F. MARION CRAWFORD

Author of Saracinesca, The Heart Of Rome, etc, etc.

With Eight Illustrations Drawn in Rome with the Author’s Suggestions

by Horace T. Carpenter

1905

“Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones which believe in Me, it were better for him that a mill stone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea”

[Illustration:  “Suddenly he heard an Italian voice very near to him, calling him by name, in A tone of surprise”]

ILLUSTRATIONS

“Suddenly he heard an Italian voice very near to him, calling him by name, in a tone of surprise”

“‘I call it the sleeping death,’ answered the Professor”

“He flushed again, very angry this time, and he moved away to leave her, without another word”

" ... the door was darkened, and the girl stood there with a large copper ‘conca’ ...”

“He moved a step towards the bed, and then another, forcing himself to go on”

“Ercole left his home after sunset that evening”

“Regina made a steady effort, lifting fully half Aurora’s weight with her”

“She sat there like a figure of grief outlined in black against the moonlight on the great wall”

CHAPTER I

When the widow of Martino Consalvi married young Corbario, people shook their heads and said that she was making a great mistake.  Consalvi had been dead a good many years, but as yet no one had thought it was time to say that his widow was no longer young and beautiful, as she had always been.  Many rich widows remain young and beautiful as much as a quarter of a century, or even longer, and the Signora Consalvi was very rich indeed.  As soon as she was married to Folco Corbario every one knew that she was thirty-five years old and he was barely twenty-six, and that such a difference of ages on the wrong side was ridiculous if it was not positively immoral.  No well-regulated young man had a right to marry a rich widow nine years older than himself, and who had a son only eleven years younger than he.

A few philosophers who said that if the widow was satisfied the matter was nobody’s business were treated with the contempt they deserved.  Those who, on the contrary, observed that young Corbario had married for money and nothing else were heard with favour, until the man who knew everything pointed out that as the greater part of the fortune would be handed over to Marcello when he came of age, six years hence, Corbario had not made a good bargain and might have done better.  It was true that Marcello Consalvi had inherited a delicate constitution of body, it had