The fantastically lean individual bent double, like a caterpillar, on a bench, filled out another blank, and consigned it to another usher, who returned exclaiming:
'Who asked for the Honourable Zanardelli?'
'I,' whispered a sibilant voice.
'He is there, but the Minister is speaking; he cannot come.'
The spectre persistently went on writing.
One deputy, however, more obliging, had come out upon the request of the person who wanted him, accosting him with a certain degree of nimble zeal, leading him into the next room, where the deputies interviewed their constituents. In this room were three or four ladies, sitting down, waiting, with their hands in their muffs. The deputy and his constituent walked up and down; the constituent spoke vivaciously, with gesticulations; the deputy listened attentively, with eyes downcast, now and then nodding his head in approval.
In the waiting-room all the people were grown weary; a physical and moral lassitude weighed upon them: the new disillusion, that evenfall, sapped their strength; one of them was leaning against the wall; the child had gone to sleep on the widow's knee; total silence reigned. Real or fictitious misfortunes, desires of idle brains or worthy, fervent desires of persevering souls, necessities brought about by indulgence in vice or unmerited mishaps, extravagant ambitions, modest little ambitions, crazes due to overwrought nerves, the thirst for justice of obstinate monomaniacs—all this human suffering, endured in silence, was mixed with a sense of oppression, of sadness, of having been abandoned, a feeling of woeful disconsolateness at having once more come to knock at that door which would not open. The gas-jets were burning brightly, but their light fell on the mortified faces of people paralyzed and listless, as though they were dead.
Three ushers came in through the door, one after the other.
'Who asked for the Honourable Sella?'
'Who asked for the Honourable Bomba?'