"Why, Signorina Carabelli."
"Mark my words, Signor Controllore! If the grouse and white truffles are meant for that Carabelli girl, they are thrown away!"
"Do you know something?" Pasotti inquired, his eyes flaming with curiosity.
The priest did not answer because, at that point, the bow grated on the gravel, and touched the landing-stage. He got out first; Pasotti, with rapid and imperious gestures, gave his wife some orders of unknown purport. Then he himself left the boat. Last to get out was the poor woman, wrapped in her Indian shawl, bending under the tall, black bonnet with the little, yellow roses, staggering, and stretching out her big hands in the canary-coloured gloves. The two curls, hanging on either side of her meek ugliness, gave her a special air of resignation, under the umbrella of her husband, proprietor, inspector and jealous custodian of so much elegance.
The three went up to the portico, by means of which the little Villa Maironi spans the road leading from the landing-stage to the parish-church of Cressogno. Between two happy sighs, the curate and Pasotti sniffed an indistinct, warm odour, which floated out from the open vestibule of the villa.
"Ah! risotto! risotto!" the priest whispered, with a greedy glow on his face.
Pasotti, who had a keen nose, shook his head, knitting his brows in manifest contempt for that other nose.
"It is not risotto," said he.
"What do you mean by saying it is not risotto?" the priest exclaimed in vexation. "It is risotto; risotto with truffles. Don't you smell it?"
Both stopped half way across the vestibule, sniffing the air noisily like a couple of hounds.