“But those letters were my only consolation,” lamented the dwarf.
“A fleeting consolation.”
“I am unhappy, so unhappy.”
“We’re all unhappy”—sententiously, and without looking at him.
“I fear that they no longer like me at the College,” he went on, as if talking to himself. “I always find myself confronted by such icy faces. That Cherubina Friscia hates me. She is a canting hypocrite, who weighs every word I speak. She makes a note in her handbook when I’m only a little late. I don’t know how it is, but sometimes I forget the hour. My memory is getting so weak.”
“So much the better for you. I can never forget.”
“And besides, the Tricolors of this year are lazy and insolent. They contradict me, refuse to write on the subjects I give them, and interrupt me with the most impertinent questions. Every now and then I lose the thread of my discourse, and then they giggle so that I can never find it again.... I’m done for, Signorina Lucia, I’m done for. I no longer enjoy teaching. I think ... I think there is intrigue at work against me at the College, a frightful, terrible, mysterious conspiracy that will end in my destruction.” He rolled his fierce, scared eyes, injected with blood and bile, as if he were taking stock of the enemies against whom he had to defend himself.
“The remedy, my dear Galimberti, is a simple one,” said Lucia with childlike candour.
“Speak, oh speak, you’re my good angel.... I will obey you in everything.”
“Shake the dust from off your sandals, and leave. Give them due warning.”