[030]Some few days after, Ferondo being come to the abbey, the abbot
no sooner saw him than he resolved to send him to purgatory.
[031]
So he
selected from among his drugs a powder of marvellous virtue, which
he had gotten in the Levant from a great prince, who averred that
'twas wont to be used by the Old Man of the Mountain, when he
would send any one to or bring him from his paradise, and that,
without doing the recipient any harm, 'twould induce in him, according
to the quantity of the dose, a sleep of such duration and quality that,
while the efficacy of the powder lasted, none would deem him to be
alive.
Whereof he took enough to cause a three days' sleep, and
gave it to Ferondo in his cell in a beaker that had still some wine in
it, so that he drank it unwittingly: after which he took Ferondo to
the cloister, and there with some of his monks fell to making merry
with him and his ineptitudes.
[032]
In no long time, however, the
powder so wrought, that Ferondo was seized in the head with a fit
of somnolence so sudden and violent that he slept as he stood, and
sleeping fell to the ground.
[033]
The abbot put on an agitated air, caused
him to be untrussed, sent for cold water, and had it sprinkled on his
face, and applied such other remedies as if he would fain call back
life and sense banished by vapours of the stomach, or some other
intrusive force; but, as, for all that he and his monks did, Ferondo
did not revive, they, after feeling his pulse and finding there no
sign of life, one and all pronounced him certainly dead. Wherefore
they sent word to his wife and kinsfolk, who came forthwith, and
mourned a while; after which Ferondo in his clothes was by the
abbot's order laid in a tomb.
[034]
The lady went home, saying that
nothing should ever part her from a little son that she had borne
Ferondo; and so she occupied herself with the care of her son and
Ferondo's estate.
[035]
At night the abbot rose noiselessly, and with the
help of a Bolognese monk, in whom he reposed much trust, and who
was that very day arrived from Bologna, got Ferondo out of the
tomb, and bore him to a vault, which admitted no light, having been
made to serve as a prison for delinquent monks; and having stripped
him of his clothes, and habited him as a monk, they laid him on a
truss of straw, and left him there until he should revive. Expecting
which event, and instructed by the abbot how he was then to act,
the Bolognese monk (none else knowing aught of what was afoot)
kept watch by the tomb.
