At this point in her reflections a man, short and stout, with bow legs, and bending over a Barbary organ, made his appearance at the entrance of the street; his black beard gave him a savage aspect. He stopped, and began to play, directing, as he did so, an uneasy glance up at the windows, and smiling sorrowfully. The aria of “Casta Diva,” accompanied with an incessant tremolo, filled the air with its harsh and metallic sound.
Some of the neighbors looked out from between the muslin curtains of their windows. Gertrudes, the servant of the professor of mathematics, showed in the narrow frame of her window her broad and swarthy face, on which were plainly discernible the traces of her forty springs. Farther on, leaning over the balcony of the second story, was seen the dark figure of Senhor Cunha Rosado, tall and thin, his cap on his head, his transparent hands clasping his dressing-gown over his stomach with an air indicative of pain.
The shopkeepers of the street came idly to their doors. The woman who kept the tobacco-shop stood at her threshold, dressed in mourning, and revealing in her whole appearance her state of widowhood, her arms folded over her dyed shawl, her figure squeezed into a jacket too small for her, that made her look still thinner than she was, an expression of languor and fatigue in her eyes. From the ground-floor of the house in which Senhor Azevedo lived, the coal-vender emerged,—a person of massive proportions, who affected a grotesque gravity, her hair in tangles, her face black and shining from the coal-dust with which she was covered from head to foot, accompanied by her three little boys, who looked like three little crying blacks, half-naked, and hanging on to her skirts. Senhor Paula, the furniture-dealer, in his cloth cap with its peak of patent leather, which he never removed from his head, advanced as far as the gutter. His soiled stockings hung down over the heels of his slippers, which were embroidered with glass beads. He suffered from a chronic hoarseness, and he had a disagreeable trick of making a clicking noise with his tongue. His long gray mustache drooped over the corners of his mouth. He hated kings and priests. The state of public affairs was a source of unceasing sorrow to him. He was always whistling the air of “Maria da Fonte;” and his every word and gesture revealed the discontented patriot.
The organ-grinder took off his hat, and without ceasing to play held it up to the balconies with the supplicating glance of one who asks an alms, leaving uncovered his forehead, to which the hair clung, wet with perspiration. The Senhoritas Azevedo quickly shut their window. The coal-vender gave him a copper coin, not, however, without first putting some questions to him; she wanted to know where he came from, what streets he had passed through, and how many airs his organ played.
A bell tolled in the distance, announcing the conclusion of some religious service, and the Sunday was approaching its close with a calm and melancholy tranquillity.
“Luiza!” said Jorge, entering the room suddenly.
She turned around, answering mechanically,—
“What is it?”
“Let us go to supper, child; it is seven o’clock,” he returned. And putting his arm around her waist, he continued, in a voice low and full of tenderness, as they stood together in the middle of the room, “You were angry with me a little while ago, were you not?”
“No,” responded Luiza, in humble accents; “you were right; I confess it.”