Up there all those who went in at the gateway on the right side of Nardones Road had gone up a stair of one flight, opposite the chief staircase, which was a little broader. They went into an apartment of two rooms that was let for an office—so called by the owner because it had no kitchen. But the two rooms were so low in the ceiling, so badly lighted by two small windows, the red brick floors were so cold, the wall-paper so dirty, and the paint of the doors and windows so greasy, that no small notary, poor advocate, doctor without practice, or dealer in doubtful business, stayed there more than a month. The cobbler who served as a porter and the inmates who went down the big stair were accustomed, therefore, to see new faces for ever going up and down the small stair—young and old men, ushers and commission agents, a string of white-faced people, often very queer-looking. Who troubled themselves about the people living there? No one—not even the porter. He got no pay from the occupiers of the flat, and did not care therefore if the tenants were changed. On the big stair busy people lived: house-agents, writing-masters, a third-rate dentist, a midwife, and others of queer professions. They went up and down, taken up about their own interests and business, their decent poverty or unsuccessful ill-doing. They were people who took little notice of their neighbours, so that one might call the office, that always was having new tenants or being left vacant, rather isolated. The ticket 'To Let' stood there on the door the whole year round; every month it was the same. When the apartment was let, then the tenant carried off the key at dusk; when it was vacant, the cobbler kept it on his counter, or, if he was away, he handed it over to the charcoal-dealer opposite. The stair of the apartment was broken in places, slippery and dangerous for those who had not good legs and sharp eyes.
Now, that August the little place had been occupied for a couple of months by a neatly-dressed young gentleman, affecting the style of a provincial trying to be fashionable. He was fat and thick, with a bull-like neck, and his red hair, joined to a florid complexion, gave him an apoplectic look. So the office was opened several times a week for a few hours, and two or three men, or sometimes more, came in. They disappeared up the staircase, and nothing more was heard, nothing showed behind the dirty window-panes; only after an hour or so these men appeared again, one by one, some red in the face, as if they had shouted for a long time, others pallid, as if gulping down repressed rage. They vanished each one by his own road, without even the porter seeing them sometimes.
But one evening of the week, always the same one, seven or eight men met in the office, and then a dirty petroleum lamp, covered by a shade that might cost threepence, lighted up the dirty room. Its only furniture was a rough table and eight or ten chairs, of odd patterns. On that evening the confabulation lasted till past midnight; often some gesticulating shadow showed queerly against the panes; sometimes the men leant out of the window, and looked stolidly into the dull black court, as if they saw the ghosts of their own excited minds. The cobbler, tired with his hard day's work, casting an indifferent glance at the windows of the office, saw it was still lighted up, and, shrugging his shoulders, went off to sleep in his den, a hole under the staircase. The courtyard was not lighted up; the street door was left half open; some people still went out and came in cautiously from the so-called great staircase. Some mysterious night-patient of the dentist, some hurried client to call the midwife, who opened the door mysteriously to go out.
It was after midnight when Dr. Trifari's guests went away from the meeting, all together, silently, hurrying down one after the other to get away as quickly as possible. The last one pulled the office door behind him, and it gave the creaking noise of old rotten wood. The two small rooms that formed the office returned to their solitude, and, with hearts beating high in the excitement of their dream, the party melted away through the town. But this dreary evening the poor cobbler had gone to bed at dusk, wrapping himself up in his ragged bed-covering and torn cape he had worn all day, feeling the chill of the tertian fever and the damp of the stormy weather in his bones. So, in the confusion of the fever that had come on like a block of ice on his chest, he heard the clatter of those going up and down the big stair. Two or three times he seemed to hear voices raised in the office, where there was a window open, and the scirocco wind carried the rain rushing in, and made the oil-lamp flicker. The rain went on falling in the badly-paved court, covering any other noise; then the window was shut, and no more could be heard. Later on the shutters were fastened too, and everything sank again into deep shadow. Still, there was a meeting going on there. Trifari, the master of the house, had been the first to arrive; he lighted the lamp, and went through to the second room to arrange some things, going and coming from it, with his hat a little on the back of his head. In spite of the scirocco wind, it was the first time the colour had gone out of his red face, and some drops of sweat came out on his forehead. Sometimes he stood still, as if he repented of what he was going to do or thought of doing; but he quickly recovered from that momentary depression. When the shrill bell rang the first time, Dr. Trifari gave a start and stood still uncertainly, as if he dared not open it. Still, he went, but he only half opened the folding-door, with great caution, to let Colaneri pass through. The ex-priest's face was rather gloomy, and his shoulders were dripping wet; for his small umbrella, a very shabby one, only protected his head. They said good-evening to each other in a whisper; Colaneri, with cautious glances from behind his spectacles, dried his wet hands with a doubtfully white handkerchief—the fat, flabby, whitish hands that are peculiar to priests. They said nothing to each other. The same complicated anguish bore down on them, so that their Southerners' loquacity was subdued; all the past excitement, beaten down by disappointments following each other, had ended by sapping their strength.
Suddenly, raising his head, Colaneri asked: 'Is he to come?'
'Yes, he is coming,' Trifari breathed between his lips.
'Has he no suspicion of what we are going to do?'
'None at all.'
A gust of wind came into the room and nearly put out the light. It was then Trifari went to shut the window.