Whosoever Shall Offend

Whosoever Shall Offend, by F.
Marion Crawford

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Title: Whosoever Shall Offend
Author: F. Marion Crawford
Release Date: November 3, 2004 [eBook #13932]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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WHOSOEVER SHALL OFFEND***
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WHOSOEVER SHALL OFFEND

by
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 even been hinted that he was consumptive.
Corbario would have done better to wait another year or two to see
what happened, said a cynic, for young people often died of
consumption between fifteen and twenty. The cynic was answered by a
practical woman of the world, who said that Corbario had six years of

luxury and extravagance before him, and that many men would have
sold themselves to the devil for less. After the six years the deluge
might come if it must; it was much pleasanter to drown in the end than
never to have had the chance of swimming in the big stream at all, and
bumping sides with the really big fish, and feeling oneself as good as
any of them. Besides, Marcello was pale and thin, and had been heard
to cough; he might die before he came of age. The only objection to
this theory was that it was based on a fiction; for the whole fortune had
been left to the Signora by a childless relation.
These amiable and interesting views were expressed with variations by
people who knew the three persons concerned, and with such a keen
sense of appropriate time and place as made it quite sure that none of
the three should ever know what was said of them. The caution of an
old fox is rash temerity compared with the circumspection