"Do me the favour, my dear curate, to confine your remarks to posciandra," said Pasotti, after a long pause, alluding to a certain coarse dish the peasants prepare, with cabbage and sausages. "Truffles there are, but risotto there is not!"
"Posciandra! posciandra!" the other grumbled, somewhat offended. "As to that——"
The poor, meek lady understood that they were quarrelling, and, much alarmed, began pointing upward towards the ceiling, with her right forefinger, to warn them that they might be overheard up above. Her husband seized her uplifted arm, signed to her to sniff, and then blew into her wide open mouth the word: "Risotto."
She hesitated, not having heard distinctly. Pasotti shrugged his shoulders. "She don't understand anything," said he. "The weather is going to change," and he went up stairs, followed by his wife. The stout curate wished to take another look at Don Franco's boat. "The Carabellis, indeed!" he mused, but he was immediately recalled by Signora Barborin, who begged him to sit beside her at the table; she was so timid, poor creature!
The fumes of the pots and kettles filled the stairs with warm fragrance. "It is not risotto," the vanguard murmured. "It is risotto," the rearguard answered in the same tone. And thus they continued, ever more softly: "It is not risotto; it is risotto," until Pasotti pushed open the door of the red room, where the mistress of the house was usually to be found.
A hideous, lean, little dog trotted, barking, towards Signora Barborin, who was endeavouring to smile, while Pasotti was putting on his most obsequious expression, and the curate, entering last, his big face all sweetness, was really, in his heart, consigning the cursed little beast to hell.
"Friend, come here, Friend!" the old Marchesa said placidly. "Dear Signora, dear Controllore, and the curate!"
Her gruff nasal voice was pitched in the same calm tone to the guests and to the dog. She had risen to receive Signora Barborin, but did not move a step from the sofa, and stood there, a squat figure, with dull, torpid eyes beneath her marble forehead, and her black wig, which rounded out over her temples in the shape of two big snails. Her face must once have been handsome, and still retained in its pallor, tinged with yellow like old marble, a certain cold majesty, which—like her glance and her voice—never varied with the varying emotions of her soul. The big curate, standing at a distance, made her two or three jerky bows, but Pasotti kissed her hand, while Signora Barborin, who felt her blood turn to ice under the old lady's lifeless glance, did not know how to move, nor what to say. Another lady had risen from the sofa when the Marchesa rose, and was staring with an insolent air at Signora Pasotti, at that poor little bundle, old within, and new without! "Signora Pasotti and her husband," said the Marchesa. "Donna Eugenia Carabelli."
Donna Eugenia hardly bowed her head. Her daughter, Donna Carolina, was standing at the window, talking with one of the Marchesa's favourites, the niece of the agent.
The Marchesa did not consider it necessary to disturb her in order to present the new arrivals, and when she had invited them to be seated, she resumed her quiet conversation with Donna Eugenia concerning mutual friends in Milan, while Friend, sniffing and sneezing, circled slowly round Signora Barborin's shawl, which smelt of camphor, or rubbed himself against the curate's calves, studying Pasotti the while, with those pitiful, watery eyes of his, but never once touching him, as if he understood that the master of that Indian shawl, in spite of his amiable expression, would have liked to ring his—Friend's—neck!