IN DON CRESCENZIO'S LOTTERY-SHOP

Donna Bianca Maria Cavalcanti read that letter over eight or ten times before putting it in her pocket. She was working at her lace alone in the bare large room, thinking over what was in it, for she knew the words by heart already. She saw it before her eyes, going over its meaning in her mind. So the slender bobbins slipped from her hands while she dreamt.

The letter was honest and frank. It said that, as a doctor and friend, he once more advised her to leave that lonely old house where she just vegetated. He begged she would deign to accept a humble, plain offer of hospitality in the country, in the village and home he was born in, where his mother lived alone piously. Donna Bianca Maria Cavalcanti should not despise this offer so frankly made. She could go down there with Margherita. The air was good, the country around fresh and green; it was an agreeable solitude. Dr. Amati could not go because of his work; but his mother would be sure to be very fond of her. She would be quite cured down there in that lifegiving, bright air. He implored her tenderly not to say 'No,' to believe in his devotion. He could not hide the real state of her health from her. Travel and country air were necessaries of life to her.

So the great doctor wrote in that short, precise style of his, honest, like his face and voice; a deep, sincere vein of feeling ran through each phrase. Feeling this, Bianca Maria shut her eyes to keep down her emotion. When Margherita brought her the letter, she guessed at once who it came from on seeing the clear, straight, precise writing. She opened it quickly, without hesitation or false modesty. After reading it, a country landscape, poor and humble, but bright and perfumed with green, rose before her eyes with the sweetness of an idyll; a flow of heat enlivened the slow blood in her veins; a desire for life and happiness gnawed at her heart; a first rush of youthful eagerness came. Antonio Amati's letter, read so often, was fixed in her mind. As she thought it over that fresh Friday evening in March, the blood rushed to her heart and her eyes filled with tears.

The Marquis di Formosa came in that evening, about eight o'clock. He also was more excited than usual, with a quiver in his limbs and features, which he got every week on Friday evening, as if he shortly expected a great sorrow or a great joy. But his daughter took no heed at first. She was distrait; though she went on working mechanically, the good, decided words of the letter that begged her to save herself buzzed in her mind, delightfully disturbing.

'Well, is there nothing yet?' asked the Marquis.

'What are you asking about? I do not understand,' she said, coming back to herself.

'What am I asking about? Why, the revelation the spirit is to make to you. Perhaps you don't wish to tell it? Why not? You must tell me; I expect to hear it from you.'

'Dear father, I know nothing about it,' she answered, growing pale, but trying to keep her voice steady. 'I will never know anything of what you imagine.'

'I don't imagine!' he cried out. 'They are truths and religious mysteries. Don Pasqualino is a pious soul. He sees. You could see, too, if you liked, but you don't want to. Tell the truth: you sup before going to bed?'

'No, I do not,' she said, keeping down her head, resigned to the torture of the inquiry, touching Amati's letter in her pocket.

'A full body is impure; it cannot have heavenly inspirations,' he said in a mystical way. 'What do you do before sleeping?'

'I pray.'

'Do you not ask for this favour with all your strength? Do you ask for it?'

She looked at her father, and opened her mouth to say 'No.' She did not utter it; but he understood her.

'It is natural the vision does not come—quite natural. Faith is needed,' said he, with deep disdain. 'But what do you pray for? What do you ask for, unloving heart?'

'I ask for peace,' she said gravely, waving her hand.

He shrugged his shoulders disdainfully.

'I will make Don Pasqualino pray,' he added. 'You will get the vision, whether you like or not; the spirits will insist on it. They command, you understand. They are masters in this world and the next. You will have the spirit by you when you least expect it; you will see it....'

'God help me!' said she, crossing herself with an uncontrollable shiver.

'Are you afraid?' he asked sneeringly, no longer, in his mad excitement, seeing how she suffered.

'Oh yes, I am,' she said feebly, as if she were fainting.

She clutched Antonio Amati's honest, affectionate letter convulsively, as if to get strength from it. But the Marquis paid no more heed to his daughter. He had rung the bell, and Giovanni came in in his old livery. He looked undecidedly at his master as he handed him his hat and stick, as if he were alarmed to see him go out earlier on that than on other Fridays. But what he dreaded was unavoidable, because the Marquis said to him, 'Come with me,' going towards his bedroom, a poor, bare room like the rest of the house. Giovanni lighted a wretched candle to hold their conversation by. The servant respectfully stood right before his master, who kept up his aristocratic bearing and natural haughtiness, which even vice could not subdue.

'Giovanni, have you any money?' he asked in a lordly way.

The servant bowed; he did not dare to answer 'No' exactly, so he said nothing.

'You must have some,' the Marquis went on rather sternly. 'I gave it to you two weeks ago. Have you spent it all? You waste the little I have left.'

'My lord, last Friday you took it almost all. We must live. You would not like her ladyship to die of hunger,' said Giovanni in a complaining voice.

'Very good, very good; I understand,' the Marquis interrupted, irritated, but concealing his rage. 'I need at least fifty francs. I have a debt of honour to pay this evening. Then to-morrow evening'—emphasizing the words—'I will give it to you back. I will give you other money, too, a lot of money, so that you will not accuse me of letting my daughter die of hunger.'

'You are master, my lord; but if you knew what money it is——' And he took a torn note-book from his pocket.

'What is it you refer to?' said the Marquis, casting devouring eyes on the pocket-book.

'Nothing, my lord;' and he respectfully handed his master a fifty-franc note.

He did it in such a way as to try and prevent the Marquis seeing a second one he had; but the old gentleman dared not ask for it just then.

'You can go,' he said to the servant, who went off.

He walked up and down the room impatiently; then he rang the bell twice. Margherita came forward in the same trembling, almost hesitating way as her husband. The old nobleman, descended from Guido Cavalcanti and ten generations of gentlemen, now stooped to cheat like a rogue.

'Margherita, do you know if Bianca Maria has money?' he asked absently.

'Who would give it to her? The few francs she gets from Sister Maria degli Angioli and her godfather at Christmas she gives to the poor.'

'I thought she had some,' he said, putting on his great coat. 'I am much embarrassed; I have to pay a debt this evening, and I supposed Bianca Maria would help her father. I am very much annoyed. Perhaps you have some money, Margherita?'

'I have money,' said she, not daring to deny it, out of respect and fear of her master.

'Can you give me some? I'll give it you back to-morrow evening.'

'Really,' she replied, 'I have some money, but I wished to buy a dress for her ladyship. Your lordship does not notice it; but at twenty, and as lovely as a queen, my mistress has only had two dresses in two years—one for summer, the other for winter. She does not even notice it herself, poor soul!... I had thought of buying one for her. Your lordship could have given me back the money at your leisure.'

'Sister Margherita, give me that money now, and to-morrow evening, I promise you before God, Bianca Maria will have money for ten dresses.'

'Amen,' said Margherita sadly and resignedly.

She could not resist the emotion in her master's voice. Pulling out a silk purse from her bodice, she detached a hundred-franc note from a roll of notes. He took it and hid it at once in his purse, and went out, saying with wild joy, in a queer tone of certainty, 'Till to-morrow evening.' And he said 'Till to-morrow evening' again as he passed through the drawing-room, standing by his daughter at a window which she had opened to get fresh air to try and recover from her moral and physical weakness.

The Marquis di Formosa went down the steps quickly, lively as a lad going to a love-tryst. Someone, in fact, was waiting for him, walking up and down before the door. It was Don Pasqualino De Feo, the medium. His sickly, mean look was not changed at all; he still wore his torn, dirty clothes, but that evening his eyes were sparkling in his thin face. He put his hand on the Marquis di Formosa's arm. Formosa, who had not noticed him, greeted him with a smile.

'Have you the money?' asked Don Pasqualino, lowering his eyelids as if to hide the flame alight in his eyes.

'Yes; how much is needed?'

'Four Masses must be paid for in four parishes to-morrow morning. We will make it five francs each Mass. I must spend the night in prayer. The spirit told me to shut myself up in San Pasquale at midnight. I have promised a gift of ten francs to the sacristan; otherwise it would not be allowed. We agreed to light four candles before San Benedetto's altar; it is his day to-morrow. Ten francs—forty; yes, forty francs would be enough.'

He made his calculation coldly, keeping his eyes cast down, but his queer, mysterious talk was unusually clear. The Marquis di Formosa agreed with a nod to every new expense that the medium enumerated, thinking it reasonable.

'And how much for yourself?' he asked, after counting forty francs into Don Pasqualino's hands.

'You know I need nothing,' said the other, waving it off.

'When do we meet?'

'To-morrow morning after my vigil, if the spirit leaves me alive. Friday last I was so beaten I thought I was dying,' the medium said emphatically, but in a whisper.

'I trust in you,' Formosa murmured.

'Let us trust in him,' retorted the other fervently, showing the whites of his eyes.

'Pray to him—pray to him!' the Marquis implored.

They separated after the Marquis had pressed two soft, wet fingers that Don Pasqualino held out to him. De Feo went up again towards Tarsia; Formosa went down towards Toledo. He was going to the lottery bank, No. 117, at the corner of Nunzio Lane, where the handsome, chestnut-bearded Don Crescenzio was the banker, and where Formosa and his friends were in the habit of staking. The shop, lately white-washed, glittered with light. Three gas-jets were burning at full cock above the broad wooden counter and high wire grating that cut off the bottom of the shop from one wall to the other. Behind this counter, seated on three high stools in front of openings in the grating, Don Crescenzio and his two clerks were working, his lads, so called, though one of them—Don Baldassare—was seventy, and might have been a hundred, he looked so decrepit; though the other had one of those colourless faces, with indefinite lines and colouring, that might be any age.

They kept a big register open before them, called 'To mother and daughter'—that is to say, with double yellow slips of paper. They wrote the numbers on them with heavy, sharp-pointed pens, so as to have a clear, strong hand-writing, putting down each number twice; one could see their lips move as they repeated it. Then they cut the ticket with a dry click of the great scissors held in the right hand, passed it quickly through a wooden saucer of black sand to dry it, and, after taking the money, handed it to the gambler. Don Crescenzio had the fine contented look of a good macaroni-eater, smiling in his dark beard; whilst Don Baldassare, so bent he seemed hunchbacked, his crooked nose drooping into his toothless mouth, worked very phlegmatically. Don Checchino, the pale clerk, wrote hurriedly, so as to finish and go away.

When the Marquis di Formosa came in about half-past nine, the shop was full of people putting down their stakes. The game began feebly on Friday morning, increasing at mid-day, and in the evening it got to the flood. The Marquis di Formosa beckoned, and Don Crescenzio opened his little door and attentively handed him a chair. The Marquis always spent Friday evenings there, seated in a corner, watching all the people gambling. He tried to get up an excitement by the sight, and succeeded to a great extent. He had the lottery numbers and the money in his pocket; but he never played when he first came in. He tasted the joy a long time, from seeing others do it.

The shop was full of people. They came in by two wide-open doors, one in Toledo Street, the other in Nunzio Lane. The flood rolled in and out, beating against the wooden counter, which was shiny from human contact. The crowd was of all ranks and ages, with every variety of the human face: good-looking and ugly, healthy and sickly, gay, sorrowing, stupefied, and dull. The crowd came from all the streets around, from Chianche della CaritÀ and Corsea, San Tommaso di Aquino cloister and Consiglio ward, Toledo and San Liborio Lane. Certainly there was another lottery bank a short distance off, one in Magnocavallo Street, and another in Pignasecca Road. In a few hundred steps' radius there were several, all flaming with gas and overflowing with people. But if a lottery bank was opened for every three other shops in Naples, from Friday to Saturday, each would have its crowd. Besides, lottery banks go by favour, like other things; some are popular, others are not. The one in Nunzio Lane, like the Plebiscito Square and the Monte Oliveto Road ones, had a great name for luck. Large sums had been gained there. Many people, therefore, came from a distance to stake a franc, five francs, or a hundred, at the bank.

The three groups in front of the wickets in Don Crescenzio's lottery bank melted into one, for ever flowing and ebbing; and the Marquis di Formosa, his hat a little back on his head, showing his fine forehead with some drops of sweat on it, looked on this sight with enchanted eyes, holding his ebony stick between his legs. Sometimes, on recognising a friend or acquaintance before one of the openings, his eyes shone with delight, much flattered that so many distinguished worthy people shared his passion. He opened his eyes wide to see it all, to take in the ever-changing picture, stretching his ears to hear the conversations and soliloquys—for lottery gamblers speak to themselves out loud, even in public—to find out which number among so many mentioned came oftenest into people's mouths, so as to play it that night or next morning. It was warm, and the light was strong in that crowded little shop. But the Marquis di Formosa felt a curious pleasure, a full wide sensation of vitality; he felt young again, and in the pride of health and strength.

In the meanwhile the crowd was not getting smaller; it increased. While in front of white-faced Don Checchino's wicket a lot of students made a row, calling out their own numbers, laughing, and pushing each other, at old Don Baldassare's, in front of the humble crowd were two or three great gamblers, who gave a whole string of numbers, staking tens and hundreds of francs on them. The old clerk wrote slowly, phlegmatically, and read them out before handing the tickets. At Don Crescenzio's, where the work was got through quicker, the scene changed every minute: the clerk came after the soldier-servant sent to stake for his Colonel, a sulky workman gave place to a stupid-looking country nurse, the old lay Sister stuck herself behind the retired magistrate—all were chattering, looking ecstatic, or deeply, sadly engrossed. That was how Don Domenico Mayer looked, the misanthropic Under-Secretary of Finance. He was now standing before Don Crescenzio, his eyes cast down, his cavernous voice dictating ten terni, terni secchi, on which he boldly played two francs each, to win ten thousand francs, less the tax on personal estate. At the third terno, he asked fiercely:

'How much is the tax?'

'Thirteen and twenty per cent,' Don Crescenzio replied playfully, waving his fat white hand in a graceful style.

'Cheat of a Government!' a shrill voice called out behind Don Domenico.

It was Michele the shoeblack, waiting to play his small Friday evening game. He was to play higher stakes next day, when he got the money from Donna Concetta. In the meanwhile he tasted the delight of being there as he waited his turn. At the third terno secco Don Domenico explained his game.

'I don't care about taking the ambo; fifteen francs are nothing to me.'

'Indeed!' said complacent Don Crescenzio.

He took the twenty francs, folded the coupons neatly, and handed them to him. Getting on tiptoe to reach the wicket, the lame hunchback was already dictating his numbers. He gave the explanation of each.

'This I have played for twenty years ... this is Father Giuseppe d'Avellino's terno ... this is the ambo of the day ... this is the terno of the man killed in Piazza degli Orefici.'

But they were small stakes, seven or eight francs in all, and those waiting behind him got impatient. By a curious attraction, big gamblers went to Don Baldassare, the old man. Ninetto Costa, in evening dress, just showing under his overcoat, his gibus hat rather askew on his curly, scented hair, his very white teeth uncovered by smiling red lips, handed his list over to the accountant, while he smoked a Havana calmly, cheerful as usual. He satisfied Don Baldassare's inquiries pleasantly. The sum staked had to be repeated to him as a precaution, not because he wondered at the largeness of it.

'On the first ticket seventy on the terno, twenty on the quaterna?'

'Yes, that is it;' and he puffed out odorous smoke.

'On the second terno secco a hundred and fifty is it?'

'Yes, a hundred and fifty.'

'On the third the whole ticket, two hundred and forty francs. Is that right?'

'Two hundred and forty—that is right.'

The Marquis di Formosa, who had exchanged a smile with Ninetto Costa, strained his ears to hear the ciphers. He quivered, touched with a little envy, regretting he had not so much money to stake. When he heard the whole amount, six hundred and fifty francs, and saw Ninetto Costa pull out this sum lightly to hand to Don Baldassare, he grew pale, thinking how much he could win with so high a risk. He went out, almost choking, to get air at the door. There Ninetto Costa joined him. Both gazed down Toledo, on its crowd and lights, without seeing them.

'You are lucky,' stammered the old nobleman; 'you have money.'

'If you knew all!' said the other, grown grave suddenly. 'I pawned jewels I paid twenty thousand francs for, and I only got five thousand. The pawnshops keep down the loans on Friday and Saturday; they get such a lot of things.'

'What does it matter?—you will win,' said the old man, rolling his eyes, excited by the vision of success.

'On Monday I have a settlement on the Exchange—twenty thousand francs' loss, and not a penny in my pocket. If I don't take something, where will I put my head?'

'You have good numbers?' Formosa asked anxiously.

'I have staked everything. Pasqualino De Feo wanted fifty francs to soothe the spirit. He gave me three ternos, two ambos, and a situato. Then that common girl I pay court to, I gave her a watch. She gave me some numbers, but under a symbol. You understand? Then there are the Cabal numbers we play together, and Marzano's cobbler's ones, and so on. I know if I don't win, Marquis, and a big sum, I must go bankrupt;' and the thoughtless stock-broker's voice trembled tragically. 'I am going to a dance—good-evening,' he said then, lighting his cigar again; and he went off with his nimble step.

Excited by this talk, the Marquis di Formosa went into the lottery-shop again. Now, before the pale, flabby Don Checchino's grill, leaning her elbow on the counter, Carmela, the cigar-girl, using the ten francs Donna Concetta gave her for her earrings, was saying her numbers, faintly, with pauses, playing three or four popular tickets.

'Six and twenty-two—put half a franc on that; eight, thirteen, and eighty-four—two sous for the ambo of it, eight sous for the terno; then eight and ninety, on the ambo another four sous.'

She stopped now and then, as if other sad thoughts distracted her; a flush coloured her delicate cheeks. When Don Checchino made up the account, four francs forty centimes, she took out a roll of copper money and began to count slowly.

'Hurry up! hurry up!' an impatient woman's voice cried out.

She turned round and recognised the woman, an old servant, Donna Rosa, she that served in the house where her unfortunate sister lived. They spoke in a whisper.

'Oh, Donna Rosa, and how is Filomena?'

'She is well; but she is in distress. She sent me to play this number—three girls are playing it, rather, as there has been a wound given, unluckily.'

'Oh, Jesus! God bless her, poor sister! And you—where do you come from?'

'I live in Chianche Road, and I am going home.'

'Greet her for me,' Carmela whispered eagerly.

Pulling her shawl round her, she went away, with her head down, as if overpowered by tiredness. Next to Rosa, the unfortunates' servant, came Baron Annibale Lamarra, fat, pale, panting with his hurried walk from one lottery bank to another. He played many tickets of twenty, fifty, a hundred francs each; but, fearing to be spied on by his miserly wife, whose dower he wasted, in spite of terrible scenes, afraid of being caught by his father, a self-made man, he had got up the fraud of playing a ticket at each place. He ran panting from one lottery to another, trying to believe he would win on Saturday and take back the promissory note from Don Gennaro Parascandolo, the one that had his wife's signature. The thought of it made him shiver with fright. When he got out of Don Crescenzio's lottery-shop he breathed again, and reckoned up mentally. Of the two thousand francs, he had given two hundred to Ambrogio Marzano, the cheerful old lawyer, for arranging with Parascandolo; then he had staked one thousand six hundred francs in different banks. He had two hundred francs left. He would stake them next day, for perhaps he would dream of some good number at night. It was no use risking it all at once. In the meanwhile, from the other door, just as he got out, Don Ambrogio Marzano came in. He stopped to talk with the Marquis di Formosa.

'Have you some good lottery numbers?' Formosa asked anxiously. He clung to the pleasant old man as a bearer of luck.

'I have a forty-nine secondo that is a love, my lord!' whispered the enthusiast, so as not to be heard.

'Ah! and what else?'

'Twenty-seven, you know, is the sympathetic number at the end of the month.'

'I have it, too. What do you say of the fourteenth?'

'It is very good, my lord; but do you wish really to know the lightning, the dazzling number?'

'Tell me—tell me!'

'I tell you in brotherly love, because when I have a treasure I can't be selfish with it, and keep it to myself. You may have it as a proof of affection—it is thirty-five!'

'Ah!' said the Marquis in a stupor of admiration.

In the meanwhile, still quite serene, Don Ambrogio Marzano went to place his stakes with Don Crescenzio. It is true he had had to give the usual fifteen francs to his Cabalist cobbler. He had given ten to Don Pasqualino, though he did not believe in him much, and a journey to Marano, to take Father Illuminato a tortoise-shell snuff-box, had cost him thirty francs; but he had taken them from a prepayment of law expenses he got from a client, so that the two hundred francs was intact, and he paid it all. Gaetano the glove-cutter, Annarella's husband, whose child was dying, was waiting his turn to stake; but it was a hard week, he had not got the loan of a sou, and had had difficulty in getting an advance of five francs from his master. He staked four of them, keeping back one for the numbers he might think of on Saturday morning.

Now, as night came on, Don Crescenzio and his tired, stupefied clerks had a sort of confused look, like those that have sat too long at musical and dancing entertainments, with dazzled eye and deafened ears; but they went on working. It was the grand weekly harvest, a gathering in of thousands, hundreds, and tens of francs for the Government. Don Crescenzio got a percentage of it, and on good weeks he gave his 'lads' a little extra. Even the people coming in constantly to stake had a queer look. Some were uneasy, some were looking round them suspiciously; others dragged along in a tired way, or their eyes were distracted, as if they were out of their senses. There were those who had just found out numbers, or got money to stake; servants, their day's work over, had run off to the lottery before going to bed; shop-lads, that had just shut up shop, and youths who had run out between two acts at the Fiorentino Theatre, were coming in; and Cabalists from the Diodati CafÉ, or the wine-room of the Testa d'Oro CafÉ, who were all Don Crescenzio's customers, and after long discussion now ended by risking all they had that evening; then a magistrate, weighed down by children and poverty, on his way back from a game of scopa, at a sou, ventured the twenty francs that was to feed them for four days; and the pale, sickly painter of saints, having insisted on getting the money for a Santa Candida beforehand, came in just then to stake it, and he was certain to play next morning what Donna Concetta had promised him for the statue of the Immaculate Conception.

Even a very elegant little street carriage stopped, and a hand in pearl-gray gloves, studded with diamonds at the wrist, handed a paper and money to a gallooned footman. The Marquis di Formosa, who had left his seat out of nervousness, and was wandering among the gamblers who came out and in, recognised the profile of a lady of his own set, the Spanish Princess, Ines di Miradois.

'It is true, then, that Francesco Althan takes everything from her,' the old lord thought to himself.

He joined Dr. Trifari and Professor Colaneri as they now came in, still quivering with rage. They quarrelled by the hour about dividing poor Rocco Galasso's seven hundred and sixty francs. Trifari made out he had induced his fellow-villager, Rocco Galasso, to sign, and he wanted five hundred francs. Colaneri made out that Rocco Galasso had signed the promissory note so as to get the examination papers from him beforehand, and by giving them he had gravely compromised himself; he might lose his post through it; therefore the five hundred francs were his. The struggle had been tremendous. They nearly came to blows twice; but Trifari very unwillingly, choking with rage, gave in, because he knew Colaneri had revelations at night—a thing he, a full-blooded heretical blasphemer, did not have. And Colaneri gave in because Trifari brought him many students to do business with for the examinations—a most dangerous thing to do, and he himself was afraid of the risk, but he yielded to temptation to satisfy his vices. In short, they divided the seven hundred and sixty francs. They had met the medium, who asked them in an inspired tone if they wished to do alms of five francs to St. Joseph. They gave it, thinking the question meant numbers, and that they ought to play five for the money and nineteen for St. Joseph's number. All the medium says on Friday evening and Saturday morning means lottery numbers. So that Trifari and Colaneri, after making their game on their favourite numbers, came down at once to play these less probable ones, according to them; then they played the popular numbers, which were three and four, just in case; and at last, leaning on the great wooden counter, they looked in each other's faces with an idiotic grin, still thinking out if they had forgotten anything.

In spite of the late hour, people went on crowding up Don Crescenzio's lottery bank. He would get a large profit this last Friday in March, owing to a flowing back of malignant fever, one of those wild, gathered-up rushes of the slow disease that eats up Naples' fortunes. There were people coming out of theatres who had thought all evening about what ticket to play; they did not wish to put off doing so till Saturday, for fear of forgetting it in the few morning hours left. There were night-cabmen who stopped before the shop, came down from the box, and waited their turn to play, the inseparable whip in hand, with the patient eyes of those accustomed to long waiting; there were those ragged, wretched, wandering night-hawkers, shadowy figures, who shivered with fright in the bright warm gaslight—vendors of newspapers, fritters, pickers-up of cigar-ends, sellers of pizze, of beans, of grass for the horses of night-cabs passing from time to time, calling out their wares; and they, too, stopped at the lottery-stand, and went in, not able to resist playing a franc, half a franc, a few sous. The driver and two porters of the omnibus that takes travellers by the last train to the Allegria Hotel came in; whilst the bus-conductors and drivers in CaritÀ Square, as soon as their day's run was over, which must have made them dead-tired, had come to stake on the lottery before going home.

Formosa had not made up his mind to play yet, with that sort of dallying with time all lovers and excitable people go in for. In a corner of the entrance, so as to let people pass, he conversed with Trifari and Colaneri, who did not want to leave either, though they had nothing left to stake. They stood to enjoy that light, warmth, and crowd, the money flowing in, the lottery-tickets going out, pledges of fortune and riches, and to muse over which of them was the right one. Which? which? Here was the tremendous, delightful doubt, the immense, burning unknown, the mystery that smiled through the veil that cannot be lifted.

After taking a little walk through Toledo, being unable to resist the attraction, Ambrogio Marzano, the lawyer, had come back, too, and joined his little group of Cabalist friends, conversing with them by fits and starts. Quite incapable of not mentioning his number, his crowning stroke, he told them of thirty-five, so that Colaneri and Trifari went in to play it, and he, Marzano, went in to play seventy-three, which Colaneri had given him. No, Formosa was not going to stake yet. But the end of his enjoyment was drawing near; he felt the great moment coming on, and in one of his fervent, mystic bursts he prayed silently to the Lord, the Casa Cavalcanti Madonna, the Ecce Homo he worshipped in his family chapel, to enlighten and inspire him, to do him the one great favour he had asked for years. His friends, after tasting this other drop of pleasure, came out again, and chatted vivaciously about numbers, getting excited with the big shadows that now filled Toledo, broken by that square of light the lottery lamp cast on the pavement. Just then they saw Cesare FragalÀ go in. After shutting his shop, the gay confectioner always spent a couple of hours at his club to play dominoes with other tradesmen—grocers, drapers, oilmen, fishmongers—putting down a sou a game. On Friday evening he played these long games, too, but rather distractedly, nervous, in spite of his youthful gaiety, and he made off rather early to go to his dear Don Crescenzio's to make his weekly large stake.

Really, there was a little crabbedness in his gambling ardour, something like a feeling of remorse, of shame at throwing away his money in that way, so he came late to the lottery bank, when there were fewer people about to see and know him. He was put out that evening on Formosa greeting him; it annoyed him to be seen by his neighbour. Then he shrugged his shoulders, and stood by his dearest friend Don Crescenzio, who went on writing, stroking his fine beard, making a lot of fine flourishes with his pen. He began to dictate his numbers to him on and on, showing his white teeth in a smile. Don Crescenzio wrote on quite unmoved. For the six months that Cesare FragalÀ played at his bank the stakes had gone on increasing. In that flood of numbers dictated, Don Crescenzio, with his peculiar memory, recognised the medium's numbers—that is to say, his symbols, that everyone had interpreted differently, so that Formosa, Colaneri, Trifari, Marzano, Ninetto Costa, Cesare FragalÀ, and all who took their luck on Don Pasqualino's words, played different numbers, and a great many of them, and thus they all managed now and then to make some small hazardous gain—fifteen or twenty crowns over a situato, six hundred francs over an ambo—very seldom, it is true, but often enough to fan their passion and make them all slaves to Don Pasqualino's cloudy phrases. So with a slight smile, while he was adding up the sum, Don Crescenzio said:

'You, too, are one of Pasqualino De Feo's clients?'

'You know him?' asked FragalÀ anxiously.

'Eh, we are friends,' Crescenzio muttered.

'He knows the numbers, does he not?' FragalÀ asked, with a quiver in his throat.

'Often he gets them right.'

'How often?'

'When his client is in God's favour,' the agent answered enigmatically. Wishing to end the conversation, he politely handed over the tickets, saying: 'Five hundred and forty francs.'

FragalÀ paid stolidly with a tradesman's calm, without changing expression. But when he got out of the lottery-shop, at the door, his smile faded; he remembered he had made his first debt to a money-lender that day, and that he had given security on the shop funds, having also taken out the whole balance to make up the big sum he had staked. It was to get away from these sad thoughts that he joined the group of Cabalists. At one in the morning, standing in front of the gambling place, they neither felt the hours passing, the lateness, nor the penetrating damp; for they burned with that constant inward fire that flamed up from Friday to Saturday. They began the same stories again, at great length, for the thousandth time, interrupting each other, getting heated and excited, staring at each other with wild, humid eyes, as if they were possessed. Cesare FragalÀ listened, trying to get the same fever, but not succeeding; for he was only a weak soul, not mad, nor subject to nerves. When they all went over the reasons that made them gamble, such and such material and moral needs, urgent and impelling, that the lottery alone could satisfy, he listened in a melancholy way. At one point he said:

'I—I need sixty thousand francs to open a shop towards San Ferdinando, and make a marriage portion for Agnesina.'

A deep sadness overpowered him. Good, honest, incapable of lying about anything to his wife, he had deceived her for months, like a cheat; he took the ledgers she often stopped to turn over out of her hands, and with hourly caution he tried to hide his vice from her, thus destroying his good temper and ease.

'If it were not for this shop, if it were not for Agnesina——' he muttered, a prey to inconsolable bitterness.

Now, about half-past one, the time came to shut the lottery bank, as the customers became fewer and fewer; and at last the Marquis di Formosa made up his mind to go and stake. Notes in hand, he said the lottery numbers slowly over to Don Crescenzio. There was a slight tremor in his voice, and his eyes stared at the string of figures on the paper, as if he was enjoying himself. The gambling-shop was deserted now. His Cabalist friends, Colaneri, Trifari, Marzano, bringing FragalÀ with them, who was in very low spirits, got behind the Marquis di Formosa to listen to his numbers, and either winked approval or shook their heads unbelievingly—in short, they served at Formosa's by no means short gambling operations with the gravity of priests taking part in a Bishop's service. Don Baldassare, the decrepit old man, and pale-faced Don Checchino, stood motionless behind the counter, their eyes half shut, dead-tired with that ten hours' gabbling, thinking of having to go through the same thing next day, from seven till noon, with great heat the last hour. Only Don Crescenzio kept up his calm, placid, Neapolitan felicity, that has its plate of macaroni secure, and serenely watches others' excitement from behind a phantom plate of macaroni, many plates of it in the great imaginative country of Cockayne. The Marquis di Formosa, greatly excited, played high. He put down what Giovanni got from Concetta the money-lender, what the lady's-maid got from Don Gennaro Parascandolo, and seventy francs he got from the pawn-shop for two artistic antique gilt-bronze candle-sticks, found in a lumber-room in his house—two hundred and twenty francs in all. He was still pallid, discontented, and melancholy, suddenly mistrustful of the value of some numbers, sorry not to be able to risk more on others, in despair at the end at not being able to stake on all the others, all that were in his calculations.

So the lover, after a long-wished-for interview with his lady, having got it, sees the moments fly past with frightful rapidity, and is afterwards deeply grieved at not having said to the lady a word of what he felt. This old man, whose ruling passion was not dulled by age, bent his head, crushed suddenly, as if he had lived ten years in a minute. He went out slowly and silently with the others, slow and silent, too, through the dark street leading to his house. They were all cold at that late hour. They shivered, and pulled their great-coats round them, holding their heads down, not speaking to each other. Thus they got as far as Dante Piazza, under the Rossi Palace, where the cabalistic talk began again. They went two or three times up and down the piazza, while the poet's stern white statue seemed to scorn them with its blank eyeballs. They took poor FragalÀ with them, eaten up now by overpowering remorse for having thrown away so much money that belonged to his family. But it was no use. He gambled because he was a weak, cheerful creature, pricked on by commercial ambition. He would never be a Cabalist. The others' madness sadly surprised him, and they never could have infected him with it. Still, he stayed with them, feeling that he had not the strength to go home and lie by his wife's side with this remorse on him for having thrown away five hundred francs. He began to look distractedly and fixedly at the shadows, as if he saw some frightful vision. At one point Marzano bowed and went off towards Porta Medina archway, for he lived in Tribunale Road. But the others continued to walk up and down, raving, in the darkness and cold, which they no longer felt. The Marquis di Formosa was the most fervent of all. His eyes sparkled, his figure stood out in the gloom, strong and vigorous, like a man of thirty. Then Colaneri and Trifari took leave. They both lived in a poor house in Cavone Street. Then Formosa went on, with a monologue, speaking to FragalÀ, the shadows, or himself. They were going down very slowly towards Toledo once more, when a quiet voice greeted them:

'Good-night, gentlemen!'

'Good-night, Don Crescenzio,' said the Marquis. 'Have you shut up, eh? Was it a good day?'

'Thirty-two thousand five hundred and twenty-seven francs was the sum staked,' said the banker, all in one breath.

Silence followed.

'Do you not play, Don Crescenzio?' FragalÀ asked.

'No, never. Good-night.'

'Good night.'

He went off smartly, and they, seeing the lottery bank was shut now, turned back heavily. It was with a sigh that they knocked gently at the palace gate. They were sorry to go home. They parted on the first landing with a hand-shake and a smile.