'Are you following the procession, colleague?' asked Giustini in a voice tinged with irony and weariness.
'Merely as an idler. And you?'
'I am watching it march, as a spectator. It is much the same thing.'
The Tuscan pronounced the letter c very hard, and spoke without looking his interlocutor in the face. He tossed his head once or twice, as if in contempt. They walked together by tacit accord.
The Honourable Giustini was neither lame, nor hip-shot, nor deformed, but his legs draggled, one of his shoulders was higher than the other, his neck was shrunk, like a turtle's, his arms and hands dangled at his side as if he did not know what to do with them. He had an earthy face, a pair of light, pale eyes, and a thin, tawny beard, cleft at the chin. His make-up was that of a man completely worn out—one afflicted with physical and moral rickets.
'These processions,' said he, 'these promenades with flags, these wreaths laid down on stones—they are all the same. I have seen a thousand of them, and have taken part in some. When one has been young and has been a law student, how can one help having taken part in processions?'
'I did, too, at the University,' replied Sangiorgio.
'Who believes in such rubbish?' resumed the Honourable Giustini, with an energetic shrug of the shoulders. 'One must be twenty or sixty—the ages at which one is silly.'
'Do not speak against youth,' answered Sangiorgio, exhibiting a faint smile.
'Yes, yes—youth, love, death—the three things sung by Leopardi. He really only sang of two, but the other stands behind them. All Southerners are Leopardists, are they not? Well, and what a famous bore that Leopardi is! He had a hump, and he made it an excuse to write verses and tire people. I am half humpbacked, too, but I write no verses, by God! And neither do I bore my colleagues in the Chamber by making speeches.'