Yosef looked at him suspiciously, then looked around like a criminal; finally he pulled out a drawer of the table and searched in it for some object.
"Ei! if he only does not want to shoot himself in the head, or poison himself," thought Augustinovich, terrified.
But Yosef had no thought of shooting or poisoning himself. The object which he drew forth was a glove. One small yellow wrinkled glove. Ei! a poor little memorial, a historical gift with which one says remember me. Addio! addio! caro mio! Remember me. Yosef, like that Emrod of old, would have gone for the glove "among two leopards and a tiger for it," but the question remained as to whether he went away after that and never returned. In point of stupidity the centuries agree oftener than in sound judgment.
Yosef raised the glove to his lips.
"Be ashamed, old man!" roared Augustinovich.
In truth, there was something humiliating in this, and afterward Yosef was greatly ashamed of his act. Next morning he went out before daylight to avoid Augustinovich, who was seriously angry and indignant. It seemed to him that he had been deceived in Yosef.
"That dunce," said he, "is like others." This idea roused that distaste in him which we feel usually on beginning to lose regard for a man whom we have thus far respected.
More important still was it that after that event Augustinovich grew convinced that Yosef would return to Lula. "Let the other die or go mad," said he of the widow. "They will take each other, let her die—Ei, let her die" (Augustinovich always tried to persuade himself that he did not like women), "there will be one less of them. Yosef will go back to Lula, he will."
He meditated then whether to tell Lula that Yosef was to marry, or not; in the end he resolved to be silent.
"But Helena is nothing to me. He will return to Lula; if I tell her everything it will be too late—it will be too late! Oh, ho, ho! But Helena too will lose, for again it will be too late. Yes, yes, I should not be able to correct the one, and should spoil the other. I shall say nothing, I will be silent—I will be silent."