e 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.
The cynic was answered by a practical woman of the world, who said that
Corbario had six years of luxury and extravagance before him, and that
many men would have sold themselves to the devil for less. After the six
years the deluge might come if it must; it was much pleasanter to drown
in the end than never to have had the chance of swimming in the big
stream at all, and bumping sides with the really big fish, and feeling
oneself as good as any of them. Besides, Marcello was pale and thin, and
had been heard to cough; he might die before he came of age. The only
objection to this theory was that it was based on a fiction; for the
whole fortune had been left to the Signora by a childless relation.
These amiable and interesting views were expressed with variations by
people who knew the three persons concerned, and with such a keen sense
of appropriate time and place as made it quite sure that none of the
three should ever know what was said of them. The caution of an old fox
is rash temerity compared with the circumspection of a first-rate
gossip; and when the gossips were tired of discussing Folco Corbario and
his wife and her son, they talked about other matters, but they had a
vague suspicion that they had been cheated out of something. A cat that
has clawed all the feathers off a stuffed canary might feel just what
they did.
For nothing happened.
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