After Beatrice is liberated from her captivity in the Campagna, she narrates that she “wandered many days, and penetrated into the wild country of the Abruzzi. But I was again lost: I know not what deprived me of reason thus, when I most needed it. Whether it were the joy, or the sudden change, attendant on a too intense sensation of freedom, which made me feel as if I interpenetrated all nature, alive and boundless. I have recollections, as if sometimes I saw the woods, the green earth, and the blue sky, and heard the roaring of a mighty waterfal which splashed me with its cold waters: but there is a blank, as of a deep, lethargic sleep; and many weeks passed before I awoke again, and entered upon the reality of life” (362). Immediately after this passage, Beatrice recalls regaining consciousness within the cavern of the elderly man, whose Paterin “doctrines,” according to Beatrice, “unveiled to me, what had before been obscure”; it is in dialogue with this man that Beatrice learns that Paterinism “has much to be said in its behalf” (364). This man is later tortured and killed (for his heretical views, Beatrice suggests), but Beatrice manages to escape (364).

Gran Sasso d'Italia, Abruzzi