of his stock into a breast-pocket, and stretched himself out at full length upon the bench. Cavalletto sat down on the pavement, holding one of his ankles in each hand, and smoking peacefully. There seemed to be some uncomfortable attraction of Monsieur Rigaud’s eyes to the immediate neighbourhood of that part of the pavement where the thumb had been in the plan. They were so drawn in that direction, that the Italian more than once followed them to and back from the pavement in some surprise.
‘What an infernal hole this is!’ said Monsieur Rigaud, breaking a long pause. ‘Look at the light of day. Day? the light of yesterday week, the light of six months ago, the light of six years ago. So slack and dead!’
It came languishing down a square funnel that blinded a window in the staircase wall, through which the sky was never seen—nor anything else.
‘Cavalletto,’ said Monsieur Rigaud, suddenly withdrawing his gaze from this funnel to which they had both involuntarily turned their eyes, ‘you know me for a gentleman?’
‘Surely, surely!’
‘How long have we been here?’
‘I, eleven weeks, to-morrow night at midnight. You, nine weeks and three days, at five this afternoon.’
‘Have I ever done anything here? Ever touched the broom, or spread the mats, or rolled them up, or found the draughts, or collected the dominoes, or put my hand to any kind of work?’
‘Never!’
‘Have you ever thought of looking to me to do any kind of work?’
John Baptist answered with that peculiar back-handed shake of the right forefinger which is the most expressive negative in the Italian language.
‘No! You knew from the first moment when you saw me here, that I was a gentleman?’
‘ALTRO!’ returned John Baptist, closing his eyes and giving his head a most vehement toss. The word being, according to its Genoese emphasis, a confirmation, a contradiction, an assertion, a denial, a taunt, a compliment, a joke, and fifty other things, became in the present instance, with a significance
Prev.
Back
Top