Cecchino Bandini did not slacken his pace till he found himself, with
his thin overcoat and opera hat all drenched, among the gas reflections
and puddles before his studio door; that shout of applause and that
burst of clapping pursuing him down the stairs of the palace and
all through the rainy streets. There were a few embers in his stove;
he threw a faggot on them, lit a cigarette, and proceeded to make
reflections, the wet opera hat still on his head. He had been a fool, a
savage. He had behaved like a child, rushing past his hostess with that
ridiculous speech in answer to her inquiries: "I am running away because
bad luck has entered your house."
Why had he not guessed it at once? What on earth else could she have
wanted his sketch for?
He determined to forget the matter, and, as he imagined, he forgot it.
Only, when the next day's evening paper displayed two columns describing
Madame Fosca's ball, and more particularly "that mask," as the reporter
had it, "which among so many which were graceful and ingenious, bore off
in triumph the palm for witty novelty," he threw the paper down and gave
it a kick towards the wood-box. But he felt ashamed of himself, picked
it up, smoothed it out and read it all--foreign news and home news, and
even the description of Madame Fosca's masked ball, conscientiously
through. Last of all he perused, with dogged resolution, the column of
petty casualties: a boy bit in the calf by a dog who was not mad; the
frustrated burgling of a baker's shop; even to the bunches of keys and
the umbrella and two cigar-cases picked up by the police, and consigned
to the appropriate municipal limbo; until he came to the following
lines: "This morning the _Guardians of Public Safety_, having been
called by the neighbouring inhabitants, penetrated into a room on the
top floor of a house situate in the Little Street of the Gravedigger
(Viccolo del Beccamorto), and discovered, hanging from a rafter, the
dead body of Maddalena X. Y. Z. The deceased had long been noted
throughout Florence for her eccentric habits and apparel." The paragraph
was headed, in somewhat larger type: "Suicide of a female lunatic."
Cecchino's cigarette had gone out, but he continued blowing at it all
the same. He could see in his mind's eye a tall, slender figure, draped
in silvery plush and silvery furs, standing by the side of an open
portfolio, and holding a drawing in her tiny hand, with the slender,
solitary gold bangle over the grey glove.