'Ah! it was written,' remarked the gossip approvingly, quite thoughtful. 'It was written, my dear. When it is God's will, what is to be done?'
House-hunters began to flock in to inspect the flats to let in Rossi Palazzo, and the door-keeper's hard times began—it was never-ending, from ten in the morning to four in the afternoon, up and down the stairs. Every time a family arrived in front of the office and made the usual inquiries, she shook her head and got up, sighing, to go with them to the first or second floor. She went in front, going up very slowly, turning round to chat with the usual familiarity of small people in Naples, making her keys rattle, as they hung from her waist; asking if they wanted to see the doctor's rooms, for he had given her charge of them. Monotonously wandering through the huge rooms, rather severely furnished, where the stern moral impression of a great science—a great will—was still present, and all the human misery that had come there to ask help, she praised up the house and Dr. Amati, the famous doctor that all Naples admired, or, as she said, the whole world.
'Ah,' said the visitors, much impressed; 'and why did he leave this house, then?'
Very hastily she replied that the doctor was going to marry and needed a larger house, or that his business had gone in another direction, or that he was going to a smaller apartment, having taken a consulting-room at the hospital; in short, any lie that came into her head—such hurried, unlikely lies that the house-hunters, endowed with natural suspiciousness, would not take it in at all, and interrupted her with: 'All right; we will come back.' But they did not come back at all; indeed, the solemn, solitary look of the flat, with too many books, too many surgical appliances, and even the chair-bed of black leather that the sick lay on to be examined, that looked like the first step towards the tomb, left rather a sad impression, so they went away hurriedly, speaking low, still more alarmed by the doctor being away, the feared and respected god of medicine. They fled, never to return, a cloud over their spirits, not at all anxious to come back to be dispirited by these solemn, thought-inspiring surroundings.
The door-keeper, standing in the doorway, saw them go off quickly towards Toledo Street, where there was movement, light, and gaiety, and in spite of their vague promises, hesitatingly made, she knew they would never come back. 'Nothing is arranged, dear,' she often said, with a wearied air, to the neighbouring door-keeper at the Rosa Mansion. Nothing was settled, even for the flats that the Fragalà and Cavalcanti families were leaving. It looked as if the house-hunters noticed the bad luck that came from these two flats, where so many tears had been shed, where so many were still being shed. In the Fragalàs' house, brave, melancholy Luisella had got rid of a great part of the furniture; the fine red drawing-room was now bare of its old brocade couches, and the child slept in its parents' room. Their way of living was of a sudden meaner, smaller, being restricted to the bedroom and dining-room. Sometimes the visitors found the family at dinner at two o'clock. Cesare Fragalà kept his eyes on his plate, eating stolidly. Luisella said nothing, but kept rolling bread-pellets in her fingers. Little Agnesina, well-behaved and good as usual, looked at her father and mother alternately, taking care to make no noise with her spoon and fork, not to disturb them. When the visitors came in, the father of the family got paler and the mother cast down her eyes. Both of them at each visit felt having to leave the house: their wounds smarted and bled afresh. The little one looked at them, and said over in a whisper:
'Mamma, mamma!'
The visitors, led in by the door-keeper, felt they were in the way, and excused themselves, going on into other rooms while the woman spoke volubly to take off their attention. When they saw the drawing-room, parlour, and lobby empty, they gave queer glances at each other, so that the door-keeper shivered with impatience, cursing in her heart all who go away from houses and those who go looking for them, also those who go round to show them—that is to say, herself, who had this hard fate. The visitors asked the stock questions rather suspiciously:
'Why are they going away?'
Then she made up her mind and whispered:
'They have failed in business.'