"I speak quite selfishly
and for my own sake. Success is never certain, and it would be a great
injury to me if you failed."
He was beginning to make up his mind.
"Why?" asked Orsino. His own instincts of generosity were aroused. He
would certainly not do Del Ferice an injury if he could help it, nor
allow him to incur the risk of one.
"If you fail," answered the other, "all Rome will say that I have
intentionally brought about your failure. You know how people talk.
Thousands will become millions and I shall be accused of having plotted
the destruction of your family, because your father once wounded me in a
duel, nearly five and twenty years ago."
"How absurd!"
"No, no. It is not absurd. I am afraid I have the reputation of being
vindictive. Well, well--it is in bad taste to talk of oneself. I am good
at hating, perhaps, but I have always felt that I preferred peace to
war, and now I am growing old. I am not what I once was, Don Orsino, and
I do not like quarrelling. But I would not allow people to say
impertinent things about me, and if you failed and lost money, I should
be abused by your friends, and perhaps censured by my own.
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