Even Ugo Favara, the splenetic advocate, came into the shop, and took a chair, and sat down behind the counter. And Don Ferrante had him sitting there all day, quite livid, quite motionless, suffering the most inconceivable anguish without uttering a word.
Every five minutes Torino-il-Martello came in and struck the counter, saying that the hour had come in which Don Ferrante was to get his punishment.
Don Ferrante was a hard man, but he could no more escape the bells than any other. And the longer he heard them, the more he began to wonder why everybody streamed into his shop. It seemed as if they meant something special. It seemed as if they wished to make him responsible for the ringing, and the evil it portended.
He had not spoken of it to any one, but his wife must have spread it about. He began to believe that everybody was thinking the same, although they did not dare to say it. He thought that the advocate was sitting and waiting for him to yield. He believed that the whole town came in to see if he would really dare to send his father-in-law away.
Donna Elisa, who had so much to do in her own shop that she could not come herself, sent old Pacifica continually to him to ask what he thought of the bell-ringing. And the priest too came to the shop for a moment and said, like all the others: “Did you ever hear such a terrible ringing, Don Ferrante?”
Don Ferrante would have liked to know if the advocate and Don Matteo and all the others came only to reproach him because he wished to send Cavaliere Palmeri away.
The blood began to throb in his temples. The room swam now and then before his eyes. People came in continually and asked: “Have you ever heard such a terrible ringing?” But one never came and asked, and that was Donna Micaela. She could not come when she felt no fear. She was merely delighted and proud that the passion which was to fill her whole life had come. “My life is to be great and glorious,” she said. And she was appalled that till now she had been only a child.
She would travel with the post-carriage that went by Diamante at ten o’clock at night. Towards four, she thought, she must tell her father everything, and begin his packing.
But that did not seem hard to her. Her father would soon come to her in Argentina. She would beg him to be patient for a few months, until they could have a home to offer him. And she was sure that he would be glad to have her leave Don Ferrante.