Passacantando entered, rattling the hanging glass doors violently, roughly shook the rain-drops from his shoulders, took his pipe from his mouth, and with disdainful unconcern looked around the room.

In the tavern the smoke of the tobacco was like a bluish cloud, through which one could discern the faces of those who were drinking: women of bad repute; Pachio, the invalided soldier, whose right eye, affected with some repulsive disease, was covered by a greasy greenish band; Binchi-Banche, the domestic of the customs officers, a small, sturdy man with a surly, yellow-hued face like a lemon without juice, with a bent back and his thin legs thrust into boots which reached to his knees; Magnasangue, the go-between of the soldiers, the friend of comedians, of jugglers, of mountebanks, of fortune-tellers, of tamers of bears,—of all that ravenous and rapacious rabble which passes through the towns to snatch from the idle and curious people a few pennies.

Then, too, there were the belles of the Fiorentino Hall, three or four women faded from dissipation, their cheeks painted brick colour, their eyes voluptuous, their mouths flaccid and almost bluish in colour like over-ripe figs.

Passacantando crossed the room, and seated himself between the women Pica and Peppuccia on a bench against the wall, which was covered with indecent figures and writing. He was a slender young fellow, rather effeminate, with a very pale face from which protruded a nose thick, rapacious, bent greatly to one side; his ears sprang from his head like two inflated paper bags, one larger than the other; his curved, protruding lips were very red, and always had a small ball of whitish saliva at the corners. Over his carefully combed hair he wore a soft cap, flattened through long use. A tuft of his hair, turned up like a hook, curled down over his forehead to the roots of his nose, while another curled over his temple. A certain licentiousness was expressed in every gesture, every move, and in the tones of his voice and his glances.

“Ohe,” he cried, “Woman Africana, a goblet of wine!” beating the table with his clay pipe, which broke from the force of the blow.

The woman Africana, the mistress of the inn, left the bar and came forward towards the table, waddling because of her extreme corpulence, and placed in front of Passacantando a glass filled to the brim with wine. She looked at him as she did so with eyes full of loving entreaty.

Passacantando suddenly flung his arm around the neck of Peppuccia, forced her to drink from the goblet, and then thrust his lips against hers. Peppuccia laughed, disentangling herself from the arms of Passacantando, her laughter causing the unswallowed wine to spurt from her mouth into his face.

The woman Africana grew livid. She withdrew behind the bar, where the sharp words of Peppuccia and Pica reached her ears. The glass door opened, and Fiorentino appeared on the threshold, all bundled up in a cloak, like the villain of a cheap novel.

“Well, girls,” he cried out in a hoarse voice, “it is time for you to go.” Peppuccia, Pica, and the others rose from their seats beside the men and followed their master.

It was raining hard, and the Square of Bagno was transformed into a muddy lake. Pachio, Magnasangue, and the others left one after another until only Binche-Banche, stretched under the table in the stupor of intoxication, remained. The smoke in the room gradually grew less, while a half-plucked dove pecked from the floor the scattered crumbs.

As Passacantando was about to rise, Africana moved slowly towards him, her unshapely figure undulating as she walked, her full-moon face wrinkled into a grotesque and affectionate grimace. Upon her face were several moles with small bunches of hair growing out from them, a thick shadow covered her upper lip and her cheeks. Her short, coarse, and curling hair formed a sort of helmet on her head; her thick eyebrows met at the top of her flat nose, so that she looked like a creature affected with dropsy and elephantiasis.

When she reached Passacantando, she grasped his hands in order to detain him.

“Oh, Giuva! What do you want? What have I done to you?”

“You? Nothing.”

“Why then do you cause me such suffering and torment?”

“I? I am surprised!... Good night! I have no time to lose just now,” and with a brutal gesture, he started to go. But Africana threw herself upon him, pressing his arms, and putting her face against his, leaning upon him with her full weight, with a passion so uncontrolled and terrible that Passacantando was frightened.

“What do you want? What do you want? Tell me! What do you want? Why do I do this? I hold you! Stay here! Stay with me! Don’t make me die of longing; don’t drive me mad! What for? Come,—take everything you find ...”

She drew him towards the bar, opened the drawer, and with one gesture offered him everything it contained. In the greasy till were scattered some copper coins, and a few shining silver ones, the whole amounting to perhaps five lire.

Passacantando, without saying a word, picked up the coins and began to count them slowly upon the bar, his mouth showing an expression of disgust. Africana looked at the coins and then at the face of the man, breathing hard, like a tired beast. One heard the tinkling of the coins as they fell upon the bar, the rough snoring of Binchi-Banche, the soft pattering of the dove in the midst of the continuous sound of the rain and the river down below the Bagno and through the Bandiera.

“Those are not enough,” Passacantando said at last. “I must have more than those; bring out some more, or I will go.”

He had crushed his cap down over his head, and from beneath his forehead with its curling tuft of hair, his whitish eyes, greedy and impudent, looked at Africana attentively, fascinating her.

“I have no more; you have seen all there is. Take all that you find ...” stammered Africana in a caressing and supplicating voice, her double chin quivering and her lips trembling, while the tears poured from her piggish eyes.

“Well,” said Passacantando softly, bending over her, “well, do you think I don’t know that your husband has some gold pieces?”

“Oh, Giovanni! ... how can I get them?”

“Go and take them, at once. I will wait for you here. Your husband is asleep, now is the time. Go, or you’ll not see me any more, in the name of Saint Antony!”

“Oh, Giovanni!... I am afraid!”

“What? Fear or no fear, I am going; let us go.”

Africana trembled; she pointed to Binchi-Banche still stretched under the table in a heavy sleep.

“Close the door first,” she said submissively.

Passacantando roused Binchi-Banche with a kick, and dragged him, howling and shaking with terror, out into the mud and slush. He came back and closed the door. The red lantern that hung on one of the shutters threw a rosy light into the tavern, leaving the heavy arches in deep shadow, and giving the stairway in the angle a mysterious look.

“Come! Let us go!” said Passacantando again to the still trembling Africana.

They slowly ascended the dark stairway in the corner of the room, the woman going first, the man following close behind. At the top of the stairway they emerged into a low room, planked with beams. In a small niche in the wall was a blue Majolica Madonna, in front of which burned, for a vow, a light in a glass filled with water and oil. The other walls were covered with a number of torn paper pictures, of as many colours as leprosy. A distressing odour filled the room.

The two thieves advanced cautiously towards the marital bed, upon which lay the old man, buried in slumber, breathing with a sort of hoarse hiss through his toothless gums and his dilated nose, damp from the use of tobacco, his head turned upon one cheek, resting on a striped cotton pillow. Above his open mouth, which looked like a cut made in a rotten pumpkin, rose his stiff moustache; one of his eyes, half opened, resembled the turned over ear of a dog, filled with hair, covered with blisters; the veins stood out boldly upon his bare emaciated arm which lay outside the coverlet; his crooked fingers, habitually grasping, clutched the counterpane.

Now, this old fellow had for a long time possessed two twenty-franc pieces, which had been left him by some miserly relative; these he guarded jealously, keeping them in the tobacco in his horn snuff-box, as some people do musk incense. There lay the shining pieces of gold, and the old man would take them out, look at them fondly, feel of them lovingly between his fingers, as the passion of avarice and the lust of possession grew within him.

Africana approached slowly, with bated breath, while Passacantando, with commanding gestures, urged her to the theft. There was a noise below; both stopped. The half-plucked dove, limping, fluttered to its nest in an old slipper at the foot of the bed, but in settling itself, it made some noise. The man, with a quick, brutal motion, snatched up the bird and choked it in his fist.

“Is it there?” he asked of Africana.

“Yes, it is there, under the pillow,” she answered, sliding her hand carefully under the pillow as she spoke. The old man moved in his sleep, sighing involuntarily, while between his eyelids appeared a little rim of the whites of his eyes. Then he fell back in the heavy stupor of senile drowsiness.

Africana, in this crisis, suddenly became audacious, pushed her hand quickly forward, grasped the tobacco box and rushed towards the stairs, descending with Passacantando just behind her.

“Lord! Lord! See what I have done for you!” she exclaimed, throwing herself upon him. With shaking hands, they started together to open the snuff-box and look among the tobacco for the gold pieces. The pungent odour of the tobacco arose to their nostrils, and both, as they felt the desire to sneeze, were seized with a strong impulse to laugh. In endeavouring to repress their sneezes, they staggered against one another, pushing and wavering. But suddenly an indistinct growling was heard, then hoarse shouts broke forth from the room above, and the old man appeared at the top of the stairs. His face was livid in the red light of the lantern, his form thin and emaciated, his legs bare, his shirt in rags. He looked down at the thieving couple, and, waving his arms like a damned soul, cried:

“The gold pieces! The gold pieces! The gold pieces!”