'Don't cry, Bianca Maria,' he said quietly. 'I have great hopes. We have been so long unhappy, Providence must be getting ready a great joy for us. It is not given to us to know the time, naturally, but it can't be far off. If it is not one week, it will be another. What are hours, days, months, in comparison to the great fortune getting ready for us in secret? We will be so rich, all this long past of privation and obscurity will seem a short dream of agony, an hour of darkness faded in the light of the sun. Who knows what instrument Providence will use?—perhaps Maria degli Angioli, who is a good soul. You will ask her to-morrow, won't you? Perhaps some other good spirit among my friends who see ... perhaps myself, unworthy sinner as I am—but I feel Providence will save us. But by what means? If I could only know!' He had started walking up and down again, still speaking to himself, as if he was accustomed to think aloud. Only now and then, in the midst of his excitement, he noticed his daughter, and took up his obstinate harping on one idea with her again: 'Where else, Bianca, can rescue come from? Work? I am old; you are a girl. The Cavalcantis have never known how to work, either in youth or old age. Business? We are people whose only business was to spend our own money generously. Only a large fortune, gained in a single day.... You will see, we'll get it. I am sure of it; a thousand dreams and revelations have told me so. You will see. You will have horses and carriages again, Bianca Maria: a victoria for the promenade on the Chiai shore, where you will take your place again; an elegant shut carriage to go to San Carlo in the evening. You'll see. I want to buy you a pearl necklace—eight strings joined by a single sapphire—and a diamond coronet, as all the women of the Cavalcanti family have had, till your mother.' He stopped as he mentioned her, as if a sudden emotion seized him; but gazing on his dream of luxury and splendour quickly distracted him. 'Open house every day. We will think of the poor and starving—so many want help; we will pour out alms—so many suffer. I have made a vow, too, to give dowries to honest poor girls. I have made so many other vows so as to get this favour.'
He stopped speaking, as if gazing through the room's darkness on fortune's splendid mirage that excited fancy brought before his eyes. His daughter got calm and thoughtful again as she listened to him. Her father's voice in the usual rhapsodies of his overheated soul sounded in her heart with anguished echoes, like a slow torment.
It is true she did not believe in the visions, but her father's impetuous, angry, tender phrases frightened her every evening. She could not get accustomed to these bursts of passion that made her peace-loving soul start and shiver.
'Signor Marzano,' Giovanni announced.
A little bent old man came in with a rough, pepper-and-salt moustache, his eyes piercing and at the same time soft. He was very plainly dressed. On passing near Bianca Maria he greeted her gently, and silently asked permission to keep his hat on. He held his Indian cane, too. Falling into step with the Marquis, the two walked up and down together, speaking in a very low voice. When they passed near the light, one saw the advocate's eyes sparkling with satisfaction, and his rather military moustache moving as if he was making mental calculations. Sometimes Bianca Maria, who busied herself more and more in her work so as not to hear, caught involuntarily some cabalistic jargon of her father's or Marzano's.
'The cadenza of seven must win.'
'We might also get the two of ritorno.'
'Playing for situazione is too risky.'
'A bigliettone is needed.'
They went on speaking, quite absorbed, their eyes flashing, lost in these fancies that falsely take the precision and fascination of mathematics, when Giovanni again came in, to announce, 'Dr. Trifari.'