'Good-evening, good evening, Don Pasqualino; we are all expecting you.'
He stood aside to let them go in; the men in the room took a long breath with fierce joy; there was no danger now that the medium would escape them. And he that spoke every night with spirits, who had especial communication by favour with wandering souls, he that ought to have known all the truth, went quietly into the little room where the meeting was, without suspecting anything. He cast, as usual, an oblique glance all round, but the Cabalists' faces said nothing new to him. They had the pallor, contortions, and feverish excitement usual on Friday evening, but he saw nothing else. Only the Marquis di Formosa, who was coming in with him, shivered two or three times; it almost looked as if he wanted to turn back. But the Marquis had been very excitable for some time past. He stammered in speaking, his noble countenance was now degraded by traces of his ignoble passion, he was badly dressed and untidy, had dirty shoes and a frayed collar, and his ill-shaved beard was disgusting and pitiable. He had got so excitable since he no longer had any money, since his daughter's engagement to Dr. Amati. The medium could get no more money out of him, so avoided him, and only saw him at the Friday evening meetings in Nardones Road. But that evening the intimacy had begun again, the Marquis had looked everywhere for the medium, and during the day had given him fifty francs, making an appointment for the evening at ten o'clock; indeed, he had anxiously insisted on this appointment, and the medium had put it down to a disappointed gambler's eagerness to get lottery numbers.
The Marquis's manner on the way to the office had been peculiar, still, Don Pasqualino was accustomed to gamblers' eccentricities, and took no notice of it. He went to sit at his usual place every week near the table, putting one hand over his eyes to shelter them from the glare of the lamp. Around the deep silence still held, broken by a sigh now and then, and on looking at all their pallid, dumb, excited faces the medium felt his first suspicion. He tried to do his usual fantastic humbugging work.
'It rains, but the sun will come out at midnight.'
'That is idle chatter,' shouted Trifari, bursting into an ironical laugh.
The others around muttered sneeringly. Now there was no longer any belief in Don Pasqualino's mysterious words. This want of faith stood out so plainly that the medium drew back as if he wanted to parry an attack. But he tried again, thinking he could profit as usual from the feverish imaginations of the Cabalists by striking a sympathetic chord.
'It rains, the sun will come out at midnight, but he who wears the Virgin's scapulary does not get wet.'
'Don Pasqualino, you are joking,' the glove-cutter said ironically. The medium darted a look of rage at him. 'You need not look at me as if you wanted to eat me, Don Pasqualino. Asking the gentlemen's pardon, you are trying to make fools of us, and we are not the people to allow it.'