That father, who had grown up in the midst of the last expiring
splendours of the Bourbon court of Naples, understood life on a large
scale, was profoundly initiated into all the arts of the voluptuary,
combined with a certain Byronic leaning towards fantastic romanticism.
His marriage had occurred under _quasi_ tragic circumstances, the finale
of a mad passion; then, after disturbing and undermining the conjugal
peace in every possible fashion, he had separated from his wife, and,
keeping his son always with him, had travelled about the whole of
Europe.
Andrea's education had thus been a living one; that is to say, derived
less from books than from the study of life as he had seen it. His mind
was corrupted not only by over-refined culture, but also by actual
experiments, and in him curiosity grew keener in proportion as his
knowledge grew wider. From the beginning, he had ever been prodigal of
his powers, for the great nervous force with which nature had endowed
him was inexhaustible in providing him with the treasures he dispensed
so lavishly. But the expansion of that energy caused in him the
destruction of another force: the moral one, which his own father had
not scrupled to repress in him. And he never perceived that his whole
life was a steady retrogression of all his faculties, of his hopes, his
joys--a species of gradual renunciation--and that the circle was slowly
but inexorably narrowing round him.
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