CHAPTER I


When the widow of Martino Consalvi married young Corbario, people shook
their heads and said that she was making a great mistake. Consalvi had
been dead a good many years, but as yet no one had thought it was time
to say that his widow was no longer young and beautiful, as she had
always been. Many rich widows remain young and beautiful as much as a
quarter of a century, or even longer, and the Signora Consalvi was very
rich indeed. As soon as she was married to Folco Corbario every one knew
that she was thirty-five years old and he was barely twenty-six, and
that such a difference of ages on the wrong side was ridiculous if it
was not positively immoral. No well-regulated young man had a right to
marry a rich widow nine years older than himself, and who had a son only
eleven years younger than he.

A few philosophers who said that if the widow was satisfied the matter
was nobody's business were treated with the contempt they deserved.
Those who, on the contrary, observed that young Corbario had married for
money and nothing else were heard with favour, until the man who knew
everything pointed out that as the greater part of the fortune would be
handed over to Marcello when he came of age, six years hence, Corbario
had not made a good bargain and might have done better. It was true that
Marcello Consalvi had inherited a delicate constitution of body, it had
even been hinted that he was consumptive. Corbario would have done
better to wait another year or two to see what happened, said a cynic,
for young people often died of consumption between fifteen and twenty.