Moreover a young fellow of two or three and twenty
does not look for a friend in the person of a man sixty years older than
himself. While maintaining the most uniformly good relations in his
home, Orsino felt himself estranged from his father and mother. His
brothers were too young, and were generally away from home at school and
college, and he had no sisters. Beyond the walls of the Palazzo
Saracinesca, San Giacinto was the only man whom he would willingly have
consulted; but San Giacinto was of all men the one least inclined to
intimacy with his neighbours, and, after all, as Orsino reflected, he
would probably repeat the advice he had already given, if he vouchsafed
counsel of any kind.
He thought of all his acquaintance and came to the conclusion that he
was in reality in terms more closely approaching to friendship with
Andrea Contini than with any man of his own class. Yet he would have
hesitated to call the architect his friend, as he would have found it
impossible to confide in him concerning any detail of his own private
life.
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