When he got down into the street in the full blaze of noon-day, he had a touch of giddiness. With an unsteady step, he set off in search of a cab. He found one in the Piazza del Quirinale and drove straight home.
Towards evening, however, a wild desire came over him to revisit those dismantled rooms. He went upstairs and entered, on the pretext of asking if the furniture he had bought had been sent away yet.
A man answered him: the things had just gone, the Signor Conte must have passed them on his way here.
Hardly anything remained in the rooms. The crimson splendour of the setting sun gleamed through the curtainless windows and mingled with the noises of the street. Some men were taking down the hangings from the walls, disclosing a paper with great vulgar flowers, torn here and there and hanging in strips. Others were engaged in taking up and rolling the carpets, raising a cloud of dust that glittered in the sunlight. One of them sang scraps of a lewd song. Dust and tobacco-smoke mingled and rose to the ceiling.
Andrea fled.
In the Piazza del Quirinale a brass band was playing in front of the royal palace. Great waves of metallic music spread through the glowing air. The obelisk, the fountain, the statues looked enormous and seemed to glow as if impregnated with flame. Rome, immense and dominated by a battle of clouds, seemed to illumine the sky.
Half-demented, Andrea fled; through the Via del Quirinale, past the Quattro Fontane and the gates of the Palazzo Barberini with its many flashing windows and, at last, reached the Cassa Zuccari.
There the porters were just taking his purchases off a cart, vociferating loudly. Several of them were carrying the cabinet up the stairs with a good deal of difficulty.
He went in. As the cabinet occupied the whole width of the staircase, he could not pass. So he had to follow it, slowly, slowly, step by step, up to his door.