The Fiery Angel Read Online Free PDF

with her face into the pillow and closed her eyes. I wanted to get up from her couch, but, softly embracing me with her arms, with tender compulsion she made me lie next to her. Not surprised by anything that might happen in that unusual night, and obedient, I lay down on the bed next to this woman, then still a complete stranger to me, not quite knowing how to behave towards her. Affectionately she encircled my neck and, pressing against me with almost naked body, she immediately fell asleep, soundly and undisturbed. It was already light with the blue light of dawn, and after what we had experienced I almost laughed to see how we both lay, strangers in a strange hostelry in a forest wilderness, yet embraced in one bed like brother and sister beneath a parental roof.
    When I had convinced myself that Renata was sleeping quietly, I carefully freed myself from her embrace, for I felt the need of fresh wind on my face and to be alone. Attentively I gazed at the face of the sleeping woman, and it appeared soft and innocent, like the images of children in the pictures of Fra Beata Angelico at Fiesole; almost incredible did it seem to me that, so short a while ago, the Devil had possessed this woman. Softly I left the room, donned my tall hat and made my way down, and, as everybody in the house was still asleep, I drew back the bolts of the door myself, and straightway found myself in the wood. There I walked along a solitary path amidst the heavy trunks of beeches, dearer to me than the slim palms and guaiacums of America, and listened to the early chirruping of the birds, that greeted me as a familiar language.
    I have never belonged to the number of those persons who, following the philosophers of the peripatetic school, maintain that in nature there are no disembodied spirits, denying the existence of demons and even that of holy angels. I have always held, though before meeting with Renata I had never actually been a witness of anything miraculous, that both observation and experiment, the two primary foundations of knowledge, prove undeniably the presence in our world, side by side with mankind, of other spirit forces, who are considered by Christians to compose the spiritual armies of Christ and the hordes of Satan. And I remembered also the words of Lactantius Firmianus, who maintains that at times guardian angels are tempted by the charms of young maidens, the souls of whom it is their duty to protect from sin. None the less, many details in the strange narrative of Renata seemed to me hardly credible and indeed inadmissible. Admitting that this woman I had encountered actually was in the power of the Devil, I was unable to distinguish where the deceits of the Spirit of Evil ended and where her own lies began.
    Thus tormenting myself with guesses and misunderstandings, I wandered at length along the paths of the unknown forest, and the sun was already risen high when I returned to the roadside hostelry in which I had spent the night. At the gate stood the hostess, a corpulent woman, red-faced and of stern appearance, more like the leader of a band of robbers, who, however, recognising me, greeted me with all courtesy, calling me lord knight. I decided to use this convenient opportunity to find out about the mysterious lady, and, approaching, I enquired with a voice of indifference, as if I only desired to gossip for want of something better to do—who was the woman whose room was next to mine.
    And this, roughly word for word, was the unexpected answer that the hostess gave to me:
    “Ah, Lord Knight, it were better you did not ask me about her, for my kind heart led me, maybe, to commit a mortal sin when I gave asylum to a heretic and one who has signed a pact with the Devil. Though she is not from our parts I know her history, for I was told it by a good friend of mine, an itinerant merchant from her part of the country. This woman who pretends to be so modest is in truth nothing but a whore, and by various machinations