In the entrance a girdle of sunlight penetrated boldly and through the iron grating one saw the tranquil garden full of heliotropes. His servant slept upon a bench with a straw hat pulled down over his face.
Don Giovanni did not wake the servant. He mounted the stairs with difficulty, his eyes fixed upon the steps, pausing every now and then to mutter: “Oh, what a thing to happen! Oh, oh, what luck!”
Having reached his room he threw himself upon the bed and with his mouth against the pillows, began again to weep. Later he arose; the silence was deep and the trees of the garden as tall as the window waved slightly in the stillness. There was nothing of the unusual in the things about him; he almost wondered at this.
He fell to thinking and remained a long time calling to mind the positions, the gestures, the words, the slightest motions of the deserter. He saw her form as clearly as if she were present. At every recollection his grief increased until at length a kind of dulness benumbed his mind. He remained sitting on the bed, almost motionless, his eyes red, his forehead blackened from the colouring matter of his hair mixed with perspiration, his face furrowed with wrinkles that had suddenly become more evident; he had aged ten years in an hour, a change both amusing and pathetic.
Don Grisostomo Troilo, who had heard the news, arrived. He was a man of advanced age, of short stature and with a round, swollen face from which spread out sharp, thin whiskers, well waxed and resembling the two wings of a bird. He said:
“Now, Giovà, what is the matter?”
Don Giovanni did not answer, but shook his shoulders as if to repel all sympathy. Don Grisostomo then began to reprove him benevolently, never speaking of Violetta Kutufa.
In came Don Cirillo d’Amelio with Don Nereo Pica. Both, on entering, showed almost an air of triumph.
“Now you have seen for yourself, Don Giovà! We told you so! We told you so!” they cried. Both had nasal voices and a cadence acquired from the habit of singing with the organ, because they belonged to the choir of the Holy Sacrament. They began to attack the character of Violetta without mercy. She did this and that and the other thing, they said.
Don Giovanni, outraged, made from time to time a motion as if he would not hear such slanders, but the two continued. Now, also, Don Pasquale Virgilio arrived, with Don Pompeo Nervi, Don Federico Sicoli, Don Tito de Sieri; almost all of the parasites came in a group. Supporting one another they became ferocious. Did he not know that Violetta Kutufa had abandoned herself to Tom, Dick and Harry...? Indeed she had! Indeed! They laid bare the exact particulars, the exact places.