The solicitor Don Emanuele Cerrotta opened his study long before dawn for the provincial customers, early and early, who also had other tasks to attend during the day in Catania. Don Calogero, the scribe, came to wake up the porter, lit up the oil lamp on the stairs and went into the studio where his principal had been working for a few hours.
In the anteroom, half a dozen chairs and a light, with a smoked pipe and a tin reflector, on the wall. In the study, two shelves full of scriptures and legal memories, three chairs complying with those of the antechamber and one with armrests; a table of fir, dyed in mahogany use, cluttered with papers, next to the inkwell, a blue cotton handkerchief and a painted cardboard snuffbox, half open to make it easier to take the rap to whom Don Emanuele was suddenly filling his nose, scattering half of every grip on the shot of his nightgown and on the papers in front of him.
