“You look like a sibyl, Signora Lucia. Via, make up your mind. A dinner is no very serious matter. I will order a crême méringue to please you, because it is light and snowy.”
“I will write to Caterina.”
“No, don’t write. Why write so much? She desired me to take no denial.”
“Well, I will come.”
And she placed her hand in his. He bent down chivalrously and imprinted a light kiss on it. She left her hand there and raised her eyes to his. By a singular optical illusion, she appeared to have grown taller than himself.
When he returned home, after a two hours’ walk about Naples, Andrea Lieti told his wife that Lucia Altimare was a false, rhetorical, antipathetic creature; that her house was suffocating enough to give one apoplexy; that she had a court of consumptives and rachitics—Galimberti, Sanna, and the Lord knows whom besides; that he would never put his foot into it again. He had done it to please her, but it had been a great sacrifice; he detested that poseuse, who received men’s visits as if she were a widow; he couldn’t imagine what men and women found to fall in love with, in that packet of bones in the shape of a cross. Of all this and more besides, he unburdened himself. He only stopped when he saw the pain on his wife’s face, who answered not a word and with difficulty restrained her tears. This strong antipathy between two persons she loved was her martyrdom.
“At least,” she stammered, “at least, she said she would dine with us on Sunday?”
“Just fancy, for your sake I had to entreat her as if I were praying to a saint. She wouldn’t, the stupid thing. At last, she accepted. But I give you due warning that on Sunday I shall not dine at home. I shall dine out and not return till midnight. Keep her to yourself, your poseuse.”
This time Caterina did burst into tears.