There were all kinds of theories, but what captured the collective imagination was the theory that the baby belonged to one of the witches of La Petaca, who, as everyone knew, freely gave their favors of the flesh. A witch who, having produced such a deformed and strange-looking boy—a punishment of the Almighty or of the devil, who knows?—had gone and thrown it under the bridge, to leave it to God’s mercy. No one knew how many hours that baby spent abandoned under the bridge, naked and hungry. Nobody could explain how he survived the elements without bleeding to death from the umbilical cord
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