'Good-night; the Madonna go with you,' the medium muttered piously, intensifying the mysticism of his voice.
'Dear Don Pasqualino, come, be good-natured before we go,' said the Marquis di Formosa with sudden affability. 'Give us real numbers, and your prison will last only till to-morrow evening at five o'clock.'
'I know nothing,' said the medium, darting a look of hatred at the Marquis, since it was the noble lord who had brought him to this bad pass.
They joined each other at the door to go out, leaving him alone with Dr. Trifari, who went backwards and forwards quietly and coldly from the room alongside, with that icy determination born villains have in carrying out a misdeed. Up till then the medium, except for a shadow crossing his face, leaving its traces of boredom and sorrow, but for a humble, beseeching glance, had given tokens of sufficient courage; but when he saw the others were going away, when he felt he was to be left alone with Dr. Trifari for long hours, days, and weeks, perhaps, all his courage fell, the cowardice of an imprisoned man rose up, and, stretching out his arms, he called out:
'Don't go away! don't go away!'
At that agonized cry the accomplices in that imprisonment stood still; their faces, set like stern judges till then, got suddenly pale. That was the only moment of the whole gloomy evening they realized they were condemning a human creature, a fellow-Christian, a man like themselves, to a frightful punishment. It was the only moment they saw the whole extent of what they were doing in its legal and moral bearings. But the demon of gain had taken possession of them, soul and body, completely. Every one of them, turning back, surrounded the medium, still asking him for lottery numbers, certain real numbers, that he knew, and up till then would not give them. Then, choking with emotion, understanding they were turning the weapons against him that he had wounded them with, the man who had gradually brought the waves of a slow shipwreck over them, who had taken their money and their souls, when confronted with that persistent, malignant cruelty that nothing could soften, that demon his own voice had called up, that real evil spirit he had truly got in communication with, the cowardly medium felt a tremendous fear, and began to sob like a child. The others, alarmed and disturbed, gazed at him; but the demon was stronger than all their wills together. The supreme hour of their life had come for old and young, gentlemen and working men—the tragic hour when nothing can prevent a tragedy, when everything pushes men forward to a tragedy.
Hearing the medium weep like a child, drying his tears with a flaming, torn pocket-handkerchief, none of them felt pity. All felt the warmer, keener desire for lottery numbers to save them from the ruin that threatened them. They left him, to weep meanly, like a frightened fool; one by one, making no noise, they went slowly from that house that had become a prison. He, still going on sobbing, stretched his ears, and heard the door shut dolefully, with that sort of noise that gives echoes in the soul. Trifari, standing behind the door, went putting up chains and bolts, shutting himself up with the new prisoner, with no fear either of the man or of the spirits he might evoke. The hairy red face, when it showed in the shining circle of the lamp, had something animal in it; it showed cruelty and obstinacy in cruelty. On coming in again, the doctor breathed in a relieved way. He looked around, as if the departure of the Cabalists, his friends who had deputed him to be gaoler, pleased him. Now he still went and came from the next room, carrying backwards and forwards all sorts of things. Then he came back from the bedroom, having changed his clothes; he had put on an old jacket instead of his frock-coat. The medium followed all his gaoler's movements closely, for, like all prisoners, he studied his only companion with profound observation. At one point they exchanged a cold, hard glare as from prisoner to turnkey.
'Do you want to smoke?' the doctor asked from a corner of the room.
'I don't smoke,' the medium answered sulkily.