"
"And of surprises," suggested Orsino.
"The surprises in history are always disagreeable, my boy," answered
Sant' Ilario.
Orsino felt the coldness in the answer and felt even more his father's
readiness to damp any expression of enthusiasm. Of late he had
encountered this chilling indifference at almost every turn, whenever he
gave vent to his admiration for any sort of activity.
It was not that Giovanni Saracinesca had any intention of repressing his
son's energetic instincts, and he assuredly had no idea of the effect
his words often produced. He sometimes wondered at the sudden silence
which came over the young man after such conversations, but he did not
understand it and on the whole paid little attention to it. He
remembered that he himself had been different, and had been wont to
argue hotly and not unfrequently to quarrel with his father about
trifles. He himself had been headstrong, passionate, often intractable
in his early youth, and his father had been no better at sixty and was
little improved in that respect even at his present great age.
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