Groups of men and women, gesticulating and talking loudly, were pouring from the streets into the square.  Superstitious terror grew in leaps and bounds from face to face.  A thousand awful images of divine punishment rose out of their rude fancies; and comments, eager disputes, plaintive appeals, wild stories, prayers, and cries were mingled in a deep uproar, as of a hurricane approaching.  For some time past this bloody redness of the sky had lasted through the night, disturbing its tranquillity, illumining sullenly the sleeping fields, and making dogs howl.

“Giacobbe!  Giacobbe!” shouted some, waving their arms, who till then had stood in a compact band around a pillar of the church portico, talking in low tones, “Giacobbe!”

There came out through the main door, and drew near to those who called him, a long, emaciated man, apparently consumptive, whose head was bald at the top, but had a crown of long reddish hair about the temples and above the nape of the neck.  His little sunken eyes, animated with the fire of a deep passion, were set close and had no particular color.  The absence of his two upper front teeth gave to his mouth when speaking, and to his sharp chin with its few scattered hairs, the strangeness of a senile faun.  The rest of his body was a wretched structure of bones ill-concealed by his clothes.  The skin on his hands, his wrists, the back of his arms, and his breast was full of blue punctures made with a pin and india-ink, the souvenirs of sanctuaries visited, pardons obtained, and vows performed.

When the fanatic approached the group at the pillar, a swarm of questions arose from the anxious men.  “Well, then? what did Don Console say?  Will they send out only the silver arm?  Would not the whole bust do better?  When would Pallura come back with the candles?  Was it one hundred pounds of wax?  Only one hundred?  And when would the bells begin to ring?  Well, then?  Well, then?”

The clamor increased around Giacobbe.  Those on the outskirts of the crowd pushed toward the church.  From all the streets people poured into the square till they filled it.  And Giacobbe kept answering his questions, whispering, as if revealing dreadful secrets and bringing prophecies from far.  He had seen aloft in the bloody sky a threatening hand, and then a black veil, and then a sword and a trumpet.

“Go ahead!  Go ahead!” they urged him, looking in each other’s faces, and seized with a strange desire to hear of marvels, while the wonder grew from mouth to mouth in the crowd.

II.