'What would you do with it?' asked Don Gennaro, taking another cigarette, and offering Cesare one from an elegant engraved-silver Russian cigar-case.
'What would I do with it? First of all I would let fifty thousand melt away to enjoy life a little with my friends. I am not selfish, and fifty thousand would do to open a shop with in San Ferdinando Square. I will never gain it in the San Spirito shop,' Cesare ended up low-spiritedly.
'Still, in the carnival you must have made great profits,' said Don Gennaro slowly, shaking off his cigar-ash.
'Yes, yes, enough! but Monte Carlo, or something else, is needed; if not, one must vegetate, and Agnesina's dowry won't be ready. Then I am always pushed to it—so many calls.... Why, yesterday I should have given you back those five hundred francs you lent me without security—you know I am always punctual—but I could not.'
'For one day it does not matter,' Don Gennaro said coldly, setting his face like a stone the moment Cesare spoke of the debt, gazing at his cigar-smoke as if not to look his friend in the face.
'But I can't even pay you to-day,' said Cesare quickly, as if he wanted to get rid of his worry all at once. 'I have had to take a lot of sugar out of bond, and then——'
Don Gennaro, quite indifferent to all this chatter, said not a word.
'Be neighbourly, and complete the favour. I have a little bill due to-morrow,' Fragalà said, passing through a sharp momentary agony; 'it is five hundred francs, and I have not got it. You might lend them to me, and I will give you a thousand francs next Saturday ... it is a great favour ... and you can be sure of my being punctual.'
'I can't,' Don Gennaro said icily.