The marchesa was always specially irritable when at cards.  The previous conversation had not improved her temper.  Moreover, the count was her partner, and a worse one could hardly be conceived.  Twice he did not even take up the cards dealt to him, but sat immovable, staring at the print of the Empress Eugenie in the Spanish dress on the green wall opposite.  Called to order peremptorily by the marchesa, he took up his cards, shuffled them, then laid them down again on the table, his eyes wandering off to the chair hitherto occupied by Enrica.

This was intolerable.  The marchesa showed him that she thought so.  He apologized.  He did take up his cards, and for a few deals attended to the game.  Again becoming abstracted, he forgot what were trumps, losing thereby several tricks.  Finally, he revoked.  Both the marchesa and the cavaliere rebuked him very sharply.  Again he apologized, tried to collect his thoughts, but still played abominably.

Meanwhile, Trenta and Baldassare kept up a perpetual wrangle.  The cavaliere was cool, sardonic, smiling, and provoking—­Baldassare hot and flushed with a concentration of rage he dared not express.  The cavaliere, thanks to his court education, was an admirable whist-player.  His frequent observations to his young friend were excellent as instruction, but were conveyed in somewhat contemptuous language.  Baldassare, having been told by the cavaliere that playing a good hand at whist was as necessary to his future social success as dancing, was much chagrined.

Poor Baldassare!—­his life was a continual conflict—­a sacrifice to his love of fine company.  It might be doubted if he would not have been infinitely happier in the atmosphere of the paternal establishment, weighing out drugs, in shabby clothes, behind the counter, than he was now, snubbed and affronted, and barely tolerated.

After this the marchesa and Trenta became partners; but matters did not improve.  A violent altercation ensued as to who led a certain crucial card, which decided the game.  Once seated at the whist-table, the cavaliere was a real autocrat. There he did not affect even to submit to the marchesa.  Now, provoked beyond endurance, he plainly told her “she never had played a good game, and, what was more, that she never would—­she was too impetuous.”  Upon hearing this the marchesa threw down her cards in a rage, and rose from the table.  Trenta rose also.  With an imperturbable countenance he offered her his arm, to lead her back to her seat.

The marchesa, extremely irate at what he had said, pushed him rudely to one side and reseated herself.

Baldassare and Marescotti rose also.  The count, having continued persistently absent up to the last, was utterly unconscious of the little fracas that had taken place between the marchesa and the cavaliere, and the consequent sudden conclusion of the game.  He had seen her rise, and it was a great relief to him.  He had been debating in his own mind whether he should adopt the Dante rhyme for his ode to the young Madonna, or make it in strophes.  He inclined to the latter treatment as more picturesque, and therefore more suitable to the subject.