As all this became clear to Marcello he suffered acutely at times, and he reproached himself bitterly for having been so long blind and indifferent.  It was bad enough that he should have been leading a wild life with Regina in Paris within a few months of his mother’s death, but even in the depths of his self-reproach he saw how much worse it was that Folco should have forgotten her so soon.  It was worse than a slight upon his mother’s memory, it was an insult.  The good woman who was gone would have shed hot tears if she could have come to life and seen how her son was living; but she would have died again, could she have seen the husband she adored in the places where many had seen him since her death.  It was no wonder that Marcello’s anger rose at the mere thought.

Moreover, as Marcello’s understanding awoke, he realised that Folco had encouraged him in all he had done, and had not seemed pleased when he had begun to live more quietly.  Folco would have made him his companion in pleasure, if he could, and the idea was horrible to Marcello as soon as it presented itself.

It was the discovery that he had been mistaken in Corbario that most directly helped him to regain his foothold in life and his free will.  There was more in the Spartan method than we are always ready to admit, for it is easier to disgust most men by the sight of human degradation than to strengthen them against temptation by preaching, or by the lessons of example which are so very peculiarly disagreeable to the normal man.

“I am virtuous, I am sober, I resist temptation, imitate me!” cries the preacher.  You say that you are virtuous, and you are apparently sober, my friend; and perhaps you are a very good man, though you need not scream out the statement at the top of your voice.  But how are we to know that you have any temptations to resist?  Or that your temptations are the same as ours, even supposing that you have any?  Or that you are speaking the truth about yourself, since what you say is so extremely flattering to your vanity?  Wherever there is preaching, those who are preached at are expected to accept a good deal on the mere word of the preacher, quite aside from anything they have been brought to believe elsewhere.

“Temptation?” said a certain great lady who was not strong in theology.  “That is what one yields to, isn’t it?”

She probably knew what she was talking about, for she had lived in the world a good while, as we have.  But the preacher is not very often one of us, and he knows little of our ways and next to nothing of our real feelings; yet he exhorts us to be like him.  It would be very odd if we succeeded.  The world would probably stand still if we did, and most of us are so well aware of the fact that we do not even try; and the sermon simply has no effect at all, which need not prevent the preacher from being richly remunerated for delivering it.

“Vice is very attractive, of course,” he says, “but you must avoid it because it is sinful.”