great flaring, heaving, roaring, full moon of a man, it would be impossible to imagine a more cautious and hypocritical figure than the other priest cut. The second priest was a little man with a grey, bleak, meagre and incredibly sly kind of face in which his native caution and fear of self-exposure were constantly waging a grotesque and open warfare with the sly, cunning, avaricious greed and sensual desire obscenely legible in his countenance. At the present moment this tormented struggle between lust and caution was comically evident: the fellow’s face was a grotesque painting of desire, and his furtive little eyes kept darting around in his head like rodents’and he peered slyly right and left all round the café to see if anyone had noticed the naked exposure of his passions. The reason for his confusion, the very sight of which set his huge companion off in great breast-and belly-heavings of tremendous laughter, was not hard to find: at the table next to the two priests were seated two comely young prostitutes, who had ogled and enticed the two holy men all through the evening and whose seductive cajoleries, encouraged by the great priest’s explosions of mountainous belly-gushing laughter, had now become naked, open, and outrageous. The little fellow was in a cold, grey sweat of fear and longing: afraid to look at the two women, he could yet hardly keep his eyes off them; and terrified lest his conduct be observed and followed, he was nevertheless unable to conceal the feverish eagerness of desire which held him fascinated in a kind of trance.
So the indecent comedy proceeded: the two women, emboldened by the huge priest’s mountainous heavings of laughter, passed swiftly from flirtatious raillery to proposals of a more serious character: at the end, something certain, swift and serious passed between the women and the huge fat priest: one of them spoke to him in a low hoarse tone, he lowered his great moon of face a trifle, and without looking at her, answered. In a moment the two girls rose with an elaborate casualness, the priest paid their bill, and the women sauntered out, turned left, moved slowly towards the corner and, crossing to the other side, advanced a few yards down the quiet intersecting street, where they paused and turned, waiting, in the obscuring shadow of a tree.
In a moment the huge priest called for the bill, paid it, tipped the waiter generously, and rising with a mountainous grunt, deliberately launched his huge bulk towards the street, closely followed by the sly and terror-stricken figure of the little priest. Outside the café the great priest
