But he himself was beginning to think, now that his faith in Folco had
been shaken, and he began to realise that he had been strangely torpid
and morally listless during the past years. The shock his whole system
had received, the long interval during which his memory had been quite
gone, the physical languor that had lasted some time after his recovery
from the fever, had all combined to make the near past seem infinitely
remote, to cloud his judgment of reality, and to destroy the healthy
tension of his natural will. A good deal of what Corbario had called
"harmless dissipation" had made matters worse, and when Regina had
persuaded him to leave Paris he had really been in that dangerous moral,
intellectual, and physical condition in which it takes very little to
send a man to the bad altogether, and not much more to kill him
outright, if he be of a delicate constitution and still very young.
Corbario had almost succeeded in his work of destruction.
He would not succeed now, for the worst danger was past, and Marcello
had found his feet after being almost lost in the quicksand through
which he had been led.
He had not at first accused Folco of anything worse than that one little
deception about the arrival of the Contessa, and of having caused him to
be too closely watched by Settimia. Little by little, however, other
possibilities had shaped themselves and had grown into certainties at an
alarming rate.
Pages:
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238