He made a gesture of horror, so clownish, at this metamorphosis of “Don Giovanni,” that much laughter burst forth from everyone in the vicinity. La Cicarina, all red paint under the black hood of her domino, like a beautiful flower of the flesh, laughed sonorously, while she tripped with two ragged harlequins.
Don Giovanni, filled with anger, lost himself in the crowd and sought Violetta Kutufa. The sarcasms of the other revellers pursued and wounded him. Suddenly he encountered another grandee of Spain, another count of Lara. He recognised Don Antonio Brattella and, at this, received a thrust in the heart. Already, between these two men, rivalry had broken loose.
“How is the medlar?” Don Donato Brandimarte screamed venomously, alluding to the fleshy protuberance that the member of the Areopagus of Marseilles had on his left ear. Don Giovanni took a fierce pleasure in this insult.
The rivals met face to face, scanned each other from head to foot, and kept their respective stations, the one always slightly withdrawn from the other, as they wandered through the crowd.
At eleven, an agitated flutter passed over the crowd. Violetta Kutufa entered. She was dressed in Mephistophelian costume, in a black domino with long scarlet hood, and with a scarlet mask over her face. The round, swan-like chin, the thick red mouth, shone through her thin veil. The eyes, lengthened and rendered slightly oblique because of the mask, seemed to smile.
All instantaneously recognised her and almost all made way for her; Don Antonio Brattella advanced caressingly on one side. On the other came Don Giovanni; Violetta Kutufa made a hasty survey of the rings that adorned the fingers of the latter, then took the arm of Brattella.
She laughed and walked with a certain sprightly undulation of the hips. Brattella, while talking to her in his customary, silly, vainglorious manner, called her “Contessa,” and interspersed their conversation with the lyrical verses of Giovanni Peruzzini.
She laughed and leaned toward him, and pressed his arm suggestively, since the weaknesses of this ugly, vain man amused her. At a certain point, Brattella, when repeating the words of the Count of Lara in the melodrama of Petrella, said or rather sang submissively:
“Shall I then hope?”
Violetta Kutufa answered in the words of Leonora: