But my limbs were
powerless. I was as if cast in lead, whilst more and more slowly she
approached me, so languorously mocking.
And then revulsion took me, suddenly and without any cause or warning. I
put my hands to my face to shut out a vision whose true significance I
realized as in a flash.
"Retro me, Sathanas!" I thundered. "Jesus! Maria!"
I rose at last numbed and stiff. I looked again. The vision had departed.
I was alone in my cell, and the rain was falling steadily outside. I
groaned despairingly. Then I swayed, reeled sideways and lost all
consciousness.
When I awoke it was broad day, and the pale wintry sun shone silvery from a
winter sky. I was very weak and very cold, and when I attempted to rise
all things swam round me, and the floor of my cell appeared to heave like
the deck of a ship upon a rolling sea.
For days thereafter I was as a man entranced, alternately frozen with cold
and burning with fever; and but that a shepherd who had turned aside to ask
the hermit's blessing discovered me in that condition, and remained, out of
his charity, for some three days to tend me, it is more than likely I
should have died.
He nourished me with the milk of goats, a luxury upon which my strength
grew swiftly, and even after he had quitted my hut he still came daily for
a week to visit me, and daily he insisted that I should consume the milk he
brought me, overruling my protests that my need being overpast there was no
longer the necessity to pamper me.
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