The students were silent, while a party of ladies and gentlemen, about to enter the square from the Val d'Aniene mule-path, stopped their mules.

First Maria, then Noemi, knelt, drawn towards the earth by an impulse which made them tremble with emotion.

Giovanni hesitated.

This was not his faith.

It seemed to him an offence to the Creator, the Giver of reason, to allow a sick man to journey a long distance on a mule, that he might be miraculously healed by an image, a relic, or a man.