Pasotti, with a face as stern as any satrap, ordered her by gestures to go to the drawer for a white shirt, to the wardrobe for his second-best suit, to a cupboard for a pair of boots. When his wife had prepared everything, hunting anxiously here and there, continually facing about to follow the eyes and gestures of the master who several times called her a fool, when she would stare open-mouthed at him, striving to catch the word she had only seen, Pasotti stuck his legs out of bed, and said:
"Here you are!"
Signora Barborin knelt before him, and began pulling on his stockings, while the Controller, stretching out his arm to the pedestal, took his snuff-box, and, having opened it, continued his previous meditations, his fingers buried in the snuff. He intended to make several visits of discovery, but in what order should he arrange them? From what his farmer had told him, he judged that Signor Giacomo Puttini's Marianna, and perhaps even Signor Giacomo himself must know something about Don Franco, and certainly something must be known in Castello. While Signora Barborin was tying the second shoe-lace, Pasotti remembered that it was Tuesday. Every Tuesday Signor Giacomo, with a few friends, was in the habit of going to the market at Lugano, or rather to the tavern called "del Lordo," in order to vary the daily wine of Grimelli by a weekly glass of an undiluted vintage, and he often came home in an affectionate and communicative frame of mind. It would therefore be better to call upon him late in the day, say between four and five. In fancy Pasotti was already holding him in his hand, and managing him as he liked. With a malicious smile he raised his fingers from the snuff-box, shook the pinch to the proper dimensions by means of a few gentle, even raps, enjoyed it at his leisure, and then his wife having given him his handkerchief, he rewarded her by mumbling with a benign expression of countenance, as he rolled the handkerchief into a ball: "Poor woman! poor creature!"
When, after half an hour's labour he had put on and buttoned up his coat, he exclaimed, seriously: "What d—— hard work!" and went to the glass. Then his wife ventured to edge cautiously towards the door, saying very timidly—
"Can I go now?"
Pasotti turned round frowning and imperious, and beckoning to her to approach, he drew about her head and person certain lines in the air, which meant a hat and shawl. She did not understand, and stood staring at him, with her mouth open. Then she pointed her forefinger at his breast, questioning him with her eyes, and her lifted eyebrows, as if suspecting he wanted those articles for himself. Pasotti answered this questioning in the same manner, with three stabs of his forefinger, which signified: "you, you, you!" Then, making the motions of cutting something with his open hand, he gave her to understand that she was to go out with him. She started several times, astonished and protesting, opened her eyes extremely wide, and said in that voice of hers which seemed to come from the cellar:
"Where?"
The Controller's only answer was a fulminating glance and a gesture: "march!" He did not intend to give any further information.
Signora Barborin struggled a little longer.
"I have not breakfasted yet," she said.