E. F. Benson

“ Never was there such a tearing to rags of apparently stout evidence; the shreds of it were scattered with loud explosions to all points of the compass, like the rockets Pasqualino had watched from his grated window. He was forced to allow that he had not looked in his pocket till three hours after he had come back from his bathe. He confessed that he had told the manager of the hotel that he must have had his portfolio with him when he went to bathe, because he had tipped the boy on his arrival at the bathing-place. ”

“ The thread of coincidence almost staggered her; the premonition of some enormous success flamed high, and, hurrying down to the offices of the lottery, she invested fifteen francs in the numbers 2, 8, 28, 88.
She lingered in the Piazza for a little, on her way back to her house, after this offering on the altar of luck, to receive the condolences of her friends on Pasqualino's delinquency, and had a kind word given her by Signore Gelotti, the great lawyer, who had come over for a week's holiday to his native island. Ah, there was a man! ”

“ It was felt to be intolerable that a boy who had just changed into his best clothes, and taken a carnation from one of the tables in the dining-room to put in his button-hole, and was actually setting off to go down to the Piazza, there to spend the afternoon of the festa, should have been called back by the unsympathetic porter of the Grand Hotel, where he was hall-boy, and be commanded to show the fat white German gentleman down to the bathing-place at the Palazzo a mare and carry his towels and bathing-dress for him. ”

“ There were well-marked features about it; it lent itself to the science of numbers. First of all, there was Pasqualino himself to be backed. "Boy," as everyone knew, was No. 2. Next there was the German gentleman (Michele, turn up "German") . Then there was a pocket, and a hole in a pocket, and a portfolio, and a bathe. Other aspects of the affair struck the inquiring mind. "Festa" was connected with it, so, too, was "prison," where now Pasqualino languished. ”

“ What a thing to use the knowledge you possess! The lucky woman! She had won a terno for the first three numbers she backed came out in that order. Why, it would be a matter of three thousand francs at least, though her title of marchioness must still be considered in abeyance. But No. 91—now, what does No. 91 mean? Quick, turn it up in Smorfia. Who has a Smorfia? Ernesto, the tobacconist, of course, but he is a mean man; it will be necessary to buy a packet of cigarettes in order to get a look at it. Never mind, a cigarette is always a cigarette. ”

“ Dio! What a lot of meanings! "The man in the moon . . . the hairs on the tail of an elephant . . . an empty egg-shell" . . . Who ever heard the like? There is no sense in such a number! And No. 4—what does No. ”