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