"Come in Father, this way."

Cosimo was lying on a small cot, resting on some pillows that were not quite propping him up.

His head was tilted to the right, one leg was stretched out, almost rigid, while the other was bent.

An arm shot suddenly upwards when the friar entered the room and encountered an incredibly alert and piercing stare.Father Jacopo noted the hands, wrapped in clean bandages, and advanced boldly into the room.

"Cosimo, Father Jacopo has come to see you."

The Dominican had entered the room reciting a mental prayer to get ready for an encounter of which he was for some reason a little afraid.

The night before, Father Oberto had told him about the woman in tears, who had been crying in front of the Virgin and didn't seem able to keep to her feet before her image.

Silently, he had gone closer and offered support. To his surprise, he had realized she was a member of the powerful family of B., recently back from the Orient.

She had told him the absurd and incredible story of a sick and paralyzed child, perhaps possessed by an evil spirit.

"Father, my Cosimo is a good boy, I swear!But the things he does, the things he says, I can't, I just can't tell you ! Guglielmo, his father, wants to throw him out of the house. He has just seen him after three years away, and he's scared. He says the child is possessed, damned, and doesn't want to see him again.My poor sister entrusted him to me before dying and begged me not to abandon him. But he didn't behave like that then "

Father Jacopo stood silently in front of the boy. He observed his countenance - the bright and beautiful eyes, the well-shaped forehead, but the nose was flat like that of a brawler and bore the signs of an old fracture.

The most startling feature was the child's mouth. Only the central part of the lower lip remained, to the sides of which there were small, recent wounds............................................