The Marquis's manner on the way to the office had been peculiar, still, Don Pasqualino was accustomed to gamblers' eccentricities, and took no notice of it. He went to sit at his usual place every week near the table, putting one hand over his eyes to shelter them from the glare of the lamp. Around the deep silence still held, broken by a sigh now and then, and on looking at all their pallid, dumb, excited faces the medium felt his first suspicion. He tried to do his usual fantastic humbugging work.
'It rains, but the sun will come out at midnight.'
'That is idle chatter,' shouted Trifari, bursting into an ironical laugh.
The others around muttered sneeringly. Now there was no longer any belief in Don Pasqualino's mysterious words. This want of faith stood out so plainly that the medium drew back as if he wanted to parry an attack. But he tried again, thinking he could profit as usual from the feverish imaginations of the Cabalists by striking a sympathetic chord.
'It rains, the sun will come out at midnight, but he who wears the Virgin's scapulary does not get wet.'
'Don Pasqualino, you are joking,' the glove-cutter said ironically. The medium darted a look of rage at him. 'You need not look at me as if you wanted to eat me, Don Pasqualino. Asking the gentlemen's pardon, you are trying to make fools of us, and we are not the people to allow it.'
'My lord, make that ass hold his tongue,' muttered the medium, making a scornful gesture.
'He is not such an ass after all, Don Pasqualino,' said Formosa, keeping down his excitement with difficulty.
'What do you mean, my lord?' asked Don Pasqualino sharply, getting up to go away; but Trifari, who had never left the medium's neighbourhood, put a hand on his shoulder without speaking, and obliged him to sit down again. The medium sank his head on his breast a minute to think it over, and gazed sideways at the door.
'Sit still, Don Pasqualino,' said Formosa slowly, 'we have a lot to talk about here.'
A slightly agonized expression went over the caller-up of spirits' face. Once more looking round the company, he only saw hard, anxious faces, determined on success. He understood now confusedly.
'Gaetano the glover is not an ass for saying you are making fools of us. What you have been doing for three years past looks like a trick. For three years, you see, you have gone on saying the most disjointed things with the excuse that the spirits said these things to you. For three years you have made us stake the very bones of our necks upon this nonsense of yours; every one of us has not only gained nothing, but thrown his whole means away, from following your rubbish, and we are full of woes, some of them incurable. What sort of a conscience have you? We are ruined!'