He turned round swiftly and the sacristan did the same, and for a few minutes there reigned in the little church a silence so intense that the stone-breaker could be heard at his work behind the ridge. Then a woman got up and approached the priest’s mother, placing a hand on her shoulder as she bent down and whispered:

‘Your son must come at once to hear the confession of King Nicodemus, who is seriously ill.’

Roused from her own sad thoughts, the mother raised her eyes to the speaker. She remembered that King Nicodemus was a fantastic old hunter who lived in a hut high up in the mountains, and she asked if Paul would have to climb up there to hear the confession.

‘No,’ whispered the woman, ‘his relations have brought him down to the village.’

So the mother went to tell Paul, who was in the little sacristy, disrobing with the help of Antiochus.

‘You will come home first and drink your coffee, won’t you?’ she asked.

He avoided looking at her and did not even answer, but pretended to be in a great hurry to go to the old man who was ill. The thoughts of both mother and son dwelt upon the same thing, the letter which had been delivered to Agnes, but neither spoke of it. Then he hastened away, and she stood there like a block of wood whilst the sacristan busied himself in replacing the vestments in the black cupboard.

‘It would have been better if I had not told him about Nicodemus until he had been home and had his coffee,’ she said.

‘A priest must get accustomed to everything,’ replied Antiochus gravely, poking his head round the cupboard door, and then he added as though to himself as he turned back to his work inside:

‘Perhaps he is angry with me, because he says I am inattentive: but it’s not true, I assure you it’s not true! Only when I looked at those old men I felt inclined to laugh, for they did not understand a word of the sermon. They sat there with their mouths open, but they understood nothing. I bet you that old Marco Panizza really thinks he ought to wash his face every day, he who never washes at all except at Easter and Christmas! And you’ll see that from now on they will all come to church every day, because he told them that poverty would disappear if they did that.’

The mother still stood there, her hands clasped beneath her apron.

‘The poverty of the soul,’ she said, to show that she at least had understood. But Antiochus only looked at her as he had looked at the old men, with a strong desire to laugh. Because he was quite sure that nobody could understand these matters as he understood them, he who already knew the four gospels by heart and intended to be a priest himself, which fact did not prevent him from being as mischievous and inquisitive as other boys.