"Have you ordered vitello? Capital! But I've finished my pasta and I'm thirsty. Well, what do you want to buy at the auction, Gaspare, and you, Amedeo, and you Salvatore?"
He plunged into the talk and made Salvatore show his keen desires, encouraging and playing with his avarice, now holding it off for a moment, then coaxing it as one coaxes an animal, stroking it, tempting it to a forward movement. The wine went round now, for the vitello was on the table, and the talk grew more noisy, the laughter louder. Outside, too, the movement and the tumult of the fair were increasing. Cries of men selling their wares rose up, the hard melodies of a piano-organ, and a strange and ecclesiastical chant sung by three voices that, repeated again and again, at last attracted Maurice's attention.
"What's that?" he asked of Gaspare. "Are those priests chanting?"
"Priests! No, signore. Those are the Romani."
"Romans here! What are they doing?"
"They have a cart decorated with flags, signorino, and they are selling lemon-water and ices. All the people say that they are Romans and that is how they sing in Rome."
The long and lugubrious chant of the ice-venders rose up again, strident and melancholy as a song chanted over a corpse.
"It's funny to sing like that to sell ices," Maurice said. "It sounds like men at a funeral."
"Oh, they are very good ices, signorino. The Romans make splendid ices."
Turkey followed the vitello.