t 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