Ismaele Pestagran’s beating in Posina is an offstage act of mob violence with consequences beyond the assault itself: shunned as a Protestant Bible seller, he finds shelter with Don Aurelio, whose decision to take him in later shadows the priest’s forced departure from Lago.

The Assault and Its Victim

The account identifies Ismaele Pestagran as a seller of Protestant Bibles who was beaten by a crowd in Posina. It gives no details of the assault or of his injuries, but makes clear that he was left without ordinary refuge: no one would take him in. The violence and the refusal of shelter together establish his precarious position in the community.

In Lago, Pestagran is called Carnesecca, a nickname drawn from his habit of mentioning Carnesecchi in his lyrical speeches. His own sharp humor is described in the way he once labeled Lago’s residents fish and now calls them sharks. The comic description does not undo the vulnerability behind it: he is an injured, rejected outsider dependent on others’ hospitality.

Don Aurelio’s Shelter

Don Aurelio takes Pestagran into his home, where the man has been staying for two days by the time the priest’s hospitality is recounted to Massimo Alberti. The woman who tells Massimo the story presents the priest’s regret that he could neither host Massimo nor meet him at the station, then explains that he had instead given his home to the injured Bible seller whom everyone else had refused.

The shelter fits Don Aurelio’s established willingness to accept a poor life as Providence’s arrangement and to serve people in need. His care is practical rather than polemical: he gives Pestagran a place to stay, while the story’s wry account of the man’s nickname and rhetoric sits alongside genuine pity for his situation.

The Threat to Don Aurelio

The assault’s aftermath becomes entangled with the threat to Don Aurelio’s own home. A letter from the Vicenza diocesan curia orders him to leave his curacy within fifteen days and requires that the house be cleared of both furniture and people, since his successor is to bring his mother and sister. Don Aurelio understands that the wording has a particular sting in the circumstances, though he does not conclude that the assault and shelter are definitively the cause of his dismissal.

After his first shock, Don Aurelio turns his attention away from his own uncertain prospects and toward finding Pestagran and preventing him from doing something foolish. The episode thus places the beaten man’s need for refuge beside the priest’s impending loss of his own: hospitality offers immediate protection, but cannot insulate either man from the forces that have made them vulnerable.