Then suddenly, wild with rage:

"Fie, fie! his senses are benumbed. His coldness offends my charms. He
scorns me; avenge me, comrades! Mnaïs, Ægle, Melibœa, avenge your
sister!"

At this appeal, one and all, lifting their thorny whips, fell to
scourging him so savagely that Fra Mino's body was soon one wound from
head to toe. Now and again they would stop to cough and spit, only to
begin afresh, plying their whips more vigorously than ever. Only sheer
weariness induced them to leave off.

"I hope," Neæra then said, "next time he will not do me the undeserved
insult I still blush to remember. We will spare his life; but if he
betrays the secret of our sports and pleasures, we will surely kill him.
Good-bye to you, my pretty boy!"

So saying, the old woman suddenly squatted down over the Monk and
drowned him in a torrent of very filthy liquid. Each sister followed
suit and did the like; then one after the other they re-entered the tomb
of San Satiro, slipping in through a tiny crack in the lid, leaving
their victim lying full length in a stream of a most intolerable stench.

When the last had disappeared,--the cock crew. Then Fra Mino at last
found himself able to rise from the earth. Broken with fatigue and pain,
benumbed with cold, shuddering with fever, half stifled with the foul
exhalations of the poisonous liquor, he set his clothing straight and
dragged himself to his cell, just as day broke.