The excitement of the meal had put her in a good humour. To cheer up the poet, to whom his mingled failure and glory were doubly painful, she thumped him on the back, laughed with her mouth full, saying in her hideous jargon, that it was not worth while for such a trifle to fling oneself head downwards from the campanile del Duomo.
"Isn't it true, il cato?" she added turning to the old tom-cat crippled by rheumatism, snoring in front of the fire. Then suddenly, in the middle of an interesting discussion, she screamed out to her husband in a voice senseless and brutal as the crack of a rifle:
"Hey! artist! la lampo qui filo!"
The poor fellow immediately interrupted his conversation to wind up the lamp, humble, submissive, anxious to avoid the scene he dreaded, and which in spite of all, he did not escape.
On returning from the theatre we had stopped at the Maison d'Or to get a bottle of choice wine to wash down the estoufato. All along the road Maria Assunta had piously carried it under her shawl, and on her arrival she had placed it on the table where she could cast tender looks upon it, for Roman women are fond of good wine. Already twice or three times mistrustful of her husband's absence of mind, and the length of his arms, she had said:
"Mind the boteglia—you're going to break it."