Of the blood relics of certain martyrs.

Oura once again swept down and bowed before the company, and then, rising and smiling all the way, said:

This is a true story. It happened about four years ago in Siena, and my boyfriend, Francesco, was on vacation visiting his uncle in Siena and saw the whole thing. He told me all about it the next fall, when we both had to go up into the mountains to pick hazelnuts for Lord Cazzo. But unlike that utterly fruitless—or nutless—endeavor, it won’t take as long to tell. And after hearing Persiflage’s real yawner—beg pardon, sir—I hope my story will cut to the chase rather than give you the runaround.

This all starts about twenty years ago, though, in the house of a family called Carvaglia. Now, you may know these villains as the folks trying to move big tomato in the capital. You’ll never see me sign on to start cooking with one of these ‘golden apples¹’ of the Indies. No thank you! I very much know what a nightshade is and know what it can do. You haven’t learned to live with loss until you’ve had to carry a dead, half-rotting sixty-pound lamb down a steep hill because Fluffy decided to be brave and try something other than grass.

Anyway, one of these Carvagli, a man named Nicanore, had four children: Gianni, Francesco (not my boyfriend, by the way), Paolo and a daughter, Elisabetta. Gianni died fighting with the French, Francesco found ill fame and a dagger’s point attempting to elope with his over-moled cousin Monna Maria², and Paolo decided to go to Rome to enrich himself at the expense of a flamboyant Cardinal Bicci.

The Carvaglias had two out of three things a wealthy Italian family needs: land and money. But they had two dead sons and one gay one, which for these times is just as bad, and that left Elisabetta with an awful big and stinky pair of shoes to fill.

Elisabetta’s mother, Roderica, came from a family that had been across-the-street neighbors of St Catherine of Siena³. Her family were somewhat resentful of this, and had been training—or forcing, I should say—generations of girls since then to become a rival St Catherine. So naturally Roderica’s task, once Elisabetta was born, was to turn her into a saint, come hell or high water.

So she did what any loving mother would in such a position: abandon her baby girl with the Poor Clares⁴, and when these had begun begging for dowry money too early, with the Dominicans⁵, the same order as St Cat’s. Easy peasy. The girl grew up nourished on bean soups, bone broth, and endless talk of the Crucifixion. I mean, they were talking as if they’d seen the damn thing with their own eyes!

‘Some of them have, dear Oura,’ Fr Bunion said.

‘OK. And? I’ve seen lots of nasty shit, but you don’t see me endlessly rehashing it. Sometimes I think we’d have a lot better things to talk about if we didn’t endlessly revisit things that shouldn’t have happened in the first place. Now will you please let me continue?’

The company chuckled and Oura recomposed herself.

One day, some nuns took Elisabetta to see the big crucifix in the Convent of San Poliute in a town called Balsacco. Now, much has been said of the name of the town, but that’s neither here nor there. What is notorious about this town and the convent is a gigantic—I’m talking HUGE—crucifix that has a bunch of little levers, pulleys and handles⁶ that you can’t see, all worked by crafty friars. If you’re a poor illiterate peasant like me, Canva, Figma and Sinema, you’re either in for the coolest thing you’ve ever seen or nightmare fuel to haunt you for the rest of your thirty-four or thirty-five years.

Elisabetta was eight years old. As soon as this wooden Jesus began to writhe on the Cross, turning his head this way and that, Elisabetta tugs on her guardian’s sleeve and says, ‘Sorella⁷, I hear Jesus telling me things from the Cross. Is this supposed to be part of the show?’

‘This is no show, Lisabetta! What is Our Lord saying to you?’

‘He says that I am an unworthy, horribly sinful little girl, and that He should like that I join him in Heaven, but the only way to do that is by bringing fame to the Church.’

‘I refuse to believe a little girl decided that the Lord imparted things to her even as a mechanical crucifix, even for a pious reason, prompted her to the thought.’

Oura frowned at Father Bunion.

‘I’m telling a story, not testifying in court, Father. If you want to take apart people’s stories, I suggest you start in your own backyard.’

‘She’s right, you know,’ added Xerox of Sabra. ‘There are some stories of the saints in the Eastern churches that strain credibility. Take, for example, the story of the Trisagion⁸. An earthquake devastates Constantinople. Somehow a child is lifted up in the midst of it, hears angels reciting the Trisagion, and just as everyone feels the shaking slow, the kid dies. Never mind about the prayer, though—what’d the kid do to deserve such a terrible fate?’

‘Stranger things have happened, Lord Xerox.’

‘Yes, but what sort of message do you think that sends, hmm? “The Church: praise God or we kill your kids.” And mind you: I’m a practicing Christian myself, so I think the criticism is well-earned.’

‘I wish to know, dear Oura, if young Lisabetta wished to either credit or discredit the novel mechanics of such an ingenious device,’ Doctor Scholl said.

I’m glad you asked, because here’s what happened next:

Regardless of whether Our Lord had actually said anything, a thought sprouted in young Lisabetta’s mind. The Church obviously needed butts in pews. But more importantly, it needed coins in pockets. Lisabetta now saw a tremendous business opportunity yawning before her from a finely carved mouth.

She goes home and tells her Mom: ‘I’d like to enter the Convent of San Marco as a novice⁹ at the end of the year.’ She’s like, eight when she tells her Mom this. And this lady! The first thing she says is: ‘Fantastic idea. How much do you think you can fundraise for the dowry by year’s end?’

And mind you, the dowry exchange rate at this time was in the high teens.

‘I had no idea dowries had an exchange rate,’ Arbonne of Olay then said.

‘Not an exchange rate, my dear lady—the marriageable age index,’ replied Oura.

If you’re a hot girl from the suburbs that’s something—a casina¹⁰, a beanfield, maybe a guy who won’t fuck the cows. But for a little girl who’s thinking of optimizing herself for HMC (Holy Mother Church), that’s peanuts.

Nicanore was all for sending Lisabetta to the sisters of San Marco—after all, what’s one less mouth to feed? But then the Prioress, Suor Gianna, says: ‘She’s a tad bit too young. Come back in eight years or better yet, try to marry her off to someone—anyone. It’s better for her to be wife and mother than yet another nun whose sole contribution is a dowry and perhaps a promising career in needlecraft.’

‘But Oura, something’s off here,’ said Messer Cayenne. ‘My sister, Madonna Carolina, was allowed to enter the Convent of San Giuliano Martire in Monza as a pupil. If Elisabetta’s family was wealthy, wouldn’t it have been better for her to at least enter the convent to learn how to be a good wife and mother?’

Oura blinked at Messer Cayenne.

‘How the hell should I know?’ she replied.

Eight years pass. Elisabetta reaches the age of marriage. As she was a pretty little thing, she had her choice of beaux, but her family had already selected one: Messer Onorato da Sangiallo, Conte of Faccabianca¹¹ in the Marche of Ancona¹². Ser Onorato was a fat, cockeyed man of twenty-six. Now around these parts I’d call that a catch. There’s a man who’ll herd your sheep and feed your pigs and maybe share a bed, but Elisabetta shuddered before the prospect that this man—and his moldy cheese millions—would prevent her from making good on a childhood wish.

On the night before her betrothal, she prays to God and says: ‘Lord, if it is Your Will, send me some means of bringing wealth and fame to this house and to Your Church.’

Now Ser Onorato was in the chamber next door and heard all of this. And so this man says to himself, ‘Onorato, you are wealthy, sexually voracious, irresistible to women such as Oura and Figma and a genius at glassmaking and goldsmithing. There must be something you can do for this beautiful Siena girl wrongly taken with notions of sainthood.’

He goes to Roderica—not Nicanore—and says, ‘Mom, let’s negotiate.’

The betrothal happens, and much to Elisabetta’s surprise, Roderica says: ‘Your future husband and I have determined how you will both honor us and the Church. Look in this little velvet-lined box that Ser Onorato will give you.’

And inside, friends, was a hagstone¹³, no bigger than a marble.

‘What’s a hagstone?’ Princess Calamondin then asked.

Lord Swiffer opened his mouth but Xerox spoke first.

‘Alright, dammit—I can take a hint,’ he said, and, rising, pulled out a large book he’d been sitting on. He licked his fingers, and peering over some rather large spectacles, found an entry in his book.

‘ “Hagstone: A perforated stone of the English-speaking peoples, akin to the Urim and Thummim¹⁴ of the ancient Jews. Paphnutios of Sinope recalls in his Tetragrammatikon¹⁵ of Lesbos that Garganios of Zeugma saw several such stones when the Western Heathens invaded in the time of Manuel II¹⁶. Furthermore, the elegant-worded Donatus of Kiev further records, that in the time of the Wandering Peoples, these were carried in a skin or bag. Some of these stones were luminous. Some people became sick in handling them, while others turned away from them because of their demonic associations. There is no truth in the telling that they are used for finding sources of water. See divining rods.” ’

Then everyone looked to Lord Swiffer.

‘I’ve never seen one myself, but her Majesty the late Queen carried one in her pomander¹⁷ to ward away the witches said to have procured her disgrace.’

‘Which queen, though?’ asked Arbonne of Olay.

‘I believe the charming Oura still retains the privilege of speaking, dear friends,’ said Lady Ouiser.

Oura bowed graciously to her and went on.

This hagstone was pulled from Ser Onorato’s quarry at Vaccastupida, where a huge waterfall had burnished many such fine stones to smoothness. It was made of bloodstone¹⁸, but had little inclusions in it that glowed in the dark like foxfire¹⁹. The stone had been pulled out nearly a year before by an unfortunate miner named Tura Satana who, if the telling is correct, dealt with its would-be thieves in some sort of deserted place. I believe a book exists telling the tale.

Then came Ser Onorato and said: ‘I have a proposition. It is obvious God has brought us together. You have a dowry and a calling, and I have this stone and a deep desire to spend your dowry. Since your mother cannot aspire to sainthood as a nun of San Marco, and neither can you now, we can kill two birds with one stone.’

‘But I don’t have a slingshot! And this stone is too fine to kill little birds with,’ replied Elisabetta.

‘That’s not what I mean,’ Ser Onorato then said. ‘In the church of San Sicario in the town of Nutella is an ampoule containing²⁰ the blood of a baby killed by King Herod in the Massacre of the Innocents²¹. The baby’s name is St Sicarius. For years, it’s always liquefied on Childermas²² in front of the people. For the last few years, my family has tried and failed to secure a misericord²³—ahem—I mean, assist the rector of this ancient church in resolving why the blood will not liquefy. This, my dear, is where you come in.’

‘Saint Sicarius sounds like an awfully severe name for a baby victim of the Massacre of the Innocents,’ Lady Aquafina said.

‘He is well known in Brantôme²⁴, where he is patron. Lady Arbonne and I have seen the saint’s grave and we, too, agree the name is most unusual for a child martyr.’

‘Sicarius is properly the name of a dagger-wielding assassin²⁵,’ Master Xerox said. ‘It’s sort of like naming your dog Bone.’

‘Did you say that Elisabetta’s parents let their little girl move in with a twenty-six-year-old man? Into his home? Without a chaperon?’ Lady Ouiser then said.

‘Francesco tells me it’s the newest thing in Siena, my lady,’ replied Oura. ‘But I pray let me continue, because the story gets a lot stupider.’

Ser Onorato and Elisabetta were formally betrothed to one another. At Childermas they appeared in the town of Nutella, and the ampoule of San Sicario was brought forth.

Now, stay with me here. This is nothing like that sordid business at San Gennaro²⁶, where the blood foretells if Mount Vesuvius will erupt. Nutella is already a town with nothing to lose—it straddles a huge chasm in the butt-crack of the Dolomites²⁷.

The relic of San Sicario is about the size of a black walnut with a curious rust-colored powder inside, with a thin pool of oil sitting atop it. Tradition says that if the people of San Sicario live decent, godly lives all year, the blood will liquefy on Childermas, and the town’s fortunes will increase. But the blood had not liquefied since a boy named Donato da Fiorporpora was caught pissing into the sacrarium²⁸ behind the sanctuary.

The priest at San Sicario, Fr Goffreddo, was a nice man, but he was desperate for a solution. Tinkers had cleaned²⁹ out the town a year before attempting to get the blood to liquefy by swinging it around in a big slingshot. Worse, they almost even broke the thing! And of course, a broken relic can’t be good for tourism.

So he was relieved when Onorato and Elisabetta showed up with the hagstone. The whole town turned up to see if the Hagstone of Miracles would make the blood of the child martyr liquefy. Elisabetta approached the relic with devotion and laid the hagstone atop it, and the priest turned the ampoule upside down.

That powdered blood sank into the oil like Parmesan into melted butter. But when Elisabetta removed the hagstone, it turned to powder again. After several more tries the blood stayed blood. Francesco says they had a big barbecue afterward.

‘It sounds like Elisabetta’s hagstone was not that effective,’ said Lady Ouiser.

‘Sometimes the elements residing in certain objects refuse to harmonize because their planetary rulers³⁰ will not allow it,’ Doctor Scholl said.

‘Indeed, Doctor. Alexios of Boetia has written that Luna imparts³¹ a wateriness to things when she floats in Cancer, and a fluidity in Pisces,’ Xerox added.

Oura blinked at them and was silent. When they had stopped mumbling incoherent scholarly quibbles at one another, she resumed her story.

Word spread all over Tuscany. Onorato was shopping Elisabetta and the hagstone at all the big churches.

At the duomo of San Bartolomeo in Fiesole³², a piece of skin belonging to the saint³³ quivered as if it were a whiting in hot oil when the hagstone was brought near it. A fresco of Our Lady in Salmonica wept tears of balsam³⁴ when the hagstone was raised to it. Devils flew from the mouth of a fat old woman named La Pazza Gorica in the town of Cessaco Grande, near Norcia. Elisabetta was named one of the Church’s ‘Fifty Under Fifty’, and a new painter in Florence painted a likeness of her holding up the hagstone between her fingers.

Onorato and Lady Elisabetta then got married in Venice. Onorato had a friend of his at the Ca’ d’Oro³⁵ arrange for a money bath. Francesco says some wenches pour donkey milk, oil, honey, attar of roses³⁶ and thousands of florins³⁷ into a kind of shallow pool that you sit in. Then you use the money to wash yourself. A Scottish duck in the time of Frederick the Fireplug and his three nephews are said to have done this in some collection of fables that Francesco has seen reproductions of. I shudder to think of having to take a bath in a tub full of coins! Who knows where those have been? What sort of vulgar person wishes to have money in all their nooks and crannies like that? Have you ever been hit by an errant coin? Do you know what sort of mark that leaves?

I’m getting beyond myself though. Let me finish the story.

Ser Onorato and Lady Elisabetta then met His Holiness. He conferred upon both of them the Order of the Holy Girdle, given only to married couples that the Pope hasn’t either murdered, seduced or conscripted into a conspiracy against Florence. For two Sienese that is a big deal—I’m talking huge. Branding, licensing, investment, you name it.

For a while you couldn’t go anywhere without seeing pasquinades³⁸ wheat-pasted over every lump of Roman marble in ‘sweet Italian’, praising or vilifying ‘Lisabetta of the Miraculous Hagstone’. One of Francesco’s buddies, a guy named ‘Face’, said that he was able to get a rare Elisabetta-themed non-fungible trattenimento³⁹ from an under-the-table dealer in Milan. It was rare because this was one of the topless trattenimenti that you usually can’t get because the black market guys are all Muscovites⁴⁰ who’ll cheat you seven ways from Sunday. You should see the guy’s car, by the way—woof!

‘None of this strikes me as new, shepherdess,’ Boulevardier then said. ‘I have yet to hear about broken promises.’

‘Where else do you have to be right now, huh, mister? I hate to break it to you but the Holy Crafting Table’s not going anywhere after it gets to Lodi.’

‘All I’m saying is that eventually this story has to prove that Elisabetta must have betrayed her spouse. I mean, that is what this story is about, isn’t it?’

‘No, Ser Boulevardier. You really do have to give a girl credit for attempting to narratively break the mold here.’

Anyway. Seeing as Mr Fancypants here is getting impatient, I’d better finish.

Ser Onorato and Elisabetta offered consultations with the hagstone through an arrangement with selected apothecaries⁴¹ and poisoners throughout Italy. The contracts were not easy to come by, and Ser Onorato was an exacting businessman. Elisabetta changed her voice and her demeanour. She was very fair, and some men found this off-putting. So, in order to instill a sense of gravity and serenity, she lowered the timbre of her voice⁴² and relaxed her expression into one of great composure and stillness. When she spoke, she sounded like the world’s most half-serious thirteen-year-old boy.

And churchmen up and down the Apennines⁴³ desperately needed the hagstone to verify relics. Those that did saw tremendous revenues, which partly explains why so many new basilicas went up. But many others didn’t.

Case in point: at the shrine of Sant’ Ubriacco in Refice, the hagstone failed to authenticate the blood relic of St Deogratias, the town’s patron. Onorato charged the rector an exorbitant sum and helped himself to four wheels of the local cheese. Weeks later, the incensed peasantry tossed out St Deogratias’ relics into the street. Francesco says people in that town use the saint’s urn now as a kind of corn-hole receptacle. But he also says—and maybe Fr Bunion here can back him up—that St Deogratias really and truly did die in that town, and this blood relic was the real deal.

Fr Bunion rummaged in a bag of cookies he had bought that day with indifference.

‘Girl, ask me later!’ the priest said.

Inevitably, the trouble you make elsewhere follows you home. One day, Ser Onorato and Elisabetta, now newly married and quite wealthy, stopped before the shrine of Saint Catherine of Siena⁴⁴. If walls could talk, my friends!

A visiting priest named Fr Florio, who was a friend of the podestà⁴⁵, said that the hagstone was an enchantment born of the Devil. He wrote a book about it entitled Why I Don’t Like The Hagstone. It had a lot of pictures in it, and one of the pictures showed that both the hagstone and the waterfall were sacred to the old gods, and that some impious and ignorant folks had kept this idea alive to scam the locals out of their money and peace. He also said that blood relics were already quite finicky, and required particular conditions in order to liquefy, to say nothing of the faith of the already put-upon faithful.

Well, this had just about everyone talking, and pretty soon, Fr Florio had quite a few people behind him, saying that Ser Onorato had charged them a whole year’s fortunes just for ten minutes with the hagstone.

Elisabetta, meanwhile, was paying calls on prelates⁴⁶ and noblemen outside of the presence of her husband—and in black clothing with very high collars. I see Messer Boulevardier here is looking for an opportunity to say something sassy here—not so fast! Elisabetta’s mere voice was enough to remind these noblemen of Greek love. No womanizer wants to be reminded of the pubescent cousin who wants to know if he has a ball-and-cup game⁴⁷ somewhere in his chambers.

Two Sienese haymakers, Negroni and Stracciatella, happened⁴⁸ to be in town for the season. As they saw Ser Onorato and Lady Elisabetta leave in a carriage to meet with a wealthy patron, Negroni said to Stracciatella:

‘Wouldn’t it be funny if their little scheme failed on the Blood of Jesus?’

‘Assuming you could find a specimen,’ Stracciatella said. ‘I’ve never seen so much as a speck of it. If the fellow really was whipped nearly to death, shouldn’t it follow that the Church would have great bucketfuls of the fellow’s blood?’

‘Some churches do have such things,’ Negroni replied.

‘But not the Duomo. Hear me out, though: what if you and me “found” a relic of the Lord’s blood while we’re out in the field? And we bring this relic to this shyster and his wife, they put that gem on it, and we and the rest of Siena laugh our asses off.’

‘That lady is too pretty to mess with. Her cock-eyed husband is bound to have us hunted to the ends of the Earth if our ruse is discovered.’

The Lord, being a kind and generous joker, however, was already hard at work setting up Ser Onorato and Lady Elisabetta for the biggest humiliation since the podestà’s pants fell down during the Pentecost egg-chase⁴⁹ of 1501.

The parish priest of San Calipodio, Fr Ruggiero, had found in the ancient records of the church that its namesake’s blood relics had been authenticated by Pope Liberius⁵⁰ himself. The tomb in his fine church still contained a notice on the slab and a silver laurel wreath. But Onorato and Elisabetta had visited the Bishop of Gubbio, who had a relic of the blood of this martyr. When it failed to materialize, the crestfallen Bishop ordered Fr Ruggiero to clean out San Calipodio’s tomb, to the dismay of the faithful.

But when the superstitious workmen lifted the slab from the tomb, they found the saint’s body perfectly undisturbed—as if the boy had fallen asleep! And even more stupendous was a limpid pool of dark blood under the body of the saint. Fr Ruggiero crossed himself, hired an engraver to make a record of it, and then had the tomb resealed. The Bishop was gobsmacked and immediately wrote for a refund. By this time, however, Elisabetta and Onorato were elsewhere—and, if Renaissance Noble magazine has it right—on the outs as well.

And while Negroni and Stracciatella went to a nearby butcher and a fiasco-maker⁵¹, Ser Onorato and Lady Elisabetta’s servants had gone to some churchmen, alleging that the two were taking everyone for a ride. Some powerful cardinals were informed and began to independently investigate in Rome.

The Feast of the Corpus Domini⁵² arrived, and Ser Onorato and Lady Elisabetta dressed up in white along with the other nobles, to attend a service at the Duomo. Stracciatella and Negroni, meanwhile, approached the rector of the church. Assuming the ignorant airs of two old men from the country, they said that an angel with a turning, flaming sword⁵³, pointed out a hole to them in a wheatfield. In a potsherd⁵⁴, the angel said, was an ampoule of Christ’s holy blood, collected when an unbelieving Syrian accountant named Theranos of Damascus, passing by Golgotha⁵⁵ on his way to a conference in Hieropolis Magna, collected it as a means of holding it as a security⁵⁶ against the Blessed Virgin if and when she needed to pay funeral expenses.

The rector was flummoxed, and, as his boss was around, quickly waved it in. They repeated the story to the Bishop and two other cardinals, and after Mass, this was brought before Ser Onorato and Lady Elisabetta.

‘Good God!’ gasped Fr Bunion. ‘A Syrian accountant? A conference in Hieropolis Magna? Security against the Virgin Mother of God?’

‘—For funeral expenses, Father,’ Oura replied.

The hagstone was brought out and laid atop the ampoule. The populace was hushed as the ampoule was turned.

It turned to blood. A cry of ‘Miracle! Miracle!’ went up to heaven.

Then Negroni and Stracciatella pulled off their disguises.

‘If this is Christ’s Blood, then both of you are no better than sausage-making country charlatans! This is pig’s blood from Duccio Gualtieri, the butcher of Francapietra. And you are both frauds! Citizens, behold! The cockeyed Onorato has pressed his own wife into lying in God’s house, and she has followed him into it!’

The people then seized Onorato, took him to the podestà, and he was seen no more. Francesco says that for a while there was a skeleton in a cage attached to the tower there, but I keep on reminding him that this punishment is usually reserved for Florentine sinners, not Sienese ones.

By then, the Church authorities had more than enough proof that Onorato and Elisabetta had scammed a fair number of people out of their livings. Francesco says that the last time he was in Siena the Carvaglia family’s tondo⁵⁷ had been removed from the Duomo, which says a lot. Roderica died the following year, and Nicanore shortly thereafter. No one heard from Elisabetta for some time, but just this past winter her name was mentioned in passing with a certain Nataniele di Campofiorito, a buffone in the service⁵⁸ of Prince Valium of Monte Orta.

This buffone found Elisabetta living under house arrest with her second husband Guglielmo, who granted access to their remote estate, which had been procured with some difficulty through an arrangement with the Church. He stayed there with her for some months, recording her comings and goings. Not once did she qualify her actions as sinful, nor Ser Onorato’s use of her or the hagstone as anything illegal.

Guglielmo was most strange, going about the house naked, speaking of grand illusions and political debauchery. When the Church found out about this, it moved to enclose her⁵⁹ to spare her the scandal, and when Nataniele left that house, he told everyone in town that Elisabetta’s wide-eyed gaze, utter lack of remorse, and self-credulity were the most pitiful things about her.

Francesco thinks she was crazy. I think she was just unlucky.

She’s in the place she truly wanted to be in the first place now: the Convento di San Marco, no doubt cross-stitching to her heart’s content.

Ser Boulevardier probably thinks I’m being too kind to her. But unlike Lady Elisabetta, I am not bound to tell a story in a certain way just because that’s the way stories are often told. The only promise I can keep is to tell the story in the way it was told to me.

And, having said these things, Oura sat down.

‘What happened to the hagstone?’ asked Princess Calamondin.

‘One believes it returned to the waterfall from whence it came,’ said Lord Swiffer. ‘One necessarily must assume it flew to its hellish abode, much as thoughts and dreams float down to us on the very air.’

‘Something tells me you wish to speak, milord,’ Lady Ouiser said, softly smiling.

The fine English lord stepped forth and swept his hat down with a graceful bow.

‘My dear lady, suffice it to say that an Englishman is as immune to storytelling as Matteo di Civigni⁶⁰ was to the murderer’s dagger that slew him.’