He remembered that and other things, which came back to him uncertainly, like the little incidents of his early childhood, like the first words he could remember hearing and answering, like the sensation of being on his mother’s knee and resting his head upon her shoulder, like the smell of the roses and the bitter-orange blossoms in the villa, like the first sensation of being set upon a pony’s back in San Domenico, while Corbario held him up in the saddle, and tried to make his little hands hold the bridle.  The inn was quite as far away as all that, and but for Regina he might have forgotten it altogether.

She was “Consalvi’s Regina” now; half Rome called her that, and she was famous.  Naples and Florence and Milan had heard of her; she had been seen at Monte Carlo, and even in Paris and London her name was not unknown in places where young men congregate to discuss the wicked world, and where young women meet to compare husbands, over the secret and sacrificial teapot which represents virtue, or the less sacred bridge-table which represents vice.  Smart young dandies who had never exchanged a word with her spoke of her familiarly as “Regina “; smarter and older men, who knew her a little, talked of her as “the Spalletta,” not without a certain respect; their mothers branded her as “that creature,” and their wives, who envied her, called her “Consalvi’s Regina.”

When people remonstrated with Folco Corbario for allowing his stepson too much liberty, he shook his head gravely and answered that he did what he could to keep Marcello in the right way, but that the boy’s intellect had been shaken by the terrible accident, and that he had undoubtedly developed vicious tendencies—­probably atavistic, Folco added.  Why did Folco allow him to have so much money?  The answer was that he was of age and the fortune was his.  But why had Folco let him have it before he was twenty-one, ever since he was found and brought home?  He had not had much, was the reply; at least it had not been much compared with the whole income he now enjoyed one could not bring up the heir of a great estate like a pauper, could one?  So the questioners desisted from questioning, but they said among themselves that, although Folco had been an admirable husband and stepfather while his wife had lived, he had not shown as much good sense after her death as they had been led to expect.  Meanwhile, no one had any right to interfere, and Marcello did as he pleased.

Children instinctively attach themselves to whichever of their parents gives them the most liberty.  It is sheer nonsense to deny it.  Marcello had loved his mother dearly, but she had always been the one to hinder him from doing what he wished to do, because she had been excessively anxious about his bodily health, and over-desirous of bringing him up to manhood in a state of ideal moral perfection.  Folco, on the other hand, had been associated with all the boy’s sports and pleasures, and had