"Bambina mia," replied Quinto, "you are a very clever child, and you
know a great many things. But you have not yet sufficiently studied
the elderly gentleman department of human nature. If the Marchese
Lamberto is as you describe him, it may be, it is true, that he is
one of those men for whom female beauty has no charm, and on whom
any kind of attack would be thrown away and mere lost labour. But it
is far more likely that the exact reverse may be found to be the
case! A thousand circumstances of his social position, or even of
his temper and turn of mind, may have kept him a bachelor,--may have
kept him out of the way of women altogether. He may be found
cautious, haughty, backward to woo, requiring to be wooed, in love
with the respectabilities of his social standing; but depend upon
it, bambina mia, if you can once awaken the dormant passion of such
a man, you may produce effects wholly irresistible,--you may do
anything with him! His love would be like a frozen torrent when the
thaw comes! It would dash aside every opposition that could be
offered it. The calculated and calculating tentatives, and
coquettings and nibblings of your practised lovers, who have been in
love a dozen times, would be as a trickling rill to an ocean wave,
compared to what might be expected from the passion of a heart first
strongly moved at the time of life the Marchese has reached.
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