He ordered them to take her to the inn, put her to bed and refresh her with food and wine.

Those who were following stopped, and the others stepped aside, allowing him to pass.

The student who had once before asked to speak, approached him respectfully, and inquired if he and some of his friends might speak a few words with him alone, later on.
"Oh yes!" Benedetto answered, consenting with manly warmth and eagerness.

Noemi, who was standing near, took heart.
"I also must ask for five minutes," she said in French, blushing; and then it immediately occurred to her she had thus shown that she knew him to be a man of culture; her face was aflame, as she repeated her petition in Italian.
Almost involuntarily Don Clemente pressed Benedetto's arm gently.
Benedetto replied courteously, but somewhat drily: "Do you wish to do a kind action?
Care for that poor girl." And he passed on.
He and Don Clemente entered the hovel alone.

No one had followed them.
An old woman, the sick man's mother, seeing him enter, threw herself weeping at his feet, repeating her daughter's words: "Are you the holy man?
Are you he?
You have healed one of my children, now heal this one also." At first, coming from the sunlight into that darkness, Benedetto could not distinguish anything, but presently he saw the man stretched on the bed; he was breathing hard, groaning and crying, and cursing the Saints, women, the village of Jenne, and his own unhappy fate.