"Lucia!" cried Marzio angrily, a flight of steps higher. "I suppose you
will bring her up to be woman of all work? Well, she could earn her
living then, which is more than you do! After all, it is better to mind
a soup-kettle than to thump a piano and to squeal so that I can hear her
in the shop opposite, and it is better than hanging about the church all
the morning, or listening to Paolo's drivelling talk. By all means keep
her in the kitchen."

It was hard to say whether Signora Pandolfi was puffing or sighing as
she paused for breath upon the landing, but there was probably something
of both in the labour of her lungs. She was used to Marzio. She had
lived with him for twenty years, and she knew his moods and his ways,
and detected the coming storm from afar. Unfortunately, or perhaps
fortunately, for her, there was little variety in the sequence of his
ideas. She was accustomed to his beginning at the grumbling stage before
dinner, and proceeding by a crescendo movement to the pitch of rage,
which was rarely reached until he had finished his meal, when he
generally seized his hat and dragged Gianbattista away with him,
declaring loudly that women were not fit for human society. The daily
excitement of this comedy had long lost its power to elicit anything
more than a sigh from the stout Maria Luisa, who generally bore Marzio's
unreasonable anger with considerable equanimity, waiting for his
departure to eat her boiled beef and salad in peace with Lucia, while
old Assunta sat by the table with the cat in her lap, putting in a word
of commiseration alternately with a word of gossip about the lodgers on
the other side of the landing. The latter were a young and happy pair:
the husband, a chorus singer at the Apollo, who worked at glove cleaning
during the day time; his wife, a sempstress, who did repairs upon the
costumes of the theatre. Their apartments consisted of two rooms and a