He left them without saying more. It was night now when he went down into the street. For a moment, feeling confused and dismayed, he thought, Where was he to go? Anew, set along by quite a mechanical goad, he took courage, and, crossing Toledo Street, went up to the high part by San Michele Church, where the Rossi Palace stood out dark and lofty. In that mansion lived the last of those largely indebted to him, the most desperate of all. So as not to have a bad omen at the beginning of the day, he had kept them to the last. But he had found money nowhere; and now, with the natural rebound of the unhappy who fight against their misfortunes by that strength of hope which never dies, now he began again to believe that Cesare Fragalà and the Marquis di Formosa would give him the money in some way—that it might rain down from heaven.
When he went into Cesare Fragalà's flat, led across an empty dark room by little Agnesina, who came to open the door, carrying a half-burnt candle, he had at once regretted he had come. Husband, wife and daughter were seated at a small table, with a cloth too small for it, taking their supper silently, looking at every little bit of fried liver they put in their mouths for fear of leaving too little for the others. The child especially, having a healthy youthful appetite, measured her mouthfuls of bread so as not to eat too much of it. Cesare Fragalà sat very solemnly, all traces of a smile having gone from his face, and looked at the tablecloth with his brows knit. His wife, the good Luisella, with her big black eyes, on whose brow the happy mother's diamond star had shone, had now a humble, subdued look in a plain stuff gown. Quietly with her calm eyes the child looked serenely, with a martyr's patience, at the visitor, as if she understood and expected the request he was about to make. Before that gentle, thoughtful child's eye Don Crescenzio felt his tongue tied, so it was with an effort he stammered out:
'Cesare, I am come about that business.'
A flame of fire burned in Cesare's cheeks. The wife gave up eating, and the child cast down her eyelids as if the blow were coming on her own head.
'It is difficult for me to do anything for you, Crescenzio; you don't know all our embarrassments,' Cesare said faintly.
'I do know—I know,' said the other, hardly able to keep down his feelings; 'but I am in a worse state than you are.'
'I don't believe you can be,' muttered the merchant, who had gone through the bankruptcy court a few days before, in a dreary tone; 'I don't think you can be.'
'Your honour is safe, Cesare, but I am not to save mine. What can I say? I add nothing more.'
And, not able to bear it any longer, feeling Agnesina's sympathetic eyes on him, he began to weep. A little evening breeze coming from a half-shut balcony made the lamp quiver. It was a fantastically wretched group, the husband, wife, and daughter clinging to each other, all most unhappy, looking at that wretched man sobbing.
'Could we not give him something, Luisella?' Cesare timidly whispered in his wife's ear, while the other mourned vaguely.