He remembered that and other things, which came back to him uncertainly,
like the little incidents of his early childhood, like the first words
he could remember hearing and answering, like the sensation of being on
his mother's knee and resting his head upon her shoulder, like the smell
of the roses and the bitter-orange blossoms in the villa, like the first
sensation of being 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.
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