hich were those
of a woman of leisure, were reforming their ranks after the first
defeat, and delaying her progress on the new road, ever more
successfully as the road became more difficult. She felt she must
succumb if no word of counsel reached her, no help from him. She could
not see him, she dared not write, for certainly he had intended to
forbid that also; and she would rather die than do anything to displease
him, if she could avoid it. She had read an article in the _Corriere_ on
the "Saint of Jenne," in which it was stated that the Saint was young,
and had been a day-labourer in the kitchen-garden at Santa Scolastica.
Therefore it must be he! She entreated Noemi to go to Jenne, and beg a
word of comfort for her, for the sake of charity! Noemi was determined
to go. Would Giovanni accompany her? In the humble tone in which she
asked this favour, Giovanni heard a tacit petition for forgiveness and
peace; he held out his hand:

"With all my heart," he said.

Maria offered to join them, and they decided to go the following
morning, starting on foot, at five o' clock, in order to avoid the
blazing sun on the slope of Jenne. Then they spoke of the Saint.

The whole valley was talking about him. The article Jeanne had seen said
that a great number of people were flocking to Jenne to see and hear the
Saint; that miraculous cures were being announced as his work; that the
Benedictines told with admiration of the life of penance and of prayer
he had led for three years at Santa Scolastica, working in the garden.
At Subiaco still more wonderful reports were circulating. A certain
forester called Torquato, a most worthy man and a relative of the
Selvas' servant, told her he had been to Jenne with a stranger, a sort
of poet, who had come all the way from Rome to talk with the Saint. On
the way there and back, they had met perhaps fifty people--real ladies
and gentlemen they were, too; and on the hillside of Jenne they had met
a procession of women singing the litanies. At Jenne he had heard the
whole story. One night the parish priest had dreamed that a globe of
fire rested on the great cross planted on the summit of the hill; this
blazing globe had set the cross itself on fire, and it was burning and
glowing without being consumed, while all the mountains and the valley
were illumined by it. The next day there had appeared before him a young
man, in the habit of a Benedictine lay-brother, who was the bearer of a
letter t