She glanced at the signora's lap, and seeing her still without her fan, her eye shot slyly up with her shining temple, inspecting the narrow opening in the curtain furtively.
A short hush of preluding ceremonies passed.
Presently Beppo heard them speaking; he was aghast to find that he had no comprehension of what they were uttering.

'Oh, accursed French dialect!' he groaned; discovering the talk to be in that tongue.
The Signor Antonio warmed rapidly from the frigid politeness of his introductory manner.

A consummate acquaintance with French was required to understand him.

He held out the fingers of one hand in regimental order, and with the others, which alternately screwed his moustache from its constitutional droop over the corners of his mouth, he touched the uplifted digits one by one, buzzing over them: flashing his white eyes, and shrugging in a way sufficient to madden a surreptitious listener who was aware that a wealth of meaning escaped him and mocked at him.

At times the Signor Antonio pitched a note compounded half of cursing, half of crying, it seemed: both pathetic and objurgative, as if he whimpered anathemas and had inexpressible bitter things in his mind.