when he had shown her that he delighted to
be with her? Was he not sinning now when he promised to buy for her the
most beautiful things of the fair? For a moment he thought to himself
that his fault against Maddalena was more grave, more unforgivable than
his fault against Hermione. But then a sudden anger that was like a
storm, against his own condemnation of himself, swept through him. He had
come out to-day to be recklessly happy, and here he was giving himself up
to gloom, to absurd self-torture. Where was his natural careless
temperament? To-day his soul was full of shadows, like the soul of a man
going to meet a doom.

"Where's the wine?" he called to Gaspare. "Wine, cameriere, wine!"

"You must not drink wine with the pasta, signorino!" cried Gaspare. "Only
afterwards, with the vitello."

"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.

Maurice's guests were now completely at ease and perfectly happy. The
consciousness that all this was going to be paid for, that they would not
have to put their hands in their pockets for a soldo, war