“Possibly.  I have certainly not accepted those of others.”

“And the result is that you are turning into an oyster—­and Orsino has begun to turn into an oyster, too, and the other boys will follow his example—­a perfect oyster-bed!  Go and take Orsino by the throat and shake him—­”

“I regret to say that I am physically not equal to that feat,” said Giovanni with a laugh.

“I should be!” exclaimed the aged Prince, doubling his hard hand and bringing it down on the table, while his bright eyes gleamed.  “Go and shake him, and tell him to give up this dirty building business—­make him give it up, buy him out of it, put plenty of money into his pockets and send him off to amuse himself!  You and Corona have made a prig of him, and business is making an oyster of him, and he will be a hopeless idiot before you realise it!  Stir him, shake him, make him move!  I hate your furniture-man—­who is always in the right place and always ready to be sat upon!”

“If you can persuade him to give up affairs I have no objection.”

“Persuade him!  I never knew a man worth speaking to who could be persuaded to anything he did not like.  Make him—­that is the way.”

“But since he is behaving himself and is occupied—­that is better than the lives all these young fellows are leading.”

“Do not argue with me, Giovanni, I hate it.  Besides, your reason is worth nothing at all.  Did I spend my youth over accounts, in the society of an architect?  Did I put water in my wine and sit up like a model little boy at my papa’s table and spend my evenings in carrying my mamma’s fan?  Nonsense!  And yet all that was expected in my day, in a way it is not expected now.  Look at yourself.  You are bad enough—­dull enough, I mean.  Did you waste the best years of your life in counting bricks and measuring mortar?”

“You say that you hate argument, and yet you are arguing.  But Orsino shall please himself, as I did, and in his own way.  I will certainly not interfere.”

“Because you know you can do nothing with him!” retorted old Saracinesca contemptuously.

Giovanni laughed.  Twenty years earlier he would have lost his temper to no purpose.  But twenty years of unruffled existence had changed him.

“You are not the man you were,” grumbled his father.

“No.  I have been too happy, far too long, to be much like what I was at thirty.”

“And do you mean to say I am not happy, and have not been happy, and do not mean to be happy, and do not wish everybody to be happy, so long as this old machine hangs together?  What nonsense you talk, my boy.  Go and make love to your wife.  That is all you are fit for!”

Discussions of this kind were not unfrequent but of course led to nothing.  As a matter of fact Sant’ Ilario was quite right in believing interference useless.  It would have been impossible.  He was no more able to change Orsino’s determination than he was physically capable of shaking him.  Not that Sant’ Ilario was weak, physically or morally, nor ever had been.  But his son had grown up to be stronger than he.