The Price of a French Lop

A parable of pride, obsession, and ruin

A parable of pride, obsession, and ruin

In the year of our Lord 1348, when the Black Death crept like a shadow across Europe, the small Spanish

village of Santa Marta remained untouched, a quiet anomaly in a dying world. Its people whispered that it was Father Luigi who kept them safe — a man of iron sermons and blazing eyes, who spoke of purity with the furyof a prophet and the precision of a butcher.

He claimed to have rooted out evil. To have cast down the witches. To have burned the sin from the soil.His flock, he preached, was pure —and so, the plague would pass them by. In truth, Luigi had built his reputation by turning in women he suspected of witchcraft — five in total. Each time, he said it was necessary. Each time,the Bishop agreed.

Luigi believed he was a holy man. Others did too.

Maria was fourteen, barely a woman, still tender with the simplicity of youth. She was kind. devout and devastatingly beautiful.

Unmarried. She tended to her ailing mother, sang in the chapel, and spoke with a quiet joy that made even the bitter feel briefly forgiven.

Luigi watched her kneel at the rail each Sunday, her eyes closed in gentle prayer. Her lips parted for the host,and something in him clenched. He told himself it was holy. That she was an emblem of God's perfection. That he only wished to protect her.

Luigi often watched her during Mass. He told himself it was admiration. A spiritual connection. But over time, his thoughts sharpened into something else. His thoughts of her turned to craving. The quenching of the flesh. He tried to sooth the heat with Self-flagellation. But the fire remained and only grew more intensely.

One afternoon, he overheard Maria tell another girl that her favorite animal was the French Lop rabbit. She had once seen one in a traveling merchant’s cage and had dreamed of having one ever since.

Weeks later, Luigi stole from the parish poorbox and sent for a French Lop from a breeder near Paris. It cost more than it should have. The money could have fed several families. But he never thought of them.

When the rabbit arrived, it was soft and calm, but fleas crawled deep in its fur, fleas from a region already overrun by plague. Luigi didn’t notice. He was focused on how the gift might impress Maria.

He presented it to her in the chapel garden, where rosemary grew wild beneath the cloister stones. His hands trembled as he held the crate open, panting and sweating beneath his robes with desire. She gasped, a sound so innocent it nearly undid him.

“Oh! A French lop?” she whispered, eyes wide with wonder.

She took it carefully, reverently, her smile warm but reserved. She thanked him graciously and turned to leave, unaware of the fever behind his eyes.

When she walked away, something inside Luigi broke, not with sadness, but with offense.

She had not understood what he had given her. What he believed he was owed.

She went home and named the rabbit Lunita, “Little moon,” tender and soft. That night she let it sleep beside her. By the next week, she was feverish. Her head ached. Red spots appeared on her arms. At first she thought it was a minor ailment. It wasn’t.

Luigi noticed her absence from Mass and took it personally. He believed she was avoiding him. That she had dismissed his gesture. He told himself she was a spoiled ungrateful child. It didn’t take long for his anger to transform itself to suspicion.

He convinced himself she had invited something unclean into the village — maybe through the rabbit. Maybe through herself.

He went to the Bishop.

“It’s Maria,” he said. “Something’s changed. She keeps to herself. She avoids church. I believe she’s been touched by something dark.”

The Bishop looked at him and nodded. “Then it must be dealt with.”

Maria was arrested the next day. She was too weak to stand. She couldn’t speak clearly. Her silence was taken as proof.

They dragged her through the village behind a horse. Small bits of diseased skin left on the cobblestones throughout the town. The villagers watched from behind shutters. No one stepped forward. No one asked questions. Some trusted Luigi. Most just didn’t want trouble.

She was burned in the town square.

Three days later, a boy fell ill. Then his mother. Then the butcher’s wife. Within a week, the town was dying.

Luigi understood what had happened. He believed the parish had failed in its purity, that hidden sin had taken deeper root in the hearts of his people than even he had suspected. Perhaps, he thought, God was punishing them for ignoring his warnings... for not listening closely enough, or obeying fully enough.

He preached more vehemently to pews that were emptier with each passing day. He lit candles no one saw. By the time the year ended, the church was still standing, but the townsfolk were gone.

Luigi survived.

He walked through the streets where children once played and saw only doorways left ajar and silence thick with death. He remembered their names. Their faces. The ones he’d baptized. Married. Buried.

He had told them they were safe. He had promised that his watchfulness, his judgment, his faith, would protect them.

He believed it.

Now, with no one left to listen, he said their names aloud as he passed their homes. He wept at their doorsteps.

In the end, he stood at the altar and prayed for their souls. The parishioners had perished Not because he wasn’t strict enough. Not because he wasn’t holy enough.

He had done everything right. He had preached, warned, fasted, prayed.But they had been weak. Worldly. They had turned their faces from God and clung to their comforts. He stood firm while they faltered. He had cast out the evil he could see — but they had welcomed it back through their own indulgence. He had given them every chance. And still, they perished. Now there was no one left to shepherd. Only silence.

But in the stillness of the nearly empty chapel, sometimes — not often, but enough to disturb his peace — a single thought crept in, quiet and persistent:

What if he had brought it?

What if his desire had opened the door?

He pushed it away, of course.

He called it temptation. A test from God. He had passed it, he insisted. He resisted. Whatever followed was beyond his control. And if, in the quiet after Vespers, the memory of her eyes rose unbidden — wide, confused, fevered — he would kneel and pray until his knees bled.

Not for her.

For strength.

To forget.