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He was on the upper rim of the great fountain craning his neck over the pack of people: then he got a dig under the ribs enough to take the breath of an ox. It was the spout of old Marco's green umbrella. "Hey! silly fool," spluttered the old liar, "dost want that loose-legged slut of thine in trouble? I tell thee she's playing in a corner with Carlo Formaggia.
Already he's pinched her cheek twice, and who knows what the end may be? Mud-coloured ass, wilt thou let thy child slip to the devil while thou standest gaping at a horse-race?" And this before all the neighbours! What to say to such a man? Maso babbled with rage; but he had to go, for Carlo Formaggia was well known. He must go of course.
General reproaches were always a failure in cases of this sort. Some were sure to be wild guess-work and to drown the real ones: you could never tell when you had hit the mark. Had she not she fourteen, too! slid astride down the railing into the Campo and been caught up in the arms of Carlo Formaggia waiting and laughing at the bottom? Had she not lain a whole minute in his arms, panting?
Presently he looked up: "Mother of God! what a white-faced rogue it is! Eh, Giuseppe?" "By Mars, if looks could stab, thou hadst been riddled by the knife before this," said his friend. Marco shrugged and went on reading he was an old man. But when Carlo Formaggia had heard the debate, he turned a shade shinier, and his eyes harder and brighter.
A faint circle smeared with the finger, and through the midst of it a ragged dart. Carlo Formaggia had been there! He knew that mark! And then the whole truth blazed before him like a sheet of fire. He fell forward on his face. The thin thread of scarlet from Marco Zoppa's gaping throat crawled drop by drop on to his shoulder. Carlo Formaggia had limed his bird.
He had the wooden stem of his pipe 'twixt finger and thumb, and used it like a conductor's baton to emphasise his points. As his voice shrilled and quavered, Carlo Formaggia caught his own name and turned back to listen, prick-eared. He stood out of sight resting one foot on a doorstep, and leaned forward on to his leg.
Maso was battling his way up the street, white and strained as a grave-cloth; and Carlo Formaggia, the approved bravo oiled and jaunty, with his brown felt fantastically rolled and stuck over one ear, with a long cigar which he alternately gnawed and sucked, Carlo the broad-chested, of the seared, evil face, came down with the stream on the arms of two other gilded youths.
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