And he did remain, cordially disliked by all. His name was Cedebonis; he was a physician, professor of philosophy in the liceo, and of pedagogy in a normal school for girls; he was a Calabrian, short, thick-set, dark, bald, with an oval-shaped head, with no neck to speak of; mulish, with a leather-colored face, enormous bushy eyebrows, and mustache the color of ebony. As the resigned victim of his many scientific doctrines, both philosophical and pedagogical, he had come to live almost automatically, with a brain like a warehouse, in which his thoughts, precise, well-weighed, and classified, were arranged in perfect order according to their various categories. Possibly his robust and vigorous body would gladly have lent itself to violent exercises, but Cedebonis made himself a storehouse for archives, or so said Scossi, and did not permit himself any expansiveness that was not according to the dictates of science, philosophy, and pedagogy. “To live is not enough; live to do good,” he used to say placidly, in his big, oily voice. And he would ask: “Reason, reason, gentlemen, for what was it given us?”
“That we might be worse than beasts,” once replied scornfully the music teacher Trunfo, who could not endure him.
Separated with much scandal from his wife, always scowling, gloomy, grumbling, and at times explosive, Trunfo passed almost the whole day in the house of Carolinona, in the dining-room there, intent, like a dog who licks the bruises he has received, on correcting and rewriting the most hissed parts of his opera, for the production of which he had half beggared himself. He smoked continually. Biagio Speranza called him “Vesuvius.”
Sometimes Cedebonis would go quietly up behind him, and sit beside him in order to inhale the odor of the tobacco, which he delighted in. Trunfo, grumbling, would squint at him a couple of times, then fuming, fidgeting with annoyance, would draw a cigar from his pocket, and offer it to him rudely: “Pray take it. Smoke, for Heaven’s sake!”
“No, thank you,” Cedebonis would reply, without the least discomfiture. “You must know that nicotine is very injurious. I only like to inhale the smoke, to smell its fragrance.”
“At my expense,” Trunfo would then burst out furiously. “How about the damage to my health? Get out of here, I say! Shame on you! If you want your pleasure you can pay for it!”
“Cedebonis,” said Scossi—who every time he began to speak would shove out the tip of his terrible tongue like an arrow-head—“Cedebonis, with that face of his, like a happy monk, would be quite capable of presenting himself calmly in the house of our dear Martinelli, and, with the pretext that woman, like nicotine, is injurious, ask him to lend him, yes, I say, for a moment—”
“His wife?” asked Biagio Speranza.
“Oh, shocking! Her powder puff.”
“But what has my wife to do with the matter?” exclaims harmless Martino Martinelli, hit when least expecting it, his eyelashes quivering rapidly over his round, owl-like eyes, very close together, separated by an extremely long, thin nose, and which seemed to draw up and leave his upper lip suspended in the air.