In the meanwhile, still quite serene, Don Ambrogio Marzano went to place his stakes with Don Crescenzio. It is true he had had to give the usual fifteen francs to his Cabalist cobbler. He had given ten to Don Pasqualino, though he did not believe in him much, and a journey to Marano, to take Father Illuminato a tortoise-shell snuff-box, had cost him thirty francs; but he had taken them from a prepayment of law expenses he got from a client, so that the two hundred francs was intact, and he paid it all. Gaetano the glove-cutter, Annarella's husband, whose child was dying, was waiting his turn to stake; but it was a hard week, he had not got the loan of a sou, and had had difficulty in getting an advance of five francs from his master. He staked four of them, keeping back one for the numbers he might think of on Saturday morning.
Now, as night came on, Don Crescenzio and his tired, stupefied clerks had a sort of confused look, like those that have sat too long at musical and dancing entertainments, with dazzled eye and deafened ears; but they went on working. It was the grand weekly harvest, a gathering in of thousands, hundreds, and tens of francs for the Government. Don Crescenzio got a percentage of it, and on good weeks he gave his 'lads' a little extra. Even the people coming in constantly to stake had a queer look. Some were uneasy, some were looking round them suspiciously; others dragged along in a tired way, or their eyes were distracted, as if they were out of their senses. There were those who had just found out numbers, or got money to stake; servants, their day's work over, had run off to the lottery before going to bed; shop-lads, that had just shut up shop, and youths who had run out between two acts at the Fiorentino Theatre, were coming in; and Cabalists from the Diodati Café, or the wine-room of the Testa d'Oro Café, who were all Don Crescenzio's customers, and after long discussion now ended by risking all they had that evening; then a magistrate, weighed down by children and poverty, on his way back from a game of scopa, at a sou, ventured the twenty francs that was to feed them for four days; and the pale, sickly painter of saints, having insisted on getting the money for a Santa Candida beforehand, came in just then to stake it, and he was certain to play next morning what Donna Concetta had promised him for the statue of the Immaculate Conception.
Even a very elegant little street carriage stopped, and a hand in pearl-gray gloves, studded with diamonds at the wrist, handed a paper and money to a gallooned footman. The Marquis di Formosa, who had left his seat out of nervousness, and was wandering among the gamblers who came out and in, recognised the profile of a lady of his own set, the Spanish Princess, Ines di Miradois.
'It is true, then, that Francesco Althan takes everything from her,' the old lord thought to himself.
He joined Dr. Trifari and Professor Colaneri as they now came in, still quivering with rage. They quarrelled by the hour about dividing poor Rocco Galasso's seven hundred and sixty francs. Trifari made out he had induced his fellow-villager, Rocco Galasso, to sign, and he wanted five hundred francs. Colaneri made out that Rocco Galasso had signed the promissory note so as to get the examination papers from him beforehand, and by giving them he had gravely compromised himself; he might lose his post through it; therefore the five hundred francs were his. The struggle had been tremendous. They nearly came to blows twice; but Trifari very unwillingly, choking with rage, gave in, because he knew Colaneri had revelations at night—a thing he, a full-blooded heretical blasphemer, did not have. And Colaneri gave in because Trifari brought him many students to do business with for the examinations—a most dangerous thing to do, and he himself was afraid of the risk, but he yielded to temptation to satisfy his vices. In short, they divided the seven hundred and sixty francs. They had met the medium, who asked them in an inspired tone if they wished to do alms of five francs to St. Joseph. They gave it, thinking the question meant numbers, and that they ought to play five for the money and nineteen for St. Joseph's number. All the medium says on Friday evening and Saturday morning means lottery numbers. So that Trifari and Colaneri, after making their game on their favourite numbers, came down at once to play these less probable ones, according to them; then they played the popular numbers, which were three and four, just in case; and at last, leaning on the great wooden counter, they looked in each other's faces with an idiotic grin, still thinking out if they had forgotten anything.
In spite of the late hour, people went on crowding up Don Crescenzio's lottery bank. He would get a large profit this last Friday in March, owing to a flowing back of malignant fever, one of those wild, gathered-up rushes of the slow disease that eats up Naples' fortunes. There were people coming out of theatres who had thought all evening about what ticket to play; they did not wish to put off doing so till Saturday, for fear of forgetting it in the few morning hours left. There were night-cabmen who stopped before the shop, came down from the box, and waited their turn to play, the inseparable whip in hand, with the patient eyes of those accustomed to long waiting; there were those ragged, wretched, wandering night-hawkers, shadowy figures, who shivered with fright in the bright warm gaslight—vendors of newspapers, fritters, pickers-up of cigar-ends, sellers of pizze, of beans, of grass for the horses of night-cabs passing from time to time, calling out their wares; and they, too, stopped at the lottery-stand, and went in, not able to resist playing a franc, half a franc, a few sous. The driver and two porters of the omnibus that takes travellers by the last train to the Allegria Hotel came in; whilst the bus-conductors and drivers in Carità Square, as soon as their day's run was over, which must have made them dead-tired, had come to stake on the lottery before going home.
Formosa had not made up his mind to play yet, with that sort of dallying with time all lovers and excitable people go in for. In a corner of the entrance, so as to let people pass, he conversed with Trifari and Colaneri, who did not want to leave either, though they had nothing left to stake. They stood to enjoy that light, warmth, and crowd, the money flowing in, the lottery-tickets going out, pledges of fortune and riches, and to muse over which of them was the right one. Which? which? Here was the tremendous, delightful doubt, the immense, burning unknown, the mystery that smiled through the veil that cannot be lifted.
After taking a little walk through Toledo, being unable to resist the attraction, Ambrogio Marzano, the lawyer, had come back, too, and joined his little group of Cabalist friends, conversing with them by fits and starts. Quite incapable of not mentioning his number, his crowning stroke, he told them of thirty-five, so that Colaneri and Trifari went in to play it, and he, Marzano, went in to play seventy-three, which Colaneri had given him. No, Formosa was not going to stake yet. But the end of his enjoyment was drawing near; he felt the great moment coming on, and in one of his fervent, mystic bursts he prayed silently to the Lord, the Casa Cavalcanti Madonna, the Ecce Homo he worshipped in his family chapel, to enlighten and inspire him, to do him the one great favour he had asked for years. His friends, after tasting this other drop of pleasure, came out again, and chatted vivaciously about numbers, getting excited with the big shadows that now filled Toledo, broken by that square of light the lottery lamp cast on the pavement. Just then they saw Cesare Fragalà go in. After shutting his shop, the gay confectioner always spent a couple of hours at his club to play dominoes with other tradesmen—grocers, drapers, oilmen, fishmongers—putting down a sou a game. On Friday evening he played these long games, too, but rather distractedly, nervous, in spite of his youthful gaiety, and he made off rather early to go to his dear Don Crescenzio's to make his weekly large stake.
Really, there was a little crabbedness in his gambling ardour, something like a feeling of remorse, of shame at throwing away his money in that way, so he came late to the lottery bank, when there were fewer people about to see and know him. He was put out that evening on Formosa greeting him; it annoyed him to be seen by his neighbour. Then he shrugged his shoulders, and stood by his dearest friend Don Crescenzio, who went on writing, stroking his fine beard, making a lot of fine flourishes with his pen. He began to dictate his numbers to him on and on, showing his white teeth in a smile. Don Crescenzio wrote on quite unmoved. For the six months that Cesare Fragalà played at his bank the stakes had gone on increasing. In that flood of numbers dictated, Don Crescenzio, with his peculiar memory, recognised the medium's numbers—that is to say, his symbols, that everyone had interpreted differently, so that Formosa, Colaneri, Trifari, Marzano, Ninetto Costa, Cesare Fragalà, and all who took their luck on Don Pasqualino's words, played different numbers, and a great many of them, and thus they all managed now and then to make some small hazardous gain—fifteen or twenty crowns over a situato, six hundred francs over an ambo—very seldom, it is true, but often enough to fan their passion and make them all slaves to Don Pasqualino's cloudy phrases. So with a slight smile, while he was adding up the sum, Don Crescenzio said:
'You, too, are one of Pasqualino De Feo's clients?'