Appetite, indeed! Was it strange that she should not be hungry? How could any one eat who lived such a life, shut up between four walls?—with a tyrant downstairs who did not even take the trouble to come and look at her, but sent his silly old clerk to keep her company! He took trouble enough to go and see Giustina Polo!
This was thinking 'like a grown-up woman,' as she had proposed to do! She was disgusted with herself, and looked about for something to occupy her thoughts. There were sweetmeats, whole boxes of sweetmeats of every sort. Twice already they had been emptied and refilled with fresh ones, since she had been brought to the house. That was Zeno's idea of what a woman needed to occupy her thoughts and be happy! Sweetmeats! Preserve of rose-leaves! Figs in syrup! That was all he knew of her wants!
She lay back among her cushions, her brown eyes gleamed angrily, her lips were a little parted, and her nostrils quivered now and then as she drew a sharp breath. Presently, she called Yulia to her side.
'Go to the secretary,' she said, 'and tell him to send me a book.'
'A book?' repeated the slave stupidly, for she had never seen a woman who could read.
'Yes. A book in Greek, Latin, or Italian; it does not matter which. I am sick of doing nothing. Tell him to be quick, too,' she added, in a tone of authority.
The girl tripped away and found Omobono in the counting-house on the ground floor. He was in a bad humour too, but in his case it took the form of dignified sorrow. His master had compared him to a fowl, and to one that cackled.
'What does she want with a book?' he asked, in a dreary tone, looking up from his accounts.
'To read, I think, sir,' answered the little maid timidly; 'and she told me to beg you to let her have it soon.'
'As if a slave could read!' He looked about him in a melancholy way, and rose to take from the shelf above his head a good-sized volume bound in soft brown leather, with little thongs tied in slip knots, for clasps, to keep it shut.