'I have been assassinated,' sobbed out the other.
'Be quiet, he may hear you; what can you expect from him?' And he took the last sip of the bluish wine left in the bottom of the tumbler.
Don Crescenzio fled. Now at intervals he felt his head going, and he needed to say the word 'Wednesday' to gather himself together. Still, instinctively, with that automatic style of moving of unhappy people who go to meet their destiny, he went up by Porto Alba again towards Bagnara Lane, where Professor Colaneri lived. He, too, owed him money, and promised to give it week by week, but had always sent him away with empty hands or put him off with small sums. The ex-priest lived on the fourth-floor of a house in Bagnara Lane, with an unlucky clear-starcher who had given heed to his blandishments and passed for his wife. They had four unhealthy children with big heads and crooked legs, and all lived in two rooms—quarrelling, crying, beating each other, and weeping all day. He had hidden from the clear-starcher that he had been a priest; the unlucky woman, thinking to become a lady, gave in to him, and for six years had lived in a state of servitude, between holding children and doing servant's work of the roughest kind amid indecent wretchedness, among that brood of ugly, howling, for ever hungry children, whom she avenged herself on by slaps for the blows her husband was liberal with towards her. It was a hellish house, where the father was always sulkily thinking over mean, sometimes guilty, methods of getting money for gambling. Twice Don Crescenzio had gone there, but he had been present at such disgusting scenes that he had rushed away, hunted out almost by the laundress's bad words and the four demons' howls. But now what did that matter? Colaneri owed him seven hundred francs and more; of a debt of nine hundred francs he had only paid two hundred in three or four months, or rather less. Colaneri, by Gad! was not ruined like Ninetto Costa, or apoplectic like Marzano—Colaneri must pay.
'Is Professor Colaneri at home?'
'Yes, sir,' an old woman who acted as door-keeper said.
Then he went up quickly; the laundress came to the door to open, unkempt, a greasy kitchen apron over a shabby dress. Her cheeks were fallen in, her breasts emaciated, and a tooth was wanting in front, through which she whistled a little.
'I would like to see Professor Colaneri.'
'He is not here,' she said quickly, leaving the other still outside.
'He is in—I know he is,' said Don Crescenzio in a rage. 'At any rate, it is no use denying it. I will wait for him on the stairs: he must come out some time.'
'Then come in,' she said unwillingly. As the lottery-keeper was coming in, a dirty boy with water on the head got a slap. Whilst he waited in the room that served as a parlour, study and dining-room, from beyond—that is to say, the kitchen, in the bedroom, and even the landing-place—cries burst out from the quarrelsome family. But in a silent interval the Professor came in, putting on an old jacket all spotted with grease, and setting his spectacles on his nose with an ecclesiastical gesture.