“Something.⁠—Anything.⁠—One of those flowers will be sufficient.” (Here she pointed to a bush of roses, planted at the door of the grotto.) “I will hide it in my bosom, and when I am dead, the nuns shall find it withered upon my heart.”

The friar was unable to reply: with slow steps, and a soul heavy with affliction, he quitted the hermitage. He approached the bush, and stooped to pluck one of the roses. Suddenly he uttered a piercing cry, started back hastily, and let the flower, which he already held, fall from his hand. Matilda heard the shriek, and flew anxiously towards him.

“What is the matter?” she cried; “Answer me, for God’s sake! What has happened?”

“I have received my death!” he replied in a faint voice; “Concealed among the roses⁠ ⁠… A serpent.⁠ ⁠…”

Here the pain of his wound became so exquisite, that nature was unable to bear it: his senses abandoned him, and he sank inanimate into Matilda’s arms.

Her distress was beyond the power of description. She rent her hair, beat her bosom, and not daring to quit Ambrosio, endeavoured by loud cries to summon the monks to her assistance. She at length succeeded. Alarmed by her shrieks, several of the brothers hastened to the spot, and the superior was conveyed back to the abbey. He was immediately put to bed, and the monk who officiated as surgeon to the fraternity prepared to examine the wound. By this time Ambrosio’s hand had swelled to an extraordinary size; the remedies which had been administered to him, ’tis true, restored him to life, but not to his senses; he raved in all the horrors of delirium, foamed at the mouth, and four of the strongest monks were scarcely able to hold him in his bed.

Father Pablos, such was the surgeon’s name, hastened to examine the wounded hand. The monks surrounded the bed, anxiously waiting for the decision: among these the feigned Rosario appeared not the most insensible to the friar’s calamity. He gazed upon the sufferer with inexpressible anguish; and the groans which every moment escaped from his bosom sufficiently betrayed the violence of his affliction.