to the Galleria. Arrived there,
he took his seat at a little table outside the "Gran Caffe," ordered a
small dinner, and, while he was eating it, watched the people strolling
up and down, seeking among them for a figure that he knew.

As the hour drew near for the music to begin, and the girls dressed in
white came out one by one to the platform that, surrounded by a white
railing edged with red velvet, is built out beyond the caffe to face the
crowd, the number of promenaders increased, and many stood still waiting
for the first note, and debating the looks of the players. Others
thronged around Artois, taking possession of the many little tables, and
calling for ices, lemon-water, syrups, and liqueurs. Priests, soldiers,
sailors, students, actors--who assemble in the Galleria to seek
engagements--newsboys, and youths whose faces suggested that they were
"ruffiani," mingled with foreigners who had come from the hotels and
from the ships in the harbor, and whose demeanor was partly curious
and partly suspicious, as of one who longs to probe the psychology of a
thief while safely guarding his pockets. The buzz of voices, the tramp
of feet, gained a peculiar and vivid sonorousness from the high and
vaulted roof; and in the warm air, under the large and winking electric
lights, the perpetually moving figures looked strangely capricious,
hungry, determined, furtive, ardent, and intent. On their little stands
the electric fans whirred as they slowly revolved, casting an artificial
breeze upon pallid faces, and around the central dome the angels with
gilded wings lifted their right arms as if pointing the unconscious
multitude the difficult way to heaven.

A priest sat down with two companions at the table next to Artois.
He had a red cord round his shaggy black hat. His face was like a
parroquet's, with small, beady eyes full of an unintellectual sharpness.
His plump body suggested this world, and his whole demeanor, the
movements of his dimpled, dirty hands, and of his protruding lips, the
attitude of his extended legs, the pose of his coarse shoulders, seemed
hostile to things mystical. He munched an ice, and swallowed hasty
draughts of iced water, talking the while with a sort of gluttonous
vivacity. Artois looked at him and heard, with his imagination, the
sound of the bell at the Elevation, and saw the bowed heads of the
crouching worshippers. The irony of life, that is the deepest mystery of
life, came upon him like