The other two reasons that the twice-over altarist spent time among the Walloons were also linked to magic. And to each other. Father Felicjan suffered from piles. The complaint manifested itself not only in bloody stools and an unbearable burning sensation in the arse, but also a significant decline in male potency. The Walloons—or to be precise the Walloon prostitutes at the brothel called the Red Mill—had a magical remedy for Father Felicjan’s complaint. Fumigated with magical Walloon incense, treated with an enema of magical Walloon balsams and a magical Walloon poultice, Father Felicjan could achieve—put simply and bluntly—a stiffness that just about permitted copulation. The harlots from Wrocław brothels had no intention of taking similar pains and would drive the priest away, mocking him and showing no interest at all in his suffering and worry. So Father Felicjan had to go further afield. Out of town, to the Walloon girls.

A serious impediment to his outings to Saint Maurice’s was the fact that he had to leave the city walls, secretly to boot, which meant after dusk and after the ignitegium. Father Felicjan knew how to leave and return in secret; the problem was the three furlongs he had to cover after that. Among the cutpurses who prowled around at night outside the city walls were some who weren’t afraid of the Walloons’ evil reputation or the rumours of their dangerous spells. So, on his regular visits to the Red Mill Father Felicjan donned a mail shirt, belted on a short sword and carried a loaded hand cannon, and as he walked he lovingly cradled and shielded with his coat the smouldering fuse and at the same time prayed aloud in Latin—which, incidentally, he couldn’t speak. Father Felicjan ascribed the fact that he never met any misfortune to his prayers. And he was right to. The boldest robbers—fearing neither the law nor God—took to their heels at the sight of the hooded oddity as he approached, clinking iron, emanating a devilish glow from under his cloak—and, to make matters worse, mumbling some sort of incoherent gobbledygook.

This time, having left the Red Mill and the Walloon vicus, Father Felicjan was trudging beside wattle fences at around midnight, muttering a litany and occasionally blowing on the fuse to keep it alight. The moon was full and the meadows still white with snow, so it was bright enough for Father Felicjan to walk quite swiftly, without having to worry about tripping over a pothole or falling into a cesspool, which had happened to him the previous autumn. The risk of bumping into robbers or other rogues was also diminishing, since on moonlit nights they usually abandoned their custom. Thus, Father Felicjan was striding more and more swiftly and boldly, and rather than pray, began to hum the tune of quite a secular song.