Whosoever Shall Offend | Page 4

was constituted Marcello's sole guardian, and was to enjoy a
life-interest in one-third of the inheritance. If Marcello died, the whole
fortune was to go to Corbario, without any condition or reservation
whatsoever.
When the will was executed, the Signora told her husband that she had
done what she intended.
"My dear," said Corbario, gently, "I thank you for the true meaning of
it. But as for the will itself, shall we talk of it thirty years hence, when
Marcello's children's children are at your knee?"
He kissed her hand tenderly.
CHAPTER II
Marcello stood at an open window listening to the musical spring rain
and watching the changing lights on the city below him, as the

dove-coloured cloud that floated over Rome like thin gauze was drawn
up into the sunshine. Then there were sudden reflections from distant
windows and wet domes, that blazed like white fires for a little while,
till the raindrops dried and the waves of changing hues that had surged
up under the rain, rising, breaking, falling, and spreading, subsided into
a restful sea of harmonious colour.
After that, the sweet smell of the wet earth came up to Marcello's
nostrils. A light breeze stirred the dripping emerald leaves, and the little
birds fluttered down and hopped along the garden walks and over the
leaves, picking up the small unwary worms that had been enjoying a
bath while their enemies tried to keep dry under the ilex boughs.
Marcello half closed his eyes and drank the fragrant air with parted lips,
his slim white hands resting on the marble sill. The sunshine made his
pale face luminous, and gilded his short fair hair, casting the shadow of
the brown lashes upon his delicate cheeks. There was something
angel-like in his expression--the look of the frescoed angels of Melozzo
da Forli in the Sacristy of St. Peter's. They are all that is left of
something very beautiful, brought thither broken from the Church of
the Holy Apostles; and so, too, one might have fancied that Marcello,
standing at the window in the morning sunshine, belonged to a world
that had long passed away--fit for a life that was, fit for a life to come
hereafter, perhaps, but not fit for the life that is. There are rare and
beautiful beings in the world who belong to it so little that it seems
cruelty and injustice to require of them what is demanded of us all.
They are born ages too late, or ages too soon; they should not have
been born now. Their very existence calls forth our tenderest sympathy,
as we should pity a fawn facing its death among wolves.
But Marcello Consalvi had no idea that he could deserve pity, and life
looked very bright to him, very easy, and very peaceful. He could
hardly have thought of anything at all likely to happen which could
darken the future, or even give him reasonable cause for anxiety. There
was no imaginative sadness in his nature, no morbid dread of undefined
evil, no melancholy to dye the days black; for melancholy is more often
an affliction of the very strong in body or mind than of the weak, or of

average men and women. Marcello was delicate, but not degenerate; he
seemed gentle, cheerful, and ready to believe the world a very good
place, as indeed it is for people who are not too unlike their neighbours
to enjoy it, or too unlucky to get some of its good things, or too weak to
work, fight, and love, or too clever to be as satisfied with themselves as
most men are. For plain, common, everyday happiness and contentment
belong to plain, average people, who do what others do and have a
cheerfully good opinion of themselves. Can a man make a good fight of
it if he does not believe himself to be about as good as his adversary?
It had never occurred to Marcello that he might have to fight for
anything, and if some one had told him on that spring morning that he
was on the very verge of a desperate struggle for existence against
overwhelming odds, he would have turned his bright eyes wonderingly
to the prophet of evil, asking whence danger could come, and trying to
think what it might be like.
At the first appearance of it he would have been startled into fear, too,
as many a grown man has been before now, when suddenly brought
face to face with an unknown peril, being quite untried: and small
shame to him. He who has been waked from a peaceful sleep and
pleasant dreams to find death at his throat, for the first time in his life,
knows the meaning of that. Samson was a tried warrior when Delilah
first roused