It is a musty odour, an
odour of staleness which perhaps an open window and the fresh air of heaven
might relieve but could not dissipate; and to this is wed, but so subtly
that it would be impossible to say which is predominant, the slight, sickly
aroma of wax.
We supped there that night in silence at about the hour that poor Gino
Falcone would be taking his departure. Silence was habitual with us at
meal-times, eating being performed--like everything else in that drab
household--as a sort of devotional act. Occasionally the silence would be
relieved by readings aloud from some pious work, undertaken at my mother's
bidding by one or another of the amanuenses.
But on the night in question there was just silence, broken chiefly by the
toothless slobber of the castellan over the soft meats that were especially
prepared for him. And there was something of grimness in that silence; for
none--and Fra Gervasio less than any--approved the unchristian thing that
out of excess of Christianity my mother had done in driving old Falcone
forth.
Myself, I could not eat at all. My misery choked me. The thought of that
old servitor whom I had loved being sent a wanderer and destitute, and all
through my own weakness, all because I had failed him in his need, just as
I had failed myself, was anguish to me.
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