aordinary
swiftness. When some of us goatherds learned this we went in search of
him for about two days through the most remote portion of this sierra, at
the end of which we found him lodged in the hollow of a large thick cork
tree. He came out to meet us with great gentleness, with his dress now
torn and his face so disfigured and burned by the sun, that we hardly
recognised him but that his clothes, though torn, convinced us, from the
recollection we had of them, that he was the person we were looking for.
He saluted us courteously, and in a few well-spoken words he told us not
to wonder at seeing him going about in this guise, as it was binding upon
him in order that he might work out a penance which for his many sins had
been imposed upon him. We asked him to tell us who he was, but we were
never able to find out from him: we begged of him too, when he was in
want of food, which he could not do without, to tell us where we should
find him, as we would bring it to him with all good-will and readiness;
or if this were not to his taste, at least to come and ask it of us and
not take it by force from the shepherds. He thanked us for the offer,
begged pardon for the late assault, and promised for the future to ask it
in God's name without offering violence to anybody. As for fixed abode,
he said he had no other than that which chance offered wherever night
might overtake him; and his words ended in an outburst of weeping so
bitter that we who listened to him must have been very stones had we not
joined him in it, comparing what we saw of him the first time with what
we saw now; for, as I said, he was a graceful and gracious youth, and in
his courteous and polished language showed himself to be of good birth
and courtly breeding, and rustics as we were that listened to him, even
to our rusticity his gentle bearing sufficed to make it plain.

"But in the midst of his conversation he stopped and became silent,
keeping his eyes fixed upon the ground for some time, during which we
stood still waiting anxiously to see what would come of this abstraction;
and with no little pity, for from his behaviour, now staring at the
ground with fixed gaze and eyes wide open without moving an eyelid, again
closing them, compressing his lips and raising his eyebrows, we could
perceive plainly that a fit of madness of some kind had come upon him;
and before long he showed that what we imagined was the truth, for he
arose in a fury from the g