'Good Lord!' Don Crescenzio just managed to bring out, falling full weight on a chair.
They said no more. The mother devoutly clutched her rosary. But both Trifari's parents seemed so tired that Don Crescenzio felt desperate, finding everywhere different forms of misfortunes, and greater ones than his own. Still, he clutched at a straw; above everything, he wished to know all about it, with that bitter enjoyment a man feels in tasting the full agony of his misfortune. He, too, had fled, then; he, too, had escaped him; that money, too, was lost—lost for ever.
'But who gave him the money to get away?' he cried out in an exasperated tone.
'Are you really friendly to him?'
'Yes, yes, I am.'
'Truly are you?'
'Yes, I tell you.'
'Here is his letter. Take it; you will find out from it.'
Then by the faint light of fading day he read the unhappy man's long letter. Eaten up by debts and his ruling passion, not knowing where to lay his head, he wrote to his parents, taking leave of them on going to make his fortune in America. Of the four hundred francs it had taken about three hundred and fifty to pay for a third-class ticket on a steamer, counting in a few francs for his keep the first two or three days in Buenos Ayres. He owned up to everything. He was the cause of his own ruin and of his family's. He cursed gambling, fate, and himself, swearing at bad luck and his own bad conscience. He sent back a few francs to the two poor old folks, begging them to go back to their village, to get on as well as they could, until he was able to send them something from Buenos Ayres. He told them to go home, and he would not forget them, and the money would just serve for two third-class fares to their village; nothing would be left over to buy food even. He begged them on his knees to forgive him, not to curse him. He had not had the courage to kill himself, for their sakes; still, he begged them to forgive him. Though he was leaving them like this, he implored them not to give him a curse as a parting provision on this wretched journey of his. He was starting with no luggage or money, and would be cast into the ship's common sleeping-place. The letter was full of tenderness and rage: abuse of the rich, of gentlemen and Government, came alternately with prayers for forgiveness and humble excuses.
Don Crescenzio read twice over that agonized letter written by a man enraged at himself and mankind, feeling himself wounded in the only tender feeling of his life. He folded it absent-mindedly, and looked at the two old people. It seemed to him that they were centenarians, falling to pieces from decrepitude and hard work, bent by age and sorrow.