The Marquis di Formosa went down the steps quickly, lively as a lad going to a love-tryst. Someone, in fact, was waiting for him, walking up and down before the door. It was Don Pasqualino De Feo, the medium. His sickly, mean look was not changed at all; he still wore his torn, dirty clothes, but that evening his eyes were sparkling in his thin face. He put his hand on the Marquis di Formosa's arm. Formosa, who had not noticed him, greeted him with a smile.
'Have you the money?' asked Don Pasqualino, lowering his eyelids as if to hide the flame alight in his eyes.
'Yes; how much is needed?'
'Four Masses must be paid for in four parishes to-morrow morning. We will make it five francs each Mass. I must spend the night in prayer. The spirit told me to shut myself up in San Pasquale at midnight. I have promised a gift of ten francs to the sacristan; otherwise it would not be allowed. We agreed to light four candles before San Benedetto's altar; it is his day to-morrow. Ten francs—forty; yes, forty francs would be enough.'
He made his calculation coldly, keeping his eyes cast down, but his queer, mysterious talk was unusually clear. The Marquis di Formosa agreed with a nod to every new expense that the medium enumerated, thinking it reasonable.
'And how much for yourself?' he asked, after counting forty francs into Don Pasqualino's hands.
'You know I need nothing,' said the other, waving it off.
'When do we meet?'
'To-morrow morning after my vigil, if the spirit leaves me alive. Friday last I was so beaten I thought I was dying,' the medium said emphatically, but in a whisper.
'I trust in you,' Formosa murmured.