nto barren rigidity?
Those ideas had all been sown in the fresh soil of Tito's mind, and were
lively germs there: that was the proper order of things--the order of
nature, which treats all maturity as a mere nidus for youth.
Baldassarre had done his work, had had his draught of life: Tito said it
was _his_ turn now.

And the prospect was so vague:--"I think they are going to take me to
Antioch:" here was a vista! After a long voyage, to spend months,
perhaps years, in a search for which even now there was no guarantee
that it would not prove vain: and to leave behind at starting a life of
distinction and love: and to find, if he found anything, the old
exacting companionship which was known by rote beforehand. Certainly
the gems and therefore the florins were, in a sense, Baldassarre's: in
the narrow sense by which the right of possession is determined in
ordinary affairs; but in that large and more radically natural view by
which the world belongs to youth and strength, they were rather his who
could extract the most pleasure out of them. That, he was conscious,
was not the sentiment which the complicated play of human feelings had
engendered in society. The men around him would expect that he should
immediately apply those florins to his benefactor's rescue. But what
was the sentiment of society?--a mere tangle of anomalous traditions and
opinions, which no wise man would take as a guide, except so far as his
own comfort was concerned. Not that he cared for the florins save
perhaps for Romola's sake: he would give up the florins readily enough.
It was the joy that was due to him and was close to his lips, which he
felt he was not bound to thrust away from him and so travel on,
thirsting. Any maxims that required a man to fling away the good that
was needed to make existence sweet, were only the lining of human
selfishness turned outward: they were made by men who wanted others to
sacrifice themselves for their sake. He would rather that Baldassarre
should not suffer: he liked no one to suffer; but could any philosophy
prove to him that he was bound to care for another's suffering more than
for his own? To do so he must have loved Baldassarre devotedly, and he
did _not_ love him: was that his own fault? Gratitude! seen closely, it
made no valid claim: his father's life would have been dreary without
him: are we convicted of a debt to men for the pleasures they give
themselves?

Having once begun to explain