Again Cavalletto got up, and gave him what he wanted. There had been something dreadful in the noiseless skill of his cold, white hands, with the fingers lithely twisting about and twining one over another like serpents. Clennam could not prevent himself from shuddering inwardly, as if he had been looking on at a nest of those creatures.
‘Hola, Pig!’ cried Rigaud, with a noisy stimulating cry, as if Cavalletto were an Italian horse or mule. ‘What! The infernal old jail was a respectable one to this. There was dignity in the bars and stones of that place. It was a prison for men. But this? Bah! A hospital for imbeciles!’
He smoked his cigarette out, with his ugly smile so fixed upon his face that he looked as though he were smoking with his drooping beak of a nose, rather than with his mouth; like a fancy in a weird picture. When he had lighted a second cigarette at the still burning end of the first, he said to Clennam:
‘One must pass the time in the madman’s absence. One must talk. One can’t drink strong wine all day long, or I would have another bottle. She’s handsome, sir. Though not exactly to my taste, still, by the Thunder and the Lightning! handsome. I felicitate you on your admiration.’
‘I neither know nor ask,’ said Clennam, ‘of whom you speak.’
‘Della bella Gowana, sir, as they say in Italy. Of the Gowan, the fair Gowan.’
‘Of whose husband you were the—follower, I think?’
‘Sir? Follower? You are insolent. The friend.’
‘Do you sell all your friends?’
Rigaud took his cigarette from his mouth, and eyed him with a momentary revelation of surprise. But he put it between his lips again, as he answered with coolness: