.  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.  He took to his bed as soon as ever the men carrying the body were out of sight.  He’s an old man is Father Fabiano.”

“Where had he been all the time between the time when the painter lady left the church, and the hour of Compline?” asked the Commissary, who had been busily thinking during the lay-brother’s moralizings.

“Ever since a little after the Angelus he had been on his knees at the altar of St. Apollinare, according to his custom.  He told me so, when he came to give me my potion; for I was down with the fever yesterday morning.”

“Do you know where he was before the Angelus?” returned the Commissary.