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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The American, by Henry James
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The American
+
+Author: Henry James
+
+Release Date: November, 1994 [eBook #177]
+[Most recently updated: February 23, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Pauline J. Iacono, John Hamm and David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AMERICAN ***
+
+cover 
+
+
+
+
+The American
+
+by Henry James
+
+1877
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+ CHAPTER I
+ CHAPTER II
+ CHAPTER III
+ CHAPTER IV
+ CHAPTER V
+ CHAPTER VI
+ CHAPTER VII
+ CHAPTER VIII
+ CHAPTER IX
+ CHAPTER X
+ CHAPTER XI
+ CHAPTER XII
+ CHAPTER XIII
+ CHAPTER XIV
+ CHAPTER XV
+ CHAPTER XVI
+ CHAPTER XVII
+ CHAPTER XVIII
+ CHAPTER XIX
+ CHAPTER XX
+ CHAPTER XXI
+ CHAPTER XXII
+ CHAPTER XXIII
+ CHAPTER XXIV
+ CHAPTER XXV
+ CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+On a brilliant day in May, in the year 1868, a gentleman was reclining
+at his ease on the great circular divan which at that period occupied
+the centre of the Salon Carré, in the Museum of the Louvre. This
+commodious ottoman has since been removed, to the extreme regret of all
+weak-kneed lovers of the fine arts, but the gentleman in question had
+taken serene possession of its softest spot, and, with his head thrown
+back and his legs outstretched, was staring at Murillo’s beautiful
+moon-borne Madonna in profound enjoyment of his posture. He had removed
+his hat, and flung down beside him a little red guide-book and an
+opera-glass. The day was warm; he was heated with walking, and he
+repeatedly passed his handkerchief over his forehead, with a somewhat
+wearied gesture. And yet he was evidently not a man to whom fatigue was
+familiar; long, lean, and muscular, he suggested the sort of vigor that
+is commonly known as “toughness.” But his exertions on this particular
+day had been of an unwonted sort, and he had performed great physical
+feats which left him less jaded than his tranquil stroll through the
+Louvre. He had looked out all the pictures to which an asterisk was
+affixed in those formidable pages of fine print in his Bädeker; his
+attention had been strained and his eyes dazzled, and he had sat down
+with an æsthetic headache. He had looked, moreover, not only at all the
+pictures, but at all the copies that were going forward around them, in
+the hands of those innumerable young women in irreproachable toilets
+who devote themselves, in France, to the propagation of masterpieces,
+and if the truth must be told, he had often admired the copy much more
+than the original. His physiognomy would have sufficiently indicated
+that he was a shrewd and capable fellow, and in truth he had often sat
+up all night over a bristling bundle of accounts, and heard the cock
+crow without a yawn. But Raphael and Titian and Rubens were a new kind
+of arithmetic, and they inspired our friend, for the first time in his
+life, with a vague self-mistrust.
+
+An observer with anything of an eye for national types would have had
+no difficulty in determining the local origin of this undeveloped
+connoisseur, and indeed such an observer might have felt a certain
+humorous relish of the almost ideal completeness with which he filled
+out the national mould. The gentleman on the divan was a powerful
+specimen of an American. But he was not only a fine American; he was in
+the first place, physically, a fine man. He appeared to possess that
+kind of health and strength which, when found in perfection, are the
+most impressive—the physical capital which the owner does nothing to
+“keep up.” If he was a muscular Christian, it was quite without knowing
+it. If it was necessary to walk to a remote spot, he walked, but he had
+never known himself to “exercise.” He had no theory with regard to cold
+bathing or the use of Indian clubs; he was neither an oarsman, a
+rifleman, nor a fencer—he had never had time for these amusements—and
+he was quite unaware that the saddle is recommended for certain forms
+of indigestion. He was by inclination a temperate man; but he had
+supped the night before his visit to the Louvre at the Café
+Anglais—someone had told him it was an experience not to be omitted—and
+he had slept none the less the sleep of the just. His usual attitude
+and carriage were of a rather relaxed and lounging kind, but when under
+a special inspiration, he straightened himself, he looked like a
+grenadier on parade. He never smoked. He had been assured—such things
+are said—that cigars were excellent for the health, and he was quite
+capable of believing it; but he knew as little about tobacco as about
+homœopathy. He had a very well-formed head, with a shapely, symmetrical
+balance of the frontal and the occipital development, and a good deal
+of straight, rather dry brown hair. His complexion was brown, and his
+nose had a bold well-marked arch. His eye was of a clear, cold gray,
+and save for a rather abundant moustache he was clean-shaved. He had
+the flat jaw and sinewy neck which are frequent in the American type;
+but the traces of national origin are a matter of expression even more
+than of feature, and it was in this respect that our friend’s
+countenance was supremely eloquent. The discriminating observer we have
+been supposing might, however, perfectly have measured its
+expressiveness, and yet have been at a loss to describe it. It had that
+typical vagueness which is not vacuity, that blankness which is not
+simplicity, that look of being committed to nothing in particular, of
+standing in an attitude of general hospitality to the chances of life,
+of being very much at one’s own disposal so characteristic of many
+American faces. It was our friend’s eye that chiefly told his story; an
+eye in which innocence and experience were singularly blended. It was
+full of contradictory suggestions, and though it was by no means the
+glowing orb of a hero of romance, you could find in it almost anything
+you looked for. Frigid and yet friendly, frank yet cautious, shrewd yet
+credulous, positive yet sceptical, confident yet shy, extremely
+intelligent and extremely good-humored, there was something vaguely
+defiant in its concessions, and something profoundly reassuring in its
+reserve. The cut of this gentleman’s moustache, with the two premature
+wrinkles in the cheek above it, and the fashion of his garments, in
+which an exposed shirt-front and a cerulean cravat played perhaps an
+obtrusive part, completed the conditions of his identity. We have
+approached him, perhaps, at a not especially favorable moment; he is by
+no means sitting for his portrait. But listless as he lounges there,
+rather baffled on the æsthetic question, and guilty of the damning
+fault (as we have lately discovered it to be) of confounding the merit
+of the artist with that of his work (for he admires the squinting
+Madonna of the young lady with the boyish coiffure, because he thinks
+the young lady herself uncommonly taking), he is a sufficiently
+promising acquaintance. Decision, salubrity, jocosity, prosperity, seem
+to hover within his call; he is evidently a practical man, but the idea
+in his case, has undefined and mysterious boundaries, which invite the
+imagination to bestir itself on his behalf.
+
+As the little copyist proceeded with her work, she sent every now and
+then a responsive glance toward her admirer. The cultivation of the
+fine arts appeared to necessitate, to her mind, a great deal of
+by-play, a great standing off with folded arms and head drooping from
+side to side, stroking of a dimpled chin with a dimpled hand, sighing
+and frowning and patting of the foot, fumbling in disordered tresses
+for wandering hair-pins. These performances were accompanied by a
+restless glance, which lingered longer than elsewhere upon the
+gentleman we have described. At last he rose abruptly, put on his hat,
+and approached the young lady. He placed himself before her picture and
+looked at it for some moments, during which she pretended to be quite
+unconscious of his inspection. Then, addressing her with the single
+word which constituted the strength of his French vocabulary, and
+holding up one finger in a manner which appeared to him to illuminate
+his meaning, “_Combien?_” he abruptly demanded.
+
+The artist stared a moment, gave a little pout, shrugged her shoulders,
+put down her palette and brushes, and stood rubbing her hands.
+
+“How much?” said our friend, in English. “_Combien?_”
+
+“Monsieur wishes to buy it?” asked the young lady in French.
+
+“Very pretty, _splendide. Combien?_” repeated the American.
+
+“It pleases monsieur, my little picture? It’s a very beautiful
+subject,” said the young lady.
+
+“The Madonna, yes; I am not a Catholic, but I want to buy it.
+_Combien?_ Write it here.” And he took a pencil from his pocket and
+showed her the fly-leaf of his guide-book. She stood looking at him and
+scratching her chin with the pencil. “Is it not for sale?” he asked.
+And as she still stood reflecting, and looking at him with an eye
+which, in spite of her desire to treat this avidity of patronage as a
+very old story, betrayed an almost touching incredulity, he was afraid
+he had offended her. She was simply trying to look indifferent, and
+wondering how far she might go. “I haven’t made a mistake—_pas
+insulté_, no?” her interlocutor continued. “Don’t you understand a
+little English?”
+
+The young lady’s aptitude for playing a part at short notice was
+remarkable. She fixed him with her conscious, perceptive eye and asked
+him if he spoke no French. Then, “_Donnez!_” she said briefly, and took
+the open guide-book. In the upper corner of the fly-leaf she traced a
+number, in a minute and extremely neat hand. Then she handed back the
+book and took up her palette again.
+
+Our friend read the number: “2,000 francs.” He said nothing for a time,
+but stood looking at the picture, while the copyist began actively to
+dabble with her paint. “For a copy, isn’t that a good deal?” he asked
+at last. “_Pas beaucoup?_”
+
+The young lady raised her eyes from her palette, scanned him from head
+to foot, and alighted with admirable sagacity upon exactly the right
+answer. “Yes, it’s a good deal. But my copy has remarkable qualities,
+it is worth nothing less.”
+
+The gentleman in whom we are interested understood no French, but I
+have said he was intelligent, and here is a good chance to prove it. He
+apprehended, by a natural instinct, the meaning of the young woman’s
+phrase, and it gratified him to think that she was so honest. Beauty,
+talent, virtue; she combined everything! “But you must finish it,” he
+said. “_finish_, you know;” and he pointed to the unpainted hand of the
+figure.
+
+“Oh, it shall be finished in perfection; in the perfection of
+perfections!” cried mademoiselle; and to confirm her promise, she
+deposited a rosy blotch in the middle of the Madonna’s cheek.
+
+But the American frowned. “Ah, too red, too red!” he rejoined. “Her
+complexion,” pointing to the Murillo, “is—more delicate.”
+
+“Delicate? Oh, it shall be delicate, monsieur; delicate as Sèvres
+_biscuit_. I am going to tone that down; I know all the secrets of my
+art. And where will you allow us to send it to you? Your address?”
+
+“My address? Oh yes!” And the gentleman drew a card from his
+pocket-book and wrote something upon it. Then hesitating a moment he
+said, “If I don’t like it when it it’s finished, you know, I shall not
+be obliged to take it.”
+
+The young lady seemed as good a guesser as himself. “Oh, I am very sure
+that monsieur is not capricious,” she said with a roguish smile.
+
+“Capricious?” And at this monsieur began to laugh. “Oh no, I’m not
+capricious. I am very faithful. I am very constant. _Comprenez?_”
+
+“Monsieur is constant; I understand perfectly. It’s a rare virtue. To
+recompense you, you shall have your picture on the first possible day;
+next week—as soon as it is dry. I will take the card of monsieur.” And
+she took it and read his name: “Christopher Newman.” Then she tried to
+repeat it aloud, and laughed at her bad accent. “Your English names are
+so droll!”
+
+“Droll?” said Mr. Newman, laughing too. “Did you ever hear of
+Christopher Columbus?”
+
+“_Bien sûr!_ He invented America; a very great man. And is he your
+patron?”
+
+“My patron?”
+
+“Your patron-saint, in the calendar.”
+
+“Oh, exactly; my parents named me for him.”
+
+“Monsieur is American?”
+
+“Don’t you see it?” monsieur inquired.
+
+“And you mean to carry my little picture away over there?” and she
+explained her phrase with a gesture.
+
+“Oh, I mean to buy a great many pictures—_beaucoup, beaucoup_,” said
+Christopher Newman.
+
+“The honor is not less for me,” the young lady answered, “for I am sure
+monsieur has a great deal of taste.”
+
+“But you must give me your card,” Newman said; “your card, you know.”
+
+The young lady looked severe for an instant, and then said, “My father
+will wait upon you.”
+
+But this time Mr. Newman’s powers of divination were at fault. “Your
+card, your address,” he simply repeated.
+
+“My address?” said mademoiselle. Then with a little shrug, “Happily for
+you, you are an American! It is the first time I ever gave my card to a
+gentleman.” And, taking from her pocket a rather greasy portemonnaie,
+she extracted from it a small glazed visiting card, and presented the
+latter to her patron. It was neatly inscribed in pencil, with a great
+many flourishes, “Mlle. Noémie Nioche.” But Mr. Newman, unlike his
+companion, read the name with perfect gravity; all French names to him
+were equally droll.
+
+“And precisely, here is my father, who has come to escort me home,”
+said Mademoiselle Noémie. “He speaks English. He will arrange with
+you.” And she turned to welcome a little old gentleman who came
+shuffling up, peering over his spectacles at Newman.
+
+M. Nioche wore a glossy wig, of an unnatural color which overhung his
+little meek, white, vacant face, and left it hardly more expressive
+than the unfeatured block upon which these articles are displayed in
+the barber’s window. He was an exquisite image of shabby gentility. His
+scant ill-made coat, desperately brushed, his darned gloves, his highly
+polished boots, his rusty, shapely hat, told the story of a person who
+had “had losses” and who clung to the spirit of nice habits even though
+the letter had been hopelessly effaced. Among other things M. Nioche
+had lost courage. Adversity had not only ruined him, it had frightened
+him, and he was evidently going through his remnant of life on tiptoe,
+for fear of waking up the hostile fates. If this strange gentleman was
+saying anything improper to his daughter, M. Nioche would entreat him
+huskily, as a particular favor, to forbear; but he would admit at the
+same time that he was very presumptuous to ask for particular favors.
+
+“Monsieur has bought my picture,” said Mademoiselle Noémie. “When it’s
+finished you’ll carry it to him in a cab.”
+
+“In a cab!” cried M. Nioche; and he stared, in a bewildered way, as if
+he had seen the sun rising at midnight.
+
+“Are you the young lady’s father?” said Newman. “I think she said you
+speak English.”
+
+“Speak English—yes,” said the old man slowly rubbing his hands. “I will
+bring it in a cab.”
+
+“Say something, then,” cried his daughter. “Thank him a little—not too
+much.”
+
+“A little, my daughter, a little?” said M. Nioche perplexed. “How
+much?”
+
+“Two thousand!” said Mademoiselle Noémie. “Don’t make a fuss or he’ll
+take back his word.”
+
+“Two thousand!” cried the old man, and he began to fumble for his
+snuff-box. He looked at Newman from head to foot; he looked at his
+daughter and then at the picture. “Take care you don’t spoil it!” he
+cried almost sublimely.
+
+“We must go home,” said Mademoiselle Noémie. “This is a good day’s
+work. Take care how you carry it!” And she began to put up her
+utensils.
+
+“How can I thank you?” said M. Nioche. “My English does not suffice.”
+
+“I wish I spoke French as well,” said Newman, good-naturedly. “Your
+daughter is very clever.”
+
+“Oh, sir!” and M. Nioche looked over his spectacles with tearful eyes
+and nodded several times with a world of sadness. “She has had an
+education—_très-supérieure!_ Nothing was spared. Lessons in pastel at
+ten francs the lesson, lessons in oil at twelve francs. I didn’t look
+at the francs then. She’s an _artiste_, eh?”
+
+“Do I understand you to say that you have had reverses?” asked Newman.
+
+“Reverses? Oh, sir, misfortunes—terrible.”
+
+“Unsuccessful in business, eh?”
+
+“Very unsuccessful, sir.”
+
+“Oh, never fear, you’ll get on your legs again,” said Newman cheerily.
+
+The old man drooped his head on one side and looked at him with an
+expression of pain, as if this were an unfeeling jest.
+
+“What does he say?” demanded Mademoiselle Noémie.
+
+M. Nioche took a pinch of snuff. “He says I will make my fortune
+again.”
+
+“Perhaps he will help you. And what else?”
+
+“He says thou art very clever.”
+
+“It is very possible. You believe it yourself, my father?”
+
+“Believe it, my daughter? With this evidence!” And the old man turned
+afresh, with a staring, wondering homage, to the audacious daub on the
+easel.
+
+“Ask him, then, if he would not like to learn French.”
+
+“To learn French?”
+
+“To take lessons.”
+
+“To take lessons, my daughter? From thee?”
+
+“From you!”
+
+“From me, my child? How should I give lessons?”
+
+“_Pas de raisons!_ Ask him immediately!” said Mademoiselle Noémie, with
+soft brevity.
+
+M. Nioche stood aghast, but under his daughter’s eye he collected his
+wits, and, doing his best to assume an agreeable smile, he executed her
+commands. “Would it please you to receive instruction in our beautiful
+language?” he inquired, with an appealing quaver.
+
+“To study French?” asked Newman, staring.
+
+M. Nioche pressed his finger-tips together and slowly raised his
+shoulders. “A little conversation!”
+
+“Conversation—that’s it!” murmured Mademoiselle Noémie, who had caught
+the word. “The conversation of the best society.”
+
+“Our French conversation is famous, you know,” M. Nioche ventured to
+continue. “It’s a great talent.”
+
+“But isn’t it awfully difficult?” asked Newman, very simply.
+
+“Not to a man of _esprit_, like monsieur, an admirer of beauty in every
+form!” and M. Nioche cast a significant glance at his daughter’s
+Madonna.
+
+“I can’t fancy myself chattering French!” said Newman with a laugh.
+“And yet, I suppose that the more a man knows the better.”
+
+“Monsieur expresses that very happily. _Hélas, oui!_”
+
+“I suppose it would help me a great deal, knocking about Paris, to know
+the language.”
+
+“Ah, there are so many things monsieur must want to say: difficult
+things!”
+
+“Everything I want to say is difficult. But you give lessons?”
+
+Poor M. Nioche was embarrassed; he smiled more appealingly. “I am not a
+regular professor,” he admitted. “I can’t nevertheless tell him that
+I’m a professor,” he said to his daughter.
+
+“Tell him it’s a very exceptional chance,” answered Mademoiselle
+Noémie; “an _homme du monde_—one gentleman conversing with another!
+Remember what you are—what you have been!”
+
+“A teacher of languages in neither case! Much more formerly and much
+less to-day! And if he asks the price of the lessons?”
+
+“He won’t ask it,” said Mademoiselle Noémie.
+
+“What he pleases, I may say?”
+
+“Never! That’s bad style.”
+
+“If he asks, then?”
+
+Mademoiselle Noémie had put on her bonnet and was tying the ribbons.
+She smoothed them out, with her soft little chin thrust forward. “Ten
+francs,” she said quickly.
+
+“Oh, my daughter! I shall never dare.”
+
+“Don’t dare, then! He won’t ask till the end of the lessons, and then I
+will make out the bill.”
+
+M. Nioche turned to the confiding foreigner again, and stood rubbing
+his hands, with an air of seeming to plead guilty which was not
+intenser only because it was habitually so striking. It never occurred
+to Newman to ask him for a guarantee of his skill in imparting
+instruction; he supposed of course M. Nioche knew his own language, and
+his appealing forlornness was quite the perfection of what the
+American, for vague reasons, had always associated with all elderly
+foreigners of the lesson-giving class. Newman had never reflected upon
+philological processes. His chief impression with regard to
+ascertaining those mysterious correlatives of his familiar English
+vocables which were current in this extraordinary city of Paris was,
+that it was simply a matter of a good deal of unwonted and rather
+ridiculous muscular effort on his own part. “How did you learn
+English?” he asked of the old man.
+
+“When I was young, before my miseries. Oh, I was wide awake, then. My
+father was a great _commerçant_; he placed me for a year in a
+counting-house in England. Some of it stuck to me; but much I have
+forgotten!”
+
+“How much French can I learn in a month?”
+
+“What does he say?” asked Mademoiselle Noémie.
+
+M. Nioche explained.
+
+“He will speak like an angel!” said his daughter.
+
+But the native integrity which had been vainly exerted to secure M.
+Nioche’s commercial prosperity flickered up again. “_Dame_, monsieur!”
+he answered. “All I can teach you!” And then, recovering himself at a
+sign from his daughter, “I will wait upon you at your hotel.”
+
+“Oh yes, I should like to learn French,” Newman went on, with
+democratic confidingness. “Hang me if I should ever have thought of it!
+I took for granted it was impossible. But if you learned my language,
+why shouldn’t I learn yours?” and his frank, friendly laugh drew the
+sting from the jest. “Only, if we are going to converse, you know, you
+must think of something cheerful to converse about.”
+
+“You are very good, sir; I am overcome!” said M. Nioche, throwing out
+his hands. “But you have cheerfulness and happiness for two!”
+
+“Oh no,” said Newman more seriously. “You must be bright and lively;
+that’s part of the bargain.”
+
+M. Nioche bowed, with his hand on his heart. “Very well, sir; you have
+already made me lively.”
+
+“Come and bring me my picture then; I will pay you for it, and we will
+talk about that. That will be a cheerful subject!”
+
+Mademoiselle Noémie had collected her accessories, and she gave the
+precious Madonna in charge to her father, who retreated backwards out
+of sight, holding it at arm’s-length and reiterating his obeisance. The
+young lady gathered her shawl about her like a perfect Parisienne, and
+it was with the smile of a Parisienne that she took leave of her
+patron.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+He wandered back to the divan and seated himself on the other side, in
+view of the great canvas on which Paul Veronese had depicted the
+marriage-feast of Cana. Wearied as he was he found the picture
+entertaining; it had an illusion for him; it satisfied his conception,
+which was ambitious, of what a splendid banquet should be. In the
+left-hand corner of the picture is a young woman with yellow tresses
+confined in a golden head-dress; she is bending forward and listening,
+with the smile of a charming woman at a dinner-party, to her neighbor.
+Newman detected her in the crowd, admired her, and perceived that she
+too had her votive copyist—a young man with his hair standing on end.
+Suddenly he became conscious of the germ of the mania of the
+“collector;” he had taken the first step; why should he not go on? It
+was only twenty minutes before that he had bought the first picture of
+his life, and now he was already thinking of art-patronage as a
+fascinating pursuit. His reflections quickened his good-humor, and he
+was on the point of approaching the young man with another “_Combien?_”
+Two or three facts in this relation are noticeable, although the
+logical chain which connects them may seem imperfect. He knew
+Mademoiselle Nioche had asked too much; he bore her no grudge for doing
+so, and he was determined to pay the young man exactly the proper sum.
+At this moment, however, his attention was attracted by a gentleman who
+had come from another part of the room and whose manner was that of a
+stranger to the gallery, although he was equipped with neither
+guide-book nor opera-glass. He carried a white sun-umbrella, lined with
+blue silk, and he strolled in front of the Paul Veronese, vaguely
+looking at it, but much too near to see anything but the grain of the
+canvas. Opposite to Christopher Newman he paused and turned, and then
+our friend, who had been observing him, had a chance to verify a
+suspicion aroused by an imperfect view of his face. The result of this
+larger scrutiny was that he presently sprang to his feet, strode across
+the room, and, with an outstretched hand, arrested the gentleman with
+the blue-lined umbrella. The latter stared, but put out his hand at a
+venture. He was corpulent and rosy, and though his countenance, which
+was ornamented with a beautiful flaxen beard, carefully divided in the
+middle and brushed outward at the sides, was not remarkable for
+intensity of expression, he looked like a person who would willingly
+shake hands with anyone. I know not what Newman thought of his face,
+but he found a want of response in his grasp.
+
+“Oh, come, come,” he said, laughing; “don’t say, now, you don’t know
+me—if I have _not_ got a white parasol!”
+
+The sound of his voice quickened the other’s memory, his face expanded
+to its fullest capacity, and he also broke into a laugh. “Why,
+Newman—I’ll be blowed! Where in the world—I declare—who would have
+thought? You know you have changed.”
+
+“You haven’t!” said Newman.
+
+“Not for the better, no doubt. When did you get here?”
+
+“Three days ago.”
+
+“Why didn’t you let me know?”
+
+“I had no idea _you_ were here.”
+
+“I have been here these six years.”
+
+“It must be eight or nine since we met.”
+
+“Something of that sort. We were very young.”
+
+“It was in St. Louis, during the war. You were in the army.”
+
+“Oh no, not I! But you were.”
+
+“I believe I was.”
+
+“You came out all right?”
+
+“I came out with my legs and arms—and with satisfaction. All that seems
+very far away.”
+
+“And how long have you been in Europe?”
+
+“Seventeen days.”
+
+“First time?”
+
+“Yes, very much so.”
+
+“Made your everlasting fortune?”
+
+Christopher Newman was silent a moment, and then with a tranquil smile
+he answered, “Yes.”
+
+“And come to Paris to spend it, eh?”
+
+“Well, we shall see. So they carry those parasols here—the men-folk?”
+
+“Of course they do. They’re great things. They understand comfort out
+here.”
+
+“Where do you buy them?”
+
+“Anywhere, everywhere.”
+
+“Well, Tristram, I’m glad to get hold of you. You can show me the
+ropes. I suppose you know Paris inside out.”
+
+Mr. Tristram gave a mellow smile of self-gratulation. “Well, I guess
+there are not many men that can show me much. I’ll take care of you.”
+
+“It’s a pity you were not here a few minutes ago. I have just bought a
+picture. You might have put the thing through for me.”
+
+“Bought a picture?” said Mr. Tristram, looking vaguely round at the
+walls. “Why, do they sell them?”
+
+“I mean a copy.”
+
+“Oh, I see. These,” said Mr. Tristram, nodding at the Titians and
+Vandykes, “these, I suppose, are originals.”
+
+“I hope so,” cried Newman. “I don’t want a copy of a copy.”
+
+“Ah,” said Mr. Tristram, mysteriously, “you can never tell. They
+imitate, you know, so deucedly well. It’s like the jewellers, with
+their false stones. Go into the Palais Royal, there; you see
+‘Imitation’ on half the windows. The law obliges them to stick it on,
+you know; but you can’t tell the things apart. To tell the truth,” Mr.
+Tristram continued, with a wry face, “I don’t do much in pictures. I
+leave that to my wife.”
+
+“Ah, you have got a wife?”
+
+“Didn’t I mention it? She’s a very nice woman; you must know her. She’s
+up there in the Avenue d’Iéna.”
+
+“So you are regularly fixed—house and children and all.”
+
+“Yes, a tip-top house and a couple of youngsters.”
+
+“Well,” said Christopher Newman, stretching his arms a little, with a
+sigh, “I envy you.”
+
+“Oh no! you don’t!” answered Mr. Tristram, giving him a little poke
+with his parasol.
+
+“I beg your pardon; I do!”
+
+“Well, you won’t, then, when—when—”
+
+“You don’t certainly mean when I have seen your establishment?”
+
+“When you have seen Paris, my boy. You want to be your own master
+here.”
+
+“Oh, I have been my own master all my life, and I’m tired of it.”
+
+“Well, try Paris. How old are you?”
+
+“Thirty-six.”
+
+“_C’est le bel âge_, as they say here.”
+
+“What does that mean?”
+
+“It means that a man shouldn’t send away his plate till he has eaten
+his fill.”
+
+“All that? I have just made arrangements to take French lessons.”
+
+“Oh, you don’t want any lessons. You’ll pick it up. I never took any.”
+
+“I suppose you speak French as well as English?”
+
+“Better!” said Mr. Tristram, roundly. “It’s a splendid language. You
+can say all sorts of bright things in it.”
+
+“But I suppose,” said Christopher Newman, with an earnest desire for
+information, “that you must be bright to begin with.”
+
+“Not a bit; that’s just the beauty of it.”
+
+The two friends, as they exchanged these remarks, had remained standing
+where they met, and leaning against the rail which protected the
+pictures. Mr. Tristram at last declared that he was overcome with
+fatigue and should be happy to sit down. Newman recommended in the
+highest terms the great divan on which he had been lounging, and they
+prepared to seat themselves. “This is a great place; isn’t it?” said
+Newman, with ardor.
+
+“Great place, great place. Finest thing in the world.” And then,
+suddenly, Mr. Tristram hesitated and looked about him. “I suppose they
+won’t let you smoke here.”
+
+Newman stared. “Smoke? I’m sure I don’t know. You know the regulations
+better than I.”
+
+“I? I never was here before!”
+
+“Never! in six years?”
+
+“I believe my wife dragged me here once when we first came to Paris,
+but I never found my way back.”
+
+“But you say you know Paris so well!”
+
+“I don’t call this Paris!” cried Mr. Tristram, with assurance. “Come;
+let’s go over to the Palais Royal and have a smoke.”
+
+“I don’t smoke,” said Newman.
+
+“A drink, then.”
+
+And Mr. Tristram led his companion away. They passed through the
+glorious halls of the Louvre, down the staircases, along the cool, dim
+galleries of sculpture, and out into the enormous court. Newman looked
+about him as he went, but he made no comments, and it was only when
+they at last emerged into the open air that he said to his friend, “It
+seems to me that in your place I should have come here once a week.”
+
+“Oh, no you wouldn’t!” said Mr. Tristram. “You think so, but you
+wouldn’t. You wouldn’t have had time. You would always mean to go, but
+you never would go. There’s better fun than that, here in Paris.
+Italy’s the place to see pictures; wait till you get there. There you
+have to go; you can’t do anything else. It’s an awful country; you
+can’t get a decent cigar. I don’t know why I went in there, to-day; I
+was strolling along, rather hard up for amusement. I sort of noticed
+the Louvre as I passed, and I thought I would go in and see what was
+going on. But if I hadn’t found you there I should have felt rather
+sold. Hang it, I don’t care for pictures; I prefer the reality!” And
+Mr. Tristram tossed off this happy formula with an assurance which the
+numerous class of persons suffering from an overdose of “culture” might
+have envied him.
+
+The two gentlemen proceeded along the Rue de Rivoli and into the Palais
+Royal, where they seated themselves at one of the little tables
+stationed at the door of the café which projects into the great open
+quadrangle. The place was filled with people, the fountains were
+spouting, a band was playing, clusters of chairs were gathered beneath
+all the lime-trees, and buxom, white-capped nurses, seated along the
+benches, were offering to their infant charges the amplest facilities
+for nutrition. There was an easy, homely gaiety in the whole scene, and
+Christopher Newman felt that it was most characteristically Parisian.
+
+“And now,” began Mr. Tristram, when they had tested the decoction which
+he had caused to be served to them, “now just give an account of
+yourself. What are your ideas, what are your plans, where have you come
+from and where are you going? In the first place, where are you
+staying?”
+
+“At the Grand Hotel,” said Newman.
+
+Mr. Tristram puckered his plump visage. “That won’t do! You must
+change.”
+
+“Change?” demanded Newman. “Why, it’s the finest hotel I ever was in.”
+
+“You don’t want a ‘fine’ hotel; you want something small and quiet and
+elegant, where your bell is answered and you—your person is
+recognized.”
+
+“They keep running to see if I have rung before I have touched the
+bell,” said Newman “and as for my person they are always bowing and
+scraping to it.”
+
+“I suppose you are always tipping them. That’s very bad style.”
+
+“Always? By no means. A man brought me something yesterday, and then
+stood loafing in a beggarly manner. I offered him a chair and asked him
+if he wouldn’t sit down. Was that bad style?”
+
+“Very!”
+
+“But he bolted, instantly. At any rate, the place amuses me. Hang your
+elegance, if it bores me. I sat in the court of the Grand Hotel last
+night until two o’clock in the morning, watching the coming and going,
+and the people knocking about.”
+
+“You’re easily pleased. But you can do as you choose—a man in your
+shoes. You have made a pile of money, eh?”
+
+“I have made enough.”
+
+“Happy the man who can say that? Enough for what?”
+
+“Enough to rest awhile, to forget the confounded thing, to look about
+me, to see the world, to have a good time, to improve my mind, and, if
+the fancy takes me, to marry a wife.” Newman spoke slowly, with a
+certain dryness of accent and with frequent pauses. This was his
+habitual mode of utterance, but it was especially marked in the words I
+have just quoted.
+
+“Jupiter! There’s a programme!” cried Mr. Tristram. “Certainly, all
+that takes money, especially the wife; unless indeed she gives it, as
+mine did. And what’s the story? How have you done it?”
+
+Newman had pushed his hat back from his forehead, folded his arms, and
+stretched his legs. He listened to the music, he looked about him at
+the bustling crowd, at the plashing fountains, at the nurses and the
+babies. “I have worked!” he answered at last.
+
+Tristram looked at him for some moments, and allowed his placid eyes to
+measure his friend’s generous longitude and rest upon his comfortably
+contemplative face. “What have you worked at?” he asked.
+
+“Oh, at several things.”
+
+“I suppose you’re a smart fellow, eh?”
+
+Newman continued to look at the nurses and babies; they imparted to the
+scene a kind of primordial, pastoral simplicity. “Yes,” he said at
+last, “I suppose I am.” And then, in answer to his companion’s
+inquiries, he related briefly his history since their last meeting. It
+was an intensely Western story, and it dealt with enterprises which it
+will be needless to introduce to the reader in detail. Newman had come
+out of the war with a brevet of brigadier-general, an honor which in
+this case—without invidious comparisons—had lighted upon shoulders
+amply competent to bear it. But though he could manage a fight, when
+need was, Newman heartily disliked the business; his four years in the
+army had left him with an angry, bitter sense of the waste of precious
+things—life and time and money and “smartness” and the early freshness
+of purpose; and he had addressed himself to the pursuits of peace with
+passionate zest and energy. He was of course as penniless when he
+plucked off his shoulder-straps as when he put them on, and the only
+capital at his disposal was his dogged resolution and his lively
+perception of ends and means. Exertion and action were as natural to
+him as respiration; a more completely healthy mortal had never trod the
+elastic soil of the West. His experience, moreover, was as wide as his
+capacity; when he was fourteen years old, necessity had taken him by
+his slim young shoulders and pushed him into the street, to earn that
+night’s supper. He had not earned it but he had earned the next
+night’s, and afterwards, whenever he had had none, it was because he
+had gone without it to use the money for something else, a keener
+pleasure or a finer profit. He had turned his hand, with his brain in
+it, to many things; he had been enterprising, in an eminent sense of
+the term; he had been adventurous and even reckless, and he had known
+bitter failure as well as brilliant success; but he was a born
+experimentalist, and he had always found something to enjoy in the
+pressure of necessity, even when it was as irritating as the haircloth
+shirt of the mediæval monk. At one time failure seemed inexorably his
+portion; ill-luck became his bed-fellow, and whatever he touched he
+turned, not to gold, but to ashes. His most vivid conception of a
+supernatural element in the world’s affairs had come to him once when
+this pertinacity of misfortune was at its climax; there seemed to him
+something stronger in life than his own will. But the mysterious
+something could only be the devil, and he was accordingly seized with
+an intense personal enmity to this impertinent force. He had known what
+it was to have utterly exhausted his credit, to be unable to raise a
+dollar, and to find himself at nightfall in a strange city, without a
+penny to mitigate its strangeness. It was under these circumstances
+that he made his entrance into San Francisco, the scene, subsequently,
+of his happiest strokes of fortune. If he did not, like Dr. Franklin in
+Philadelphia, march along the street munching a penny-loaf, it was only
+because he had not the penny-loaf necessary to the performance. In his
+darkest days he had had but one simple, practical impulse—the desire,
+as he would have phrased it, to see the thing through. He did so at
+last, buffeted his way into smooth waters, and made money largely. It
+must be admitted, rather nakedly, that Christopher Newman’s sole aim in
+life had been to make money; what he had been placed in the world for
+was, to his own perception, simply to wrest a fortune, the bigger the
+better, from defiant opportunity. This idea completely filled his
+horizon and satisfied his imagination. Upon the uses of money, upon
+what one might do with a life into which one had succeeded in injecting
+the golden stream, he had up to his thirty-fifth year very scantily
+reflected. Life had been for him an open game, and he had played for
+high stakes. He had won at last and carried off his winnings; and now
+what was he to do with them? He was a man to whom, sooner or later, the
+question was sure to present itself, and the answer to it belongs to
+our story. A vague sense that more answers were possible than his
+philosophy had hitherto dreamt of had already taken possession of him,
+and it seemed softly and agreeably to deepen as he lounged in this
+brilliant corner of Paris with his friend.
+
+“I must confess,” he presently went on, “that here I don’t feel at all
+smart. My remarkable talents seem of no use. I feel as simple as a
+little child, and a little child might take me by the hand and lead me
+about.”
+
+“Oh, I’ll be your little child,” said Tristram, jovially; “I’ll take
+you by the hand. Trust yourself to me.”
+
+“I am a good worker,” Newman continued, “but I rather think I am a poor
+loafer. I have come abroad to amuse myself, but I doubt whether I know
+how.”
+
+“Oh, that’s easily learned.”
+
+“Well, I may perhaps learn it, but I am afraid I shall never do it by
+rote. I have the best will in the world about it, but my genius doesn’t
+lie in that direction. As a loafer I shall never be original, as I take
+it that you are.”
+
+“Yes,” said Tristram, “I suppose I am original; like all those immoral
+pictures in the Louvre.”
+
+“Besides,” Newman continued, “I don’t want to work at pleasure, any
+more than I played at work. I want to take it easily. I feel
+deliciously lazy, and I should like to spend six months as I am now,
+sitting under a tree and listening to a band. There’s only one thing; I
+want to hear some good music.”
+
+“Music and pictures! Lord, what refined tastes! You are what my wife
+calls intellectual. I ain’t, a bit. But we can find something better
+for you to do than to sit under a tree. To begin with, you must come to
+the club.”
+
+“What club?”
+
+“The Occidental. You will see all the Americans there; all the best of
+them, at least. Of course you play poker?”
+
+“Oh, I say,” cried Newman, with energy, “you are not going to lock me
+up in a club and stick me down at a card-table! I haven’t come all this
+way for that.”
+
+“What the deuce _have_ you come for! You were glad enough to play poker
+in St. Louis, I recollect, when you cleaned me out.”
+
+“I have come to see Europe, to get the best out of it I can. I want to
+see all the great things, and do what the clever people do.”
+
+“The clever people? Much obliged. You set me down as a blockhead,
+then?”
+
+Newman was sitting sidewise in his chair, with his elbow on the back
+and his head leaning on his hand. Without moving he looked a while at
+his companion with his dry, guarded, half-inscrutable, and yet
+altogether good-natured smile. “Introduce me to your wife!” he said at
+last.
+
+Tristram bounced about in his chair. “Upon my word, I won’t. She
+doesn’t want any help to turn up her nose at me, nor do you, either!”
+
+“I don’t turn up my nose at you, my dear fellow; nor at anyone, or
+anything. I’m not proud, I assure you I’m not proud. That’s why I am
+willing to take example by the clever people.”
+
+“Well, if I’m not the rose, as they say here, I have lived near it. I
+can show you some clever people, too. Do you know General Packard? Do
+you know C. P. Hatch? Do you know Miss Kitty Upjohn?”
+
+“I shall be happy to make their acquaintance; I want to cultivate
+society.”
+
+Tristram seemed restless and suspicious; he eyed his friend askance,
+and then, “What are you up to, anyway?” he demanded. “Are you going to
+write a book?”
+
+Christopher Newman twisted one end of his moustache a while, in
+silence, and at last he made answer. “One day, a couple of months ago,
+something very curious happened to me. I had come on to New York on
+some important business; it was rather a long story—a question of
+getting ahead of another party, in a certain particular way, in the
+stock-market. This other party had once played me a very mean trick. I
+owed him a grudge, I felt awfully savage at the time, and I vowed that,
+when I got a chance, I would, figuratively speaking, put his nose out
+of joint. There was a matter of some sixty thousand dollars at stake.
+If I put it out of his way, it was a blow the fellow would feel, and he
+really deserved no quarter. I jumped into a hack and went about my
+business, and it was in this hack—this immortal, historical hack—that
+the curious thing I speak of occurred. It was a hack like any other,
+only a trifle dirtier, with a greasy line along the top of the drab
+cushions, as if it had been used for a great many Irish funerals. It is
+possible I took a nap; I had been traveling all night, and though I was
+excited with my errand, I felt the want of sleep. At all events I woke
+up suddenly, from a sleep or from a kind of a reverie, with the most
+extraordinary feeling in the world—a mortal disgust for the thing I was
+going to do. It came upon me like _that!_” and he snapped his
+fingers—“as abruptly as an old wound that begins to ache. I couldn’t
+tell the meaning of it; I only felt that I loathed the whole business
+and wanted to wash my hands of it. The idea of losing that sixty
+thousand dollars, of letting it utterly slide and scuttle and never
+hearing of it again, seemed the sweetest thing in the world. And all
+this took place quite independently of my will, and I sat watching it
+as if it were a play at the theatre. I could feel it going on inside of
+me. You may depend upon it that there are things going on inside of us
+that we understand mighty little about.”
+
+“Jupiter! you make my flesh creep!” cried Tristram. “And while you sat
+in your hack, watching the play, as you call it, the other man marched
+in and bagged your sixty thousand dollars?”
+
+“I have not the least idea. I hope so, poor devil! but I never found
+out. We pulled up in front of the place I was going to in Wall Street,
+but I sat still in the carriage, and at last the driver scrambled down
+off his seat to see whether his carriage had not turned into a hearse.
+I couldn’t have got out, any more than if I had been a corpse. What was
+the matter with me? Momentary idiocy, you’ll say. What I wanted to get
+out of was Wall Street. I told the man to drive down to the Brooklyn
+ferry and to cross over. When we were over, I told him to drive me out
+into the country. As I had told him originally to drive for dear life
+down town, I suppose he thought me insane. Perhaps I was, but in that
+case I am insane still. I spent the morning looking at the first green
+leaves on Long Island. I was sick of business; I wanted to throw it all
+up and break off short; I had money enough, or if I hadn’t I ought to
+have. I seemed to feel a new man inside my old skin, and I longed for a
+new world. When you want a thing so very badly you had better treat
+yourself to it. I didn’t understand the matter, not in the least; but I
+gave the old horse the bridle and let him find his way. As soon as I
+could get out of the game I sailed for Europe. That is how I come to be
+sitting here.”
+
+“You ought to have bought up that hack,” said Tristram; “it isn’t a
+safe vehicle to have about. And you have really sold out, then; you
+have retired from business?”
+
+“I have made over my hand to a friend; when I feel disposed, I can take
+up the cards again. I dare say that a twelvemonth hence the operation
+will be reversed. The pendulum will swing back again. I shall be
+sitting in a gondola or on a dromedary, and all of a sudden I shall
+want to clear out. But for the present I am perfectly free. I have even
+bargained that I am to receive no business letters.”
+
+“Oh, it’s a real _caprice de prince_,” said Tristram. “I back out; a
+poor devil like me can’t help you to spend such very magnificent
+leisure as that. You should get introduced to the crowned heads.”
+
+Newman looked at him a moment, and then, with his easy smile, “How does
+one do it?” he asked.
+
+“Come, I like that!” cried Tristram. “It shows you are in earnest.”
+
+“Of course I am in earnest. Didn’t I say I wanted the best? I know the
+best can’t be had for mere money, but I rather think money will do a
+good deal. In addition, I am willing to take a good deal of trouble.”
+
+“You are not bashful, eh?”
+
+“I haven’t the least idea. I want the biggest kind of entertainment a
+man can get. People, places, art, nature, everything! I want to see the
+tallest mountains, and the bluest lakes, and the finest pictures and
+the handsomest churches, and the most celebrated men, and the most
+beautiful women.”
+
+“Settle down in Paris, then. There are no mountains that I know of, and
+the only lake is in the Bois du Boulogne, and not particularly blue.
+But there is everything else: plenty of pictures and churches, no end
+of celebrated men, and several beautiful women.”
+
+“But I can’t settle down in Paris at this season, just as summer is
+coming on.”
+
+“Oh, for the summer go up to Trouville.”
+
+“What is Trouville?”
+
+“The French Newport. Half the Americans go.”
+
+“Is it anywhere near the Alps?”
+
+“About as near as Newport is to the Rocky Mountains.”
+
+“Oh, I want to see Mont Blanc,” said Newman, “and Amsterdam, and the
+Rhine, and a lot of places. Venice in particular. I have great ideas
+about Venice.”
+
+“Ah,” said Mr. Tristram, rising, “I see I shall have to introduce you
+to my wife!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+He performed this ceremony on the following day, when, by appointment,
+Christopher Newman went to dine with him. Mr. and Mrs. Tristram lived
+behind one of those chalk-colored façades which decorate with their
+pompous sameness the broad avenues manufactured by Baron Haussmann in
+the neighborhood of the Arc de Triomphe. Their apartment was rich in
+the modern conveniences, and Tristram lost no time in calling his
+visitor’s attention to their principal household treasures, the
+gas-lamps and the furnace-holes. “Whenever you feel homesick,” he said,
+“you must come up here. We’ll stick you down before a register, under a
+good big burner, and—”
+
+“And you will soon get over your homesickness,” said Mrs. Tristram.
+
+Her husband stared; his wife often had a tone which he found
+inscrutable he could not tell for his life whether she was in jest or
+in earnest. The truth is that circumstances had done much to cultivate
+in Mrs. Tristram a marked tendency to irony. Her taste on many points
+differed from that of her husband, and though she made frequent
+concessions it must be confessed that her concessions were not always
+graceful. They were founded upon a vague project she had of some day
+doing something very positive, something a trifle passionate. What she
+meant to do she could by no means have told you; but meanwhile,
+nevertheless, she was buying a good conscience, by instalments.
+
+It should be added, without delay, to anticipate misconception, that
+her little scheme of independence did not definitely involve the
+assistance of another person, of the opposite sex; she was not saving
+up virtue to cover the expenses of a flirtation. For this there were
+various reasons. To begin with, she had a very plain face and she was
+entirely without illusions as to her appearance. She had taken its
+measure to a hair’s breadth, she knew the worst and the best, she had
+accepted herself. It had not been, indeed, without a struggle. As a
+young girl she had spent hours with her back to her mirror, crying her
+eyes out; and later she had from desperation and bravado adopted the
+habit of proclaiming herself the most ill-favored of women, in order
+that she might—as in common politeness was inevitable—be contradicted
+and reassured. It was since she had come to live in Europe that she had
+begun to take the matter philosophically. Her observation, acutely
+exercised here, had suggested to her that a woman’s first duty is not
+to be beautiful, but to be pleasing, and she encountered so many women
+who pleased without beauty that she began to feel that she had
+discovered her mission. She had once heard an enthusiastic musician,
+out of patience with a gifted bungler, declare that a fine voice is
+really an obstacle to singing properly; and it occurred to her that it
+might perhaps be equally true that a beautiful face is an obstacle to
+the acquisition of charming manners. Mrs. Tristram, then, undertook to
+be exquisitely agreeable, and she brought to the task a really touching
+devotion. How well she would have succeeded I am unable to say;
+unfortunately she broke off in the middle. Her own excuse was the want
+of encouragement in her immediate circle. But I am inclined to think
+that she had not a real genius for the matter, or she would have
+pursued the charming art for itself. The poor lady was very incomplete.
+She fell back upon the harmonies of the toilet, which she thoroughly
+understood, and contented herself with dressing in perfection. She
+lived in Paris, which she pretended to detest, because it was only in
+Paris that one could find things to exactly suit one’s complexion.
+Besides out of Paris it was always more or less of a trouble to get
+ten-button gloves. When she railed at this serviceable city and you
+asked her where she would prefer to reside, she returned some very
+unexpected answer. She would say in Copenhagen, or in Barcelona;
+having, while making the tour of Europe, spent a couple of days at each
+of these places. On the whole, with her poetic furbelows and her
+misshapen, intelligent little face, she was, when you knew her, a
+decidedly interesting woman. She was naturally shy, and if she had been
+born a beauty, she would (having no vanity) probably have remained shy.
+Now, she was both diffident and importunate; extremely reserved
+sometimes with her friends, and strangely expansive with strangers. She
+despised her husband; despised him too much, for she had been perfectly
+at liberty not to marry him. She had been in love with a clever man who
+had slighted her, and she had married a fool in the hope that this
+thankless wit, reflecting on it, would conclude that she had no
+appreciation of merit, and that he had flattered himself in supposing
+that she cared for his own. Restless, discontented, visionary, without
+personal ambitions, but with a certain avidity of imagination, she was,
+as I have said before, eminently incomplete. She was full—both for good
+and for ill—of beginnings that came to nothing; but she had
+nevertheless, morally, a spark of the sacred fire.
+
+Newman was fond, under all circumstances, of the society of women, and
+now that he was out of his native element and deprived of his habitual
+interests, he turned to it for compensation. He took a great fancy to
+Mrs. Tristram; she frankly repaid it, and after their first meeting he
+passed a great many hours in her drawing-room. After two or three talks
+they were fast friends. Newman’s manner with women was peculiar, and it
+required some ingenuity on a lady’s part to discover that he admired
+her. He had no gallantry, in the usual sense of the term; no
+compliments, no graces, no speeches. Very fond of what is called
+chaffing, in his dealings with men, he never found himself on a sofa
+beside a member of the softer sex without feeling extremely serious. He
+was not shy, and so far as awkwardness proceeds from a struggle with
+shyness, he was not awkward; grave, attentive, submissive, often
+silent, he was simply swimming in a sort of rapture of respect. This
+emotion was not at all theoretic, it was not even in a high degree
+sentimental; he had thought very little about the “position” of women,
+and he was not familiar either sympathetically or otherwise, with the
+image of a President in petticoats. His attitude was simply the flower
+of his general good-nature, and a part of his instinctive and genuinely
+democratic assumption of everyone’s right to lead an easy life. If a
+shaggy pauper had a right to bed and board and wages and a vote, women,
+of course, who were weaker than paupers, and whose physical tissue was
+in itself an appeal, should be maintained, sentimentally, at the public
+expense. Newman was willing to be taxed for this purpose, largely, in
+proportion to his means. Moreover, many of the common traditions with
+regard to women were with him fresh personal impressions; he had never
+read a novel! He had been struck with their acuteness, their subtlety,
+their tact, their felicity of judgment. They seemed to him exquisitely
+organized. If it is true that one must always have in one’s work here
+below a religion, or at least an ideal, of some sort, Newman found his
+metaphysical inspiration in a vague acceptance of final responsibility
+to some illumined feminine brow.
+
+He spent a great deal of time in listening to advice from Mrs.
+Tristram; advice, it must be added, for which he had never asked. He
+would have been incapable of asking for it, for he had no perception of
+difficulties, and consequently no curiosity about remedies. The complex
+Parisian world about him seemed a very simple affair; it was an
+immense, amazing spectacle, but it neither inflamed his imagination nor
+irritated his curiosity. He kept his hands in his pockets, looked on
+good-humoredly, desired to miss nothing important, observed a great
+many things narrowly, and never reverted to himself. Mrs. Tristram’s
+“advice” was a part of the show, and a more entertaining element, in
+her abundant gossip, than the others. He enjoyed her talking about
+himself; it seemed a part of her beautiful ingenuity; but he never made
+an application of anything she said, or remembered it when he was away
+from her. For herself, she appropriated him; he was the most
+interesting thing she had had to think about in many a month. She
+wished to do something with him—she hardly knew what. There was so much
+of him; he was so rich and robust, so easy, friendly, well-disposed,
+that he kept her fancy constantly on the alert. For the present, the
+only thing she could do was to like him. She told him that he was
+“horribly Western,” but in this compliment the adverb was tinged with
+insincerity. She led him about with her, introduced him to fifty
+people, and took extreme satisfaction in her conquest. Newman accepted
+every proposal, shook hands universally and promiscuously, and seemed
+equally unfamiliar with trepidation or with elation. Tom Tristram
+complained of his wife’s avidity, and declared that he could never have
+a clear five minutes with his friend. If he had known how things were
+going to turn out, he never would have brought him to the Avenue
+d’Iéna. The two men, formerly, had not been intimate, but Newman
+remembered his earlier impression of his host, and did Mrs. Tristram,
+who had by no means taken him into her confidence, but whose secret he
+presently discovered, the justice to admit that her husband was a
+rather degenerate mortal. At twenty-five he had been a good fellow, and
+in this respect he was unchanged; but of a man of his age one expected
+something more. People said he was sociable, but this was as much a
+matter of course as for a dipped sponge to expand; and it was not a
+high order of sociability. He was a great gossip and tattler, and to
+produce a laugh would hardly have spared the reputation of his aged
+mother. Newman had a kindness for old memories, but he found it
+impossible not to perceive that Tristram was nowadays a very light
+weight. His only aspirations were to hold out at poker, at his club, to
+know the names of all the _cocottes_, to shake hands all round, to ply
+his rosy gullet with truffles and champagne, and to create
+uncomfortable eddies and obstructions among the constituent atoms of
+the American colony. He was shamefully idle, spiritless, sensual,
+snobbish. He irritated our friend by the tone of his allusions to their
+native country, and Newman was at a loss to understand why the United
+States were not good enough for Mr. Tristram. He had never been a very
+conscious patriot, but it vexed him to see them treated as little
+better than a vulgar smell in his friend’s nostrils, and he finally
+broke out and swore that they were the greatest country in the world,
+that they could put all Europe into their breeches’ pockets, and that
+an American who spoke ill of them ought to be carried home in irons and
+compelled to live in Boston. (This, for Newman was putting it very
+vindictively.) Tristram was a comfortable man to snub, he bore no
+malice, and he continued to insist on Newman’s finishing his evening at
+the Occidental Club.
+
+Christopher Newman dined several times in the Avenue d’Iéna, and his
+host always proposed an early adjournment to this institution. Mrs.
+Tristram protested, and declared that her husband exhausted his
+ingenuity in trying to displease her.
+
+“Oh no, I never try, my love,” he answered. “I know you loathe me quite
+enough when I take my chance.”
+
+Newman hated to see a husband and wife on these terms, and he was sure
+one or other of them must be very unhappy. He knew it was not Tristram.
+Mrs. Tristram had a balcony before her windows, upon which, during the
+June evenings, she was fond of sitting, and Newman used frankly to say
+that he preferred the balcony to the club. It had a fringe of perfumed
+plants in tubs, and enabled you to look up the broad street and see the
+Arch of Triumph vaguely massing its heroic sculptures in the summer
+starlight. Sometimes Newman kept his promise of following Mr. Tristram,
+in half an hour, to the Occidental, and sometimes he forgot it. His
+hostess asked him a great many questions about himself, but on this
+subject he was an indifferent talker. He was not what is called
+subjective, though when he felt that her interest was sincere, he made
+an almost heroic attempt to be. He told her a great many things he had
+done, and regaled her with anecdotes of Western life; she was from
+Philadelphia, and with her eight years in Paris, talked of herself as a
+languid Oriental. But some other person was always the hero of the
+tale, by no means always to his advantage; and Newman’s own emotions
+were but scantily chronicled. She had an especial wish to know whether
+he had ever been in love—seriously, passionately—and, failing to gather
+any satisfaction from his allusions, she at last directly inquired. He
+hesitated a while, and at last he said, “No!” She declared that she was
+delighted to hear it, as it confirmed her private conviction that he
+was a man of no feeling.
+
+“Really?” he asked, very gravely. “Do you think so? How do you
+recognize a man of feeling?”
+
+“I can’t make out,” said Mrs. Tristram, “whether you are very simple or
+very deep.”
+
+“I’m very deep. That’s a fact.”
+
+“I believe that if I were to tell you with a certain air that you have
+no feeling, you would implicitly believe me.”
+
+“A certain air?” said Newman. “Try it and see.”
+
+“You would believe me, but you would not care,” said Mrs. Tristram.
+
+“You have got it all wrong. I should care immensely, but I shouldn’t
+believe you. The fact is I have never had time to feel things. I have
+had to _do_ them, to make myself felt.”
+
+“I can imagine that you may have done that tremendously, sometimes.”
+
+“Yes, there’s no mistake about that.”
+
+“When you are in a fury it can’t be pleasant.”
+
+“I am never in a fury.”
+
+“Angry, then, or displeased.”
+
+“I am never angry, and it is so long since I have been displeased that
+I have quite forgotten it.”
+
+“I don’t believe,” said Mrs. Tristram, “that you are never angry. A man
+ought to be angry sometimes, and you are neither good enough nor bad
+enough always to keep your temper.”
+
+“I lose it perhaps once in five years.”
+
+“The time is coming round, then,” said his hostess. “Before I have
+known you six months I shall see you in a fine fury.”
+
+“Do you mean to put me into one?”
+
+“I should not be sorry. You take things too coolly. It exasperates me.
+And then you are too happy. You have what must be the most agreeable
+thing in the world, the consciousness of having bought your pleasure
+beforehand and paid for it. You have not a day of reckoning staring you
+in the face. Your reckonings are over.”
+
+“Well, I suppose I am happy,” said Newman, meditatively.
+
+“You have been odiously successful.”
+
+“Successful in copper,” said Newman, “only so-so in railroads, and a
+hopeless fizzle in oil.”
+
+“It is very disagreeable to know how Americans have made their money.
+Now you have the world before you. You have only to enjoy.”
+
+“Oh, I suppose I am very well off,” said Newman. “Only I am tired of
+having it thrown up at me. Besides, there are several drawbacks. I am
+not intellectual.”
+
+“One doesn’t expect it of you,” Mrs. Tristram answered. Then in a
+moment, “Besides, you are!”
+
+“Well, I mean to have a good time, whether or no,” said Newman. “I am
+not cultivated, I am not even educated; I know nothing about history,
+or art, or foreign tongues, or any other learned matters. But I am not
+a fool, either, and I shall undertake to know something about Europe by
+the time I have done with it. I feel something under my ribs here,” he
+added in a moment, “that I can’t explain—a sort of a mighty hankering,
+a desire to stretch out and haul in.”
+
+“Bravo!” said Mrs. Tristram, “that is very fine. You are the great
+Western Barbarian, stepping forth in his innocence and might, gazing a
+while at this poor effete Old World and then swooping down on it.”
+
+“Oh, come,” said Newman. “I am not a barbarian, by a good deal. I am
+very much the reverse. I have seen barbarians; I know what they are.”
+
+“I don’t mean that you are a Comanche chief, or that you wear a blanket
+and feathers. There are different shades.”
+
+“I am a highly civilized man,” said Newman. “I stick to that. If you
+don’t believe it, I should like to prove it to you.”
+
+Mrs. Tristram was silent a while. “I should like to make you prove it,”
+she said, at last. “I should like to put you in a difficult place.”
+
+“Pray do,” said Newman.
+
+“That has a little conceited sound!” his companion rejoined.
+
+“Oh,” said Newman, “I have a very good opinion of myself.”
+
+“I wish I could put it to the test. Give me time and I will.” And Mrs.
+Tristram remained silent for some time afterwards, as if she was trying
+to keep her pledge. It did not appear that evening that she succeeded;
+but as he was rising to take his leave she passed suddenly, as she was
+very apt to do, from the tone of unsparing persiflage to that of almost
+tremulous sympathy. “Speaking seriously,” she said, “I believe in you,
+Mr. Newman. You flatter my patriotism.”
+
+“Your patriotism?” Christopher demanded.
+
+“Even so. It would take too long to explain, and you probably would not
+understand. Besides, you might take it—really, you might take it for a
+declaration. But it has nothing to do with you personally; it’s what
+you represent. Fortunately you don’t know all that, or your conceit
+would increase insufferably.”
+
+Newman stood staring and wondering what under the sun he “represented.”
+
+“Forgive all my meddlesome chatter and forget my advice. It is very
+silly in me to undertake to tell you what to do. When you are
+embarrassed, do as you think best, and you will do very well. When you
+are in a difficulty, judge for yourself.”
+
+“I shall remember everything you have told me,” said Newman. “There are
+so many forms and ceremonies over here—”
+
+“Forms and ceremonies are what I mean, of course.”
+
+“Ah, but I want to observe them,” said Newman. “Haven’t I as good a
+right as another? They don’t scare me, and you needn’t give me leave to
+violate them. I won’t take it.”
+
+“That is not what I mean. I mean, observe them in your own way. Settle
+nice questions for yourself. Cut the knot or untie it, as you choose.”
+
+“Oh, I am sure I shall never fumble over it!” said Newman.
+
+The next time that he dined in the Avenue d’Iéna was a Sunday, a day on
+which Mr. Tristram left the cards unshuffled, so that there was a trio
+in the evening on the balcony. The talk was of many things, and at last
+Mrs. Tristram suddenly observed to Christopher Newman that it was high
+time he should take a wife.
+
+“Listen to her; she has the audacity!” said Tristram, who on Sunday
+evenings was always rather acrimonious.
+
+“I don’t suppose you have made up your mind not to marry?” Mrs.
+Tristram continued.
+
+“Heaven forbid!” cried Newman. “I am sternly resolved on it.”
+
+“It’s very easy,” said Tristram; “fatally easy!”
+
+“Well, then, I suppose you do not mean to wait till you are fifty.”
+
+“On the contrary, I am in a great hurry.”
+
+“One would never suppose it. Do you expect a lady to come and propose
+to you?”
+
+“No; I am willing to propose. I think a great deal about it.”
+
+“Tell me some of your thoughts.”
+
+“Well,” said Newman, slowly, “I want to marry very well.”
+
+“Marry a woman of sixty, then,” said Tristram.
+
+“‘Well’ in what sense?”
+
+“In every sense. I shall be hard to please.”
+
+“You must remember that, as the French proverb says, the most beautiful
+girl in the world can give but what she has.”
+
+“Since you ask me,” said Newman, “I will say frankly that I want
+extremely to marry. It is time, to begin with: before I know it I shall
+be forty. And then I’m lonely and helpless and dull. But if I marry
+now, so long as I didn’t do it in hot haste when I was twenty, I must
+do it with my eyes open. I want to do the thing in handsome style. I do
+not only want to make no mistakes, but I want to make a great hit. I
+want to take my pick. My wife must be a magnificent woman.”
+
+“_Voilà ce qui s’appelle parler!_” cried Mrs. Tristram.
+
+“Oh, I have thought an immense deal about it.”
+
+“Perhaps you think too much. The best thing is simply to fall in love.”
+
+“When I find the woman who pleases me, I shall love her enough. My wife
+shall be very comfortable.”
+
+“You are superb! There’s a chance for the magnificent women.”
+
+“You are not fair.” Newman rejoined. “You draw a fellow out and put him
+off guard, and then you laugh at him.”
+
+“I assure you,” said Mrs. Tristram, “that I am very serious. To prove
+it, I will make you a proposal. Should you like me, as they say here,
+to marry you?”
+
+“To hunt up a wife for me?”
+
+“She is already found. I will bring you together.”
+
+“Oh, come,” said Tristram, “we don’t keep a matrimonial bureau. He will
+think you want your commission.”
+
+“Present me to a woman who comes up to my notions,” said Newman, “and I
+will marry her tomorrow.”
+
+“You have a strange tone about it, and I don’t quite understand you. I
+didn’t suppose you would be so coldblooded and calculating.”
+
+Newman was silent a while. “Well,” he said, at last, “I want a great
+woman. I stick to that. That’s one thing I _can_ treat myself to, and
+if it is to be had I mean to have it. What else have I toiled and
+struggled for, all these years? I have succeeded, and now what am I to
+do with my success? To make it perfect, as I see it, there must be a
+beautiful woman perched on the pile, like a statue on a monument. She
+must be as good as she is beautiful, and as clever as she is good. I
+can give my wife a good deal, so I am not afraid to ask a good deal
+myself. She shall have everything a woman can desire; I shall not even
+object to her being too good for me; she may be cleverer and wiser than
+I can understand, and I shall only be the better pleased. I want to
+possess, in a word, the best article in the market.”
+
+“Why didn’t you tell a fellow all this at the outset?” Tristram
+demanded. “I have been trying so to make you fond of _me!_”
+
+“This is very interesting,” said Mrs. Tristram. “I like to see a man
+know his own mind.”
+
+“I have known mine for a long time,” Newman went on. “I made up my mind
+tolerably early in life that a beautiful wife was the thing best worth
+having, here below. It is the greatest victory over circumstances. When
+I say beautiful, I mean beautiful in mind and in manners, as well as in
+person. It is a thing every man has an equal right to; he may get it if
+he can. He doesn’t have to be born with certain faculties, on purpose;
+he needs only to be a man. Then he needs only to use his will, and such
+wits as he has, and to try.”
+
+“It strikes me that your marriage is to be rather a matter of vanity.”
+
+“Well, it is certain,” said Newman, “that if people notice my wife and
+admire her, I shall be mightily tickled.”
+
+“After this,” cried Mrs. Tristram, “call any man modest!”
+
+“But none of them will admire her so much as I.”
+
+“I see you have a taste for splendor.”
+
+Newman hesitated a little; and then, “I honestly believe I have!” he
+said.
+
+“And I suppose you have already looked about you a good deal.”
+
+“A good deal, according to opportunity.”
+
+“And you have seen nothing that satisfied you?”
+
+“No,” said Newman, half reluctantly, “I am bound to say in honesty that
+I have seen nothing that really satisfied me.”
+
+“You remind me of the heroes of the French romantic poets, Rolla and
+Fortunio and all those other insatiable gentlemen for whom nothing in
+this world was handsome enough. But I see you are in earnest, and I
+should like to help you.”
+
+“Who the deuce is it, darling, that you are going to put upon him?”
+Tristram cried. “We know a good many pretty girls, thank Heaven, but
+magnificent women are not so common.”
+
+“Have you any objections to a foreigner?” his wife continued,
+addressing Newman, who had tilted back his chair and, with his feet on
+a bar of the balcony railing and his hands in his pockets, was looking
+at the stars.
+
+“No Irish need apply,” said Tristram.
+
+Newman meditated a while. “As a foreigner, no,” he said at last; “I
+have no prejudices.”
+
+“My dear fellow, you have no suspicions!” cried Tristram. “You don’t
+know what terrible customers these foreign women are; especially the
+‘magnificent’ ones. How should you like a fair Circassian, with a
+dagger in her belt?”
+
+Newman administered a vigorous slap to his knee. “I would marry a
+Japanese, if she pleased me,” he affirmed.
+
+“We had better confine ourselves to Europe,” said Mrs. Tristram. “The
+only thing is, then, that the person be in herself to your taste?”
+
+“She is going to offer you an unappreciated governess!” Tristram
+groaned.
+
+“Assuredly. I won’t deny that, other things being equal, I should
+prefer one of my own countrywomen. We should speak the same language,
+and that would be a comfort. But I am not afraid of a foreigner.
+Besides, I rather like the idea of taking in Europe, too. It enlarges
+the field of selection. When you choose from a greater number, you can
+bring your choice to a finer point!”
+
+“You talk like Sardanapalus!” exclaimed Tristram.
+
+“You say all this to the right person,” said Newman’s hostess. “I
+happen to number among my friends the loveliest woman in the world.
+Neither more nor less. I don’t say a very charming person or a very
+estimable woman or a very great beauty; I say simply the loveliest
+woman in the world.”
+
+“The deuce!” cried Tristram, “you have kept very quiet about her. Were
+you afraid of me?”
+
+“You have seen her,” said his wife, “but you have no perception of such
+merit as Claire’s.”
+
+“Ah, her name is Claire? I give it up.”
+
+“Does your friend wish to marry?” asked Newman.
+
+“Not in the least. It is for you to make her change her mind. It will
+not be easy; she has had one husband, and he gave her a low opinion of
+the species.”
+
+“Oh, she is a widow, then?” said Newman.
+
+“Are you already afraid? She was married at eighteen, by her parents,
+in the French fashion, to a disagreeable old man. But he had the good
+taste to die a couple of years afterward, and she is now twenty-five.”
+
+“So she is French?”
+
+“French by her father, English by her mother. She is really more
+English than French, and she speaks English as well as you or I—or
+rather much better. She belongs to the very top of the basket, as they
+say here. Her family, on each side, is of fabulous antiquity; her
+mother is the daughter of an English Catholic earl. Her father is dead,
+and since her widowhood she has lived with her mother and a married
+brother. There is another brother, younger, who I believe is wild. They
+have an old hotel in the Rue de l’Université, but their fortune is
+small, and they make a common household, for economy’s sake. When I was
+a girl I was put into a convent here for my education, while my father
+made the tour of Europe. It was a silly thing to do with me, but it had
+the advantage that it made me acquainted with Claire de Bellegarde. She
+was younger than I but we became fast friends. I took a tremendous
+fancy to her, and she returned my passion as far as she could. They
+kept such a tight rein on her that she could do very little, and when I
+left the convent she had to give me up. I was not of her _monde_; I am
+not now, either, but we sometimes meet. They are terrible people—her
+_monde_; all mounted upon stilts a mile high, and with pedigrees long
+in proportion. It is the skim of the milk of the old _noblesse_. Do you
+know what a Legitimist is, or an Ultramontane? Go into Madame de
+Cintré’s drawing-room some afternoon, at five o’clock, and you will see
+the best preserved specimens. I say go, but no one is admitted who
+can’t show his fifty quarterings.”
+
+“And this is the lady you propose to me to marry?” asked Newman. “A
+lady I can’t even approach?”
+
+“But you said just now that you recognized no obstacles.”
+
+Newman looked at Mrs. Tristram a while, stroking his moustache. “Is she
+a beauty?” he demanded.
+
+“No.”
+
+“Oh, then it’s no use—”
+
+“She is not a beauty, but she is beautiful, two very different things.
+A beauty has no faults in her face, the face of a beautiful woman may
+have faults that only deepen its charm.”
+
+“I remember Madame de Cintré, now,” said Tristram. “She is as plain as
+a pike-staff. A man wouldn’t look at her twice.”
+
+“In saying that _he_ would not look at her twice, my husband
+sufficiently describes her,” Mrs. Tristram rejoined.
+
+“Is she good; is she clever?” Newman asked.
+
+“She is perfect! I won’t say more than that. When you are praising a
+person to another who is to know her, it is bad policy to go into
+details. I won’t exaggerate. I simply recommend her. Among all women I
+have known she stands alone; she is of a different clay.”
+
+“I should like to see her,” said Newman, simply.
+
+“I will try to manage it. The only way will be to invite her to dinner.
+I have never invited her before, and I don’t know that she will come.
+Her old feudal countess of a mother rules the family with an iron hand,
+and allows her to have no friends but of her own choosing, and to visit
+only in a certain sacred circle. But I can at least ask her.”
+
+At this moment Mrs. Tristram was interrupted; a servant stepped out
+upon the balcony and announced that there were visitors in the
+drawing-room. When Newman’s hostess had gone in to receive her friends,
+Tom Tristram approached his guest.
+
+“Don’t put your foot into _this_, my boy,” he said, puffing the last
+whiffs of his cigar. “There’s nothing in it!”
+
+Newman looked askance at him, inquisitive. “You tell another story,
+eh?”
+
+“I say simply that Madame de Cintré is a great white doll of a woman,
+who cultivates quiet haughtiness.”
+
+“Ah, she’s haughty, eh?”
+
+“She looks at you as if you were so much thin air, and cares for you
+about as much.”
+
+“She is very proud, eh?”
+
+“Proud? As proud as I’m humble.”
+
+“And not good-looking?”
+
+Tristram shrugged his shoulders: “It’s a kind of beauty you must be
+_intellectual_ to understand. But I must go in and amuse the company.”
+
+Some time elapsed before Newman followed his friends into the
+drawing-room. When he at last made his appearance there he remained but
+a short time, and during this period sat perfectly silent, listening to
+a lady to whom Mrs. Tristram had straightway introduced him and who
+chattered, without a pause, with the full force of an extraordinarily
+high-pitched voice. Newman gazed and attended. Presently he came to bid
+good-night to Mrs. Tristram.
+
+“Who is that lady?” he asked.
+
+“Miss Dora Finch. How do you like her?”
+
+“She’s too noisy.”
+
+“She is thought so bright! Certainly, you are fastidious,” said Mrs.
+Tristram.
+
+Newman stood a moment, hesitating. Then at last, “Don’t forget about
+your friend,” he said, “Madame What’s-her-name? the proud beauty. Ask
+her to dinner, and give me a good notice.” And with this he departed.
+
+Some days later he came back; it was in the afternoon. He found Mrs.
+Tristram in her drawing-room; with her was a visitor, a woman young and
+pretty, dressed in white. The two ladies had risen and the visitor was
+apparently taking her leave. As Newman approached, he received from
+Mrs. Tristram a glance of the most vivid significance, which he was not
+immediately able to interpret.
+
+“This is a good friend of ours,” she said, turning to her companion,
+“Mr. Christopher Newman. I have spoken of you to him and he has an
+extreme desire to make your acquaintance. If you had consented to come
+and dine, I should have offered him an opportunity.”
+
+The stranger turned her face toward Newman, with a smile. He was not
+embarrassed, for his unconscious _sang-froid_ was boundless; but as he
+became aware that this was the proud and beautiful Madame de Cintré,
+the loveliest woman in the world, the promised perfection, the proposed
+ideal, he made an instinctive movement to gather his wits together.
+Through the slight preoccupation that it produced he had a sense of a
+long, fair face, and of two eyes that were both brilliant and mild.
+
+“I should have been most happy,” said Madame de Cintré. “Unfortunately,
+as I have been telling Mrs. Tristram, I go on Monday to the country.”
+
+Newman had made a solemn bow. “I am very sorry,” he said.
+
+“Paris is getting too warm,” Madame de Cintré added, taking her
+friend’s hand again in farewell.
+
+Mrs. Tristram seemed to have formed a sudden and somewhat venturesome
+resolution, and she smiled more intensely, as women do when they take
+such resolution. “I want Mr. Newman to know you,” she said, dropping
+her head on one side and looking at Madame de Cintré’s bonnet ribbons.
+
+Christopher Newman stood gravely silent, while his native penetration
+admonished him. Mrs. Tristram was determined to force her friend to
+address him a word of encouragement which should be more than one of
+the common formulas of politeness; and if she was prompted by charity,
+it was by the charity that begins at home. Madame de Cintré was her
+dearest Claire, and her especial admiration but Madame de Cintré had
+found it impossible to dine with her and Madame de Cintré should for
+once be forced gently to render tribute to Mrs. Tristram.
+
+“It would give me great pleasure,” she said, looking at Mrs. Tristram.
+
+“That’s a great deal,” cried the latter, “for Madame de Cintré to say!”
+
+“I am very much obliged to you,” said Newman. “Mrs. Tristram can speak
+better for me than I can speak for myself.”
+
+Madame de Cintré looked at him again, with the same soft brightness.
+“Are you to be long in Paris?” she asked.
+
+“We shall keep him,” said Mrs. Tristram.
+
+“But you are keeping _me!_” and Madame de Cintré shook her friend’s
+hand.
+
+“A moment longer,” said Mrs. Tristram.
+
+Madame de Cintré looked at Newman again; this time without her smile.
+Her eyes lingered a moment. “Will you come and see me?” she asked.
+
+Mrs. Tristram kissed her. Newman expressed his thanks, and she took her
+leave. Her hostess went with her to the door, and left Newman alone a
+moment. Presently she returned, rubbing her hands. “It was a fortunate
+chance,” she said. “She had come to decline my invitation. You
+triumphed on the spot, making her ask you, at the end of three minutes,
+to her house.”
+
+“It was you who triumphed,” said Newman. “You must not be too hard upon
+her.”
+
+Mrs. Tristram stared. “What do you mean?”
+
+“She did not strike me as so proud. I should say she was shy.”
+
+“You are very discriminating. And what do you think of her face?”
+
+“It’s handsome!” said Newman.
+
+“I should think it was! Of course you will go and see her.”
+
+“To-morrow!” cried Newman.
+
+“No, not to-morrow; the next day. That will be Sunday; she leaves Paris
+on Monday. If you don’t see her; it will at least be a beginning.” And
+she gave him Madame de Cintré’s address.
+
+He walked across the Seine, late in the summer afternoon, and made his
+way through those gray and silent streets of the Faubourg St. Germain
+whose houses present to the outer world a face as impassive and as
+suggestive of the concentration of privacy within as the blank walls of
+Eastern seraglios. Newman thought it a queer way for rich people to
+live; his ideal of grandeur was a splendid façade diffusing its
+brilliancy outward too, irradiating hospitality. The house to which he
+had been directed had a dark, dusty, painted portal, which swung open
+in answer to his ring. It admitted him into a wide, gravelled court,
+surrounded on three sides with closed windows, and with a doorway
+facing the street, approached by three steps and surmounted by a tin
+canopy. The place was all in the shade; it answered to Newman’s
+conception of a convent. The portress could not tell him whether Madame
+de Cintré was visible; he would please to apply at the farther door. He
+crossed the court; a gentleman was sitting, bareheaded, on the steps of
+the portico, playing with a beautiful pointer. He rose as Newman
+approached, and, as he laid his hand upon the bell, said with a smile,
+in English, that he was afraid Newman would be kept waiting; the
+servants were scattered, he himself had been ringing, he didn’t know
+what the deuce was in them. He was a young man, his English was
+excellent, and his smile very frank. Newman pronounced the name of
+Madame de Cintré.
+
+“I think,” said the young man, “that my sister is visible. Come in, and
+if you will give me your card I will carry it to her myself.”
+
+Newman had been accompanied on his present errand by a slight
+sentiment, I will not say of defiance—a readiness for aggression or
+defence, as they might prove needful—but of reflection, good-humored
+suspicion. He took from his pocket, while he stood on the portico, a
+card upon which, under his name, he had written the words “San
+Francisco,” and while he presented it he looked warily at his
+interlocutor. His glance was singularly reassuring; he liked the young
+man’s face; it strongly resembled that of Madame de Cintré. He was
+evidently her brother. The young man, on his side, had made a rapid
+inspection of Newman’s person. He had taken the card and was about to
+enter the house with it when another figure appeared on the
+threshold—an older man, of a fine presence, wearing evening dress. He
+looked hard at Newman, and Newman looked at him. “Madame de Cintré,”
+the younger man repeated, as an introduction of the visitor. The other
+took the card from his hand, read it in a rapid glance, looked again at
+Newman from head to foot, hesitated a moment, and then said, gravely
+but urbanely, “Madame de Cintré is not at home.”
+
+The younger man made a gesture, and then, turning to Newman, “I am very
+sorry, sir,” he said.
+
+Newman gave him a friendly nod, to show that he bore him no malice, and
+retraced his steps. At the porter’s lodge he stopped; the two men were
+still standing on the portico.
+
+“Who is the gentleman with the dog?” he asked of the old woman who
+reappeared. He had begun to learn French.
+
+“That is Monsieur le Comte.”
+
+“And the other?”
+
+“That is Monsieur le Marquis.”
+
+“A marquis?” said Christopher in English, which the old woman
+fortunately did not understand. “Oh, then he’s not the butler!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Early one morning, before Christopher Newman was dressed, a little old
+man was ushered into his apartment, followed by a youth in a blouse,
+bearing a picture in a brilliant frame. Newman, among the distractions
+of Paris, had forgotten M. Nioche and his accomplished daughter; but
+this was an effective reminder.
+
+“I am afraid you had given me up, sir,” said the old man, after many
+apologies and salutations. “We have made you wait so many days. You
+accused us, perhaps, of inconstancy, of bad faith. But behold me at
+last! And behold also the pretty Madonna. Place it on a chair, my
+friend, in a good light, so that monsieur may admire it.” And M.
+Nioche, addressing his companion, helped him to dispose the work of
+art.
+
+It had been endued with a layer of varnish an inch thick and its frame,
+of an elaborate pattern, was at least a foot wide. It glittered and
+twinkled in the morning light, and looked, to Newman’s eyes,
+wonderfully splendid and precious. It seemed to him a very happy
+purchase, and he felt rich in the possession of it. He stood looking at
+it complacently, while he proceeded with his toilet, and M. Nioche, who
+had dismissed his own attendant, hovered near, smiling and rubbing his
+hands.
+
+“It has wonderful _finesse_,” he murmured, caressingly. “And here and
+there are marvelous touches, you probably perceive them, sir. It
+attracted great attention on the Boulevard, as we came along. And then
+a gradation of tones! That’s what it is to know how to paint. I don’t
+say it because I am her father, sir; but as one man of taste addressing
+another I cannot help observing that you have there an exquisite work.
+It is hard to produce such things and to have to part with them. If our
+means only allowed us the luxury of keeping it! I really may say, sir—”
+and M. Nioche gave a little feebly insinuating laugh—“I really may say
+that I envy you! You see,” he added in a moment, “we have taken the
+liberty of offering you a frame. It increases by a trifle the value of
+the work, and it will save you the annoyance—so great for a person of
+your delicacy—of going about to bargain at the shops.”
+
+The language spoken by M. Nioche was a singular compound, which I
+shrink from the attempt to reproduce in its integrity. He had
+apparently once possessed a certain knowledge of English, and his
+accent was oddly tinged with the cockneyism of the British metropolis.
+But his learning had grown rusty with disuse, and his vocabulary was
+defective and capricious. He had repaired it with large patches of
+French, with words anglicized by a process of his own, and with native
+idioms literally translated. The result, in the form in which he in all
+humility presented it, would be scarcely comprehensible to the reader,
+so that I have ventured to trim and sift it. Newman only half
+understood it, but it amused him, and the old man’s decent forlornness
+appealed to his democratic instincts. The assumption of a fatality in
+misery always irritated his strong good nature—it was almost the only
+thing that did so; and he felt the impulse to wipe it out, as it were,
+with the sponge of his own prosperity. The papa of Mademoiselle Noémie,
+however, had apparently on this occasion been vigorously indoctrinated,
+and he showed a certain tremulous eagerness to cultivate unexpected
+opportunities.
+
+“How much do I owe you, then, with the frame?” asked Newman.
+
+“It will make in all three thousand francs,” said the old man, smiling
+agreeably, but folding his hands in instinctive suppliance.
+
+“Can you give me a receipt?”
+
+“I have brought one,” said M. Nioche. “I took the liberty of drawing it
+up, in case monsieur should happen to desire to discharge his debt.”
+And he drew a paper from his pocket-book and presented it to his
+patron. The document was written in a minute, fantastic hand, and
+couched in the choicest language.
+
+Newman laid down the money, and M. Nioche dropped the napoleons one by
+one, solemnly and lovingly, into an old leathern purse.
+
+“And how is your young lady?” asked Newman. “She made a great
+impression on me.”
+
+“An impression? Monsieur is very good. Monsieur admires her
+appearance?”
+
+“She is very pretty, certainly.”
+
+“Alas, yes, she is very pretty!”
+
+“And what is the harm in her being pretty?”
+
+M. Nioche fixed his eyes upon a spot on the carpet and shook his head.
+Then looking up at Newman with a gaze that seemed to brighten and
+expand, “Monsieur knows what Paris is. She is dangerous to beauty, when
+beauty hasn’t the sou.”
+
+“Ah, but that is not the case with your daughter. She is rich, now.”
+
+“Very true; we are rich for six months. But if my daughter were a plain
+girl I should sleep better all the same.”
+
+“You are afraid of the young men?”
+
+“The young and the old!”
+
+“She ought to get a husband.”
+
+“Ah, monsieur, one doesn’t get a husband for nothing. Her husband must
+take her as she is; I can’t give her a sou. But the young men don’t see
+with that eye.”
+
+“Oh,” said Newman, “her talent is in itself a dowry.”
+
+“Ah, sir, it needs first to be converted into specie!” and M. Nioche
+slapped his purse tenderly before he stowed it away. “The operation
+doesn’t take place every day.”
+
+“Well, your young men are very shabby,” said Newman; “that’s all I can
+say. They ought to pay for your daughter, and not ask money
+themselves.”
+
+“Those are very noble ideas, monsieur; but what will you have? They are
+not the ideas of this country. We want to know what we are about when
+we marry.”
+
+“How big a portion does your daughter want?”
+
+M. Nioche stared, as if he wondered what was coming next; but he
+promptly recovered himself, at a venture, and replied that he knew a
+very nice young man, employed by an insurance company, who would
+content himself with fifteen thousand francs.
+
+“Let your daughter paint half a dozen pictures for me, and she shall
+have her dowry.”
+
+“Half a dozen pictures—her dowry! Monsieur is not speaking
+inconsiderately?”
+
+“If she will make me six or eight copies in the Louvre as pretty as
+that Madonna, I will pay her the same price,” said Newman.
+
+Poor M. Nioche was speechless a moment, with amazement and gratitude,
+and then he seized Newman’s hand, pressed it between his own ten
+fingers, and gazed at him with watery eyes. “As pretty as that? They
+shall be a thousand times prettier—they shall be magnificent, sublime.
+Ah, if I only knew how to paint, myself, sir, so that I might lend a
+hand! What can I do to thank you? _Voyons!_” And he pressed his
+forehead while he tried to think of something.
+
+“Oh, you have thanked me enough,” said Newman.
+
+“Ah, here it is, sir!” cried M. Nioche. “To express my gratitude, I
+will charge you nothing for the lessons in French conversation.”
+
+“The lessons? I had quite forgotten them. Listening to your English,”
+added Newman, laughing, “is almost a lesson in French.”
+
+“Ah, I don’t profess to teach English, certainly,” said M. Nioche. “But
+for my own admirable tongue I am still at your service.”
+
+“Since you are here, then,” said Newman, “we will begin. This is a very
+good hour. I am going to have my coffee; come every morning at
+half-past nine and have yours with me.”
+
+“Monsieur offers me my coffee, also?” cried M. Nioche. “Truly, my
+_beaux jours_ are coming back.”
+
+“Come,” said Newman, “let us begin. The coffee is almighty hot. How do
+you say that in French?”
+
+Every day, then, for the following three weeks, the minutely
+respectable figure of M. Nioche made its appearance, with a series of
+little inquiring and apologetic obeisances, among the aromatic fumes of
+Newman’s morning beverage. I don’t know how much French our friend
+learned, but, as he himself said, if the attempt did him no good, it
+could at any rate do him no harm. And it amused him; it gratified that
+irregularly sociable side of his nature which had always expressed
+itself in a relish for ungrammatical conversation, and which often,
+even in his busy and preoccupied days, had made him sit on rail fences
+in young Western towns, in the twilight, in gossip hardly less than
+fraternal with humorous loafers and obscure fortune-seekers. He had
+notions, wherever he went, about talking with the natives; he had been
+assured, and his judgment approved the advice, that in traveling abroad
+it was an excellent thing to look into the life of the country. M.
+Nioche was very much of a native and, though his life might not be
+particularly worth looking into, he was a palpable and smoothly-rounded
+unit in that picturesque Parisian civilization which offered our hero
+so much easy entertainment and propounded so many curious problems to
+his inquiring and practical mind. Newman was fond of statistics; he
+liked to know how things were done; it gratified him to learn what
+taxes were paid, what profits were gathered, what commercial habits
+prevailed, how the battle of life was fought. M. Nioche, as a reduced
+capitalist, was familiar with these considerations, and he formulated
+his information, which he was proud to be able to impart, in the
+neatest possible terms and with a pinch of snuff between finger and
+thumb. As a Frenchman—quite apart from Newman’s napoleons—M. Nioche
+loved conversation, and even in his decay his urbanity had not grown
+rusty. As a Frenchman, too, he could give a clear account of things,
+and—still as a Frenchman—when his knowledge was at fault he could
+supply its lapses with the most convenient and ingenious hypotheses.
+The little shrunken financier was intensely delighted to have questions
+asked him, and he scraped together information, by frugal processes,
+and took notes, in his little greasy pocket-book, of incidents which
+might interest his munificent friend. He read old almanacs at the
+book-stalls on the quays, and he began to frequent another _café_,
+where more newspapers were taken and his postprandial _demitasse_ cost
+him a penny extra, and where he used to con the tattered sheets for
+curious anecdotes, freaks of nature, and strange coincidences. He would
+relate with solemnity the next morning that a child of five years of
+age had lately died at Bordeaux, whose brain had been found to weigh
+sixty ounces—the brain of a Napoleon or a Washington! or that Madame
+P—, _charcutière_ in the Rue de Clichy, had found in the wadding of an
+old petticoat the sum of three hundred and sixty francs, which she had
+lost five years before. He pronounced his words with great distinctness
+and sonority, and Newman assured him that his way of dealing with the
+French tongue was very superior to the bewildering chatter that he
+heard in other mouths. Upon this M. Nioche’s accent became more finely
+trenchant than ever, he offered to read extracts from Lamartine, and he
+protested that, although he did endeavor according to his feeble lights
+to cultivate refinement of diction, monsieur, if he wanted the real
+thing, should go to the Théâtre Français.
+
+Newman took an interest in French thriftiness and conceived a lively
+admiration for Parisian economies. His own economic genius was so
+entirely for operations on a larger scale, and, to move at his ease, he
+needed so imperatively the sense of great risks and great prizes, that
+he found an ungrudging entertainment in the spectacle of fortunes made
+by the aggregation of copper coins, and in the minute subdivision of
+labor and profit. He questioned M. Nioche about his own manner of life,
+and felt a friendly mixture of compassion and respect over the recital
+of his delicate frugalities. The worthy man told him how, at one
+period, he and his daughter had supported existence comfortably upon
+the sum of fifteen sous _per diem_; recently, having succeeded in
+hauling ashore the last floating fragments of the wreck of his fortune,
+his budget had been a trifle more ample. But they still had to count
+their sous very narrowly, and M. Nioche intimated with a sigh that
+Mademoiselle Noémie did not bring to this task that zealous cooperation
+which might have been desired.
+
+“But what will you have?”’ he asked, philosophically. “One is young,
+one is pretty, one needs new dresses and fresh gloves; one can’t wear
+shabby gowns among the splendors of the Louvre.”
+
+“But your daughter earns enough to pay for her own clothes,” said
+Newman.
+
+M. Nioche looked at him with weak, uncertain eyes. He would have liked
+to be able to say that his daughter’s talents were appreciated, and
+that her crooked little daubs commanded a market; but it seemed a
+scandal to abuse the credulity of this free-handed stranger, who,
+without a suspicion or a question, had admitted him to equal social
+rights. He compromised, and declared that while it was obvious that
+Mademoiselle Noémie’s reproductions of the old masters had only to be
+seen to be coveted, the prices which, in consideration of their
+altogether peculiar degree of finish, she felt obliged to ask for them
+had kept purchasers at a respectful distance. “Poor little one!” said
+M. Nioche, with a sigh; “it is almost a pity that her work is so
+perfect! It would be in her interest to paint less well.”
+
+“But if Mademoiselle Noémie has this devotion to her art,” Newman once
+observed, “why should you have those fears for her that you spoke of
+the other day?”
+
+M. Nioche meditated: there was an inconsistency in his position; it
+made him chronically uncomfortable. Though he had no desire to destroy
+the goose with the golden eggs—Newman’s benevolent confidence—he felt a
+tremulous impulse to speak out all his trouble. “Ah, she is an artist,
+my dear sir, most assuredly,” he declared. “But, to tell you the truth,
+she is also a _franche coquette_. I am sorry to say,” he added in a
+moment, shaking his head with a world of harmless bitterness, “that she
+comes honestly by it. Her mother was one before her!”
+
+“You were not happy with your wife?” Newman asked.
+
+M. Nioche gave half a dozen little backward jerks of his head. “She was
+my purgatory, monsieur!”
+
+“She deceived you?”
+
+“Under my nose, year after year. I was too stupid, and the temptation
+was too great. But I found her out at last. I have only been once in my
+life a man to be afraid of; I know it very well; it was in that hour!
+Nevertheless I don’t like to think of it. I loved her—I can’t tell you
+how much. She was a bad woman.”
+
+“She is not living?”
+
+“She has gone to her account.”
+
+“Her influence on your daughter, then,” said Newman encouragingly, “is
+not to be feared.”
+
+“She cared no more for her daughter than for the sole of her shoe! But
+Noémie has no need of influence. She is sufficient to herself. She is
+stronger than I.”
+
+“She doesn’t obey you, eh?”
+
+“She can’t obey, monsieur, since I don’t command. What would be the
+use? It would only irritate her and drive her to some _coup de tête_.
+She is very clever, like her mother; she would waste no time about it.
+As a child—when I was happy, or supposed I was—she studied drawing and
+painting with first-class professors, and they assured me she had a
+talent. I was delighted to believe it, and when I went into society I
+used to carry her pictures with me in a portfolio and hand them round
+to the company. I remember, once, a lady thought I was offering them
+for sale, and I took it very ill. We don’t know what we may come to!
+Then came my dark days, and my explosion with Madame Nioche. Noémie had
+no more twenty-franc lessons; but in the course of time, when she grew
+older, and it became highly expedient that she should do something that
+would help to keep us alive, she bethought herself of her palette and
+brushes. Some of our friends in the _quartier_ pronounced the idea
+fantastic: they recommended her to try bonnet making, to get a
+situation in a shop, or—if she was more ambitious—to advertise for a
+place of _dame de compagnie_. She did advertise, and an old lady wrote
+her a letter and bade her come and see her. The old lady liked her, and
+offered her her living and six hundred francs a year; but Noémie
+discovered that she passed her life in her armchair and had only two
+visitors, her confessor and her nephew: the confessor very strict, and
+the nephew a man of fifty, with a broken nose and a government
+clerkship of two thousand francs. She threw her old lady over, bought a
+paint-box, a canvas, and a new dress, and went and set up her easel in
+the Louvre. There in one place and another, she has passed the last two
+years; I can’t say it has made us millionaires. But Noémie tells me
+that Rome was not built in a day, that she is making great progress,
+that I must leave her to her own devices. The fact is, without
+prejudice to her genius, that she has no idea of burying herself alive.
+She likes to see the world, and to be seen. She says, herself, that she
+can’t work in the dark. With her appearance it is very natural. Only, I
+can’t help worrying and trembling and wondering what may happen to her
+there all alone, day after day, amid all that coming and going of
+strangers. I can’t be always at her side. I go with her in the morning,
+and I come to fetch her away, but she won’t have me near her in the
+interval; she says I make her nervous. As if it didn’t make me nervous
+to wander about all day without her! Ah, if anything were to happen to
+her!” cried M. Nioche, clenching his two fists and jerking back his
+head again, portentously.
+
+“Oh, I guess nothing will happen,” said Newman.
+
+“I believe I should shoot her!” said the old man, solemnly.
+
+“Oh, we’ll marry her,” said Newman, “since that’s how you manage it;
+and I will go and see her tomorrow at the Louvre and pick out the
+pictures she is to copy for me.”
+
+M. Nioche had brought Newman a message from his daughter, in acceptance
+of his magnificent commission, the young lady declaring herself his
+most devoted servant, promising her most zealous endeavor, and
+regretting that the proprieties forbade her coming to thank him in
+person. The morning after the conversation just narrated, Newman
+reverted to his intention of meeting Mademoiselle Noémie at the Louvre.
+M. Nioche appeared preoccupied, and left his budget of anecdotes
+unopened; he took a great deal of snuff, and sent certain oblique,
+appealing glances toward his stalwart pupil. At last, when he was
+taking his leave, he stood a moment, after he had polished his hat with
+his calico pocket-handkerchief, with his small, pale eyes fixed
+strangely upon Newman.
+
+“What’s the matter?” our hero demanded.
+
+“Excuse the solicitude of a father’s heart!” said M. Nioche. “You
+inspire me with boundless confidence, but I can’t help giving you a
+warning. After all, you are a man, you are young and at liberty. Let me
+beseech you, then, to respect the innocence of Mademoiselle Nioche!”
+
+Newman had wondered what was coming, and at this he broke into a laugh.
+He was on the point of declaring that his own innocence struck him as
+the more exposed, but he contented himself with promising to treat the
+young girl with nothing less than veneration. He found her waiting for
+him, seated upon the great divan in the Salon Carré. She was not in her
+working-day costume, but wore her bonnet and gloves and carried her
+parasol, in honor of the occasion. These articles had been selected
+with unerring taste, and a fresher, prettier image of youthful
+alertness and blooming discretion was not to be conceived. She made
+Newman a most respectful curtsey and expressed her gratitude for his
+liberality in a wonderfully graceful little speech. It annoyed him to
+have a charming young girl stand there thanking him, and it made him
+feel uncomfortable to think that this perfect young lady, with her
+excellent manners and her finished intonation, was literally in his
+pay. He assured her, in such French as he could muster, that the thing
+was not worth mentioning, and that he considered her services a great
+favor.
+
+“Whenever you please, then,” said Mademoiselle Noémie, “we will pass
+the review.”
+
+They walked slowly round the room, then passed into the others and
+strolled about for half an hour. Mademoiselle Noémie evidently relished
+her situation, and had no desire to bring her public interview with her
+striking-looking patron to a close. Newman perceived that prosperity
+agreed with her. The little thin-lipped, peremptory air with which she
+had addressed her father on the occasion of their former meeting had
+given place to the most lingering and caressing tones.
+
+“What sort of pictures do you desire?” she asked. “Sacred, or profane?”
+
+“Oh, a few of each,” said Newman. “But I want something bright and
+gay.”
+
+“Something gay? There is nothing very gay in this solemn old Louvre.
+But we will see what we can find. You speak French to-day like a charm.
+My father has done wonders.”
+
+“Oh, I am a bad subject,” said Newman. “I am too old to learn a
+language.”
+
+“Too old? _Quelle folie!_” cried Mademoiselle Noémie, with a clear,
+shrill laugh. “You are a very young man. And how do you like my
+father?”
+
+“He is a very nice old gentleman. He never laughs at my blunders.”
+
+“He is very _comme il faut_, my papa,” said Mademoiselle Noémie, “and
+as honest as the day. Oh, an exceptional probity! You could trust him
+with millions.”
+
+“Do you always obey him?” asked Newman.
+
+“Obey him?”
+
+“Do you do what he bids you?”
+
+The young girl stopped and looked at him; she had a spot of color in
+either cheek, and in her expressive French eye, which projected too
+much for perfect beauty, there was a slight gleam of audacity. “Why do
+you ask me that?” she demanded.
+
+“Because I want to know.”
+
+“You think me a bad girl?” And she gave a strange smile.
+
+Newman looked at her a moment; he saw that she was pretty, but he was
+not in the least dazzled. He remembered poor M. Nioche’s solicitude for
+her “innocence,” and he laughed as his eyes met hers. Her face was the
+oddest mixture of youth and maturity, and beneath her candid brow her
+searching little smile seemed to contain a world of ambiguous
+intentions. She was pretty enough, certainly to make her father
+nervous; but, as regards her innocence, Newman felt ready on the spot
+to affirm that she had never parted with it. She had simply never had
+any; she had been looking at the world since she was ten years old, and
+he would have been a wise man who could tell her any secrets. In her
+long mornings at the Louvre she had not only studied Madonnas and St.
+Johns; she had kept an eye upon all the variously embodied human nature
+around her, and she had formed her conclusions. In a certain sense, it
+seemed to Newman, M. Nioche might be at rest; his daughter might do
+something very audacious, but she would never do anything foolish.
+Newman, with his long-drawn, leisurely smile, and his even, unhurried
+utterance, was always, mentally, taking his time; and he asked himself,
+now, what she was looking at him in that way for. He had an idea that
+she would like him to confess that he did think her a bad girl.
+
+“Oh, no,” he said at last; “it would be very bad manners in me to judge
+you that way. I don’t know you.”
+
+“But my father has complained to you,” said Mademoiselle Noémie.
+
+“He says you are a coquette.”
+
+“He shouldn’t go about saying such things to gentlemen! But you don’t
+believe it?”
+
+“No,” said Newman gravely, “I don’t believe it.”
+
+She looked at him again, gave a shrug and a smile, and then pointed to
+a small Italian picture, a Marriage of St. Catherine. “How should you
+like that?” she asked.
+
+“It doesn’t please me,” said Newman. “The young lady in the yellow
+dress is not pretty.”
+
+“Ah, you are a great connoisseur,” murmured Mademoiselle Noémie.
+
+“In pictures? Oh, no; I know very little about them.”
+
+“In pretty women, then.”
+
+“In that I am hardly better.”
+
+“What do you say to that, then?” the young girl asked, indicating a
+superb Italian portrait of a lady. “I will do it for you on a smaller
+scale.”
+
+“On a smaller scale? Why not as large as the original?”
+
+Mademoiselle Noémie glanced at the glowing splendor of the Venetian
+masterpiece and gave a little toss of her head. “I don’t like that
+woman. She looks stupid.”
+
+“I do like her,” said Newman. “Decidedly, I must have her, as large as
+life. And just as stupid as she is there.”
+
+The young girl fixed her eyes on him again, and with her mocking smile,
+“It certainly ought to be easy for me to make her look stupid!” she
+said.
+
+“What do you mean?” asked Newman, puzzled.
+
+She gave another little shrug. “Seriously, then, you want that
+portrait—the golden hair, the purple satin, the pearl necklace, the two
+magnificent arms?”
+
+“Everything—just as it is.”
+
+“Would nothing else do, instead?”
+
+“Oh, I want some other things, but I want that too.”
+
+Mademoiselle Noémie turned away a moment, walked to the other side of
+the hall, and stood there, looking vaguely about her. At last she came
+back. “It must be charming to be able to order pictures at such a rate.
+Venetian portraits, as large as life! You go at it _en prince_. And you
+are going to travel about Europe that way?”
+
+“Yes, I intend to travel,” said Newman.
+
+“Ordering, buying, spending money?”
+
+“Of course I shall spend some money.”
+
+“You are very happy to have it. And you are perfectly free?”
+
+“How do you mean, free?”
+
+“You have nothing to bother you—no family, no wife, no _fiancée?_”
+
+“Yes, I am tolerably free.”
+
+“You are very happy,” said Mademoiselle Noémie, gravely.
+
+“_Je le veux bien!_” said Newman, proving that he had learned more
+French than he admitted.
+
+“And how long shall you stay in Paris?” the young girl went on.
+
+“Only a few days more.”
+
+“Why do you go away?”
+
+“It is getting hot, and I must go to Switzerland.”
+
+“To Switzerland? That’s a fine country. I would give my new parasol to
+see it! Lakes and mountains, romantic valleys and icy peaks! Oh, I
+congratulate you. Meanwhile, I shall sit here through all the hot
+summer, daubing at your pictures.”
+
+“Oh, take your time about it,” said Newman. “Do them at your
+convenience.”
+
+They walked farther and looked at a dozen other things. Newman pointed
+out what pleased him, and Mademoiselle Noémie generally criticised it,
+and proposed something else. Then suddenly she diverged and began to
+talk about some personal matter.
+
+“What made you speak to me the other day in the Salon Carré?” she
+abruptly asked.
+
+“I admired your picture.”
+
+“But you hesitated a long time.”
+
+“Oh, I do nothing rashly,” said Newman.
+
+“Yes, I saw you watching me. But I never supposed you were going to
+speak to me. I never dreamed I should be walking about here with you
+to-day. It’s very curious.”
+
+“It is very natural,” observed Newman.
+
+“Oh, I beg your pardon; not to me. Coquette as you think me, I have
+never walked about in public with a gentleman before. What was my
+father thinking of, when he consented to our interview?”
+
+“He was repenting of his unjust accusations,” replied Newman.
+
+Mademoiselle Noémie remained silent; at last she dropped into a seat.
+“Well then, for those five it is fixed,” she said. “Five copies as
+brilliant and beautiful as I can make them. We have one more to choose.
+Shouldn’t you like one of those great Rubenses—the marriage of Marie de
+Médicis? Just look at it and see how handsome it is.”
+
+“Oh, yes; I should like that,” said Newman. “Finish off with that.”
+
+“Finish off with that—good!” And she laughed. She sat a moment, looking
+at him, and then she suddenly rose and stood before him, with her hands
+hanging and clasped in front of her. “I don’t understand you,” she said
+with a smile. “I don’t understand how a man can be so ignorant.”
+
+“Oh, I am ignorant, certainly,” said Newman, putting his hands into his
+pockets.
+
+“It’s ridiculous! I don’t know how to paint.”
+
+“You don’t know how?”
+
+“I paint like a cat; I can’t draw a straight line. I never sold a
+picture until you bought that thing the other day.” And as she offered
+this surprising information she continued to smile.
+
+Newman burst into a laugh. “Why do you tell me this?” he asked.
+
+“Because it irritates me to see a clever man blunder so. My pictures
+are grotesque.”
+
+“And the one I possess—”
+
+“That one is rather worse than usual.”
+
+“Well,” said Newman, “I like it all the same!”
+
+She looked at him askance. “That is a very pretty thing to say,” she
+answered; “but it is my duty to warn you before you go farther. This
+order of yours is impossible, you know. What do you take me for? It is
+work for ten men. You pick out the six most difficult pictures in the
+Louvre, and you expect me to go to work as if I were sitting down to
+hem a dozen pocket handkerchiefs. I wanted to see how far you would
+go.”
+
+Newman looked at the young girl in some perplexity. In spite of the
+ridiculous blunder of which he stood convicted, he was very far from
+being a simpleton, and he had a lively suspicion that Mademoiselle
+Noémie’s sudden frankness was not essentially more honest than her
+leaving him in error would have been. She was playing a game; she was
+not simply taking pity on his æsthetic verdancy. What was it she
+expected to win? The stakes were high and the risk was great; the prize
+therefore must have been commensurate. But even granting that the prize
+might be great, Newman could not resist a movement of admiration for
+his companion’s intrepidity. She was throwing away with one hand,
+whatever she might intend to do with the other, a very handsome sum of
+money.
+
+“Are you joking,” he said, “or are you serious?”
+
+“Oh, serious!” cried Mademoiselle Noémie, but with her extraordinary
+smile.
+
+“I know very little about pictures or how they are painted. If you
+can’t do all that, of course you can’t. Do what you can, then.”
+
+“It will be very bad,” said Mademoiselle Noémie.
+
+“Oh,” said Newman, laughing, “if you are determined it shall be bad, of
+course it will. But why do you go on painting badly?”
+
+“I can do nothing else; I have no real talent.”
+
+“You are deceiving your father, then.”
+
+The young girl hesitated a moment. “He knows very well!”
+
+“No,” Newman declared; “I am sure he believes in you.”
+
+“He is afraid of me. I go on painting badly, as you say, because I want
+to learn. I like it, at any rate. And I like being here; it is a place
+to come to, every day; it is better than sitting in a little dark, damp
+room, on a court, or selling buttons and whalebones over a counter.”
+
+“Of course it is much more amusing,” said Newman. “But for a poor girl
+isn’t it rather an expensive amusement?”
+
+“Oh, I am very wrong, there is no doubt about that,” said Mademoiselle
+Noémie. “But rather than earn my living as some girls do—toiling with a
+needle, in little black holes, out of the world—I would throw myself
+into the Seine.”
+
+“There is no need of that,” Newman answered; “your father told you my
+offer?”
+
+“Your offer?”
+
+“He wants you to marry, and I told him I would give you a chance to
+earn your _dot_.”
+
+“He told me all about it, and you see the account I make of it! Why
+should you take such an interest in my marriage?”
+
+“My interest was in your father. I hold to my offer; do what you can,
+and I will buy what you paint.”
+
+She stood for some time, meditating, with her eyes on the ground. At
+last, looking up, “What sort of a husband can you get for twelve
+thousand francs?” she asked.
+
+“Your father tells me he knows some very good young men.”
+
+“Grocers and butchers and little _maîtres de cafés!_ I will not marry
+at all if I can’t marry well.”
+
+“I would advise you not to be too fastidious,” said Newman. “That’s all
+the advice I can give you.”
+
+“I am very much vexed at what I have said!” cried the young girl. “It
+has done me no good. But I couldn’t help it.”
+
+“What good did you expect it to do you?”
+
+“I couldn’t help it, simply.”
+
+Newman looked at her a moment. “Well, your pictures may be bad,” he
+said, “but you are too clever for me, nevertheless. I don’t understand
+you. Good-bye!” And he put out his hand.
+
+She made no response, and offered him no farewell. She turned away and
+seated herself sidewise on a bench, leaning her head on the back of her
+hand, which clasped the rail in front of the pictures. Newman stood a
+moment and then turned on his heel and retreated. He had understood her
+better than he confessed; this singular scene was a practical
+commentary upon her father’s statement that she was a frank coquette.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+When Newman related to Mrs. Tristram his fruitless visit to Madame de
+Cintré, she urged him not to be discouraged, but to carry out his plan
+of “seeing Europe” during the summer, and return to Paris in the autumn
+and settle down comfortably for the winter. “Madame de Cintré will
+keep,” she said; “she is not a woman who will marry from one day to
+another.” Newman made no distinct affirmation that he would come back
+to Paris; he even talked about Rome and the Nile, and abstained from
+professing any especial interest in Madame de Cintré’s continued
+widowhood. This circumstance was at variance with his habitual
+frankness, and may perhaps be regarded as characteristic of the
+incipient stage of that passion which is more particularly known as the
+mysterious one. The truth is that the expression of a pair of eyes that
+were at once brilliant and mild had become very familiar to his memory,
+and he would not easily have resigned himself to the prospect of never
+looking into them again. He communicated to Mrs. Tristram a number of
+other facts, of greater or less importance, as you choose; but on this
+particular point he kept his own counsel. He took a kindly leave of M.
+Nioche, having assured him that, so far as he was concerned, the
+blue-cloaked Madonna herself might have been present at his interview
+with Mademoiselle Noémie; and left the old man nursing his
+breast-pocket, in an ecstasy which the acutest misfortune might have
+been defied to dissipate. Newman then started on his travels, with all
+his usual appearance of slow-strolling leisure, and all his essential
+directness and intensity of aim. No man seemed less in a hurry, and yet
+no man achieved more in brief periods. He had certain practical
+instincts which served him excellently in his trade of tourist. He
+found his way in foreign cities by divination, his memory was excellent
+when once his attention had been at all cordially given, and he emerged
+from dialogues in foreign tongues, of which he had, formally, not
+understood a word, in full possession of the particular fact he had
+desired to ascertain. His appetite for facts was capacious, and
+although many of those which he noted would have seemed woefully dry
+and colorless to the ordinary sentimental traveler, a careful
+inspection of the list would have shown that he had a soft spot in his
+imagination. In the charming city of Brussels—his first stopping-place
+after leaving Paris—he asked a great many questions about the
+street-cars, and took extreme satisfaction in the reappearance of this
+familiar symbol of American civilization; but he was also greatly
+struck with the beautiful Gothic tower of the Hôtel de Ville, and
+wondered whether it would not be possible to “get up” something like it
+in San Francisco. He stood for half an hour in the crowded square
+before this edifice, in imminent danger from carriage-wheels, listening
+to a toothless old cicerone mumble in broken English the touching
+history of Counts Egmont and Horn; and he wrote the names of these
+gentlemen—for reasons best known to himself—on the back of an old
+letter.
+
+At the outset, on his leaving Paris, his curiosity had not been
+intense; passive entertainment, in the Champs Élysées and at the
+theatres, seemed about as much as he need expect of himself, and
+although, as he had said to Tristram, he wanted to see the mysterious,
+satisfying _best_, he had not the Grand Tour in the least on his
+conscience, and was not given to cross-questioning the amusement of the
+hour. He believed that Europe was made for him, and not he for Europe.
+He had said that he wanted to improve his mind, but he would have felt
+a certain embarrassment, a certain shame, even—a false shame,
+possibly—if he had caught himself looking intellectually into the
+mirror. Neither in this nor in any other respect had Newman a high
+sense of responsibility; it was his prime conviction that a man’s life
+should be easy, and that he should be able to resolve privilege into a
+matter of course. The world, to his sense, was a great bazaar, where
+one might stroll about and purchase handsome things; but he was no more
+conscious, individually, of social pressure than he admitted the
+existence of such a thing as an obligatory purchase. He had not only a
+dislike, but a sort of moral mistrust, of uncomfortable thoughts, and
+it was both uncomfortable and slightly contemptible to feel obliged to
+square one’s self with a standard. One’s standard was the ideal of
+one’s own good-humored prosperity, the prosperity which enabled one to
+give as well as take. To expand, without bothering about it—without
+shiftless timidity on one side, or loquacious eagerness on the other—to
+the full compass of what he would have called a “pleasant” experience,
+was Newman’s most definite programme of life. He had always hated to
+hurry to catch railroad trains, and yet he had always caught them; and
+just so an undue solicitude for “culture” seemed a sort of silly
+dawdling at the station, a proceeding properly confined to women,
+foreigners, and other unpractical persons. All this admitted, Newman
+enjoyed his journey, when once he had fairly entered the current, as
+profoundly as the most zealous _dilettante_. One’s theories, after all,
+matter little; it is one’s humor that is the great thing. Our friend
+was intelligent, and he could not help that. He lounged through Belgium
+and Holland and the Rhineland, through Switzerland and Northern Italy,
+planning about nothing, but seeing everything. The guides and _valets
+de place_ found him an excellent subject. He was always approachable,
+for he was much addicted to standing about in the vestibules and
+porticos of inns, and he availed himself little of the opportunities
+for impressive seclusion which are so liberally offered in Europe to
+gentlemen who travel with long purses. When an excursion, a church, a
+gallery, a ruin, was proposed to him, the first thing Newman usually
+did, after surveying his postulant in silence, from head to foot, was
+to sit down at a little table and order something to drink. The
+cicerone, during this process, usually retreated to a respectful
+distance; otherwise I am not sure that Newman would not have bidden him
+sit down and have a glass also, and tell him as an honest fellow
+whether his church or his gallery was really worth a man’s trouble. At
+last he rose and stretched his long legs, beckoned to the man of
+monuments, looked at his watch, and fixed his eye on his adversary.
+“What is it?” he asked. “How far?” And whatever the answer was,
+although he sometimes seemed to hesitate, he never declined. He stepped
+into an open cab, made his conductor sit beside him to answer
+questions, bade the driver go fast (he had a particular aversion to
+slow driving) and rolled, in all probability through a dusty suburb, to
+the goal of his pilgrimage. If the goal was a disappointment, if the
+church was meagre, or the ruin a heap of rubbish, Newman never
+protested or berated his cicerone; he looked with an impartial eye upon
+great monuments and small, made the guide recite his lesson, listened
+to it religiously, asked if there was nothing else to be seen in the
+neighborhood, and drove back again at a rattling pace. It is to be
+feared that his perception of the difference between good architecture
+and bad was not acute, and that he might sometimes have been seen
+gazing with culpable serenity at inferior productions. Ugly churches
+were a part of his pastime in Europe, as well as beautiful ones, and
+his tour was altogether a pastime. But there is sometimes nothing like
+the imagination of these people who have none, and Newman, now and
+then, in an unguided stroll in a foreign city, before some lonely,
+sad-towered church, or some angular image of one who had rendered civic
+service in an unknown past, had felt a singular inward tremor. It was
+not an excitement or a perplexity; it was a placid, fathomless sense of
+diversion.
+
+He encountered by chance in Holland a young American, with whom, for a
+time, he formed a sort of traveler’s partnership. They were men of a
+very different cast, but each, in his way, was so good a fellow that,
+for a few weeks at least, it seemed something of a pleasure to share
+the chances of the road. Newman’s comrade, whose name was Babcock, was
+a young Unitarian minister, a small, spare, neatly-attired man, with a
+strikingly candid physiognomy. He was a native of Dorchester,
+Massachusetts, and had spiritual charge of a small congregation in
+another suburb of the New England metropolis. His digestion was weak
+and he lived chiefly on Graham bread and hominy—a regimen to which he
+was so much attached that his tour seemed to him destined to be
+blighted when, on landing on the Continent, he found that these
+delicacies did not flourish under the _table d’hôte_ system. In Paris
+he had purchased a bag of hominy at an establishment which called
+itself an American Agency, and at which the New York illustrated papers
+were also to be procured, and he had carried it about with him, and
+shown extreme serenity and fortitude in the somewhat delicate position
+of having his hominy prepared for him and served at anomalous hours, at
+the hotels he successively visited. Newman had once spent a morning, in
+the course of business, at Mr. Babcock’s birthplace, and, for reasons
+too recondite to unfold, his visit there always assumed in his mind a
+jocular cast. To carry out his joke, which certainly seems poor so long
+as it is not explained, he used often to address his companion as
+“Dorchester.” Fellow-travelers very soon grow intimate but it is highly
+improbable that at home these extremely dissimilar characters would
+have found any very convenient points of contact. They were, indeed, as
+different as possible. Newman, who never reflected on such matters,
+accepted the situation with great equanimity, but Babcock used to
+meditate over it privately; used often, indeed, to retire to his room
+early in the evening for the express purpose of considering it
+conscientiously and impartially. He was not sure that it was a good
+thing for him to associate with our hero, whose way of taking life was
+so little his own. Newman was an excellent, generous fellow; Mr.
+Babcock sometimes said to himself that he was a _noble_ fellow, and,
+certainly, it was impossible not to like him. But would it not be
+desirable to try to exert an influence upon him, to try to quicken his
+moral life and sharpen his sense of duty? He liked everything, he
+accepted everything, he found amusement in everything; he was not
+discriminating, he had not a high tone. The young man from Dorchester
+accused Newman of a fault which he considered very grave, and which he
+did his best to avoid: what he would have called a want of “moral
+reaction.” Poor Mr. Babcock was extremely fond of pictures and
+churches, and carried Mrs. Jameson’s works about in his trunk; he
+delighted in æsthetic analysis, and received peculiar impressions from
+everything he saw. But nevertheless in his secret soul he detested
+Europe, and he felt an irritating need to protest against Newman’s
+gross intellectual hospitality. Mr. Babcock’s moral _malaise_, I am
+afraid, lay deeper than where any definition of mine can reach it. He
+mistrusted the European temperament, he suffered from the European
+climate, he hated the European dinner-hour; European life seemed to him
+unscrupulous and impure. And yet he had an exquisite sense of beauty;
+and as beauty was often inextricably associated with the above
+displeasing conditions, as he wished, above all, to be just and
+dispassionate, and as he was, furthermore, extremely devoted to
+“culture,” he could not bring himself to decide that Europe was utterly
+bad. But he thought it was very bad indeed, and his quarrel with Newman
+was that this unregulated epicure had a sadly insufficient perception
+of the bad. Babcock himself really knew as little about the bad, in any
+quarter of the world, as a nursing infant, his most vivid realization
+of evil had been the discovery that one of his college classmates, who
+was studying architecture in Paris had a love affair with a young woman
+who did not expect him to marry her. Babcock had related this incident
+to Newman, and our hero had applied an epithet of an unflattering sort
+to the young girl. The next day his companion asked him whether he was
+very sure he had used exactly the right word to characterize the young
+architect’s mistress. Newman stared and laughed. “There are a great
+many words to express that idea,” he said; “you can take your choice!”
+
+“Oh, I mean,” said Babcock, “was she possibly not to be considered in a
+different light? Don’t you think she _really_ expected him to marry
+her?”
+
+“I am sure I don’t know,” said Newman. “Very likely she did; I have no
+doubt she is a grand woman.” And he began to laugh again.
+
+“I didn’t mean that either,” said Babcock, “I was only afraid that I
+might have seemed yesterday not to remember—not to consider; well, I
+think I will write to Percival about it.”
+
+And he had written to Percival (who answered him in a really impudent
+fashion), and he had reflected that it was somehow, raw and reckless in
+Newman to assume in that off-hand manner that the young woman in Paris
+might be “grand.” The brevity of Newman’s judgments very often shocked
+and discomposed him. He had a way of damning people without farther
+appeal, or of pronouncing them capital company in the face of
+uncomfortable symptoms, which seemed unworthy of a man whose conscience
+had been properly cultivated. And yet poor Babcock liked him, and
+remembered that even if he was sometimes perplexing and painful, this
+was not a reason for giving him up. Goethe recommended seeing human
+nature in the most various forms, and Mr. Babcock thought Goethe
+perfectly splendid. He often tried, in odd half-hours of conversation
+to infuse into Newman a little of his own spiritual starch, but
+Newman’s personal texture was too loose to admit of stiffening. His
+mind could no more hold principles than a sieve can hold water. He
+admired principles extremely, and thought Babcock a mighty fine little
+fellow for having so many. He accepted all that his high-strung
+companion offered him, and put them away in what he supposed to be a
+very safe place; but poor Babcock never afterwards recognized his gifts
+among the articles that Newman had in daily use.
+
+They traveled together through Germany and into Switzerland, where for
+three or four weeks they trudged over passes and lounged upon blue
+lakes. At last they crossed the Simplon and made their way to Venice.
+Mr. Babcock had become gloomy and even a trifle irritable; he seemed
+moody, absent, preoccupied; he got his plans into a tangle, and talked
+one moment of doing one thing and the next of doing another. Newman led
+his usual life, made acquaintances, took his ease in the galleries and
+churches, spent an unconscionable amount of time in strolling in the
+Piazza San Marco, bought a great many bad pictures, and for a fortnight
+enjoyed Venice grossly. One evening, coming back to his inn, he found
+Babcock waiting for him in the little garden beside it. The young man
+walked up to him, looking very dismal, thrust out his hand, and said
+with solemnity that he was afraid they must part. Newman expressed his
+surprise and regret, and asked why a parting had become necessary.
+“Don’t be afraid I’m tired of you,” he said.
+
+“You are not tired of me?” demanded Babcock, fixing him with his clear
+gray eye.
+
+“Why the deuce should I be? You are a very plucky fellow. Besides, I
+don’t grow tired of things.”
+
+“We don’t understand each other,” said the young minister.
+
+“Don’t I understand you?” cried Newman. “Why, I hoped I did. But what
+if I don’t; where’s the harm?”
+
+“I don’t understand _you_,” said Babcock. And he sat down and rested
+his head on his hand, and looked up mournfully at his immeasurable
+friend.
+
+“Oh Lord, I don’t mind that!” cried Newman, with a laugh.
+
+“But it’s very distressing to me. It keeps me in a state of unrest. It
+irritates me; I can’t settle anything. I don’t think it’s good for me.”
+
+“You worry too much; that’s what’s the matter with you,” said Newman.
+
+“Of course it must seem so to you. You think I take things too hard,
+and I think you take things too easily. We can never agree.”
+
+“But we have agreed very well all along.”
+
+“No, I haven’t agreed,” said Babcock, shaking his head. “I am very
+uncomfortable. I ought to have separated from you a month ago.”
+
+“Oh, horrors! I’ll agree to anything!” cried Newman.
+
+Mr. Babcock buried his head in both hands. At last looking up, “I don’t
+think you appreciate my position,” he said. “I try to arrive at the
+truth about everything. And then you go too fast. For me, you are too
+passionate, too extravagant. I feel as if I ought to go over all this
+ground we have traversed again, by myself, alone. I am afraid I have
+made a great many mistakes.”
+
+“Oh, you needn’t give so many reasons,” said Newman. “You are simply
+tired of my company. You have a good right to be.”
+
+“No, no, I am not tired!” cried the pestered young divine. “It is very
+wrong to be tired.”
+
+“I give it up!” laughed Newman. “But of course it will never do to go
+on making mistakes. Go your way, by all means. I shall miss you; but
+you have seen I make friends very easily. You will be lonely yourself;
+but drop me a line, when you feel like it, and I will wait for you
+anywhere.”
+
+“I think I will go back to Milan. I am afraid I didn’t do justice to
+Luini.”
+
+“Poor Luini!” said Newman.
+
+“I mean that I am afraid I overestimated him. I don’t think that he is
+a painter of the first rank.”
+
+“Luini?” Newman exclaimed; “why, he’s enchanting—he’s magnificent!
+There is something in his genius that is like a beautiful woman. It
+gives one the same feeling.”
+
+Mr. Babcock frowned and winced. And it must be added that this was, for
+Newman, an unusually metaphysical flight; but in passing through Milan
+he had taken a great fancy to the painter. “There you are again!” said
+Mr. Babcock. “Yes, we had better separate.” And on the morrow he
+retraced his steps and proceeded to tone down his impressions of the
+great Lombard artist.
+
+A few days afterwards Newman received a note from his late companion
+which ran as follows:—
+
+My Dear Mr. Newman,—I am afraid that my conduct at Venice, a week ago,
+seemed to you strange and ungrateful, and I wish to explain my
+position, which, as I said at the time, I do not think you appreciate.
+I had long had it on my mind to propose that we should part company,
+and this step was not really so abrupt as it seemed. In the first
+place, you know, I am traveling in Europe on funds supplied by my
+congregation, who kindly offered me a vacation and an opportunity to
+enrich my mind with the treasures of nature and art in the Old World. I
+feel, therefore, as if I ought to use my time to the very best
+advantage. I have a high sense of responsibility. You appear to care
+only for the pleasure of the hour, and you give yourself up to it with
+a violence which I confess I am not able to emulate. I feel as if I
+must arrive at some conclusion and fix my belief on certain points. Art
+and life seem to me intensely serious things, and in our travels in
+Europe we should especially remember the immense seriousness of Art.
+You seem to hold that if a thing amuses you for the moment, that is all
+you need ask for it, and your relish for mere amusement is also much
+higher than mine. You put, however, a kind of reckless confidence into
+your pleasure which at times, I confess, has seemed to me—shall I say
+it?—almost cynical. Your way at any rate is not my way, and it is
+unwise that we should attempt any longer to pull together. And yet, let
+me add that I know there is a great deal to be said for your way; I
+have felt its attraction, in your society, very strongly. But for this
+I should have left you long ago. But I was so perplexed. I hope I have
+not done wrong. I feel as if I had a great deal of lost time to make
+up. I beg you take all this as I mean it, which, Heaven knows, is not
+invidiously. I have a great personal esteem for you and hope that some
+day, when I have recovered my balance, we shall meet again. I hope you
+will continue to enjoy your travels, only _do_ remember that Life and
+Art _are_ extremely serious. Believe me your sincere friend and
+well-wisher,
+
+BENJAMIN BABCOCK
+
+P. S. I am greatly perplexed by Luini.
+
+This letter produced in Newman’s mind a singular mixture of
+exhilaration and awe. At first, Mr. Babcock’s tender conscience seemed
+to him a capital farce, and his traveling back to Milan only to get
+into a deeper muddle appeared, as the reward of his pedantry,
+exquisitely and ludicrously just. Then Newman reflected that these are
+mighty mysteries, that possibly he himself was indeed that baleful and
+barely mentionable thing, a cynic, and that his manner of considering
+the treasures of art and the privileges of life was probably very base
+and immoral. Newman had a great contempt for immorality, and that
+evening, for a good half hour, as he sat watching the star-sheen on the
+warm Adriatic, he felt rebuked and depressed. He was at a loss how to
+answer Babcock’s letter. His good nature checked his resenting the
+young minister’s lofty admonitions, and his tough, inelastic sense of
+humor forbade his taking them seriously. He wrote no answer at all but
+a day or two afterward he found in a curiosity shop a grotesque little
+statuette in ivory, of the sixteenth century, which he sent off to
+Babcock without a commentary. It represented a gaunt, ascetic-looking
+monk, in a tattered gown and cowl, kneeling with clasped hands and
+pulling a portentously long face. It was a wonderfully delicate piece
+of carving, and in a moment, through one of the rents of his gown, you
+espied a fat capon hung round the monk’s waist. In Newman’s intention
+what did the figure symbolize? Did it mean that he was going to try to
+be as “high-toned” as the monk looked at first, but that he feared he
+should succeed no better than the friar, on a closer inspection, proved
+to have done? It is not supposable that he intended a satire upon
+Babcock’s own asceticism, for this would have been a truly cynical
+stroke. He made his late companion, at any rate, a very valuable little
+present.
+
+Newman, on leaving Venice, went through the Tyrol to Vienna, and then
+returned westward, through Southern Germany. The autumn found him at
+Baden-Baden, where he spent several weeks. The place was charming, and
+he was in no hurry to depart; besides, he was looking about him and
+deciding what to do for the winter. His summer had been very full, and
+he sat under the great trees beside the miniature river that trickles
+past the Baden flower-beds, he slowly rummaged it over. He had seen and
+done a great deal, enjoyed and observed a great deal; he felt older,
+and yet he felt younger too. He remembered Mr. Babcock and his desire
+to form conclusions, and he remembered also that he had profited very
+little by his friend’s exhortation to cultivate the same respectable
+habit. Could he not scrape together a few conclusions? Baden-Baden was
+the prettiest place he had seen yet, and orchestral music in the
+evening, under the stars, was decidedly a great institution. This was
+one of his conclusions! But he went on to reflect that he had done very
+wisely to pull up stakes and come abroad; this seeing of the world was
+a very interesting thing. He had learned a great deal; he couldn’t say
+just what, but he had it there under his hat-band. He had done what he
+wanted; he had seen the great things, and he had given his mind a
+chance to “improve,” if it would. He cheerfully believed that it had
+improved. Yes, this seeing of the world was very pleasant, and he would
+willingly do a little more of it. Thirty-six years old as he was, he
+had a handsome stretch of life before him yet, and he need not begin to
+count his weeks. Where should he take the world next? I have said he
+remembered the eyes of the lady whom he had found standing in Mrs.
+Tristram’s drawing-room; four months had elapsed, and he had not
+forgotten them yet. He had looked—he had made a point of looking—into a
+great many other eyes in the interval, but the only ones he thought of
+now were Madame de Cintré’s. If he wanted to see more of the world,
+should he find it in Madame de Cintré’s eyes? He would certainly find
+something there, call it this world or the next. Throughout these
+rather formless meditations he sometimes thought of his past life and
+the long array of years (they had begun so early) during which he had
+had nothing in his head but “enterprise.” They seemed far away now, for
+his present attitude was more than a holiday, it was almost a rupture.
+He had told Tristram that the pendulum was swinging back and it
+appeared that the backward swing had not yet ended. Still “enterprise,”
+which was over in the other quarter wore to his mind a different aspect
+at different hours. In its train a thousand forgotten episodes came
+trooping back into his memory. Some of them he looked complacently
+enough in the face; from some he averted his head. They were old
+efforts, old exploits, antiquated examples of “smartness” and
+sharpness. Some of them, as he looked at them, he felt decidedly proud
+of; he admired himself as if he had been looking at another man. And,
+in fact, many of the qualities that make a great deed were there: the
+decision, the resolution, the courage, the celerity, the clear eye, and
+the strong hand. Of certain other achievements it would be going too
+far to say that he was ashamed of them for Newman had never had a
+stomach for dirty work. He was blessed with a natural impulse to
+disfigure with a direct, unreasoning blow the comely visage of
+temptation. And certainly, in no man could a want of integrity have
+been less excusable. Newman knew the crooked from the straight at a
+glance, and the former had cost him, first and last, a great many
+moments of lively disgust. But none the less some of his memories
+seemed to wear at present a rather graceless and sordid mien, and it
+struck him that if he had never done anything very ugly, he had never,
+on the other hand, done anything particularly beautiful. He had spent
+his years in the unremitting effort to add thousands to thousands, and,
+now that he stood well outside of it, the business of money-getting
+appeared tolerably dry and sterile. It is very well to sneer at
+money-getting after you have filled your pockets, and Newman, it may be
+said, should have begun somewhat earlier to moralize thus delicately.
+To this it may be answered that he might have made another fortune, if
+he chose; and we ought to add that he was not exactly moralizing. It
+had come back to him simply that what he had been looking at all summer
+was a very rich and beautiful world, and that it had not all been made
+by sharp railroad men and stock-brokers.
+
+During his stay at Baden-Baden he received a letter from Mrs. Tristram,
+scolding him for the scanty tidings he had sent to his friends of the
+Avenue d’Iéna, and begging to be definitely informed that he had not
+concocted any horrid scheme for wintering in outlying regions, but was
+coming back sanely and promptly to the most comfortable city in the
+world. Newman’s answer ran as follows:—
+
+“I supposed you knew I was a miserable letter-writer, and didn’t expect
+anything of me. I don’t think I have written twenty letters of pure
+friendship in my whole life; in America I conducted my correspondence
+altogether by telegrams. This is a letter of pure friendship; you have
+got hold of a curiosity, and I hope you will value it. You want to know
+everything that has happened to me these three months. The best way to
+tell you, I think, would be to send you my half dozen guide-books, with
+my pencil-marks in the margin. Wherever you find a scratch or a cross,
+or a ‘Beautiful!’ or a ‘So true!’ or a ‘Too thin!’ you may know that I
+have had a sensation of some sort or other. That has been about my
+history, ever since I left you. Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Germany,
+Italy—I have been through the whole list, and I don’t think I am any
+the worse for it. I know more about Madonnas and church-steeples than I
+supposed any man could. I have seen some very pretty things, and shall
+perhaps talk them over this winter, by your fireside. You see, my face
+is not altogether set against Paris. I have had all kinds of plans and
+visions, but your letter has blown most of them away. ‘_L’appétit vient
+en mangeant_,’ says the French proverb, and I find that the more I see
+of the world the more I want to see. Now that I am in the shafts, why
+shouldn’t I trot to the end of the course? Sometimes I think of the far
+East, and keep rolling the names of Eastern cities under my tongue:
+Damascus and Bagdad, Medina and Mecca. I spent a week last month in the
+company of a returned missionary, who told me I ought to be ashamed to
+be loafing about Europe when there are such big things to be seen out
+there. I do want to explore, but I think I would rather explore over in
+the Rue de l’Université. Do you ever hear from that pretty lady? If you
+can get her to promise she will be at home the next time I call, I will
+go back to Paris straight. I am more than ever in the state of mind I
+told you about that evening; I want a first-class wife. I have kept an
+eye on all the pretty girls I have come across this summer, but none of
+them came up to my notion, or anywhere near it. I should have enjoyed
+all this a thousand times more if I had had the lady just mentioned by
+my side. The nearest approach to her was a Unitarian minister from
+Boston, who very soon demanded a separation, for incompatibility of
+temper. He told me I was low-minded, immoral, a devotee of ‘art for
+art’—whatever that is: all of which greatly afflicted me, for he was
+really a sweet little fellow. But shortly afterwards I met an
+Englishman, with whom I struck up an acquaintance which at first seemed
+to promise well—a very bright man, who writes in the London papers and
+knows Paris nearly as well as Tristram. We knocked about for a week
+together, but he very soon gave me up in disgust. I was too virtuous by
+half; I was too stern a moralist. He told me, in a friendly way, that I
+was cursed with a conscience; that I judged things like a Methodist and
+talked about them like an old lady. This was rather bewildering. Which
+of my two critics was I to believe? I didn’t worry about it and very
+soon made up my mind they were both idiots. But there is one thing in
+which no one will ever have the impudence to pretend I am wrong, that
+is, in being your faithful friend,
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Newman gave up Damascus and Bagdad and returned to Paris before the
+autumn was over. He established himself in some rooms selected for him
+by Tom Tristram, in accordance with the latter’s estimate of what he
+called his social position. When Newman learned that his social
+position was to be taken into account, he professed himself utterly
+incompetent, and begged Tristram to relieve him of the care. “I didn’t
+know I had a social position,” he said, “and if I have, I haven’t the
+smallest idea what it is. Isn’t a social position knowing some two or
+three thousand people and inviting them to dinner? I know you and your
+wife and little old Mr. Nioche, who gave me French lessons last spring.
+Can I invite you to dinner to meet each other? If I can, you must come
+to-morrow.”
+
+“That is not very grateful to me,” said Mrs. Tristram, “who introduced
+you last year to every creature I know.”
+
+“So you did; I had quite forgotten. But I thought you wanted me to
+forget,” said Newman, with that tone of simple deliberateness which
+frequently marked his utterance, and which an observer would not have
+known whether to pronounce a somewhat mysteriously humorous affection
+of ignorance or a modest aspiration to knowledge; “you told me you
+disliked them all.”
+
+“Ah, the way you remember what I say is at least very flattering. But
+in future,” added Mrs. Tristram, “pray forget all the wicked things and
+remember only the good ones. It will be easily done, and it will not
+fatigue your memory. But I forewarn you that if you trust my husband to
+pick out your rooms, you are in for something hideous.”
+
+“Hideous, darling?” cried Tristram.
+
+“To-day I must say nothing wicked; otherwise I should use stronger
+language.”
+
+“What do you think she would say, Newman?” asked Tristram. “If she
+really tried, now? She can express displeasure, volubly, in two or
+three languages; that’s what it is to be intellectual. It gives her the
+start of me completely, for I can’t swear, for the life of me, except
+in English. When I get mad I have to fall back on our dear old mother
+tongue. There’s nothing like it, after all.”
+
+Newman declared that he knew nothing about tables and chairs, and that
+he would accept, in the way of a lodging, with his eyes shut, anything
+that Tristram should offer him. This was partly veracity on our hero’s
+part, but it was also partly charity. He knew that to pry about and
+look at rooms, and make people open windows, and poke into sofas with
+his cane, and gossip with landladies, and ask who lived above and who
+below—he knew that this was of all pastimes the dearest to Tristram’s
+heart, and he felt the more disposed to put it in his way as he was
+conscious that, as regards his obliging friend, he had suffered the
+warmth of ancient good-fellowship somewhat to abate. Besides, he had no
+taste for upholstery; he had even no very exquisite sense of comfort or
+convenience. He had a relish for luxury and splendor, but it was
+satisfied by rather gross contrivances. He scarcely knew a hard chair
+from a soft one, and he possessed a talent for stretching his legs
+which quite dispensed with adventitious facilities. His idea of comfort
+was to inhabit very large rooms, have a great many of them, and be
+conscious of their possessing a number of patented mechanical
+devices—half of which he should never have occasion to use. The
+apartments should be light and brilliant and lofty; he had once said
+that he liked rooms in which you wanted to keep your hat on. For the
+rest, he was satisfied with the assurance of any respectable person
+that everything was “handsome.” Tristram accordingly secured for him an
+apartment to which this epithet might be lavishly applied. It was
+situated on the Boulevard Haussmann, on the first floor, and consisted
+of a series of rooms, gilded from floor to ceiling a foot thick, draped
+in various light shades of satin, and chiefly furnished with mirrors
+and clocks. Newman thought them magnificent, thanked Tristram heartily,
+immediately took possession, and had one of his trunks standing for
+three months in his drawing-room.
+
+One day Mrs. Tristram told him that her beautiful friend, Madame de
+Cintré, had returned from the country; that she had met her three days
+before, coming out of the Church of St. Sulpice; she herself having
+journeyed to that distant quarter in quest of an obscure lace-mender,
+of whose skill she had heard high praise.
+
+“And how were those eyes?” Newman asked.
+
+“Those eyes were red with weeping, if you please!” said Mrs. Tristram.
+“She had been to confession.”
+
+“It doesn’t tally with your account of her,” said Newman, “that she
+should have sins to confess.”
+
+“They were not sins; they were sufferings.”
+
+“How do you know that?”
+
+“She asked me to come and see her; I went this morning.”
+
+“And what does she suffer from?”
+
+“I didn’t ask her. With her, somehow, one is very discreet. But I
+guessed, easily enough. She suffers from her wicked old mother and her
+Grand Turk of a brother. They persecute her. But I can almost forgive
+them, because, as I told you, she is a saint, and a persecution is all
+that she needs to bring out her saintliness and make her perfect.”
+
+“That’s a comfortable theory for her. I hope you will never impart it
+to the old folks. Why does she let them bully her? Is she not her own
+mistress?”
+
+“Legally, yes, I suppose; but morally, no. In France you must never say
+nay to your mother, whatever she requires of you. She may be the most
+abominable old woman in the world, and make your life a purgatory; but,
+after all, she is _ma mère_, and you have no right to judge her. You
+have simply to obey. The thing has a fine side to it. Madame de Cintré
+bows her head and folds her wings.”
+
+“Can’t she at least make her brother leave off?”
+
+“Her brother is the _chef de la famille_, as they say; he is the head
+of the clan. With those people the family is everything; you must act,
+not for your own pleasure, but for the advantage of the family.”
+
+“I wonder what _my_ family would like me to do!” exclaimed Tristram.
+
+“I wish you had one!” said his wife.
+
+“But what do they want to get out of that poor lady?” Newman asked.
+
+“Another marriage. They are not rich, and they want to bring more money
+into the family.”
+
+“There’s your chance, my boy!” said Tristram.
+
+“And Madame de Cintré objects,” Newman continued.
+
+“She has been sold once; she naturally objects to being sold again. It
+appears that the first time they made rather a poor bargain; M. de
+Cintré left a scanty property.”
+
+“And to whom do they want to marry her now?”
+
+“I thought it best not to ask; but you may be sure it is to some horrid
+old nabob, or to some dissipated little duke.”
+
+“There’s Mrs. Tristram, as large as life!” cried her husband. “Observe
+the richness of her imagination. She has not a single question—it’s
+vulgar to ask questions—and yet she knows everything. She has the
+history of Madame de Cintré’s marriage at her fingers’ ends. She has
+seen the lovely Claire on her knees, with loosened tresses and
+streaming eyes, and the rest of them standing over her with spikes and
+goads and red-hot irons, ready to come down on her if she refuses the
+tipsy duke. The simple truth is that they made a fuss about her
+milliner’s bill or refused her an opera-box.”
+
+Newman looked from Tristram to his wife with a certain mistrust in each
+direction. “Do you really mean,” he asked of Mrs. Tristram, “that your
+friend is being forced into an unhappy marriage?”
+
+“I think it extremely probable. Those people are very capable of that
+sort of thing.”
+
+“It is like something in a play,” said Newman; “that dark old house
+over there looks as if wicked things had been done in it, and might be
+done again.”
+
+“They have a still darker old house in the country Madame de Cintré
+tells me, and there, during the summer this scheme must have been
+hatched.”
+
+“_Must_ have been; mind that!” said Tristram.
+
+“After all,” suggested Newman, after a silence, “she may be in trouble
+about something else.”
+
+“If it is something else, then it is something worse,” said Mrs.
+Tristram, with rich decision.
+
+Newman was silent a while, and seemed lost in meditation. “Is it
+possible,” he asked at last, “that they do that sort of thing over
+here? that helpless women are bullied into marrying men they hate?”
+
+“Helpless women, all over the world, have a hard time of it,” said Mrs.
+Tristram. “There is plenty of bullying everywhere.”
+
+“A great deal of that kind of thing goes on in New York,” said
+Tristram. “Girls are bullied or coaxed or bribed, or all three
+together, into marrying nasty fellows. There is no end of that always
+going on in the Fifth Avenue, and other bad things besides. The
+Mysteries of the Fifth Avenue! Someone ought to show them up.”
+
+“I don’t believe it!” said Newman, very gravely. “I don’t believe that,
+in America, girls are ever subjected to compulsion. I don’t believe
+there have been a dozen cases of it since the country began.”
+
+“Listen to the voice of the spread eagle!” cried Tristram.
+
+“The spread eagle ought to use his wings,” said Mrs. Tristram. “Fly to
+the rescue of Madame de Cintré!”
+
+“To her rescue?”
+
+“Pounce down, seize her in your talons, and carry her off. Marry her
+yourself.”
+
+Newman, for some moments, answered nothing; but presently, “I should
+suppose she had heard enough of marrying,” he said. “The kindest way to
+treat her would be to admire her, and yet never to speak of it. But
+that sort of thing is infamous,” he added; “it makes me feel savage to
+hear of it.”
+
+He heard of it, however, more than once afterward. Mrs. Tristram again
+saw Madame de Cintré, and again found her looking very sad. But on
+these occasions there had been no tears; her beautiful eyes were clear
+and still. “She is cold, calm, and hopeless,” Mrs. Tristram declared,
+and she added that on her mentioning that her friend Mr. Newman was
+again in Paris and was faithful in his desire to make Madame de
+Cintré’s acquaintance, this lovely woman had found a smile in her
+despair, and declared that she was sorry to have missed his visit in
+the spring and that she hoped he had not lost courage. “I told her
+something about you,” said Mrs. Tristram.
+
+“That’s a comfort,” said Newman, placidly. “I like people to know about
+me.”
+
+A few days after this, one dusky autumn afternoon, he went again to the
+Rue de l’Université. The early evening had closed in as he applied for
+admittance at the stoutly guarded _Hôtel de Bellegarde_. He was told
+that Madame de Cintré was at home; he crossed the court, entered the
+farther door, and was conducted through a vestibule, vast, dim, and
+cold, up a broad stone staircase with an ancient iron balustrade, to an
+apartment on the second floor. Announced and ushered in, he found
+himself in a sort of paneled boudoir, at one end of which a lady and
+gentleman were seated before the fire. The gentleman was smoking a
+cigarette; there was no light in the room save that of a couple of
+candles and the glow from the hearth. Both persons rose to welcome
+Newman, who, in the firelight, recognized Madame de Cintré. She gave
+him her hand with a smile which seemed in itself an illumination, and,
+pointing to her companion, said softly, “My brother.” The gentleman
+offered Newman a frank, friendly greeting, and our hero then perceived
+him to be the young man who had spoken to him in the court of the hotel
+on his former visit and who had struck him as a good fellow.
+
+“Mrs. Tristram has spoken to me a great deal of you,” said Madame de
+Cintré gently, as she resumed her former place.
+
+Newman, after he had seated himself, began to consider what, in truth,
+was his errand. He had an unusual, unexpected sense of having wandered
+into a strange corner of the world. He was not given, as a general
+thing, to anticipating danger, or forecasting disaster, and he had had
+no social tremors on this particular occasion. He was not timid and he
+was not impudent. He felt too kindly toward himself to be the one, and
+too good-naturedly toward the rest of the world to be the other. But
+his native shrewdness sometimes placed his ease of temper at its mercy;
+with every disposition to take things simply, it was obliged to
+perceive that some things were not so simple as others. He felt as one
+does in missing a step, in an ascent, where one expected to find it.
+This strange, pretty woman, sitting in fire-side talk with her brother,
+in the gray depths of her inhospitable-looking house—what had he to say
+to her? She seemed enveloped in a sort of fantastic privacy; on what
+grounds had he pulled away the curtain? For a moment he felt as if he
+had plunged into some medium as deep as the ocean, and as if he must
+exert himself to keep from sinking. Meanwhile he was looking at Madame
+de Cintré, and she was settling herself in her chair and drawing in her
+long dress and turning her face towards him. Their eyes met; a moment
+afterwards she looked away and motioned to her brother to put a log on
+the fire. But the moment, and the glance which traversed it, had been
+sufficient to relieve Newman of the first and the last fit of personal
+embarrassment he was ever to know. He performed the movement which was
+so frequent with him, and which was always a sort of symbol of his
+taking mental possession of a scene—he extended his legs. The
+impression Madame de Cintré had made upon him on their first meeting
+came back in an instant; it had been deeper than he knew. She was
+pleasing, she was interesting; he had opened a book and the first lines
+held his attention.
+
+She asked him several questions: how lately he had seen Mrs. Tristram,
+how long he had been in Paris, how long he expected to remain there,
+how he liked it. She spoke English without an accent, or rather with
+that distinctively British accent which, on his arrival in Europe, had
+struck Newman as an altogether foreign tongue, but which, in women, he
+had come to like extremely. Here and there Madame de Cintré’s utterance
+had a faint shade of strangeness but at the end of ten minutes Newman
+found himself waiting for these soft roughnesses. He enjoyed them, and
+he marveled to see that gross thing, error, brought down to so fine a
+point.
+
+“You have a beautiful country,” said Madame de Cintré, presently.
+
+“Oh, magnificent!” said Newman. “You ought to see it.”
+
+“I shall never see it,” said Madame de Cintré with a smile.
+
+“Why not?” asked Newman.
+
+“I don’t travel; especially so far.”
+
+“But you go away sometimes; you are not always here?”
+
+“I go away in summer, a little way, to the country.”
+
+Newman wanted to ask her something more, something personal, he hardly
+knew what. “Don’t you find it rather—rather quiet here?” he said; “so
+far from the street?” Rather “gloomy,” he was going to say, but he
+reflected that that would be impolite.
+
+“Yes, it is very quiet,” said Madame de Cintré; “but we like that.”
+
+“Ah, you like that,” repeated Newman, slowly.
+
+“Besides, I have lived here all my life.”
+
+“Lived here all your life,” said Newman, in the same way.
+
+“I was born here, and my father was born here before me, and my
+grandfather, and my great-grandfathers. Were they not, Valentin?” and
+she appealed to her brother.
+
+“Yes, it’s a family habit to be born here!” the young man said with a
+laugh, and rose and threw the remnant of his cigarette into the fire,
+and then remained leaning against the chimney-piece. An observer would
+have perceived that he wished to take a better look at Newman, whom he
+covertly examined, while he stood stroking his moustache.
+
+“Your house is tremendously old, then,” said Newman.
+
+“How old is it, brother?” asked Madame de Cintré.
+
+The young man took the two candles from the mantel-shelf, lifted one
+high in each hand, and looked up toward the cornice of the room, above
+the chimney-piece. This latter feature of the apartment was of white
+marble, and in the familiar rococo style of the last century; but above
+it was a paneling of an earlier date, quaintly carved, painted white,
+and gilded here and there. The white had turned to yellow, and the
+gilding was tarnished. On the top, the figures ranged themselves into a
+sort of shield, on which an armorial device was cut. Above it, in
+relief, was a date—1627. “There you have it,” said the young man. “That
+is old or new, according to your point of view.”
+
+“Well, over here,” said Newman, “one’s point of view gets shifted round
+considerably.” And he threw back his head and looked about the room.
+“Your house is of a very curious style of architecture,” he said.
+
+“Are you interested in architecture?” asked the young man at the
+chimney-piece.
+
+“Well, I took the trouble, this summer,” said Newman, “to examine—as
+well as I can calculate—some four hundred and seventy churches. Do you
+call that interested?”
+
+“Perhaps you are interested in theology,” said the young man.
+
+“Not particularly. Are you a Roman Catholic, madam?” And he turned to
+Madame de Cintré.
+
+“Yes, sir,” she answered, gravely.
+
+Newman was struck with the gravity of her tone; he threw back his head
+and began to look round the room again. “Had you never noticed that
+number up there?” he presently asked.
+
+She hesitated a moment, and then, “In former years,” she said.
+
+Her brother had been watching Newman’s movement. “Perhaps you would
+like to examine the house,” he said.
+
+Newman slowly brought down his eyes and looked at him; he had a vague
+impression that the young man at the chimney-piece was inclined to
+irony. He was a handsome fellow, his face wore a smile, his moustaches
+were curled up at the ends, and there was a little dancing gleam in his
+eye. “Damn his French impudence!” Newman was on the point of saying to
+himself. “What the deuce is he grinning at?” He glanced at Madame de
+Cintré; she was sitting with her eyes fixed on the floor. She raised
+them, they met his, and she looked at her brother. Newman turned again
+to this young man and observed that he strikingly resembled his sister.
+This was in his favor, and our hero’s first impression of the Count
+Valentin, moreover, had been agreeable. His mistrust expired, and he
+said he would be very glad to see the house.
+
+The young man gave a frank laugh, and laid his hand on one of the
+candlesticks. “Good, good!” he exclaimed. “Come, then.”
+
+But Madame de Cintré rose quickly and grasped his arm, “Ah, Valentin!”
+she said. “What do you mean to do?”
+
+“To show Mr. Newman the house. It will be very amusing.”
+
+She kept her hand on his arm, and turned to Newman with a smile. “Don’t
+let him take you,” she said; “you will not find it amusing. It is a
+musty old house, like any other.”
+
+“It is full of curious things,” said the count, resisting. “Besides, I
+want to do it; it is a rare chance.”
+
+“You are very wicked, brother,” Madame de Cintré answered.
+
+“Nothing venture, nothing have!” cried the young man. “Will you come?”
+
+Madame de Cintré stepped toward Newman, gently clasping her hands and
+smiling softly. “Would you not prefer my society, here, by my fire, to
+stumbling about dark passages after my brother?”
+
+“A hundred times!” said Newman. “We will see the house some other day.”
+
+The young man put down his candlestick with mock solemnity, and,
+shaking his head, “Ah, you have defeated a great scheme, sir!” he said.
+
+“A scheme? I don’t understand,” said Newman.
+
+“You would have played your part in it all the better. Perhaps some day
+I shall have a chance to explain it.”
+
+“Be quiet, and ring for the tea,” said Madame de Cintré.
+
+The young man obeyed, and presently a servant brought in the tea,
+placed the tray on a small table, and departed. Madame de Cintré, from
+her place, busied herself with making it. She had but just begun when
+the door was thrown open and a lady rushed in, making a loud rustling
+sound. She stared at Newman, gave a little nod and a “Monsieur!” and
+then quickly approached Madame de Cintré and presented her forehead to
+be kissed. Madame de Cintré saluted her, and continued to make tea. The
+new-comer was young and pretty, it seemed to Newman; she wore her
+bonnet and cloak, and a train of royal proportions. She began to talk
+rapidly in French. “Oh, give me some tea, my beautiful one, for the
+love of God! I’m exhausted, mangled, massacred.” Newman found himself
+quite unable to follow her; she spoke much less distinctly than M.
+Nioche.
+
+“That is my sister-in-law,” said the Count Valentin, leaning towards
+him.
+
+“She is very pretty,” said Newman.
+
+“Exquisite,” answered the young man, and this time, again, Newman
+suspected him of irony.
+
+His sister-in-law came round to the other side of the fire with her cup
+of tea in her hand, holding it out at arm’s-length, so that she might
+not spill it on her dress, and uttering little cries of alarm. She
+placed the cup on the mantel-shelf and begun to unpin her veil and pull
+off her gloves, looking meanwhile at Newman.
+
+“Is there anything I can do for you, my dear lady?” the Count Valentin
+asked, in a sort of mock-caressing tone.
+
+“Present monsieur,” said his sister-in-law.
+
+The young man answered, “Mr. Newman!”
+
+“I can’t courtesy to you, monsieur, or I shall spill my tea,” said the
+lady. “So Claire receives strangers, like that?” she added, in a low
+voice, in French, to her brother-in-law.
+
+“Apparently!” he answered with a smile. Newman stood a moment, and then
+he approached Madame de Cintré. She looked up at him as if she were
+thinking of something to say. But she seemed to think of nothing; so
+she simply smiled. He sat down near her and she handed him a cup of
+tea. For a few moments they talked about that, and meanwhile he looked
+at her. He remembered what Mrs. Tristram had told him of her
+“perfection” and of her having, in combination, all the brilliant
+things that he dreamed of finding. This made him observe her not only
+without mistrust, but without uneasy conjectures; the presumption, from
+the first moment he looked at her, had been in her favor. And yet, if
+she was beautiful, it was not a dazzling beauty. She was tall and
+moulded in long lines; she had thick fair hair, a wide forehead, and
+features with a sort of harmonious irregularity. Her clear gray eyes
+were strikingly expressive; they were both gentle and intelligent, and
+Newman liked them immensely; but they had not those depths of
+splendor—those many-colored rays—which illumine the brows of famous
+beauties. Madame de Cintré was rather thin, and she looked younger than
+probably she was. In her whole person there was something both youthful
+and subdued, slender and yet ample, tranquil yet shy; a mixture of
+immaturity and repose, of innocence and dignity. What had Tristram
+meant, Newman wondered, by calling her proud? She was certainly not
+proud now, to him; or if she was, it was of no use, it was lost upon
+him; she must pile it up higher if she expected him to mind it. She was
+a beautiful woman, and it was very easy to get on with her. Was she a
+countess, a _marquise_, a kind of historical formation? Newman, who had
+rarely heard these words used, had never been at pains to attach any
+particular image to them; but they occurred to him now and seemed
+charged with a sort of melodious meaning. They signified something fair
+and softly bright, that had easy motions and spoke very agreeably.
+
+“Have you many friends in Paris; do you go out?” asked Madame de
+Cintré, who had at last thought of something to say.
+
+“Do you mean do I dance, and all that?”
+
+“Do you go _dans le monde_, as we say?”
+
+“I have seen a good many people. Mrs. Tristram has taken me about. I do
+whatever she tells me.”
+
+“By yourself, you are not fond of amusements?”
+
+“Oh yes, of some sorts. I am not fond of dancing, and that sort of
+thing; I am too old and sober. But I want to be amused; I came to
+Europe for that.”
+
+“But you can be amused in America, too.”
+
+“I couldn’t; I was always at work. But after all, that was my
+amusement.”
+
+At this moment Madame de Bellegarde came back for another cup of tea,
+accompanied by the Count Valentin. Madame de Cintré, when she had
+served her, began to talk again with Newman, and recalling what he had
+last said, “In your own country you were very much occupied?” she
+asked.
+
+“I was in business. I have been in business since I was fifteen years
+old.”
+
+“And what was your business?” asked Madame de Bellegarde, who was
+decidedly not so pretty as Madame de Cintré.
+
+“I have been in everything,” said Newman. “At one time I sold leather;
+at one time I manufactured wash-tubs.”
+
+Madame de Bellegarde made a little grimace. “Leather? I don’t like
+that. Wash-tubs are better. I prefer the smell of soap. I hope at least
+they made your fortune.” She rattled this off with the air of a woman
+who had the reputation of saying everything that came into her head,
+and with a strong French accent.
+
+Newman had spoken with cheerful seriousness, but Madame de Bellegarde’s
+tone made him go on, after a meditative pause, with a certain light
+grimness of jocularity. “No, I lost money on wash-tubs, but I came out
+pretty square on leather.”
+
+“I have made up my mind, after all,” said Madame de Bellegarde, “that
+the great point is—how do you call it?—to come out square. I am on my
+knees to money; I don’t deny it. If you have it, I ask no questions.
+For that I am a real democrat—like you, monsieur. Madame de Cintré is
+very proud; but I find that one gets much more pleasure in this sad
+life if one doesn’t look too close.”
+
+“Just Heaven, dear madam, how you go at it,” said the Count Valentin,
+lowering his voice.
+
+“He’s a man one can speak to, I suppose, since my sister receives him,”
+the lady answered. “Besides, it’s very true; those are my ideas.”
+
+“Ah, you call them ideas,” murmured the young man.
+
+“But Mrs. Tristram told me you had been in the army—in your war,” said
+Madame de Cintré.
+
+“Yes, but that is not business!” said Newman.
+
+“Very true!” said M. de Bellegarde. “Otherwise perhaps I should not be
+penniless.”
+
+“Is it true,” asked Newman in a moment, “that you are so proud? I had
+already heard it.”
+
+Madame de Cintré smiled. “Do you find me so?”
+
+“Oh,” said Newman, “I am no judge. If you are proud with me, you will
+have to tell me. Otherwise I shall not know it.”
+
+Madame de Cintré began to laugh. “That would be pride in a sad
+position!” she said.
+
+“It would be partly,” Newman went on, “because I shouldn’t want to know
+it. I want you to treat me well.”
+
+Madame de Cintré, whose laugh had ceased, looked at him with her head
+half averted, as if she feared what he was going to say.
+
+“Mrs. Tristram told you the literal truth,” he went on; “I want very
+much to know you. I didn’t come here simply to call to-day; I came in
+the hope that you might ask me to come again.”
+
+“Oh, pray come often,” said Madame de Cintré.
+
+“But will you be at home?” Newman insisted. Even to himself he seemed a
+trifle “pushing,” but he was, in truth, a trifle excited.
+
+“I hope so!” said Madame de Cintré.
+
+Newman got up. “Well, we shall see,” he said smoothing his hat with his
+coat-cuff.
+
+“Brother,” said Madame de Cintré, “invite Mr. Newman to come again.”
+
+The Count Valentin looked at our hero from head to foot with his
+peculiar smile, in which impudence and urbanity seemed perplexingly
+commingled. “Are you a brave man?” he asked, eying him askance.
+
+“Well, I hope so,” said Newman.
+
+“I rather suspect so. In that case, come again.”
+
+“Ah, what an invitation!” murmured Madame de Cintré, with something
+painful in her smile.
+
+“Oh, I want Mr. Newman to come—particularly,” said the young man. “It
+will give me great pleasure. I shall be desolate if I miss one of his
+visits. But I maintain he must be brave. A stout heart, sir!” And he
+offered Newman his hand.
+
+“I shall not come to see you; I shall come to see Madame de Cintré,”
+said Newman.
+
+“You will need all the more courage.”
+
+“Ah, Valentin!” said Madame de Cintré, appealingly.
+
+“Decidedly,” cried Madame de Bellegarde, “I am the only person here
+capable of saying something polite! Come to see me; you will need no
+courage,” she said.
+
+Newman gave a laugh which was not altogether an assent, and took his
+leave. Madame de Cintré did not take up her sister’s challenge to be
+gracious, but she looked with a certain troubled air at the retreating
+guest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+One evening very late, about a week after his visit to Madame de
+Cintré, Newman’s servant brought him a card. It was that of young M. de
+Bellegarde. When, a few moments later, he went to receive his visitor,
+he found him standing in the middle of his great gilded parlor and
+eying it from cornice to carpet. M. de Bellegarde’s face, it seemed to
+Newman, expressed a sense of lively entertainment. “What the devil is
+he laughing at now?” our hero asked himself. But he put the question
+without acrimony, for he felt that Madame de Cintré’s brother was a
+good fellow, and he had a presentiment that on this basis of good
+fellowship they were destined to understand each other. Only, if there
+was anything to laugh at, he wished to have a glimpse of it too.
+
+“To begin with,” said the young man, as he extended his hand, “have I
+come too late?”
+
+“Too late for what?” asked Newman.
+
+“To smoke a cigar with you.”
+
+“You would have to come early to do that,” said Newman. “I don’t
+smoke.”
+
+“Ah, you are a strong man!”
+
+“But I keep cigars,” Newman added. “Sit down.”
+
+“Surely, I may not smoke here,” said M. de Bellegarde.
+
+“What is the matter? Is the room too small?”
+
+“It is too large. It is like smoking in a ball-room, or a church.”
+
+“That is what you were laughing at just now?” Newman asked; “the size
+of my room?”
+
+“It is not size only,” replied M. de Bellegarde, “but splendor, and
+harmony, and beauty of detail. It was the smile of admiration.”
+
+Newman looked at him a moment, and then, “So it _is_ very ugly?” he
+inquired.
+
+“Ugly, my dear sir? It is magnificent.”
+
+“That is the same thing, I suppose,” said Newman. “Make yourself
+comfortable. Your coming to see me, I take it, is an act of friendship.
+You were not obliged to. Therefore, if anything around here amuses you,
+it will be all in a pleasant way. Laugh as loud as you please; I like
+to see my visitors cheerful. Only, I must make this request: that you
+explain the joke to me as soon as you can speak. I don’t want to lose
+anything, myself.”
+
+M. de Bellegarde stared, with a look of unresentful perplexity. He laid
+his hand on Newman’s sleeve and seemed on the point of saying
+something, but he suddenly checked himself, leaned back in his chair,
+and puffed at his cigar. At last, however, breaking
+silence,—“Certainly,” he said, “my coming to see you is an act of
+friendship. Nevertheless I was in a measure obliged to do so. My sister
+asked me to come, and a request from my sister is, for me, a law. I was
+near you, and I observed lights in what I supposed were your rooms. It
+was not a ceremonious hour for making a call, but I was not sorry to do
+something that would show I was not performing a mere ceremony.”
+
+“Well, here I am as large as life,” said Newman, extending his legs.
+
+“I don’t know what you mean,” the young man went on “by giving me
+unlimited leave to laugh. Certainly I am a great laugher, and it is
+better to laugh too much than too little. But it is not in order that
+we may laugh together—or separately—that I have, I may say, sought your
+acquaintance. To speak with almost impudent frankness, you interest
+me!” All this was uttered by M. de Bellegarde with the modulated
+smoothness of the man of the world, and in spite of his excellent
+English, of the Frenchman; but Newman, at the same time that he sat
+noting its harmonious flow, perceived that it was not mere mechanical
+urbanity. Decidedly, there was something in his visitor that he liked.
+M. de Bellegarde was a foreigner to his finger-tips, and if Newman had
+met him on a Western prairie he would have felt it proper to address
+him with a “How-d’ye-do, Mosseer?” But there was something in his
+physiognomy which seemed to cast a sort of aerial bridge over the
+impassable gulf produced by difference of race. He was below the middle
+height, and robust and agile in figure. Valentin de Bellegarde, Newman
+afterwards learned, had a mortal dread of the robustness overtaking the
+agility; he was afraid of growing stout; he was too short, as he said,
+to afford a belly. He rode and fenced and practiced gymnastics with
+unremitting zeal, and if you greeted him with a “How well you are
+looking” he started and turned pale. In your _well_ he read a grosser
+monosyllable. He had a round head, high above the ears, a crop of hair
+at once dense and silky, a broad, low forehead, a short nose, of the
+ironical and inquiring rather than of the dogmatic or sensitive cast,
+and a moustache as delicate as that of a page in a romance. He
+resembled his sister not in feature, but in the expression of his
+clear, bright eye, completely void of introspection, and in the way he
+smiled. The great point in his face was that it was intensely
+alive—frankly, ardently, gallantly alive. The look of it was like a
+bell, of which the handle might have been in the young man’s soul: at a
+touch of the handle it rang with a loud, silver sound. There was
+something in his quick, light brown eye which assured you that he was
+not economizing his consciousness. He was not living in a corner of it
+to spare the furniture of the rest. He was squarely encamped in the
+centre and he was keeping open house. When he smiled, it was like the
+movement of a person who in emptying a cup turns it upside down: he
+gave you the last drop of his jollity. He inspired Newman with
+something of the same kindness that our hero used to feel in his
+earlier years for those of his companions who could perform strange and
+clever tricks—make their joints crack in queer places or whistle at the
+back of their mouths.
+
+“My sister told me,” M. de Bellegarde continued, “that I ought to come
+and remove the impression that I had taken such great pains to produce
+upon you; the impression that I am a lunatic. Did it strike you that I
+behaved very oddly the other day?”
+
+“Rather so,” said Newman.
+
+“So my sister tells me.” And M. de Bellegarde watched his host for a
+moment through his smoke-wreaths. “If that is the case, I think we had
+better let it stand. I didn’t try to make you think I was a lunatic, at
+all; on the contrary, I wanted to produce a favorable impression. But
+if, after all, I made a fool of myself, it was the intention of
+Providence. I should injure myself by protesting too much, for I should
+seem to set up a claim for wisdom which, in the sequel of our
+acquaintance, I could by no means justify. Set me down as a lunatic
+with intervals of sanity.”
+
+“Oh, I guess you know what you are about,” said Newman.
+
+“When I am sane, I am very sane; that I admit,” M. de Bellegarde
+answered. “But I didn’t come here to talk about myself. I should like
+to ask you a few questions. You allow me?”
+
+“Give me a specimen,” said Newman.
+
+“You live here all alone?”
+
+“Absolutely. With whom should I live?”
+
+“For the moment,” said M. de Bellegarde with a smile “I am asking
+questions, not answering them. You have come to Paris for your
+pleasure?”
+
+Newman was silent a while. Then, at last, “Everyone asks me that!” he
+said with his mild slowness. “It sounds so awfully foolish.”
+
+“But at any rate you had a reason.”
+
+“Oh, I came for my pleasure!” said Newman. “Though it is foolish, it is
+true.”
+
+“And you are enjoying it?”
+
+Like any other good American, Newman thought it as well not to truckle
+to the foreigner. “Oh, so-so,” he answered.
+
+M. de Bellegarde puffed his cigar again in silence. “For myself,” he
+said at last, “I am entirely at your service. Anything I can do for you
+I shall be very happy to do. Call upon me at your convenience. Is there
+anyone you desire to know—anything you wish to see? It is a pity you
+should not enjoy Paris.”
+
+“Oh, I do enjoy it!” said Newman, good-naturedly. “I’m much obliged to
+you.”
+
+“Honestly speaking,” M. de Bellegarde went on, “there is something
+absurd to me in hearing myself make you these offers. They represent a
+great deal of goodwill, but they represent little else. You are a
+successful man and I am a failure, and it’s a turning of the tables to
+talk as if I could lend you a hand.”
+
+“In what way are you a failure?” asked Newman.
+
+“Oh, I’m not a tragical failure!” cried the young man with a laugh. “I
+have fallen from a height, and my fiasco has made no noise. You,
+evidently, are a success. You have made a fortune, you have built up an
+edifice, you are a financial, commercial power, you can travel about
+the world until you have found a soft spot, and lie down in it with the
+consciousness of having earned your rest. Is not that true? Well,
+imagine the exact reverse of all that, and you have me. I have done
+nothing—I can do nothing!”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“It’s a long story. Some day I will tell you. Meanwhile, I’m right, eh?
+You are a success? You have made a fortune? It’s none of my business,
+but, in short, you are rich?”
+
+“That’s another thing that it sounds foolish to say,” said Newman.
+“Hang it, no man is rich!”
+
+“I have heard philosophers affirm,” laughed M. de Bellegarde, “that no
+man was poor; but your formula strikes me as an improvement. As a
+general thing, I confess, I don’t like successful people, and I find
+clever men who have made great fortunes very offensive. They tread on
+my toes; they make me uncomfortable. But as soon as I saw you, I said
+to myself. ‘Ah, there is a man with whom I shall get on. He has the
+good-nature of success and none of the _morgue_; he has not our
+confoundedly irritable French vanity.’ In short, I took a fancy to you.
+We are very different, I’m sure; I don’t believe there is a subject on
+which we think or feel alike. But I rather think we shall get on, for
+there is such a thing, you know, as being too different to quarrel.”
+
+“Oh, I never quarrel,” said Newman.
+
+“Never! Sometimes it’s a duty—or at least it’s a pleasure. Oh, I have
+had two or three delicious quarrels in my day!” and M. de Bellegarde’s
+handsome smile assumed, at the memory of these incidents, an almost
+voluptuous intensity.
+
+With the preamble embodied in his share of the foregoing fragment of
+dialogue, he paid our hero a long visit; as the two men sat with their
+heels on Newman’s glowing hearth, they heard the small hours of the
+morning striking larger from a far-off belfry. Valentin de Bellegarde
+was, by his own confession, at all times a great chatterer, and on this
+occasion he was evidently in a particularly loquacious mood. It was a
+tradition of his race that people of its blood always conferred a favor
+by their smiles, and as his enthusiasms were as rare as his civility
+was constant, he had a double reason for not suspecting that his
+friendship could ever be importunate. Moreover, the flower of an
+ancient stem as he was, tradition (since I have used the word) had in
+his temperament nothing of disagreeable rigidity. It was muffled in
+sociability and urbanity, as an old dowager in her laces and strings of
+pearls. Valentin was what is called in France a _gentilhomme_, of the
+purest source, and his rule of life, so far as it was definite, was to
+play the part of a _gentilhomme_. This, it seemed to him, was enough to
+occupy comfortably a young man of ordinary good parts. But all that he
+was he was by instinct and not by theory, and the amiability of his
+character was so great that certain of the aristocratic virtues, which
+in some aspects seem rather brittle and trenchant, acquired in his
+application of them an extreme geniality. In his younger years he had
+been suspected of low tastes, and his mother had greatly feared he
+would make a slip in the mud of the highway and bespatter the family
+shield. He had been treated, therefore, to more than his share of
+schooling and drilling, but his instructors had not succeeded in
+mounting him upon stilts. They could not spoil his safe spontaneity,
+and he remained the least cautious and the most lucky of young nobles.
+He had been tied with so short a rope in his youth that he had now a
+mortal grudge against family discipline. He had been known to say,
+within the limits of the family, that, light-headed as he was, the
+honor of the name was safer in his hands than in those of some of its
+other members, and that if a day ever came to try it, they should see.
+His talk was an odd mixture of almost boyish garrulity and of the
+reserve and discretion of the man of the world, and he seemed to
+Newman, as afterwards young members of the Latin races often seemed to
+him, now amusingly juvenile and now appallingly mature. In America,
+Newman reflected, lads of twenty-five and thirty have old heads and
+young hearts, or at least young morals; here they have young heads and
+very aged hearts, morals the most grizzled and wrinkled.
+
+“What I envy you is your liberty,” observed M. de Bellegarde, “your
+wide range, your freedom to come and go, your not having a lot of
+people, who take themselves awfully seriously, expecting something of
+you. I live,” he added with a sigh, “beneath the eyes of my admirable
+mother.”
+
+“It is your own fault; what is to hinder your ranging?” said Newman.
+
+“There is a delightful simplicity in that remark! Everything is to
+hinder me. To begin with, I have not a penny.”
+
+“I had not a penny when I began to range.”
+
+“Ah, but your poverty was your capital. Being an American, it was
+impossible you should remain what you were born, and being born poor—do
+I understand it?—it was therefore inevitable that you should become
+rich. You were in a position that makes one’s mouth water; you looked
+round you and saw a world full of things you had only to step up to and
+take hold of. When I was twenty, I looked around me and saw a world
+with everything ticketed ‘Hands off!’ and the deuce of it was that the
+ticket seemed meant only for me. I couldn’t go into business, I
+couldn’t make money, because I was a Bellegarde. I couldn’t go into
+politics, because I was a Bellegarde—the Bellegardes don’t recognize
+the Bonapartes. I couldn’t go into literature, because I was a dunce. I
+couldn’t marry a rich girl, because no Bellegarde had ever married a
+_roturière_, and it was not proper that I should begin. We shall have
+to come to it, yet. Marriageable heiresses, _de notre bord_, are not to
+be had for nothing; it must be name for name, and fortune for fortune.
+The only thing I could do was to go and fight for the Pope. That I did,
+punctiliously, and received an apostolic flesh-wound at Castlefidardo.
+It did neither the Holy Father nor me any good, that I could see. Rome
+was doubtless a very amusing place in the days of Caligula, but it has
+sadly fallen off since. I passed three years in the Castle of St.
+Angelo, and then came back to secular life.”
+
+“So you have no profession—you do nothing,” said Newman.
+
+“I do nothing! I am supposed to amuse myself, and, to tell the truth, I
+have amused myself. One can, if one knows how. But you can’t keep it up
+forever. I am good for another five years, perhaps, but I foresee that
+after that I shall lose my appetite. Then what shall I do? I think I
+shall turn monk. Seriously, I think I shall tie a rope round my waist
+and go into a monastery. It was an old custom, and the old customs were
+very good. People understood life quite as well as we do. They kept the
+pot boiling till it cracked, and then they put it on the shelf
+altogether.”
+
+“Are you very religious?” asked Newman, in a tone which gave the
+inquiry a grotesque effect.
+
+M. de Bellegarde evidently appreciated the comical element in the
+question, but he looked at Newman a moment with extreme soberness. “I
+am a very good Catholic. I respect the Church. I adore the blessed
+Virgin. I fear the Devil.”
+
+“Well, then,” said Newman, “you are very well fixed. You have got
+pleasure in the present and religion in the future; what do you
+complain of?”
+
+“It’s a part of one’s pleasure to complain. There is something in your
+own circumstances that irritates me. You are the first man I have ever
+envied. It’s singular, but so it is. I have known many men who, besides
+any factitious advantages that I may possess, had money and brains into
+the bargain; but somehow they have never disturbed my good-humor. But
+you have got something that I should have liked to have. It is not
+money, it is not even brains—though no doubt yours are excellent. It is
+not your six feet of height, though I should have rather liked to be a
+couple of inches taller. It’s a sort of air you have of being
+thoroughly at home in the world. When I was a boy, my father told me
+that it was by such an air as that that people recognized a Bellegarde.
+He called my attention to it. He didn’t advise me to cultivate it; he
+said that as we grew up it always came of itself. I supposed it had
+come to me, because I think I have always had the feeling. My place in
+life was made for me, and it seemed easy to occupy it. But you who, as
+I understand it, have made your own place, you who, as you told us the
+other day, have manufactured wash-tubs—you strike me, somehow, as a man
+who stands at his ease, who looks at things from a height. I fancy you
+going about the world like a man traveling on a railroad in which he
+owns a large amount of stock. You make me feel as if I had missed
+something. What is it?”
+
+“It is the proud consciousness of honest toil—of having manufactured a
+few wash-tubs,” said Newman, at once jocose and serious.
+
+“Oh no; I have seen men who had done even more, men who had made not
+only wash-tubs, but soap—strong-smelling yellow soap, in great bars;
+and they never made me the least uncomfortable.”
+
+“Then it’s the privilege of being an American citizen,” said Newman.
+“That sets a man up.”
+
+“Possibly,” rejoined M. de Bellegarde. “But I am forced to say that I
+have seen a great many American citizens who didn’t seem at all set up
+or in the least like large stock-holders. I never envied them. I rather
+think the thing is an accomplishment of your own.”
+
+“Oh, come,” said Newman, “you will make me proud!”
+
+“No, I shall not. You have nothing to do with pride, or with
+humility—that is a part of this easy manner of yours. People are proud
+only when they have something to lose, and humble when they have
+something to gain.”
+
+“I don’t know what I have to lose,” said Newman, “but I certainly have
+something to gain.”
+
+“What is it?” asked his visitor.
+
+Newman hesitated a while. “I will tell you when I know you better.”
+
+“I hope that will be soon! Then, if I can help you to gain it, I shall
+be happy.”
+
+“Perhaps you may,” said Newman.
+
+“Don’t forget, then, that I am your servant,” M. de Bellegarde
+answered; and shortly afterwards he took his departure.
+
+During the next three weeks Newman saw Bellegarde several times, and
+without formally swearing an eternal friendship the two men established
+a sort of comradeship. To Newman, Bellegarde was the ideal Frenchman,
+the Frenchman of tradition and romance, so far as our hero was
+concerned with these mystical influences. Gallant, expansive, amusing,
+more pleased himself with the effect he produced than those (even when
+they were well pleased) for whom he produced it; a master of all the
+distinctively social virtues and a votary of all agreeable sensations;
+a devotee of something mysterious and sacred to which he occasionally
+alluded in terms more ecstatic even than those in which he spoke of the
+last pretty woman, and which was simply the beautiful though somewhat
+superannuated image of _honor_; he was irresistibly entertaining and
+enlivening, and he formed a character to which Newman was as capable of
+doing justice when he had once been placed in contact with it, as he
+was unlikely, in musing upon the possible mixtures of our human
+ingredients, mentally to have foreshadowed it. Bellegarde did not in
+the least cause him to modify his needful premise that all Frenchmen
+are of a frothy and imponderable substance; he simply reminded him that
+light materials may be beaten up into a most agreeable compound. No two
+companions could be more different, but their differences made a
+capital basis for a friendship of which the distinctive characteristic
+was that it was extremely amusing to each.
+
+Valentin de Bellegarde lived in the basement of an old house in the Rue
+d’Anjou St. Honoré, and his small apartments lay between the court of
+the house and an old garden which spread itself behind it—one of those
+large, sunless humid gardens into which you look unexpectingly in Paris
+from back windows, wondering how among the grudging habitations they
+find their space. When Newman returned Bellegarde’s visit, he hinted
+that _his_ lodging was at least as much a laughing matter as his own.
+But its oddities were of a different cast from those of our hero’s
+gilded saloons on the Boulevard Haussmann: the place was low, dusky,
+contracted, and crowded with curious bric-à-brac. Bellegarde, penniless
+patrician as he was, was an insatiable collector, and his walls were
+covered with rusty arms and ancient panels and platters, his doorways
+draped in faded tapestries, his floors muffled in the skins of beasts.
+Here and there was one of those uncomfortable tributes to elegance in
+which the upholsterer’s art, in France, is so prolific; a curtain
+recess with a sheet of looking-glass in which, among the shadows, you
+could see nothing; a divan on which, for its festoons and furbelows,
+you could not sit; a fireplace draped, flounced, and frilled to the
+complete exclusion of fire. The young man’s possessions were in
+picturesque disorder, and his apartment was pervaded by the odor of
+cigars, mingled with perfumes more inscrutable. Newman thought it a
+damp, gloomy place to live in, and was puzzled by the obstructive and
+fragmentary character of the furniture.
+
+Bellegarde, according to the custom of his country talked very
+generously about himself, and unveiled the mysteries of his private
+history with an unsparing hand. Inevitably, he had a vast deal to say
+about women, and he used frequently to indulge in sentimental and
+ironical apostrophes to these authors of his joys and woes. “Oh, the
+women, the women, and the things they have made me do!” he would
+exclaim with a lustrous eye. “_C’est égal_, of all the follies and
+stupidities I have committed for them I would not have missed one!” On
+this subject Newman maintained an habitual reserve; to expatiate
+largely upon it had always seemed to him a proceeding vaguely analogous
+to the cooing of pigeons and the chattering of monkeys, and even
+inconsistent with a fully developed human character. But Bellegarde’s
+confidences greatly amused him, and rarely displeased him, for the
+generous young Frenchman was not a cynic. “I really think,” he had once
+said, “that I am not more depraved than most of my contemporaries. They
+are tolerably depraved, my contemporaries!” He said wonderfully pretty
+things about his female friends, and, numerous and various as they had
+been, declared that on the whole there was more good in them than harm.
+“But you are not to take that as advice,” he added. “As an authority I
+am very untrustworthy. I’m prejudiced in their favor; I’m an
+_idealist!_” Newman listened to him with his impartial smile, and was
+glad, for his own sake, that he had fine feelings; but he mentally
+repudiated the idea of a Frenchman having discovered any merit in the
+amiable sex which he himself did not suspect. M. de Bellegarde,
+however, did not confine his conversation to the autobiographical
+channel; he questioned our hero largely as to the events of his own
+life, and Newman told him some better stories than any that Bellegarde
+carried in his budget. He narrated his career, in fact, from the
+beginning, through all its variations, and whenever his companion’s
+credulity, or his habits of gentility, appeared to protest, it amused
+him to heighten the color of the episode. Newman had sat with Western
+humorists in knots, round cast-iron stoves, and seen “tall” stories
+grow taller without toppling over, and his own imagination had learned
+the trick of piling up consistent wonders. Bellegarde’s regular
+attitude at last became that of laughing self-defense; to maintain his
+reputation as an all-knowing Frenchman, he doubted of everything,
+wholesale. The result of this was that Newman found it impossible to
+convince him of certain time-honored verities.
+
+“But the details don’t matter,” said M. de Bellegarde. “You have
+evidently had some surprising adventures; you have seen some strange
+sides of life, you have revolved to and fro over a whole continent as I
+walked up and down the Boulevard. You are a man of the world with a
+vengeance! You have spent some deadly dull hours, and you have done
+some extremely disagreeable things: you have shoveled sand, as a boy,
+for supper, and you have eaten roast dog in a gold-diggers’ camp. You
+have stood casting up figures for ten hours at a time, and you have sat
+through Methodist sermons for the sake of looking at a pretty girl in
+another pew. All that is rather stiff, as we say. But at any rate you
+have done something and you are something; you have used your will and
+you have made your fortune. You have not stupified yourself with
+debauchery and you have not mortgaged your fortune to social
+conveniences. You take things easily, and you have fewer prejudices
+even than I, who pretend to have none, but who in reality have three or
+four. Happy man, you are strong and you are free. But what the deuce,”
+demanded the young man in conclusion, “do you propose to do with such
+advantages? Really to use them you need a better world than this. There
+is nothing worth your while here.”
+
+“Oh, I think there is something,” said Newman.
+
+“What is it?”
+
+“Well,” murmured Newman, “I will tell you some other time!”
+
+In this way our hero delayed from day to day broaching a subject which
+he had very much at heart. Meanwhile, however, he was growing
+practically familiar with it; in other words, he had called again,
+three times, on Madame de Cintré. On only two of these occasions had he
+found her at home, and on each of them she had other visitors. Her
+visitors were numerous and extremely loquacious, and they exacted much
+of their hostess’s attention. She found time, however, to bestow a
+little of it on Newman, in an occasional vague smile, the very
+vagueness of which pleased him, allowing him as it did to fill it out
+mentally, both at the time and afterwards, with such meanings as most
+pleased him. He sat by without speaking, looking at the entrances and
+exits, the greetings and chatterings, of Madame de Cintré’s visitors.
+He felt as if he were at the play, and as if his own speaking would be
+an interruption; sometimes he wished he had a book, to follow the
+dialogue; he half expected to see a woman in a white cap and pink
+ribbons come and offer him one for two francs. Some of the ladies
+looked at him very hard—or very soft, as you please; others seemed
+profoundly unconscious of his presence. The men looked only at Madame
+de Cintré. This was inevitable; for whether one called her beautiful or
+not, she entirely occupied and filled one’s vision, just as an
+agreeable sound fills one’s ear. Newman had but twenty distinct words
+with her, but he carried away an impression to which solemn promises
+could not have given a higher value. She was part of the play that he
+was seeing acted, quite as much as her companions; but how she filled
+the stage and how much better she did it! Whether she rose or seated
+herself; whether she went with her departing friends to the door and
+lifted up the heavy curtain as they passed out, and stood an instant
+looking after them and giving them the last nod; or whether she leaned
+back in her chair with her arms crossed and her eyes resting, listening
+and smiling; she gave Newman the feeling that he should like to have
+her always before him, moving slowly to and fro along the whole scale
+of expressive hospitality. If it might be _to_ him, it would be well;
+if it might be _for_ him, it would be still better! She was so tall and
+yet so light, so active and yet so still, so elegant and yet so simple,
+so frank and yet so mysterious! It was the mystery—it was what she was
+off the stage, as it were—that interested Newman most of all. He could
+not have told you what warrant he had for talking about mysteries; if
+it had been his habit to express himself in poetic figures he might
+have said that in observing Madame de Cintré he seemed to see the vague
+circle which sometimes accompanies the partly-filled disk of the moon.
+It was not that she was reserved; on the contrary, she was as frank as
+flowing water. But he was sure she had qualities which she herself did
+not suspect.
+
+He had abstained for several reasons from saying some of these things
+to Bellegarde. One reason was that before proceeding to any act he was
+always circumspect, conjectural, contemplative; he had little
+eagerness, as became a man who felt that whenever he really began to
+move he walked with long steps. And then, it simply pleased him not to
+speak—it occupied him, it excited him. But one day Bellegarde had been
+dining with him, at a restaurant, and they had sat long over their
+dinner. On rising from it, Bellegarde proposed that, to help them
+through the rest of the evening, they should go and see Madame
+Dandelard. Madame Dandelard was a little Italian lady who had married a
+Frenchman who proved to be a rake and a brute and the torment of her
+life. Her husband had spent all her money, and then, lacking the means
+of obtaining more expensive pleasures, had taken, in his duller hours,
+to beating her. She had a blue spot somewhere, which she showed to
+several persons, including Bellegarde. She had obtained a separation
+from her husband, collected the scraps of her fortune (they were very
+meagre) and come to live in Paris, where she was staying at a _hôtel
+garni_. She was always looking for an apartment, and visiting,
+inquiringly, those of other people. She was very pretty, very
+childlike, and she made very extraordinary remarks. Bellegarde had made
+her acquaintance, and the source of his interest in her was, according
+to his own declaration, a curiosity as to what would become of her.
+“She is poor, she is pretty, and she is silly,” he said, “it seems to
+me she can go only one way. It’s a pity, but it can’t be helped. I will
+give her six months. She has nothing to fear from me, but I am watching
+the process. I am curious to see just how things will go. Yes, I know
+what you are going to say: this horrible Paris hardens one’s heart. But
+it quickens one’s wits, and it ends by teaching one a refinement of
+observation! To see this little woman’s little drama play itself out,
+now, is, for me, an intellectual pleasure.”
+
+“If she is going to throw herself away,” Newman had said, “you ought to
+stop her.”
+
+“Stop her? How stop her?”
+
+“Talk to her; give her some good advice.”
+
+Bellegarde laughed. “Heaven deliver us both! Imagine the situation! Go
+and advise her yourself.”
+
+It was after this that Newman had gone with Bellegarde to see Madame
+Dandelard. When they came away, Bellegarde reproached his companion.
+“Where was your famous advice?” he asked. “I didn’t hear a word of it.”
+
+“Oh, I give it up,” said Newman, simply.
+
+“Then you are as bad as I!” said Bellegarde.
+
+“No, because I don’t take an ‘intellectual pleasure’ in her prospective
+adventures. I don’t in the least want to see her going down hill. I had
+rather look the other way. But why,” he asked, in a moment, “don’t you
+get your sister to go and see her?”
+
+Bellegarde stared. “Go and see Madame Dandelard—my sister?”
+
+“She might talk to her to very good purpose.”
+
+Bellegarde shook his head with sudden gravity. “My sister can’t see
+that sort of person. Madame Dandelard is nothing at all; they would
+never meet.”
+
+“I should think,” said Newman, “that your sister might see whom she
+pleased.” And he privately resolved that after he knew her a little
+better he would ask Madame de Cintré to go and talk to the foolish
+little Italian lady.
+
+After his dinner with Bellegarde, on the occasion I have mentioned, he
+demurred to his companion’s proposal that they should go again and
+listen to Madame Dandelard describe her sorrows and her bruises.
+
+“I have something better in mind,” he said; “come home with me and
+finish the evening before my fire.”
+
+Bellegarde always welcomed the prospect of a long stretch of
+conversation, and before long the two men sat watching the great blaze
+which scattered its scintillations over the high adornments of Newman’s
+ball-room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+“Tell me something about your sister,” Newman began abruptly.
+
+Bellegarde turned and gave him a quick look. “Now that I think of it,
+you have never yet asked me a question about her.”
+
+“I know that very well.”
+
+“If it is because you don’t trust me, you are very right,” said
+Bellegarde. “I can’t talk of her rationally. I admire her too much.”
+
+“Talk of her as you can,” rejoined Newman. “Let yourself go.”
+
+“Well, we are very good friends; we are such a brother and sister as
+have not been seen since Orestes and Electra. You have seen her; you
+know what she is: tall, thin, light, imposing, and gentle, half a
+_grande dame_ and half an angel; a mixture of pride and humility, of
+the eagle and the dove. She looks like a statue which had failed as
+stone, resigned itself to its grave defects, and come to life as flesh
+and blood, to wear white capes and long trains. All I can say is that
+she really possesses every merit that her face, her glance, her smile,
+the tone of her voice, lead you to expect; it is saying a great deal.
+As a general thing, when a woman seems very charming, I should say
+‘Beware!’ But in proportion as Claire seems charming you may fold your
+arms and let yourself float with the current; you are safe. She is so
+good! I have never seen a woman half so perfect or so complete. She has
+everything; that is all I can say about her. There!” Bellegarde
+concluded; “I told you I should rhapsodize.”
+
+Newman was silent a while, as if he were turning over his companion’s
+words. “She is very good, eh?” he repeated at last.
+
+“Divinely good!”
+
+“Kind, charitable, gentle, generous?”
+
+“Generosity itself; kindness double-distilled!”
+
+“Is she clever?”
+
+“She is the most intelligent woman I know. Try her, some day, with
+something difficult, and you will see.”
+
+“Is she fond of admiration?”
+
+“_Parbleu!_” cried Bellegarde; “what woman is not?”
+
+“Ah, when they are too fond of admiration they commit all kinds of
+follies to get it.”
+
+“I did not say she was too fond!” Bellegarde exclaimed. “Heaven forbid
+I should say anything so idiotic. She is not _too_ anything! If I were
+to say she was ugly, I should not mean she was too ugly. She is fond of
+pleasing, and if you are pleased she is grateful. If you are not
+pleased, she lets it pass and thinks the worst neither of you nor of
+herself. I imagine, though, she hopes the saints in heaven are, for I
+am sure she is incapable of trying to please by any means of which they
+would disapprove.”
+
+“Is she grave or gay?” asked Newman.
+
+“She is both; not alternately, for she is always the same. There is
+gravity in her gaiety, and gaiety in her gravity. But there is no
+reason why she should be particularly gay.”
+
+“Is she unhappy?”
+
+“I won’t say that, for unhappiness is according as one takes things,
+and Claire takes them according to some receipt communicated to her by
+the Blessed Virgin in a vision. To be unhappy is to be disagreeable,
+which, for her, is out of the question. So she has arranged her
+circumstances so as to be happy in them.”
+
+“She is a philosopher,” said Newman.
+
+“No, she is simply a very nice woman.”
+
+“Her circumstances, at any rate, have been disagreeable?”
+
+Bellegarde hesitated a moment—a thing he very rarely did. “Oh, my dear
+fellow, if I go into the history of my family I shall give you more
+than you bargain for.”
+
+“No, on the contrary, I bargain for that,” said Newman.
+
+“We shall have to appoint a special séance, then, beginning early.
+Suffice it for the present that Claire has not slept on roses. She made
+at eighteen a marriage that was expected to be brilliant, but that
+turned out like a lamp that goes out; all smoke and bad smell. M. de
+Cintré was sixty years old, and an odious old gentleman. He lived,
+however, but a short time, and after his death his family pounced upon
+his money, brought a lawsuit against his widow, and pushed things very
+hard. Their case was a good one, for M. de Cintré, who had been trustee
+for some of his relatives, appeared to have been guilty of some very
+irregular practices. In the course of the suit some revelations were
+made as to his private history which my sister found so displeasing
+that she ceased to defend herself and washed her hands of the property.
+This required some pluck, for she was between two fires, her husband’s
+family opposing her and her own family forcing her. My mother and my
+brother wished her to cleave to what they regarded as her rights. But
+she resisted firmly, and at last bought her freedom—obtained my
+mother’s assent to dropping the suit at the price of a promise.”
+
+“What was the promise?”
+
+“To do anything else, for the next ten years, that was asked of
+her—anything, that is, but marry.”
+
+“She had disliked her husband very much?”
+
+“No one knows how much!”
+
+“The marriage had been made in your horrible French way,” Newman
+continued, “made by the two families, without her having any voice?”
+
+“It was a chapter for a novel. She saw M. de Cintré for the first time
+a month before the wedding, after everything, to the minutest detail,
+had been arranged. She turned white when she looked at him, and white
+she remained till her wedding-day. The evening before the ceremony she
+swooned away, and she spent the whole night in sobs. My mother sat
+holding her two hands, and my brother walked up and down the room. I
+declared it was revolting and told my sister publicly that if she would
+refuse, downright, I would stand by her. I was told to go about my
+business, and she became Comtesse de Cintré.”
+
+“Your brother,” said Newman, reflectively, “must be a very nice young
+man.”
+
+“He is very nice, though he is not young. He is upward of fifty,
+fifteen years my senior. He has been a father to my sister and me. He
+is a very remarkable man; he has the best manners in France. He is
+extremely clever; indeed he is very learned. He is writing a history of
+The Princesses of France Who Never Married.” This was said by
+Bellegarde with extreme gravity, looking straight at Newman, and with
+an eye that betokened no mental reservation; or that, at least, almost
+betokened none.
+
+Newman perhaps discovered there what little there was, for he presently
+said, “You don’t love your brother.”
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said Bellegarde, ceremoniously; “well-bred people
+always love their brothers.”
+
+“Well, I don’t love him, then!” Newman answered.
+
+“Wait till you know him!” rejoined Bellegarde, and this time he smiled.
+
+“Is your mother also very remarkable?” Newman asked, after a pause.
+
+“For my mother,” said Bellegarde, now with intense gravity, “I have the
+highest admiration. She is a very extraordinary woman. You cannot
+approach her without perceiving it.”
+
+“She is the daughter, I believe, of an English nobleman.”
+
+“Of the Earl of St. Dunstan’s.”
+
+“Is the Earl of St. Dunstan’s a very old family?”
+
+“So-so; the sixteenth century. It is on my father’s side that we go
+back—back, back, back. The family antiquaries themselves lose breath.
+At last they stop, panting and fanning themselves, somewhere in the
+ninth century, under Charlemagne. That is where we begin.”
+
+“There is no mistake about it?” said Newman.
+
+“I’m sure I hope not. We have been mistaken at least for several
+centuries.”
+
+“And you have always married into old families?”
+
+“As a rule; though in so long a stretch of time there have been some
+exceptions. Three or four Bellegardes, in the seventeenth and
+eighteenth centuries, took wives out of the _bourgeoisie_—married
+lawyers’ daughters.”
+
+“A lawyer’s daughter; that’s very bad, is it?” asked Newman.
+
+“Horrible! one of us, in the Middle Ages, did better: he married a
+beggar-maid, like King Cophetua. That was really better; it was like
+marrying a bird or a monkey; one didn’t have to think about her family
+at all. Our women have always done well; they have never even gone into
+the _petite noblesse_. There is, I believe, not a case on record of a
+misalliance among the women.”
+
+Newman turned this over for a while, and, then at last he said, “You
+offered, the first time you came to see me to render me any service you
+could. I told you that some time I would mention something you might
+do. Do you remember?”
+
+“Remember? I have been counting the hours.”
+
+“Very well; here’s your chance. Do what you can to make your sister
+think well of me.”
+
+Bellegarde stared, with a smile. “Why, I’m sure she thinks as well of
+you as possible, already.”
+
+“An opinion founded on seeing me three or four times? That is putting
+me off with very little. I want something more. I have been thinking of
+it a good deal, and at last I have decided to tell you. I should like
+very much to marry Madame de Cintré.”
+
+Bellegarde had been looking at him with quickened expectancy, and with
+the smile with which he had greeted Newman’s allusion to his promised
+request. At this last announcement he continued to gaze; but his smile
+went through two or three curious phases. It felt, apparently, a
+momentary impulse to broaden; but this it immediately checked. Then it
+remained for some instants taking counsel with itself, at the end of
+which it decreed a retreat. It slowly effaced itself and left a look of
+seriousness modified by the desire not to be rude. Extreme surprise had
+come into the Count Valentin’s face; but he had reflected that it would
+be uncivil to leave it there. And yet, what the deuce was he to do with
+it? He got up, in his agitation, and stood before the chimney-piece,
+still looking at Newman. He was a longer time thinking what to say than
+one would have expected.
+
+“If you can’t render me the service I ask,” said Newman, “say it out!”
+
+“Let me hear it again, distinctly,” said Bellegarde. “It’s very
+important, you know. I shall plead your cause with my sister, because
+you want—you want to marry her? That’s it, eh?”
+
+“Oh, I don’t say plead my cause, exactly; I shall try and do that
+myself. But say a good word for me, now and then—let her know that you
+think well of me.”
+
+At this, Bellegarde gave a little light laugh.
+
+“What I want chiefly, after all,” Newman went on, “is just to let you
+know what I have in mind. I suppose that is what you expect, isn’t it?
+I want to do what is customary over here. If there is anything
+particular to be done, let me know and I will do it. I wouldn’t for the
+world approach Madame de Cintré without all the proper forms. If I
+ought to go and tell your mother, why I will go and tell her. I will go
+and tell your brother, even. I will go and tell anyone you please. As I
+don’t know anyone else, I begin by telling you. But that, if it is a
+social obligation, is a pleasure as well.”
+
+“Yes, I see—I see,” said Bellegarde, lightly stroking his chin. “You
+have a very right feeling about it, but I’m glad you have begun with
+me.” He paused, hesitated, and then turned away and walked slowly the
+length of the room. Newman got up and stood leaning against the
+mantel-shelf, with his hands in his pockets, watching Bellegarde’s
+promenade. The young Frenchman came back and stopped in front of him.
+“I give it up,” he said; “I will not pretend I am not surprised. I
+am—hugely! _Ouf!_ It’s a relief.”
+
+“That sort of news is always a surprise,” said Newman. “No matter what
+you have done, people are never prepared. But if you are so surprised,
+I hope at least you are pleased.”
+
+“Come!” said Bellegarde. “I am going to be tremendously frank. I don’t
+know whether I am pleased or horrified.”
+
+“If you are pleased, I shall be glad,” said Newman, “and I shall
+be—encouraged. If you are horrified, I shall be sorry, but I shall not
+be discouraged. You must make the best of it.”
+
+“That is quite right—that is your only possible attitude. You are
+perfectly serious?”
+
+“Am I a Frenchman, that I should not be?” asked Newman. “But why is it,
+by the bye, that you should be horrified?”
+
+Bellegarde raised his hand to the back of his head and rubbed his hair
+quickly up and down, thrusting out the tip of his tongue as he did so.
+“Why, you are not noble, for instance,” he said.
+
+“The devil I am not!” exclaimed Newman.
+
+“Oh,” said Bellegarde a little more seriously, “I did not know you had
+a title.”
+
+“A title? What do you mean by a title?” asked Newman. “A count, a duke,
+a marquis? I don’t know anything about that, I don’t know who is and
+who is not. But I say I am noble. I don’t exactly know what you mean by
+it, but it’s a fine word and a fine idea; I put in a claim to it.”
+
+“But what have you to show, my dear fellow, what proofs?”
+
+“Anything you please! But you don’t suppose I am going to undertake to
+prove that I am noble. It is for you to prove the contrary.”
+
+“That’s easily done. You have manufactured wash-tubs.”
+
+Newman stared a moment. “Therefore I am not noble? I don’t see it. Tell
+me something I have _not_ done—something I cannot do.”
+
+“You cannot marry a woman like Madame de Cintré for the asking.”
+
+“I believe you mean,” said Newman slowly, “that I am not good enough.”
+
+“Brutally speaking—yes!”
+
+Bellegarde had hesitated a moment, and while he hesitated Newman’s
+attentive glance had grown somewhat eager. In answer to these last
+words he for a moment said nothing. He simply blushed a little. Then he
+raised his eyes to the ceiling and stood looking at one of the rosy
+cherubs that was painted upon it. “Of course I don’t expect to marry
+any woman for the asking,” he said at last; “I expect first to make
+myself acceptable to her. She must like me, to begin with. But that I
+am not good enough to make a trial is rather a surprise.”
+
+Bellegarde wore a look of mingled perplexity, sympathy, and amusement.
+“You should not hesitate, then, to go up to-morrow and ask a duchess to
+marry you?”
+
+“Not if I thought she would suit me. But I am very fastidious; she
+might not at all.”
+
+Bellegarde’s amusement began to prevail. “And you should be surprised
+if she refused you?”
+
+Newman hesitated a moment. “It sounds conceited to say yes, but
+nevertheless I think I should. For I should make a very handsome
+offer.”
+
+“What would it be?”
+
+“Everything she wishes. If I get hold of a woman that comes up to my
+standard, I shall think nothing too good for her. I have been a long
+time looking, and I find such women are rare. To combine the qualities
+I require seems to be difficult, but when the difficulty is vanquished
+it deserves a reward. My wife shall have a good position, and I’m not
+afraid to say that I shall be a good husband.”
+
+“And these qualities that you require—what are they?”
+
+“Goodness, beauty, intelligence, a fine education, personal
+elegance—everything, in a word, that makes a splendid woman.”
+
+“And noble birth, evidently,” said Bellegarde.
+
+“Oh, throw that in, by all means, if it’s there. The more the better!”
+
+“And my sister seems to you to have all these things?”
+
+“She is exactly what I have been looking for. She is my dream
+realized.”
+
+“And you would make her a very good husband?”
+
+“That is what I wanted you to tell her.”
+
+Bellegarde laid his hand on his companion’s arm a moment, looked at him
+with his head on one side, from head to foot, and then, with a loud
+laugh, and shaking the other hand in the air, turned away. He walked
+again the length of the room, and again he came back and stationed
+himself in front of Newman. “All this is very interesting—it is very
+curious. In what I said just now I was speaking, not for myself, but
+for my tradition, my superstitions. For myself, really, your proposal
+tickles me. It startled me at first, but the more I think of it the
+more I see in it. It’s no use attempting to explain anything; you won’t
+understand me. After all, I don’t see why you need; it’s no great
+loss.”
+
+“Oh, if there is anything more to explain, try it! I want to proceed
+with my eyes open. I will do my best to understand.”
+
+“No,” said Bellegarde, “it’s disagreeable to me; I give it up. I liked
+you the first time I saw you, and I will abide by that. It would be
+quite odious for me to come talking to you as if I could patronize you.
+I have told you before that I envy you; _vous m’imposez_, as we say. I
+didn’t know you much until within five minutes. So we will let things
+go, and I will say nothing to you that, if our positions were reversed,
+you would not say to me.”
+
+I do not know whether in renouncing the mysterious opportunity to which
+he alluded, Bellegarde felt that he was doing something very generous.
+If so, he was not rewarded; his generosity was not appreciated. Newman
+quite failed to recognize the young Frenchman’s power to wound his
+feelings, and he had now no sense of escaping or coming off easily. He
+did not thank his companion even with a glance. “My eyes are open,
+though,” he said, “so far as that you have practically told me that
+your family and your friends will turn up their noses at me. I have
+never thought much about the reasons that make it proper for people to
+turn up their noses, and so I can only decide the question off-hand.
+Looking at it in that way I can’t see anything in it. I simply think,
+if you want to know, that I’m as good as the best. Who the best are, I
+don’t pretend to say. I have never thought much about that either. To
+tell the truth, I have always had rather a good opinion of myself; a
+man who is successful can’t help it. But I will admit that I was
+conceited. What I don’t say yes to is that I don’t stand high—as high
+as anyone else. This is a line of speculation I should not have chosen,
+but you must remember you began it yourself. I should never have
+dreamed that I was on the defensive, or that I had to justify myself;
+but if your people will have it so, I will do my best.”
+
+“But you offered, a while ago, to make your court as we say, to my
+mother and my brother.”
+
+“Damn it!” cried Newman, “I want to be polite.”
+
+“Good!” rejoined Bellegarde; “this will go far, it will be very
+entertaining. Excuse my speaking of it in that cold-blooded fashion,
+but the matter must, of necessity, be for me something of a spectacle.
+It’s positively exciting. But apart from that I sympathize with you,
+and I shall be actor, so far as I can, as well as spectator. You are a
+capital fellow; I believe in you and I back you. The simple fact that
+you appreciate my sister will serve as the proof I was asking for. All
+men are equal—especially men of taste!”
+
+“Do you think,” asked Newman presently, “that Madame de Cintré is
+determined not to marry?”
+
+“That is my impression. But that is not against you; it’s for you to
+make her change her mind.”
+
+“I am afraid it will be hard,” said Newman, gravely.
+
+“I don’t think it will be easy. In a general way I don’t see why a
+widow should ever marry again. She has gained the benefits of
+matrimony—freedom and consideration—and she has got rid of the
+drawbacks. Why should she put her head into the noose again? Her usual
+motive is ambition: if a man can offer her a great position, make her a
+princess or an ambassadress she may think the compensation sufficient.”
+
+“And—in that way—is Madame de Cintré ambitious?”
+
+“Who knows?” said Bellegarde, with a profound shrug. “I don’t pretend
+to say all that she is or all that she is not. I think she might be
+touched by the prospect of becoming the wife of a great man. But in a
+certain way, I believe, whatever she does will be the _improbable_.
+Don’t be too confident, but don’t absolutely doubt. Your best chance
+for success will be precisely in being, to her mind, unusual,
+unexpected, original. Don’t try to be anyone else; be simply yourself,
+out and out. Something or other can’t fail to come of it; I am very
+curious to see what.”
+
+“I am much obliged to you for your advice,” said Newman. “And,” he
+added with a smile, “I am glad, for your sake, I am going to be so
+amusing.”
+
+“It will be more than amusing,” said Bellegarde; “it will be inspiring.
+I look at it from my point of view, and you from yours. After all,
+anything for a change! And only yesterday I was yawning so as to
+dislocate my jaw, and declaring that there was nothing new under the
+sun! If it isn’t new to see you come into the family as a suitor, I am
+very much mistaken. Let me say that, my dear fellow; I won’t call it
+anything else, bad or good; I will simply call it _new_.” And overcome
+with a sense of the novelty thus foreshadowed, Valentin de Bellegarde
+threw himself into a deep armchair before the fire, and, with a fixed,
+intense smile, seemed to read a vision of it in the flame of the logs.
+After a while he looked up. “Go ahead, my boy; you have my good
+wishes,” he said. “But it is really a pity you don’t understand me,
+that you don’t know just what I am doing.”
+
+“Oh,” said Newman, laughing, “don’t do anything wrong. Leave me to
+myself, rather, or defy me, out and out. I wouldn’t lay any load on
+your conscience.”
+
+Bellegarde sprang up again; he was evidently excited; there was a
+warmer spark even than usual in his eye. “You never will understand—you
+never will know,” he said; “and if you succeed, and I turn out to have
+helped you, you will never be grateful, not as I shall deserve you
+should be. You will be an excellent fellow always, but you will not be
+grateful. But it doesn’t matter, for I shall get my own fun out of it.”
+And he broke into an extravagant laugh. “You look puzzled,” he added;
+“you look almost frightened.”
+
+“It _is_ a pity,” said Newman, “that I don’t understand you. I shall
+lose some very good jokes.”
+
+“I told you, you remember, that we were very strange people,”
+Bellegarde went on. “I give you warning again. We are! My mother is
+strange, my brother is strange, and I verily believe that I am stranger
+than either. You will even find my sister a little strange. Old trees
+have crooked branches, old houses have queer cracks, old races have odd
+secrets. Remember that we are eight hundred years old!”
+
+“Very good,” said Newman; “that’s the sort of thing I came to Europe
+for. You come into my programme.”
+
+“_Touchez-là_, then,” said Bellegarde, putting out his hand. “It’s a
+bargain: I accept you; I espouse your cause. It’s because I like you,
+in a great measure; but that is not the only reason!” And he stood
+holding Newman’s hand and looking at him askance.
+
+“What is the other one?”
+
+“I am in the Opposition. I dislike someone else.”
+
+“Your brother?” asked Newman, in his unmodulated voice.
+
+Bellegarde laid his fingers upon his lips with a whispered _hush!_ “Old
+races have strange secrets!” he said. “Put yourself into motion, come
+and see my sister, and be assured of my sympathy!” And on this he took
+his leave.
+
+Newman dropped into a chair before his fire, and sat a long time
+staring into the blaze.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+He went to see Madame de Cintré the next day, and was informed by the
+servant that she was at home. He passed as usual up the large, cold
+staircase and through a spacious vestibule above, where the walls
+seemed all composed of small door panels, touched with long-faded
+gilding; whence he was ushered into the sitting-room in which he had
+already been received. It was empty, and the servant told him that
+Madame la Comtesse would presently appear. He had time, while he
+waited, to wonder whether Bellegarde had seen his sister since the
+evening before, and whether in this case he had spoken to her of their
+talk. In this case Madame de Cintré’s receiving him was an
+encouragement. He felt a certain trepidation as he reflected that she
+might come in with the knowledge of his supreme admiration and of the
+project he had built upon it in her eyes; but the feeling was not
+disagreeable. Her face could wear no look that would make it less
+beautiful, and he was sure beforehand that however she might take the
+proposal he had in reserve, she would not take it in scorn or in irony.
+He had a feeling that if she could only read the bottom of his heart
+and measure the extent of his good will toward her, she would be
+entirely kind.
+
+She came in at last, after so long an interval that he wondered whether
+she had been hesitating. She smiled with her usual frankness, and held
+out her hand; she looked at him straight with her soft and luminous
+eyes, and said, without a tremor in her voice, that she was glad to see
+him and that she hoped he was well. He found in her what he had found
+before—that faint perfume of a personal shyness worn away by contact
+with the world, but the more perceptible the more closely you
+approached her. This lingering diffidence seemed to give a peculiar
+value to what was definite and assured in her manner; it made it seem
+like an accomplishment, a beautiful talent, something that one might
+compare to an exquisite touch in a pianist. It was, in fact, Madame de
+Cintré’s “authority,” as they say of artists, that especially impressed
+and fascinated Newman; he always came back to the feeling that when he
+should complete himself by taking a wife, that was the way he should
+like his wife to interpret him to the world. The only trouble, indeed,
+was that when the instrument was so perfect it seemed to interpose too
+much between you and the genius that used it. Madame de Cintré gave
+Newman the sense of an elaborate education, of her having passed
+through mysterious ceremonies and processes of culture in her youth, of
+her having been fashioned and made flexible to certain exalted social
+needs. All this, as I have affirmed, made her seem rare and precious—a
+very expensive article, as he would have said, and one which a man with
+an ambition to have everything about him of the best would find it
+highly agreeable to possess. But looking at the matter with an eye to
+private felicity, Newman wondered where, in so exquisite a compound,
+nature and art showed their dividing line. Where did the special
+intention separate from the habit of good manners? Where did urbanity
+end and sincerity begin? Newman asked himself these questions even
+while he stood ready to accept the admired object in all its
+complexity; he felt that he could do so in profound security, and
+examine its mechanism afterwards, at leisure.
+
+“I am very glad to find you alone,” he said. “You know I have never had
+such good luck before.”
+
+“But you have seemed before very well contented with your luck,” said
+Madame de Cintré. “You have sat and watched my visitors with an air of
+quiet amusement. What have you thought of them?”
+
+“Oh, I have thought the ladies were very elegant and very graceful, and
+wonderfully quick at repartee. But what I have chiefly thought has been
+that they only helped me to admire you.” This was not gallantry on
+Newman’s part—an art in which he was quite unversed. It was simply the
+instinct of the practical man, who had made up his mind what he wanted,
+and was now beginning to take active steps to obtain it.
+
+Madame de Cintré started slightly, and raised her eyebrows; she had
+evidently not expected so fervid a compliment. “Oh, in that case,” she
+said with a laugh, “your finding me alone is not good luck for me. I
+hope someone will come in quickly.”
+
+“I hope not,” said Newman. “I have something particular to say to you.
+Have you seen your brother?”
+
+“Yes, I saw him an hour ago.”
+
+“Did he tell you that he had seen me last night?”
+
+“He said so.”
+
+“And did he tell you what we had talked about?”
+
+Madame de Cintré hesitated a moment. As Newman asked these questions
+she had grown a little pale, as if she regarded what was coming as
+necessary, but not as agreeable. “Did you give him a message to me?”
+she asked.
+
+“It was not exactly a message—I asked him to render me a service.”
+
+“The service was to sing your praises, was it not?” And she accompanied
+this question with a little smile, as if to make it easier to herself.
+
+“Yes, that is what it really amounts to,” said Newman. “Did he sing my
+praises?”
+
+“He spoke very well of you. But when I know that it was by your special
+request, of course I must take his eulogy with a grain of salt.”
+
+“Oh, that makes no difference,” said Newman. “Your brother would not
+have spoken well of me unless he believed what he was saying. He is too
+honest for that.”
+
+“Are you very deep?” said Madame de Cintré. “Are you trying to please
+me by praising my brother? I confess it is a good way.”
+
+“For me, any way that succeeds will be good. I will praise your brother
+all day, if that will help me. He is a noble little fellow. He has made
+me feel, in promising to do what he can to help me, that I can depend
+upon him.”
+
+“Don’t make too much of that,” said Madame de Cintré. “He can help you
+very little.”
+
+“Of course I must work my way myself. I know that very well; I only
+want a chance to. In consenting to see me, after what he told you, you
+almost seem to be giving me a chance.”
+
+“I am seeing you,” said Madame de Cintré, slowly and gravely, “because
+I promised my brother I would.”
+
+“Blessings on your brother’s head!” cried Newman. “What I told him last
+evening was this: that I admired you more than any woman I had ever
+seen, and that I should like immensely to make you my wife.” He uttered
+these words with great directness and firmness, and without any sense
+of confusion. He was full of his idea, he had completely mastered it,
+and he seemed to look down on Madame de Cintré, with all her gathered
+elegance, from the height of his bracing good conscience. It is
+probable that this particular tone and manner were the very best he
+could have hit upon. Yet the light, just visibly forced smile with
+which his companion had listened to him died away, and she sat looking
+at him with her lips parted and her face as solemn as a tragic mask.
+There was evidently something very painful to her in the scene to which
+he was subjecting her, and yet her impatience of it found no angry
+voice. Newman wondered whether he was hurting her; he could not imagine
+why the liberal devotion he meant to express should be disagreeable. He
+got up and stood before her, leaning one hand on the chimney-piece. “I
+know I have seen you very little to say this,” he said, “so little that
+it may make what I say seem disrespectful. That is my misfortune! I
+could have said it the first time I saw you. Really, I had seen you
+before; I had seen you in imagination; you seemed almost an old friend.
+So what I say is not mere gallantry and compliments and nonsense—I
+can’t talk that way, I don’t know how, and I wouldn’t, to you, if I
+could. It’s as serious as such words can be. I feel as if I knew you
+and knew what a beautiful, admirable woman you are. I shall know
+better, perhaps, some day, but I have a general notion now. You are
+just the woman I have been looking for, except that you are far more
+perfect. I won’t make any protestations and vows, but you can trust me.
+It is very soon, I know, to say all this; it is almost offensive. But
+why not gain time if one can? And if you want time to reflect—of course
+you do—the sooner you begin, the better for me. I don’t know what you
+think of me; but there is no great mystery about me; you see what I am.
+Your brother told me that my antecedents and occupations were against
+me; that your family stands, somehow, on a higher level than I do. That
+is an idea which of course I don’t understand and don’t accept. But you
+don’t care anything about that. I can assure you that I am a very solid
+fellow, and that if I give my mind to it I can arrange things so that
+in a very few years I shall not need to waste time in explaining who I
+am and what I am. You will decide for yourself whether you like me or
+not. What there is you see before you. I honestly believe I have no
+hidden vices or nasty tricks. I am kind, kind, kind! Everything that a
+man can give a woman I will give you. I have a large fortune, a very
+large fortune; some day, if you will allow me, I will go into details.
+If you want brilliancy, everything in the way of brilliancy that money
+can give you, you shall have. And as regards anything you may give up,
+don’t take for granted too much that its place cannot be filled. Leave
+that to me; I’ll take care of you; I shall know what you need. Energy
+and ingenuity can arrange everything. I’m a strong man! There, I have
+said what I had on my heart! It was better to get it off. I am very
+sorry if it’s disagreeable to you; but think how much better it is that
+things should be clear. Don’t answer me now, if you don’t wish it.
+Think about it, think about it as slowly as you please. Of course I
+haven’t said, I can’t say, half I mean, especially about my admiration
+for you. But take a favorable view of me; it will only be just.”
+
+During this speech, the longest that Newman had ever made, Madame de
+Cintré kept her gaze fixed upon him, and it expanded at the last into a
+sort of fascinated stare. When he ceased speaking she lowered her eyes
+and sat for some moments looking down and straight before her. Then she
+slowly rose to her feet, and a pair of exceptionally keen eyes would
+have perceived that she was trembling a little in the movement. She
+still looked extremely serious. “I am very much obliged to you for your
+offer,” she said. “It seems very strange, but I am glad you spoke
+without waiting any longer. It is better the subject should be
+dismissed. I appreciate all you say; you do me great honor. But I have
+decided not to marry.”
+
+“Oh, don’t say that!” cried Newman, in a tone absolutely _naïf_ from
+its pleading and caressing cadence. She had turned away, and it made
+her stop a moment with her back to him. “Think better of that. You are
+too young, too beautiful, too much made to be happy and to make others
+happy. If you are afraid of losing your freedom, I can assure you that
+this freedom here, this life you now lead, is a dreary bondage to what
+I will offer you. You shall do things that I don’t think you have ever
+thought of. I will take you anywhere in the wide world that you
+propose. Are you unhappy? You give me a feeling that you _are_ unhappy.
+You have no right to be, or to be made so. Let me come in and put an
+end to it.”
+
+Madame de Cintré stood there a moment longer, looking away from him. If
+she was touched by the way he spoke, the thing was conceivable. His
+voice, always very mild and interrogative, gradually became as soft and
+as tenderly argumentative as if he had been talking to a much-loved
+child. He stood watching her, and she presently turned round again, but
+this time she did not look at him, and she spoke in a quietness in
+which there was a visible trace of effort.
+
+“There are a great many reasons why I should not marry,” she said,
+“more than I can explain to you. As for my happiness, I am very happy.
+Your offer seems strange to me, for more reasons also than I can say.
+Of course you have a perfect right to make it. But I cannot accept
+it—it is impossible. Please never speak of this matter again. If you
+cannot promise me this, I must ask you not to come back.”
+
+“Why is it impossible?” Newman demanded. “You may think it is, at
+first, without its really being so. I didn’t expect you to be pleased
+at first, but I do believe that if you will think of it a good while,
+you may be satisfied.”
+
+“I don’t know you,” said Madame de Cintré. “Think how little I know
+you.”
+
+“Very little, of course, and therefore I don’t ask for your ultimatum
+on the spot. I only ask you not to say no, and to let me hope. I will
+wait as long as you desire. Meanwhile you can see more of me and know
+me better, look at me as a possible husband—as a candidate—and make up
+your mind.”
+
+Something was going on, rapidly, in Madame de Cintré’s thoughts; she
+was weighing a question there, beneath Newman’s eyes, weighing it and
+deciding it. “From the moment I don’t very respectfully beg you to
+leave the house and never return,” she said, “I listen to you, I seem
+to give you hope. I _have_ listened to you—against my judgment. It is
+because you are eloquent. If I had been told this morning that I should
+consent to consider you as a possible husband, I should have thought my
+informant a little crazy. I _am_ listening to you, you see!” And she
+threw her hands out for a moment and let them drop with a gesture in
+which there was just the slightest expression of appealing weakness.
+
+“Well, as far as saying goes, I have said everything,” said Newman. “I
+believe in you, without restriction, and I think all the good of you
+that it is possible to think of a human creature. I firmly believe that
+in marrying me you will be _safe_. As I said just now,” he went on with
+a smile, “I have no bad ways. I can _do_ so much for you. And if you
+are afraid that I am not what you have been accustomed to, not refined
+and delicate and punctilious, you may easily carry that too far. I _am_
+delicate! You shall see!”
+
+Madame de Cintré walked some distance away, and paused before a great
+plant, an azalea, which was flourishing in a porcelain tub before her
+window. She plucked off one of the flowers and, twisting it in her
+fingers, retraced her steps. Then she sat down in silence, and her
+attitude seemed to be a consent that Newman should say more.
+
+“Why should you say it is impossible you should marry?” he continued.
+“The only thing that could make it really impossible would be your
+being already married. Is it because you have been unhappy in marriage?
+That is all the more reason! Is it because your family exert a pressure
+upon you, interfere with you, annoy you? That is still another reason;
+you ought to be perfectly free, and marriage will make you so. I don’t
+say anything against your family—understand that!” added Newman, with
+an eagerness which might have made a perspicacious observer smile.
+“Whatever way you feel toward them is the right way, and anything that
+you should wish me to do to make myself agreeable to them I will do as
+well as I know how. Depend upon that!”
+
+Madame de Cintré rose again and came toward the fireplace, near which
+Newman was standing. The expression of pain and embarrassment had
+passed out of her face, and it was illuminated with something which,
+this time at least, Newman need not have been perplexed whether to
+attribute to habit or to intention, to art or to nature. She had the
+air of a woman who has stepped across the frontier of friendship and,
+looking around her, finds the region vast. A certain checked and
+controlled exaltation seemed mingled with the usual level radiance of
+her glance. “I will not refuse to see you again,” she said, “because
+much of what you have said has given me pleasure. But I will see you
+only on this condition: that you say nothing more in the same way for a
+long time.”
+
+“For how long?”
+
+“For six months. It must be a solemn promise.”
+
+“Very well, I promise.”
+
+“Good-bye, then,” she said, and extended her hand.
+
+He held it a moment, as if he were going to say something more. But he
+only looked at her; then he took his departure.
+
+That evening, on the Boulevard, he met Valentin de Bellegarde. After
+they had exchanged greetings, Newman told him that he had seen Madame
+de Cintré a few hours before.
+
+“I know it,” said Bellegarde. “I dined in the Rue de l’Université.” And
+then, for some moments, both men were silent. Newman wished to ask
+Bellegarde what visible impression his visit had made and the Count
+Valentin had a question of his own. Bellegarde spoke first.
+
+“It’s none of my business, but what the deuce did you say to my
+sister?”
+
+“I am willing to tell you,” said Newman, “that I made her an offer of
+marriage.”
+
+“Already!” And the young man gave a whistle. “‘Time is money!’ Is that
+what you say in America? And Madame de Cintré?” he added, with an
+interrogative inflection.
+
+“She did not accept my offer.”
+
+“She couldn’t, you know, in that way.”
+
+“But I’m to see her again,” said Newman.
+
+“Oh, the strangeness of woman!” exclaimed Bellegarde. Then he stopped,
+and held Newman off at arms’-length. “I look at you with respect!” he
+exclaimed. “You have achieved what we call a personal success!
+Immediately, now, I must present you to my brother.”
+
+“Whenever you please!” said Newman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Newman continued to see his friends the Tristrams with a good deal of
+frequency, though if you had listened to Mrs. Tristram’s account of the
+matter you would have supposed that they had been cynically repudiated
+for the sake of grander acquaintance. “We were all very well so long as
+we had no rivals—we were better than nothing. But now that you have
+become the fashion, and have your pick every day of three invitations
+to dinner, we are tossed into the corner. I am sure it is very good of
+you to come and see us once a month; I wonder you don’t send us your
+cards in an envelope. When you do, pray have them with black edges; it
+will be for the death of my last illusion.” It was in this incisive
+strain that Mrs. Tristram moralized over Newman’s so-called neglect,
+which was in reality a most exemplary constancy. Of course she was
+joking, but there was always something ironical in her jokes, as there
+was always something jocular in her gravity.
+
+“I know no better proof that I have treated you very well,” Newman had
+said, “than the fact that you make so free with my character.
+Familiarity breeds contempt; I have made myself too cheap. If I had a
+little proper pride I would stay away a while, and when you asked me to
+dinner say I was going to the Princess Borealska’s. But I have not any
+pride where my pleasure is concerned, and to keep you in the humor to
+see me—if you must see me only to call me bad names—I will agree to
+anything you choose; I will admit that I am the biggest snob in Paris.”
+Newman, in fact, had declined an invitation personally given by the
+Princess Borealska, an inquiring Polish lady to whom he had been
+presented, on the ground that on that particular day he always dined at
+Mrs. Tristram’s; and it was only a tenderly perverse theory of his
+hostess of the Avenue d’Iéna that he was faithless to his early
+friendships. She needed the theory to explain a certain moral
+irritation by which she was often visited; though, if this explanation
+was unsound, a deeper analyst than I must give the right one. Having
+launched our hero upon the current which was bearing him so rapidly
+along, she appeared but half-pleased at its swiftness. She had
+succeeded too well; she had played her game too cleverly and she wished
+to mix up the cards. Newman had told her, in due season, that her
+friend was “satisfactory.” The epithet was not romantic, but Mrs.
+Tristram had no difficulty in perceiving that, in essentials, the
+feeling which lay beneath it was. Indeed, the mild, expansive brevity
+with which it was uttered, and a certain look, at once appealing and
+inscrutable, that issued from Newman’s half-closed eyes as he leaned
+his head against the back of his chair, seemed to her the most eloquent
+attestation of a mature sentiment that she had ever encountered. Newman
+was, according to the French phrase, only abounding in her own sense,
+but his temperate raptures exerted a singular effect upon the ardor
+which she herself had so freely manifested a few months before. She now
+seemed inclined to take a purely critical view of Madame de Cintré, and
+wished to have it understood that she did not in the least answer for
+her being a compendium of all the virtues. “No woman was ever so good
+as that woman seems,” she said. “Remember what Shakespeare calls
+Desdemona; ‘a supersubtle Venetian.’ Madame de Cintré is a supersubtle
+Parisian. She is a charming woman, and she has five hundred merits; but
+you had better keep that in mind.” Was Mrs. Tristram simply finding out
+that she was jealous of her dear friend on the other side of the Seine,
+and that in undertaking to provide Newman with an ideal wife she had
+counted too much on her own disinterestedness? We may be permitted to
+doubt it. The inconsistent little lady of the Avenue d’Iéna had an
+insuperable need of changing her place, intellectually. She had a
+lively imagination, and she was capable, at certain times, of imagining
+the direct reverse of her most cherished beliefs, with a vividness more
+intense than that of conviction. She got tired of thinking aright; but
+there was no serious harm in it, as she got equally tired of thinking
+wrong. In the midst of her mysterious perversities she had admirable
+flashes of justice. One of these occurred when Newman related to her
+that he had made a formal proposal to Madame de Cintré. He repeated in
+a few words what he had said, and in a great many what she had
+answered. Mrs. Tristram listened with extreme interest.
+
+“But after all,” said Newman, “there is nothing to congratulate me
+upon. It is not a triumph.”
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said Mrs. Tristram; “it is a great triumph. It is
+a great triumph that she did not silence you at the first word, and
+request you never to speak to her again.”
+
+“I don’t see that,” observed Newman.
+
+“Of course you don’t; Heaven forbid you should! When I told you to go
+on your own way and do what came into your head, I had no idea you
+would go over the ground so fast. I never dreamed you would offer
+yourself after five or six morning-calls. As yet, what had you done to
+make her like you? You had simply sat—not very straight—and stared at
+her. But she does like you.”
+
+“That remains to be seen.”
+
+“No, that is proved. What will come of it remains to be seen. That you
+should propose to marry her, without more ado, could never have come
+into her head. You can form very little idea of what passed through her
+mind as you spoke; if she ever really marries you, the affair will be
+characterized by the usual justice of all human beings towards women.
+You will think you take generous views of her; but you will never begin
+to know through what a strange sea of feeling she passed before she
+accepted you. As she stood there in front of you the other day, she
+plunged into it. She said ‘Why not?’ to something which, a few hours
+earlier, had been inconceivable. She turned about on a thousand
+gathered prejudices and traditions as on a pivot, and looked where she
+had never looked hitherto. When I think of it—when I think of Claire de
+Cintré and all that she represents, there seems to me something very
+fine in it. When I recommended you to try your fortune with her I of
+course thought well of you, and in spite of your sins I think so still.
+But I confess I don’t see quite what you are and what you have done, to
+make such a woman do this sort of thing for you.”
+
+“Oh, there is something very fine in it!” said Newman with a laugh,
+repeating her words. He took an extreme satisfaction in hearing that
+there was something fine in it. He had not the least doubt of it
+himself, but he had already begun to value the world’s admiration of
+Madame de Cintré, as adding to the prospective glory of possession.
+
+It was immediately after this conversation that Valentin de Bellegarde
+came to conduct his friend to the Rue de l’Université to present him to
+the other members of his family. “You are already introduced,” he said,
+“and you have begun to be talked about. My sister has mentioned your
+successive visits to my mother, and it was an accident that my mother
+was present at none of them. I have spoken of you as an American of
+immense wealth, and the best fellow in the world, who is looking for
+something very superior in the way of a wife.”
+
+“Do you suppose,” asked Newman, “that Madame de Cintré has related to
+your mother the last conversation I had with her?”
+
+“I am very certain that she has not; she will keep her own counsel.
+Meanwhile you must make your way with the rest of the family. Thus much
+is known about you: you have made a great fortune in trade, you are a
+little eccentric, and you frankly admire our dear Claire. My
+sister-in-law, whom you remember seeing in Madame de Cintré’s
+sitting-room, took, it appears, a fancy to you; she has described you
+as having _beaucoup de cachet_. My mother, therefore, is curious to see
+you.”
+
+“She expects to laugh at me, eh?” said Newman.
+
+“She never laughs. If she does not like you, don’t hope to purchase
+favor by being amusing. Take warning by me!”
+
+This conversation took place in the evening, and half an hour later
+Valentin ushered his companion into an apartment of the house of the
+Rue de l’Université into which he had not yet penetrated, the salon of
+the dowager Marquise de Bellegarde. It was a vast, high room, with
+elaborate and ponderous mouldings, painted a whitish gray, along the
+upper portion of the walls and the ceiling; with a great deal of faded
+and carefully repaired tapestry in the doorways and chair-backs; a
+Turkey carpet in light colors, still soft and deep, in spite of great
+antiquity, on the floor, and portraits of each of Madame de
+Bellegarde’s children, at the age of ten, suspended against an old
+screen of red silk. The room was illumined, exactly enough for
+conversation, by half a dozen candles, placed in odd corners, at a
+great distance apart. In a deep armchair, near the fire, sat an old
+lady in black; at the other end of the room another person was seated
+at the piano, playing a very expressive waltz. In this latter person
+Newman recognized the young Marquise de Bellegarde.
+
+Valentin presented his friend, and Newman walked up to the old lady by
+the fire and shook hands with her. He received a rapid impression of a
+white, delicate, aged face, with a high forehead, a small mouth, and a
+pair of cold blue eyes which had kept much of the freshness of youth.
+Madame de Bellegarde looked hard at him, and returned his hand-shake
+with a sort of British positiveness which reminded him that she was the
+daughter of the Earl of St. Dunstan’s. Her daughter-in-law stopped
+playing and gave him an agreeable smile. Newman sat down and looked
+about him, while Valentin went and kissed the hand of the young
+marquise.
+
+“I ought to have seen you before,” said Madame de Bellegarde. “You have
+paid several visits to my daughter.”
+
+“Oh, yes,” said Newman, smiling; “Madame de Cintré and I are old
+friends by this time.”
+
+“You have gone fast,” said Madame de Bellegarde.
+
+“Not so fast as I should like,” said Newman, bravely.
+
+“Oh, you are very ambitious,” answered the old lady.
+
+“Yes, I confess I am,” said Newman, smiling.
+
+Madame de Bellegarde looked at him with her cold fine eyes, and he
+returned her gaze, reflecting that she was a possible adversary and
+trying to take her measure. Their eyes remained in contact for some
+moments. Then Madame de Bellegarde looked away, and without smiling, “I
+am very ambitious, too,” she said.
+
+Newman felt that taking her measure was not easy; she was a formidable,
+inscrutable little woman. She resembled her daughter, and yet she was
+utterly unlike her. The coloring in Madame de Cintré was the same, and
+the high delicacy of her brow and nose was hereditary. But her face was
+a larger and freer copy, and her mouth in especial a happy divergence
+from that conservative orifice, a little pair of lips at once plump and
+pinched, that looked, when closed, as if they could not open wider than
+to swallow a gooseberry or to emit an “Oh, dear, no!” which probably
+had been thought to give the finishing touch to the aristocratic
+prettiness of the Lady Emmeline Atheling as represented, forty years
+before, in several Books of Beauty. Madame de Cintré’s face had, to
+Newman’s eye, a range of expression as delightfully vast as the
+wind-streaked, cloud-flecked distance on a Western prairie. But her
+mother’s white, intense, respectable countenance, with its formal gaze,
+and its circumscribed smile, suggested a document signed and sealed; a
+thing of parchment, ink, and ruled lines. “She is a woman of
+conventions and proprieties,” he said to himself as he looked at her;
+“her world is the world of things immutably decreed. But how she is at
+home in it, and what a paradise she finds it. She walks about in it as
+if it were a blooming park, a Garden of Eden; and when she sees ‘This
+is genteel,’ or ‘This is improper,’ written on a mile-stone she stops
+ecstatically, as if she were listening to a nightingale or smelling a
+rose.” Madame de Bellegarde wore a little black velvet hood tied under
+her chin, and she was wrapped in an old black cashmere shawl.
+
+“You are an American?” she said presently. “I have seen several
+Americans.”
+
+“There are several in Paris,” said Newman jocosely.
+
+“Oh, really?” said Madame de Bellegarde. “It was in England I saw
+these, or somewhere else; not in Paris. I think it must have been in
+the Pyrenees, many years ago. I am told your ladies are very pretty.
+One of these ladies was very pretty! such a wonderful complexion! She
+presented me a note of introduction from someone—I forgot whom—and she
+sent with it a note of her own. I kept her letter a long time
+afterwards, it was so strangely expressed. I used to know some of the
+phrases by heart. But I have forgotten them now, it is so many years
+ago. Since then I have seen no more Americans. I think my
+daughter-in-law has; she is a great gad-about, she sees everyone.”
+
+At this the younger lady came rustling forward, pinching in a very
+slender waist, and casting idly preoccupied glances over the front of
+her dress, which was apparently designed for a ball. She was, in a
+singular way, at once ugly and pretty; she had protuberant eyes, and
+lips strangely red. She reminded Newman of his friend, Mademoiselle
+Nioche; this was what that much-obstructed young lady would have liked
+to be. Valentin de Bellegarde walked behind her at a distance, hopping
+about to keep off the far-spreading train of her dress.
+
+“You ought to show more of your shoulders behind,” he said very
+gravely. “You might as well wear a standing ruff as such a dress as
+that.”
+
+The young woman turned her back to the mirror over the chimney-piece,
+and glanced behind her, to verify Valentin’s assertion. The mirror
+descended low, and yet it reflected nothing but a large unclad flesh
+surface. The young marquise put her hands behind her and gave a
+downward pull to the waist of her dress. “Like that, you mean?” she
+asked.
+
+“That is a little better,” said Bellegarde in the same tone, “but it
+leaves a good deal to be desired.”
+
+“Oh, I never go to extremes,” said his sister-in-law. And then, turning
+to Madame de Bellegarde, “What were you calling me just now, madame?”
+
+“I called you a gad-about,” said the old lady. “But I might call you
+something else, too.”
+
+“A gad-about? What an ugly word! What does it mean?”
+
+“A very beautiful person,” Newman ventured to say, seeing that it was
+in French.
+
+“That is a pretty compliment but a bad translation,” said the young
+marquise. And then, looking at him a moment, “Do you dance?”
+
+“Not a step.”
+
+“You are very wrong,” she said, simply. And with another look at her
+back in the mirror she turned away.
+
+“Do you like Paris?” asked the old lady, who was apparently wondering
+what was the proper way to talk to an American.
+
+“Yes, rather,” said Newman. And then he added with a friendly
+intonation, “Don’t you?”
+
+“I can’t say I know it. I know my house—I know my friends—I don’t know
+Paris.”
+
+“Oh, you lose a great deal,” said Newman, sympathetically.
+
+Madame de Bellegarde stared; it was presumably the first time she had
+been condoled with on her losses.
+
+“I am content with what I have,” she said with dignity.
+
+Newman’s eyes, at this moment, were wandering round the room, which
+struck him as rather sad and shabby; passing from the high casements,
+with their small, thickly-framed panes, to the sallow tints of two or
+three portraits in pastel, of the last century, which hung between
+them. He ought, obviously, to have answered that the contentment of his
+hostess was quite natural—she had a great deal; but the idea did not
+occur to him during the pause of some moments which followed.
+
+“Well, my dear mother,” said Valentin, coming and leaning against the
+chimney-piece, “what do you think of my dear friend Newman? Is he not
+the excellent fellow I told you?”
+
+“My acquaintance with Mr. Newman has not gone very far,” said Madame de
+Bellegarde. “I can as yet only appreciate his great politeness.”
+
+“My mother is a great judge of these matters,” said Valentin to Newman.
+“If you have satisfied her, it is a triumph.”
+
+“I hope I shall satisfy you, some day,” said Newman, looking at the old
+lady. “I have done nothing yet.”
+
+“You must not listen to my son; he will bring you into trouble. He is a
+sad scatterbrain.”
+
+“Oh, I like him—I like him,” said Newman, genially.
+
+“He amuses you, eh?”
+
+“Yes, perfectly.”
+
+“Do you hear that, Valentin?” said Madame de Bellegarde. “You amuse Mr.
+Newman.”
+
+“Perhaps we shall all come to that!” Valentin exclaimed.
+
+“You must see my other son,” said Madame de Bellegarde. “He is much
+better than this one. But he will not amuse you.”
+
+“I don’t know—I don’t know!” murmured Valentin, reflectively. “But we
+shall very soon see. Here comes _Monsieur mon frère_.”
+
+The door had just opened to give ingress to a gentleman who stepped
+forward and whose face Newman remembered. He had been the author of our
+hero’s discomfiture the first time he tried to present himself to
+Madame de Cintré. Valentin de Bellegarde went to meet his brother,
+looked at him a moment, and then, taking him by the arm, led him up to
+Newman.
+
+“This is my excellent friend Mr. Newman,” he said very blandly. “You
+must know him.”
+
+“I am delighted to know Mr. Newman,” said the marquis with a low bow,
+but without offering his hand.
+
+“He is the old woman at second-hand,” Newman said to himself, as he
+returned M. de Bellegarde’s greeting. And this was the starting-point
+of a speculative theory, in his mind, that the late marquis had been a
+very amiable foreigner, with an inclination to take life easily and a
+sense that it was difficult for the husband of the stilted little lady
+by the fire to do so. But if he had taken little comfort in his wife he
+had taken much in his two younger children, who were after his own
+heart, while Madame de Bellegarde had paired with her eldest-born.
+
+“My brother has spoken to me of you,” said M. de Bellegarde; “and as
+you are also acquainted with my sister, it was time we should meet.” He
+turned to his mother and gallantly bent over her hand, touching it with
+his lips, and then he assumed an attitude before the chimney-piece.
+With his long, lean face, his high-bridged nose and his small, opaque
+eye he looked much like an Englishman. His whiskers were fair and
+glossy, and he had a large dimple, of unmistakably British origin, in
+the middle of his handsome chin. He was “distinguished” to the tips of
+his polished nails, and there was not a movement of his fine,
+perpendicular person that was not noble and majestic. Newman had never
+yet been confronted with such an incarnation of the art of taking one’s
+self seriously; he felt a sort of impulse to step backward, as you do
+to get a view of a great façade.
+
+“Urbain,” said young Madame de Bellegarde, who had apparently been
+waiting for her husband to take her to her ball, “I call your attention
+to the fact that I am dressed.”
+
+“That is a good idea,” murmured Valentin.
+
+“I am at your orders, my dear friend,” said M. de Bellegarde. “Only,
+you must allow me first the pleasure of a little conversation with Mr.
+Newman.”
+
+“Oh, if you are going to a party, don’t let me keep you,” objected
+Newman. “I am very sure we shall meet again. Indeed, if you would like
+to converse with me I will gladly name an hour.” He was eager to make
+it known that he would readily answer all questions and satisfy all
+exactions.
+
+M. de Bellegarde stood in a well-balanced position before the fire,
+caressing one of his fair whiskers with one of his white hands, and
+looking at Newman, half askance, with eyes from which a particular ray
+of observation made its way through a general meaningless smile. “It is
+very kind of you to make such an offer,” he said. “If I am not
+mistaken, your occupations are such as to make your time precious. You
+are in—a—as we say, _dans les affaires_.”
+
+“In business, you mean? Oh no, I have thrown business overboard for the
+present. I am ‘loafing,’ as _we_ say. My time is quite my own.”
+
+“Ah, you are taking a holiday,” rejoined M. de Bellegarde. “‘Loafing.’
+Yes, I have heard that expression.”
+
+“Mr. Newman is American,” said Madame de Bellegarde.
+
+“My brother is a great ethnologist,” said Valentin.
+
+“An ethnologist?” said Newman. “Ah, you collect negroes’ skulls, and
+that sort of thing.”
+
+The marquis looked hard at his brother, and began to caress his other
+whisker. Then, turning to Newman, with sustained urbanity, “You are
+traveling for your pleasure?” he asked.’
+
+“Oh, I am knocking about to pick up one thing and another. Of course I
+get a good deal of pleasure out of it.”
+
+“What especially interests you?” inquired the marquis.
+
+“Well, everything interests me,” said Newman. “I am not particular.
+Manufactures are what I care most about.”
+
+“That has been your specialty?”
+
+“I can’t say I have any specialty. My specialty has been to make the
+largest possible fortune in the shortest possible time.” Newman made
+this last remark very deliberately; he wished to open the way, if it
+were necessary, to an authoritative statement of his means.
+
+M. de Bellegarde laughed agreeably. “I hope you have succeeded,” he
+said.
+
+“Yes, I have made a fortune in a reasonable time. I am not so old, you
+see.”
+
+“Paris is a very good place to spend a fortune. I wish you great
+enjoyment of yours.” And M. de Bellegarde drew forth his gloves and
+began to put them on.
+
+Newman for a few moments watched him sliding his white hands into the
+white kid, and as he did so his feelings took a singular turn. M. de
+Bellegarde’s good wishes seemed to descend out of the white expanse of
+his sublime serenity with the soft, scattered movement of a shower of
+snow-flakes. Yet Newman was not irritated; he did not feel that he was
+being patronized; he was conscious of no especial impulse to introduce
+a discord into so noble a harmony. Only he felt himself suddenly in
+personal contact with the forces with which his friend Valentin had
+told him that he would have to contend, and he became sensible of their
+intensity. He wished to make some answering manifestation, to stretch
+himself out at his own length, to sound a note at the uttermost end of
+_his_ scale. It must be added that if this impulse was not vicious or
+malicious, it was by no means void of humorous expectancy. Newman was
+quite as ready to give play to that loosely-adjusted smile of his, if
+his hosts should happen to be shocked, as he was far from deliberately
+planning to shock them.
+
+“Paris is a very good place for idle people,” he said, “or it is a very
+good place if your family has been settled here for a long time, and
+you have made acquaintances and got your relations round you; or if you
+have got a good big house like this, and a wife and children and mother
+and sister, and everything comfortable. I don’t like that way of living
+all in rooms next door to each other. But I am not an idler. I try to
+be, but I can’t manage it; it goes against the grain. My business
+habits are too deep-seated. Then, I haven’t any house to call my own,
+or anything in the way of a family. My sisters are five thousand miles
+away, my mother died when I was a youngster, and I haven’t any wife; I
+wish I had! So, you see, I don’t exactly know what to do with myself. I
+am not fond of books, as you are, sir, and I get tired of dining out
+and going to the opera. I miss my business activity. You see, I began
+to earn my living when I was almost a baby, and until a few months ago
+I have never had my hand off the plow. Elegant leisure comes hard.”
+
+This speech was followed by a profound silence of some moments, on the
+part of Newman’s entertainers. Valentin stood looking at him fixedly,
+with his hands in his pockets, and then he slowly, with a half-sidling
+motion, went out of the door. The marquis continued to draw on his
+gloves and to smile benignantly.
+
+“You began to earn your living when you were a mere baby?” said the
+marquise.
+
+“Hardly more—a small boy.”
+
+“You say you are not fond of books,” said M. de Bellegarde; “but you
+must do yourself the justice to remember that your studies were
+interrupted early.”
+
+“That is very true; on my tenth birthday I stopped going to school. I
+thought it was a grand way to keep it. But I picked up some information
+afterwards,” said Newman, reassuringly.
+
+“You have some sisters?” asked old Madame de Bellegarde.
+
+“Yes, two sisters. Splendid women!”
+
+“I hope that for them the hardships of life commenced less early.”
+
+“They married very early, if you call that a hardship, as girls do in
+our Western country. One of them is married to the owner of the largest
+india-rubber house in the West.”
+
+“Ah, you make houses also of india-rubber?” inquired the marquise.
+
+“You can stretch them as your family increases,” said young Madame de
+Bellegarde, who was muffling herself in a long white shawl.
+
+Newman indulged in a burst of hilarity, and explained that the house in
+which his brother-in-law lived was a large wooden structure, but that
+he manufactured and sold india-rubber on a colossal scale.
+
+“My children have some little india-rubber shoes which they put on when
+they go to play in the Tuileries in damp weather,” said the young
+marquise. “I wonder whether your brother-in-law made them.”
+
+“Very likely,” said Newman; “if he did, you may be very sure they are
+well made.”
+
+“Well, you must not be discouraged,” said M. de Bellegarde, with vague
+urbanity.
+
+“Oh, I don’t mean to be. I have a project which gives me plenty to
+think about, and that is an occupation.” And then Newman was silent a
+moment, hesitating, yet thinking rapidly; he wished to make his point,
+and yet to do so forced him to speak out in a way that was disagreeable
+to him. Nevertheless he continued, addressing himself to old Madame de
+Bellegarde, “I will tell you my project; perhaps you can help me. I
+want to take a wife.”
+
+“It is a very good project, but I am no matchmaker,” said the old lady.
+
+Newman looked at her an instant, and then, with perfect sincerity, “I
+should have thought you were,” he declared.
+
+Madame de Bellegarde appeared to think him too sincere. She murmured
+something sharply in French, and fixed her eyes on her son. At this
+moment the door of the room was thrown open, and with a rapid step
+Valentin reappeared.
+
+“I have a message for you,” he said to his sister-in-law. “Claire bids
+me to request you not to start for your ball. She will go with you.”
+
+“Claire will go with us!” cried the young marquise. “_En voilà, du
+nouveau!_”
+
+“She has changed her mind; she decided half an hour ago, and she is
+sticking the last diamond into her hair,” said Valentin.
+
+“What has taken possession of my daughter?” demanded Madame de
+Bellegarde, sternly. “She has not been into the world these three
+years. Does she take such a step at half an hour’s notice, and without
+consulting me?”
+
+“She consulted me, dear mother, five minutes since,” said Valentin,
+“and I told her that such a beautiful woman—she is beautiful, you will
+see—had no right to bury herself alive.”
+
+“You should have referred Claire to her mother, my brother,” said M. de
+Bellegarde, in French. “This is very strange.”
+
+“I refer her to the whole company!” said Valentin. “Here she comes!”
+And he went to the open door, met Madame de Cintré on the threshold,
+took her by the hand, and led her into the room. She was dressed in
+white; but a long blue cloak, which hung almost to her feet, was
+fastened across her shoulders by a silver clasp. She had tossed it
+back, however, and her long white arms were uncovered. In her dense,
+fair hair there glittered a dozen diamonds. She looked serious and,
+Newman thought, rather pale; but she glanced round her, and, when she
+saw him, smiled and put out her hand. He thought her tremendously
+handsome. He had a chance to look at her full in the face, for she
+stood a moment in the centre of the room, hesitating, apparently, what
+she should do, without meeting his eyes. Then she went up to her
+mother, who sat in her deep chair by the fire, looking at Madame de
+Cintré almost fiercely. With her back turned to the others, Madame de
+Cintré held her cloak apart to show her dress.
+
+“What do you think of me?” she asked.
+
+“I think you are audacious,” said the marquise. “It was but three days
+ago, when I asked you, as a particular favor to myself, to go to the
+Duchess de Lusignan’s, that you told me you were going nowhere and that
+one must be consistent. Is this your consistency? Why should you
+distinguish Madame Robineau? Who is it you wish to please to-night?”
+
+“I wish to please myself, dear mother,” said Madame de Cintré. And she
+bent over and kissed the old lady.
+
+“I don’t like surprises, my sister,” said Urbain de Bellegarde;
+“especially when one is on the point of entering a drawing-room.”
+
+Newman at this juncture felt inspired to speak. “Oh, if you are going
+into a room with Madame de Cintré, you needn’t be afraid of being
+noticed yourself!”
+
+M. de Bellegarde turned to his sister with a smile too intense to be
+easy. “I hope you appreciate a compliment that is paid you at your
+brother’s expense,” he said. “Come, come, madame.” And offering Madame
+de Cintré his arm he led her rapidly out of the room. Valentin rendered
+the same service to young Madame de Bellegarde, who had apparently been
+reflecting on the fact that the ball-dress of her sister-in-law was
+much less brilliant than her own, and yet had failed to derive absolute
+comfort from the reflection. With a farewell smile she sought the
+complement of her consolation in the eyes of the American visitor, and
+perceiving in them a certain mysterious brilliancy, it is not
+improbable that she may have flattered herself she had found it.
+
+Newman, left alone with old Madame de Bellegarde, stood before her a
+few moments in silence. “Your daughter is very beautiful,” he said at
+last.
+
+“She is very strange,” said Madame de Bellegarde.
+
+“I am glad to hear it,” Newman rejoined, smiling. “It makes me hope.”
+
+“Hope what?”
+
+“That she will consent, some day, to marry me.”
+
+The old lady slowly rose to her feet. “That really is your project,
+then?”
+
+“Yes; will you favor it?”
+
+“Favor it?” Madame de Bellegarde looked at him a moment and then shook
+her head. “No!” she said, softly.
+
+“Will you suffer it, then? Will you let it pass?”
+
+“You don’t know what you ask. I am a very proud and meddlesome old
+woman.”
+
+“Well, I am very rich,” said Newman.
+
+Madame de Bellegarde fixed her eyes on the floor, and Newman thought it
+probable she was weighing the reasons in favor of resenting the
+brutality of this remark. But at last, looking up, she said simply,
+“How rich?”
+
+Newman expressed his income in a round number which had the magnificent
+sound that large aggregations of dollars put on when they are
+translated into francs. He added a few remarks of a financial
+character, which completed a sufficiently striking presentment of his
+resources.
+
+Madame de Bellegarde listened in silence. “You are very frank,” she
+said finally. “I will be the same. I would rather favor you, on the
+whole, than suffer you. It will be easier.”
+
+“I am thankful for any terms,” said Newman. “But, for the present, you
+have suffered me long enough. Good night!” And he took his leave.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Newman, on his return to Paris, had not resumed the study of French
+conversation with M. Nioche; he found that he had too many other uses
+for his time. M. Nioche, however, came to see him very promptly, having
+learned his whereabouts by a mysterious process to which his patron
+never obtained the key. The shrunken little capitalist repeated his
+visit more than once. He seemed oppressed by a humiliating sense of
+having been overpaid, and wished apparently to redeem his debt by the
+offer of grammatical and statistical information in small installments.
+He wore the same decently melancholy aspect as a few months before; a
+few months more or less of brushing could make little difference in the
+antique lustre of his coat and hat. But the poor old man’s spirit was a
+trifle more threadbare; it seemed to have received some hard rubs
+during the summer. Newman inquired with interest about Mademoiselle
+Noémie; and M. Nioche, at first, for answer, simply looked at him in
+lachrymose silence.
+
+“Don’t ask me, sir,” he said at last. “I sit and watch her, but I can
+do nothing.”
+
+“Do you mean that she misconducts herself?”
+
+“I don’t know, I am sure. I can’t follow her. I don’t understand her.
+She has something in her head; I don’t know what she is trying to do.
+She is too deep for me.”
+
+“Does she continue to go to the Louvre? Has she made any of those
+copies for me?”
+
+“She goes to the Louvre, but I see nothing of the copies. She has
+something on her easel; I suppose it is one of the pictures you
+ordered. Such a magnificent order ought to give her fairy-fingers. But
+she is not in earnest. I can’t say anything to her; I am afraid of her.
+One evening, last summer, when I took her to walk in the Champs
+Élysées, she said some things to me that frightened me.”
+
+“What were they?”
+
+“Excuse an unhappy father from telling you,” said M. Nioche, unfolding
+his calico pocket-handkerchief.
+
+Newman promised himself to pay Mademoiselle Noémie another visit at the
+Louvre. He was curious about the progress of his copies, but it must be
+added that he was still more curious about the progress of the young
+lady herself. He went one afternoon to the great museum, and wandered
+through several of the rooms in fruitless quest of her. He was bending
+his steps to the long hall of the Italian masters, when suddenly he
+found himself face to face with Valentin de Bellegarde. The young
+Frenchman greeted him with ardor, and assured him that he was a
+godsend. He himself was in the worst of humors and he wanted someone to
+contradict.
+
+“In a bad humor among all these beautiful things?” said Newman. “I
+thought you were so fond of pictures, especially the old black ones.
+There are two or three here that ought to keep you in spirits.”
+
+“Oh, to-day,” answered Valentin, “I am not in a mood for pictures, and
+the more beautiful they are the less I like them. Their great staring
+eyes and fixed positions irritate me. I feel as if I were at some big,
+dull party, in a room full of people I shouldn’t wish to speak to. What
+should I care for their beauty? It’s a bore, and, worse still, it’s a
+reproach. I have a great many _ennuis_; I feel vicious.”
+
+“If the Louvre has so little comfort for you, why in the world did you
+come here?” Newman asked.
+
+“That is one of my _ennuis_. I came to meet my cousin—a dreadful
+English cousin, a member of my mother’s family—who is in Paris for a
+week for her husband, and who wishes me to point out the ‘principal
+beauties.’ Imagine a woman who wears a green crape bonnet in December
+and has straps sticking out of the ankles of her interminable boots! My
+mother begged I would do something to oblige them. I have undertaken to
+play _valet de place_ this afternoon. They were to have met me here at
+two o’clock, and I have been waiting for them twenty minutes. Why
+doesn’t she arrive? She has at least a pair of feet to carry her. I
+don’t know whether to be furious at their playing me false, or
+delighted to have escaped them.”
+
+“I think in your place I would be furious,” said Newman, “because they
+may arrive yet, and then your fury will still be of use to you. Whereas
+if you were delighted and they were afterwards to turn up, you might
+not know what to do with your delight.”
+
+“You give me excellent advice, and I already feel better. I will be
+furious; I will let them go to the deuce and I myself will go with
+you—unless by chance you too have a rendezvous.”
+
+“It is not exactly a rendezvous,” said Newman. “But I have in fact come
+to see a person, not a picture.”
+
+“A woman, presumably?”
+
+“A young lady.”
+
+“Well,” said Valentin, “I hope for you with all my heart that she is
+not clothed in green tulle and that her feet are not too much out of
+focus.”
+
+“I don’t know much about her feet, but she has very pretty hands.”
+
+Valentin gave a sigh. “And on that assurance I must part with you?”
+
+“I am not certain of finding my young lady,” said Newman, “and I am not
+quite prepared to lose your company on the chance. It does not strike
+me as particularly desirable to introduce you to her, and yet I should
+rather like to have your opinion of her.”
+
+“Is she pretty?”
+
+“I guess you will think so.”
+
+Bellegarde passed his arm into that of his companion. “Conduct me to
+her on the instant! I should be ashamed to make a pretty woman wait for
+my verdict.”
+
+Newman suffered himself to be gently propelled in the direction in
+which he had been walking, but his step was not rapid. He was turning
+something over in his mind. The two men passed into the long gallery of
+the Italian masters, and Newman, after having scanned for a moment its
+brilliant vista, turned aside into the smaller apartment devoted to the
+same school, on the left. It contained very few persons, but at the
+farther end of it sat Mademoiselle Nioche, before her easel. She was
+not at work; her palette and brushes had been laid down beside her, her
+hands were folded in her lap, and she was leaning back in her chair and
+looking intently at two ladies on the other side of the hall, who, with
+their backs turned to her, had stopped before one of the pictures.
+These ladies were apparently persons of high fashion; they were dressed
+with great splendor, and their long silken trains and furbelows were
+spread over the polished floor. It was at their dresses Mademoiselle
+Noémie was looking, though what she was thinking of I am unable to say.
+I hazard the supposition that she was saying to herself that to be able
+to drag such a train over a polished floor was a felicity worth any
+price. Her reflections, at any rate, were disturbed by the advent of
+Newman and his companion. She glanced at them quickly, and then,
+coloring a little, rose and stood before her easel.
+
+“I came here on purpose to see you,” said Newman in his bad French,
+offering to shake hands. And then, like a good American, he introduced
+Valentin formally: “Allow me to make you acquainted with the Comte
+Valentin de Bellegarde.”
+
+Valentin made a bow which must have seemed to Mademoiselle Noémie quite
+in harmony with the impressiveness of his title, but the graceful
+brevity of her own response made no concession to underbred surprise.
+She turned to Newman, putting up her hands to her hair and smoothing
+its delicately-felt roughness. Then, rapidly, she turned the canvas
+that was on her easel over upon its face. “You have not forgotten me?”
+she asked.
+
+“I shall never forget you,” said Newman. “You may be sure of that.”
+
+“Oh,” said the young girl, “there are a great many different ways of
+remembering a person.” And she looked straight at Valentin de
+Bellegarde, who was looking at her as a gentleman may when a “verdict”
+is expected of him.
+
+“Have you painted anything for me?” said Newman. “Have you been
+industrious?”
+
+“No, I have done nothing.” And taking up her palette, she began to mix
+her colors at hazard.
+
+“But your father tells me you have come here constantly.”
+
+“I have nowhere else to go! Here, all summer, it was cool, at least.”
+
+“Being here, then,” said Newman, “you might have tried something.”
+
+“I told you before,” she answered, softly, “that I don’t know how to
+paint.”
+
+“But you have something charming on your easel, now,” said Valentin,
+“if you would only let me see it.”
+
+She spread out her two hands, with the fingers expanded, over the back
+of the canvas—those hands which Newman had called pretty, and which, in
+spite of several paint-stains, Valentin could now admire. “My painting
+is not charming,” she said.
+
+“It is the only thing about you that is not, then, mademoiselle,” quoth
+Valentin, gallantly.
+
+She took up her little canvas and silently passed it to him. He looked
+at it, and in a moment she said, “I am sure you are a judge.”
+
+“Yes,” he answered, “I am.”
+
+“You know, then, that that is very bad.”
+
+“_Mon Dieu_,” said Valentin, shrugging his shoulders “let us
+distinguish.”
+
+“You know that I ought not to attempt to paint,” the young girl
+continued.
+
+“Frankly, then, mademoiselle, I think you ought not.”
+
+She began to look at the dresses of the two splendid ladies again—a
+point on which, having risked one conjecture, I think I may risk
+another. While she was looking at the ladies she was seeing Valentin de
+Bellegarde. He, at all events, was seeing her. He put down the
+roughly-besmeared canvas and addressed a little click with his tongue,
+accompanied by an elevation of the eyebrows, to Newman.
+
+“Where have you been all these months?” asked Mademoiselle Noémie of
+our hero. “You took those great journeys, you amused yourself well?”
+
+“Oh, yes,” said Newman. “I amused myself well enough.”
+
+“I am very glad,” said Mademoiselle Noémie with extreme gentleness, and
+she began to dabble in her colors again. She was singularly pretty,
+with the look of serious sympathy that she threw into her face.
+
+Valentin took advantage of her downcast eyes to telegraph again to his
+companion. He renewed his mysterious physiognomical play, making at the
+same time a rapid tremulous movement in the air with his fingers. He
+was evidently finding Mademoiselle Noémie extremely interesting; the
+blue devils had departed, leaving the field clear.
+
+“Tell me something about your travels,” murmured the young girl.
+
+“Oh, I went to Switzerland,—to Geneva and Zermatt and Zürich and all
+those places you know; and down to Venice, and all through Germany, and
+down the Rhine, and into Holland and Belgium—the regular round. How do
+you say that, in French—the regular round?” Newman asked of Valentin.
+
+Mademoiselle Nioche fixed her eyes an instant on Bellegarde, and then
+with a little smile, “I don’t understand monsieur,” she said, “when he
+says so much at once. Would you be so good as to translate?”
+
+“I would rather talk to you out of my own head,” Valentin declared.
+
+“No,” said Newman, gravely, still in his bad French, “you must not talk
+to Mademoiselle Nioche, because you say discouraging things. You ought
+to tell her to work, to persevere.”
+
+“And we French, mademoiselle,” said Valentin, “are accused of being
+false flatterers!”
+
+“I don’t want any flattery, I want only the truth. But I know the
+truth.”
+
+“All I say is that I suspect there are some things that you can do
+better than paint,” said Valentin.
+
+“I know the truth—I know the truth,” Mademoiselle Noémie repeated. And,
+dipping a brush into a clot of red paint, she drew a great horizontal
+daub across her unfinished picture.
+
+“What is that?” asked Newman.
+
+Without answering, she drew another long crimson daub, in a vertical
+direction, down the middle of her canvas, and so, in a moment,
+completed the rough indication of a cross. “It is the sign of the
+truth,” she said at last.
+
+The two men looked at each other, and Valentin indulged in another
+flash of physiognomical eloquence. “You have spoiled your picture,”
+said Newman.
+
+“I know that very well. It was the only thing to do with it. I had sat
+looking at it all day without touching it. I had begun to hate it. It
+seemed to me something was going to happen.”
+
+“I like it better that way than as it was before,” said Valentin. “Now
+it is more interesting. It tells a story. Is it for sale?”
+
+“Everything I have is for sale,” said Mademoiselle Noémie.
+
+“How much is this thing?”
+
+“Ten thousand francs,” said the young girl, without a smile.
+
+“Everything that Mademoiselle Nioche may do at present is mine in
+advance,” said Newman. “It makes part of an order I gave her some
+months ago. So you can’t have this.”
+
+“Monsieur will lose nothing by it,” said the young girl, looking at
+Valentin. And she began to put up her utensils.
+
+“I shall have gained a charming memory,” said Valentin. “You are going
+away? your day is over?”
+
+“My father is coming to fetch me,” said Mademoiselle Noémie.
+
+She had hardly spoken when, through the door behind her, which opens on
+one of the great white stone staircases of the Louvre, M. Nioche made
+his appearance. He came in with his usual even, patient shuffle, and he
+made a low salute to the two gentlemen who were standing before his
+daughter’s easel. Newman shook his hands with muscular friendliness,
+and Valentin returned his greeting with extreme deference. While the
+old man stood waiting for Noémie to make a parcel of her implements, he
+let his mild, oblique gaze hover toward Bellegarde, who was watching
+Mademoiselle Noémie put on her bonnet and mantle. Valentin was at no
+pains to disguise his scrutiny. He looked at a pretty girl as he would
+have listened to a piece of music. Attention, in each case, was simple
+good manners. M. Nioche at last took his daughter’s paint-box in one
+hand and the bedaubed canvas, after giving it a solemn, puzzled stare,
+in the other, and led the way to the door. Mademoiselle Noémie made the
+young men the salute of a duchess, and followed her father.
+
+“Well,” said Newman, “what do you think of her?”
+
+“She is very remarkable. _Diable, diable, diable!_” repeated M. de
+Bellegarde, reflectively; “she is very remarkable.”
+
+“I am afraid she is a sad little adventuress,” said Newman.
+
+“Not a little one—a great one. She has the material.” And Valentin
+began to walk away slowly, looking vaguely at the pictures on the
+walls, with a thoughtful illumination in his eye. Nothing could have
+appealed to his imagination more than the possible adventures of a
+young lady endowed with the “material” of Mademoiselle Nioche. “She is
+very interesting,” he went on. “She is a beautiful type.”
+
+“A beautiful type? What the deuce do you mean?” asked Newman.
+
+“I mean from the artistic point of view. She is an artist,—outside of
+her painting, which obviously is execrable.”
+
+“But she is not beautiful. I don’t even think her very pretty.”
+
+“She is quite pretty enough for her purposes, and it is a face and
+figure on which everything tells. If she were prettier she would be
+less intelligent, and her intelligence is half of her charm.”
+
+“In what way,” asked Newman, who was much amused at his companion’s
+immediate philosophisation of Mademoiselle Nioche, “does her
+intelligence strike you as so remarkable?”
+
+“She has taken the measure of life, and she has determined to _be_
+something—to succeed at any cost. Her painting, of course, is a mere
+trick to gain time. She is waiting for her chance; she wishes to launch
+herself, and to do it well. She knows her Paris. She is one of fifty
+thousand, so far as the mere ambition goes; but I am very sure that in
+the way of resolution and capacity she is a rarity. And in one
+gift—perfect heartlessness—I will warrant she is unsurpassed. She has
+not as much heart as will go on the point of a needle. That is an
+immense virtue. Yes, she is one of the celebrities of the future.”
+
+“Heaven help us!” said Newman, “how far the artistic point of view may
+take a man! But in this case I must request that you don’t let it take
+you too far. You have learned a wonderful deal about Mademoiselle
+Noémie in a quarter of an hour. Let that suffice; don’t follow up your
+researches.”
+
+“My dear fellow,” cried Bellegarde with warmth, “I hope I have too good
+manners to intrude.”
+
+“You are not intruding. The girl is nothing to me. In fact, I rather
+dislike her. But I like her poor old father, and for his sake I beg you
+to abstain from any attempt to verify your theories.”
+
+“For the sake of that seedy old gentleman who came to fetch her?”
+demanded Valentin, stopping short. And on Newman’s assenting, “Ah no,
+ah no,” he went on with a smile. “You are quite wrong, my dear fellow;
+you needn’t mind him.”
+
+“I verily believe that you are accusing the poor gentleman of being
+capable of rejoicing in his daughter’s dishonor.”
+
+“_Voyons!_” said Valentin; “who is he? what is he?”
+
+“He is what he looks like: as poor as a rat, but very high-toned.”
+
+“Exactly. I noticed him perfectly; be sure I do him justice. He has had
+losses, _des malheurs_, as we say. He is very low-spirited, and his
+daughter is too much for him. He is the pink of respectability, and he
+has sixty years of honesty on his back. All this I perfectly
+appreciate. But I know my fellow-men and my fellow-Parisians, and I
+will make a bargain with you.” Newman gave ear to his bargain and he
+went on. “He would rather his daughter were a good girl than a bad one,
+but if the worst comes to the worst, the old man will not do what
+Virginius did. Success justifies everything. If Mademoiselle Noémie
+makes a figure, her papa will feel—well, we will call it relieved. And
+she will make a figure. The old gentleman’s future is assured.”
+
+“I don’t know what Virginius did, but M. Nioche will shoot Miss
+Noémie,” said Newman. “After that, I suppose his future will be assured
+in some snug prison.”
+
+“I am not a cynic; I am simply an observer,” Valentin rejoined.
+“Mademoiselle Noémie interests me; she is extremely remarkable. If
+there is a good reason, in honor or decency, for dismissing her from my
+thoughts forever, I am perfectly willing to do it. Your estimate of the
+papa’s sensibilities is a good reason until it is invalidated. I
+promise you not to look at the young girl again until you tell me that
+you have changed your mind about the papa. When he has given distinct
+proof of being a philosopher, you will raise your interdict. Do you
+agree to that?”
+
+“Do you mean to bribe him?”
+
+“Oh, you admit, then, that he is bribable? No, he would ask too much,
+and it would not be exactly fair. I mean simply to wait. You will
+continue, I suppose, to see this interesting couple, and you will give
+me the news yourself.”
+
+“Well,” said Newman, “if the old man turns out a humbug, you may do
+what you please. I wash my hands of the matter. For the girl herself,
+you may be at rest. I don’t know what harm she may do to me, but I
+certainly can’t hurt her. It seems to me,” said Newman, “that you are
+very well matched. You are both hard cases, and M. Nioche and I, I
+believe, are the only virtuous men to be found in Paris.”
+
+Soon after this M. de Bellegarde, in punishment for his levity,
+received a stern poke in the back from a pointed instrument. Turning
+quickly round he found the weapon to be a parasol wielded by a lady in
+green gauze bonnet. Valentin’s English cousins had been drifting about
+unpiloted, and evidently deemed that they had a grievance. Newman left
+him to their mercies, but with a boundless faith in his power to plead
+his cause.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Three days after his introduction to the family of Madame de Cintré,
+Newman, coming in toward evening, found upon his table the card of the
+Marquis de Bellegarde. On the following day he received a note
+informing him that the Marquise de Bellegarde would be grateful for the
+honor of his company at dinner.
+
+He went, of course, though he had to break another engagement to do it.
+He was ushered into the room in which Madame de Bellegarde had received
+him before, and here he found his venerable hostess, surrounded by her
+entire family. The room was lighted only by the crackling fire, which
+illuminated the very small pink slippers of a lady who, seated in a low
+chair, was stretching out her toes before it. This lady was the younger
+Madame de Bellegarde. Madame de Cintré was seated at the other end of
+the room, holding a little girl against her knee, the child of her
+brother Urbain, to whom she was apparently relating a wonderful story.
+Valentin was sitting on a puff, close to his sister-in-law, into whose
+ear he was certainly distilling the finest nonsense. The marquis was
+stationed before the fire, with his head erect and his hands behind
+him, in an attitude of formal expectancy.
+
+Old Madame de Bellegarde stood up to give Newman her greeting, and
+there was that in the way she did so which seemed to measure narrowly
+the extent of her condescension. “We are all alone, you see, we have
+asked no one else,” she said austerely.
+
+“I am very glad you didn’t; this is much more sociable,” said Newman.
+“Good evening, sir,” and he offered his hand to the marquis.
+
+M. de Bellegarde was affable, but in spite of his dignity he was
+restless. He began to pace up and down the room, he looked out of the
+long windows, he took up books and laid them down again. Young Madame
+de Bellegarde gave Newman her hand without moving and without looking
+at him.
+
+“You may think that is coldness,” exclaimed Valentin; “but it is not,
+it is warmth. It shows she is treating you as an intimate. Now she
+detests me, and yet she is always looking at me.”
+
+“No wonder I detest you if I am always looking at you!” cried the lady.
+“If Mr. Newman does not like my way of shaking hands, I will do it
+again.”
+
+But this charming privilege was lost upon our hero, who was already
+making his way across the room to Madame de Cintré. She looked at him
+as she shook hands, but she went on with the story she was telling her
+little niece. She had only two or three phrases to add, but they were
+apparently of great moment. She deepened her voice, smiling as she did
+so, and the little girl gazed at her with round eyes.
+
+“But in the end the young prince married the beautiful Florabella,”
+said Madame de Cintré, “and carried her off to live with him in the
+Land of the Pink Sky. There she was so happy that she forgot all her
+troubles, and went out to drive every day of her life in an ivory coach
+drawn by five hundred white mice. Poor Florabella,” she exclaimed to
+Newman, “had suffered terribly.”
+
+“She had had nothing to eat for six months,” said little Blanche.
+
+“Yes, but when the six months were over, she had a plum-cake as big as
+that ottoman,” said Madame de Cintré. “That quite set her up again.”
+
+“What a checkered career!” said Newman. “Are you very fond of
+children?” He was certain that she was, but he wished to make her say
+it.
+
+“I like to talk with them,” she answered; “we can talk with them so
+much more seriously than with grown persons. That is great nonsense
+that I have been telling Blanche, but it is a great deal more serious
+than most of what we say in society.”
+
+“I wish you would talk to me, then, as if I were Blanche’s age,” said
+Newman, laughing. “Were you happy at your ball the other night?”
+
+“Ecstatically!”
+
+“Now you are talking the nonsense that we talk in society,” said
+Newman. “I don’t believe that.”
+
+“It was my own fault if I was not happy. The ball was very pretty, and
+everyone very amiable.”
+
+“It was on your conscience,” said Newman, “that you had annoyed your
+mother and your brother.”
+
+Madame de Cintré looked at him a moment without answering. “That is
+true,” she replied at last. “I had undertaken more than I could carry
+out. I have very little courage; I am not a heroine.” She said this
+with a certain soft emphasis; but then, changing her tone, “I could
+never have gone through the sufferings of the beautiful Florabella,”
+she added, not even for her prospective rewards.
+
+Dinner was announced, and Newman betook himself to the side of the old
+Madame de Bellegarde. The dining-room, at the end of a cold corridor,
+was vast and sombre; the dinner was simple and delicately excellent.
+Newman wondered whether Madame de Cintré had had something to do with
+ordering the repast and greatly hoped she had. Once seated at table,
+with the various members of the ancient house of Bellegarde around him,
+he asked himself the meaning of his position. Was the old lady
+responding to his advances? Did the fact that he was a solitary guest
+augment his credit or diminish it? Were they ashamed to show him to
+other people, or did they wish to give him a sign of sudden adoption
+into their last reserve of favor? Newman was on his guard; he was
+watchful and conjectural; and yet at the same time he was vaguely
+indifferent. Whether they gave him a long rope or a short one he was
+there now, and Madame de Cintré was opposite to him. She had a tall
+candlestick on each side of her; she would sit there for the next hour,
+and that was enough. The dinner was extremely solemn and measured; he
+wondered whether this was always the state of things in “old families.”
+Madame de Bellegarde held her head very high, and fixed her eyes, which
+looked peculiarly sharp in her little, finely-wrinkled white face, very
+intently upon the table-service. The marquis appeared to have decided
+that the fine arts offered a safe subject of conversation, as not
+leading to startling personal revelations. Every now and then, having
+learned from Newman that he had been through the museums of Europe, he
+uttered some polished aphorism upon the flesh-tints of Rubens and the
+good taste of Sansovino. His manners seemed to indicate a fine, nervous
+dread that something disagreeable might happen if the atmosphere were
+not purified by allusions of a thoroughly superior cast. “What under
+the sun is the man afraid of?” Newman asked himself. “Does he think I
+am going to offer to swap jack-knives with him?” It was useless to shut
+his eyes to the fact that the marquis was profoundly disagreeable to
+him. He had never been a man of strong personal aversions; his nerves
+had not been at the mercy of the mystical qualities of his neighbors.
+But here was a man towards whom he was irresistibly in opposition; a
+man of forms and phrases and postures; a man full of possible
+impertinences and treacheries. M. de Bellegarde made him feel as if he
+were standing bare-footed on a marble floor; and yet, to gain his
+desire, Newman felt perfectly able to stand. He wondered what Madame de
+Cintré thought of his being accepted, if accepted it was. There was no
+judging from her face, which expressed simply the desire to be gracious
+in a manner which should require as little explicit recognition as
+possible. Young Madame de Bellegarde had always the same manners; she
+was always preoccupied, distracted, listening to everything and hearing
+nothing, looking at her dress, her rings, her finger-nails, seeming
+rather bored, and yet puzzling you to decide what was her ideal of
+social diversion. Newman was enlightened on this point later. Even
+Valentin did not quite seem master of his wits; his vivacity was fitful
+and forced, yet Newman observed that in the lapses of his talk he
+appeared excited. His eyes had an intenser spark than usual. The effect
+of all this was that Newman, for the first time in his life, was not
+himself; that he measured his movements, and counted his words, and
+resolved that if the occasion demanded that he should appear to have
+swallowed a ramrod, he would meet the emergency.
+
+After dinner M. de Bellegarde proposed to his guest that they should go
+into the smoking-room, and he led the way toward a small, somewhat
+musty apartment, the walls of which were ornamented with old hangings
+of stamped leather and trophies of rusty arms. Newman refused a cigar,
+but he established himself upon one of the divans, while the marquis
+puffed his own weed before the fire-place, and Valentin sat looking
+through the light fumes of a cigarette from one to the other.
+
+“I can’t keep quiet any longer,” said Valentin, at last. “I must tell
+you the news and congratulate you. My brother seems unable to come to
+the point; he revolves around his announcement like the priest around
+the altar. You are accepted as a candidate for the hand of our sister.”
+
+“Valentin, be a little proper!” murmured the marquis, with a look of
+the most delicate irritation contracting the bridge of his high nose.
+
+“There has been a family council,” the young man continued; “my mother
+and Urbain have put their heads together, and even my testimony has not
+been altogether excluded. My mother and the marquis sat at a table
+covered with green cloth; my sister-in-law and I were on a bench
+against the wall. It was like a committee at the Corps Législatif. We
+were called up, one after the other, to testify. We spoke of you very
+handsomely. Madame de Bellegarde said that if she had not been told who
+you were, she would have taken you for a duke—an American duke, the
+Duke of California. I said that I could warrant you grateful for the
+smallest favors—modest, humble, unassuming. I was sure that you would
+know your own place, always, and never give us occasion to remind you
+of certain differences. After all, you couldn’t help it if you were not
+a duke. There were none in your country; but if there had been, it was
+certain that, smart and active as you are, you would have got the pick
+of the titles. At this point I was ordered to sit down, but I think I
+made an impression in your favor.”
+
+M. de Bellegarde looked at his brother with dangerous coldness, and
+gave a smile as thin as the edge of a knife. Then he removed a spark of
+cigar-ash from the sleeve of his coat; he fixed his eyes for a while on
+the cornice of the room, and at last he inserted one of his white hands
+into the breast of his waistcoat. “I must apologize to you for the
+deplorable levity of my brother,” he said, “and I must notify you that
+this is probably not the last time that his want of tact will cause you
+serious embarrassment.”
+
+“No, I confess I have no tact,” said Valentin. “Is your embarrassment
+really painful, Newman? The marquis will put you right again; his own
+touch is deliciously delicate.”
+
+“Valentin, I am sorry to say,” the marquis continued, “has never
+possessed the tone, the manner, that belongs to a young man in his
+position. It has been a great affliction to his mother, who is very
+fond of the old traditions. But you must remember that he speaks for no
+one but himself.”
+
+“Oh, I don’t mind him, sir,” said Newman, good-humoredly. “I know what
+he amounts to.”
+
+“In the good old times,” said Valentin, “marquises and counts used to
+have their appointed fools and jesters, to crack jokes for them.
+Nowadays we see a great strapping democrat keeping a count about him to
+play the fool. It’s a good situation, but I certainly am very
+degenerate.”
+
+M. de Bellegarde fixed his eyes for some time on the floor. “My mother
+informed me,” he said presently, “of the announcement that you made to
+her the other evening.”
+
+“That I desired to marry your sister?” said Newman.
+
+“That you wished to arrange a marriage,” said the marquis, slowly,
+“with my sister, the Comtesse de Cintré. The proposal was serious, and
+required, on my mother’s part, a great deal of reflection. She
+naturally took me into her counsels, and I gave my most zealous
+attention to the subject. There was a great deal to be considered; more
+than you appear to imagine. We have viewed the question on all its
+faces, we have weighed one thing against another. Our conclusion has
+been that we favor your suit. My mother has desired me to inform you of
+our decision. She will have the honor of saying a few words to you on
+the subject herself. Meanwhile, by us, the heads of the family, you are
+accepted.”
+
+Newman got up and came nearer to the marquis. “You will do nothing to
+hinder me, and all you can to help me, eh?”
+
+“I will recommend my sister to accept you.”
+
+Newman passed his hand over his face, and pressed it for a moment upon
+his eyes. This promise had a great sound, and yet the pleasure he took
+in it was embittered by his having to stand there so and receive his
+passport from M. de Bellegarde. The idea of having this gentleman mixed
+up with his wooing and wedding was more and more disagreeable to him.
+But Newman had resolved to go through the mill, as he imagined it, and
+he would not cry out at the first turn of the wheel. He was silent a
+while, and then he said, with a certain dryness which Valentin told him
+afterwards had a very grand air, “I am much obliged to you.”
+
+“I take note of the promise,” said Valentin, “I register the vow.”
+
+M. de Bellegarde began to gaze at the cornice again; he apparently had
+something more to say. “I must do my mother the justice,” he resumed,
+“I must do myself the justice, to say that our decision was not easy.
+Such an arrangement was not what we had expected. The idea that my
+sister should marry a gentleman—ah—in business was something of a
+novelty.”
+
+“So I told you, you know,” said Valentin raising his finger at Newman.
+
+“The novelty has not quite worn away, I confess,” the marquis went on;
+“perhaps it never will, entirely. But possibly that is not altogether
+to be regretted,” and he gave his thin smile again. “It may be that the
+time has come when we should make some concession to novelty. There had
+been no novelties in our house for a great many years. I made the
+observation to my mother, and she did me the honor to admit that it was
+worthy of attention.”
+
+“My dear brother,” interrupted Valentin, “is not your memory just here
+leading you the least bit astray? Our mother is, I may say,
+distinguished for her small respect of abstract reasoning. Are you very
+sure that she replied to your striking proposition in the gracious
+manner you describe? You know how terribly incisive she is sometimes.
+Didn’t she, rather, do you the honor to say, ‘A fiddlestick for your
+phrases! There are better reasons than that?’”
+
+“Other reasons were discussed,” said the marquis, without looking at
+Valentin, but with an audible tremor in his voice; “some of them
+possibly were better. We are conservative, Mr. Newman, but we are not
+also bigots. We judged the matter liberally. We have no doubt that
+everything will be comfortable.”
+
+Newman had stood listening to these remarks with his arms folded and
+his eyes fastened upon M. de Bellegarde, “Comfortable?” he said, with a
+sort of grim flatness of intonation. “Why shouldn’t we be comfortable?
+If you are not, it will be your own fault; I have everything to make
+_me_ so.”
+
+“My brother means that with the lapse of time you may get used to the
+change”—and Valentin paused, to light another cigarette.
+
+“What change?” asked Newman in the same tone.
+
+“Urbain,” said Valentin, very gravely, “I am afraid that Mr. Newman
+does not quite realize the change. We ought to insist upon that.”
+
+“My brother goes too far,” said M. de Bellegarde. “It is his fatal want
+of tact again. It is my mother’s wish, and mine, that no such allusions
+should be made. Pray never make them yourself. We prefer to assume that
+the person accepted as the possible husband of my sister is one of
+ourselves, and that he should have no explanations to make. With a
+little discretion on both sides, everything, I think, will be easy.
+That is exactly what I wished to say—that we quite understand what we
+have undertaken, and that you may depend upon our adhering to our
+resolution.”
+
+Valentin shook his hands in the air and then buried his face in them.
+“I have less tact than I might have, no doubt; but oh, my brother, if
+you knew what you yourself were saying!” And he went off into a long
+laugh.
+
+M. de Bellegarde’s face flushed a little, but he held his head higher,
+as if to repudiate this concession to vulgar perturbability. “I am sure
+you understand me,” he said to Newman.
+
+“Oh no, I don’t understand you at all,” said Newman. “But you needn’t
+mind that. I don’t care. In fact, I think I had better not understand
+you. I might not like it. That wouldn’t suit me at all, you know. I
+want to marry your sister, that’s all; to do it as quickly as possible,
+and to find fault with nothing. I don’t care how I do it. I am not
+marrying you, you know, sir. I have got my leave, and that is all I
+want.”
+
+“You had better receive the last word from my mother,” said the
+marquis.
+
+“Very good; I will go and get it,” said Newman; and he prepared to
+return to the drawing-room.
+
+M. de Bellegarde made a motion for him to pass first, and when Newman
+had gone out he shut himself into the room with Valentin. Newman had
+been a trifle bewildered by the audacious irony of the younger brother,
+and he had not needed its aid to point the moral of M. de Bellegarde’s
+transcendent patronage. He had wit enough to appreciate the force of
+that civility which consists in calling your attention to the
+impertinences it spares you. But he had felt warmly the delicate
+sympathy with himself that underlay Valentin’s fraternal irreverence,
+and he was most unwilling that his friend should pay a tax upon it. He
+paused a moment in the corridor, after he had gone a few steps,
+expecting to hear the resonance of M. de Bellegarde’s displeasure; but
+he detected only a perfect stillness. The stillness itself seemed a
+trifle portentous; he reflected however that he had no right to stand
+listening, and he made his way back to the salon. In his absence
+several persons had come in. They were scattered about the room in
+groups, two or three of them having passed into a small boudoir, next
+to the drawing-room, which had now been lighted and opened. Old Madame
+de Bellegarde was in her place by the fire, talking to a very old
+gentleman in a wig and a profuse white neck cloth of the fashion of
+1820. Madame de Cintré was bending a listening head to the historic
+confidences of an old lady who was presumably the wife of the old
+gentleman in the neckcloth, an old lady in a red satin dress and an
+ermine cape, who wore across her forehead a band with a topaz set in
+it. Young Madame de Bellegarde, when Newman came in, left some people
+among whom she was sitting, and took the place that she had occupied
+before dinner. Then she gave a little push to the puff that stood near
+her, and by a glance at Newman seemed to indicate that she had placed
+it in position for him. He went and took possession of it; the
+marquis’s wife amused and puzzled him.
+
+“I know your secret,” she said, in her bad but charming English; “you
+need make no mystery of it. You wish to marry my sister-in-law. _C’est
+un beau choix_. A man like you ought to marry a tall, thin woman. You
+must know that I have spoken in your favor; you owe me a famous taper!”
+
+“You have spoken to Madame de Cintré?” said Newman.
+
+“Oh no, not that. You may think it strange, but my sister-in-law and I
+are not so intimate as that. No; I spoke to my husband and my
+mother-in-law; I said I was sure we could do what we chose with you.”
+
+“I am much obliged to you,” said Newman, laughing; “but you can’t.”
+
+“I know that very well; I didn’t believe a word of it. But I wanted you
+to come into the house; I thought we should be friends.”
+
+“I am very sure of it,” said Newman.
+
+“Don’t be too sure. If you like Madame de Cintré so much, perhaps you
+will not like me. We are as different as blue and pink. But you and I
+have something in common. I have come into this family by marriage; you
+want to come into it in the same way.”
+
+“Oh no, I don’t!” interrupted Newman. “I only want to take Madame de
+Cintré out of it.”
+
+“Well, to cast your nets you have to go into the water. Our positions
+are alike; we shall be able to compare notes. What do you think of my
+husband? It’s a strange question, isn’t it? But I shall ask you some
+stranger ones yet.”
+
+“Perhaps a stranger one will be easier to answer,” said Newman. “You
+might try me.”
+
+“Oh, you get off very well; the old Comte de la Rochefidèle, yonder,
+couldn’t do it better. I told them that if we only gave you a chance
+you would be a perfect _talon rouge_. I know something about men.
+Besides, you and I belong to the same camp. I am a ferocious democrat.
+By birth I am _vieille roche_; a good little bit of the history of
+France is the history of my family. Oh, you never heard of us, of
+course! _Ce que c’est que la gloire!_ We are much better than the
+Bellegardes, at any rate. But I don’t care a pin for my pedigree; I
+want to belong to my time. I’m a revolutionist, a radical, a child of
+the age! I am sure I go beyond you. I like clever people, wherever they
+come from, and I take my amusement wherever I find it. I don’t pout at
+the Empire; here all the world pouts at the Empire. Of course I have to
+mind what I say; but I expect to take my revenge with you.” Madame de
+Bellegarde discoursed for some time longer in this sympathetic strain,
+with an eager abundance which seemed to indicate that her opportunities
+for revealing her esoteric philosophy were indeed rare. She hoped that
+Newman would never be afraid of her, however he might be with the
+others, for, really, she went very far indeed. “Strong people”—_le gens
+forts_—were in her opinion equal, all the world over. Newman listened
+to her with an attention at once beguiled and irritated. He wondered
+what the deuce she, too, was driving at, with her hope that he would
+not be afraid of her and her protestations of equality. In so far as he
+could understand her, she was wrong; a silly, rattling woman was
+certainly not the equal of a sensible man, preoccupied with an
+ambitious passion. Madame de Bellegarde stopped suddenly, and looked at
+him sharply, shaking her fan. “I see you don’t believe me,” she said,
+“you are too much on your guard. You will not form an alliance,
+offensive or defensive? You are very wrong; I could help you.”
+
+Newman answered that he was very grateful and that he would certainly
+ask for help; she should see. “But first of all,” he said, “I must help
+myself.” And he went to join Madame de Cintré.
+
+“I have been telling Madame de la Rochefidèle that you are an
+American,” she said, as he came up. “It interests her greatly. Her
+father went over with the French troops to help you in your battles in
+the last century, and she has always, in consequence, wanted greatly to
+see an American. But she has never succeeded till to-night. You are the
+first—to her knowledge—that she has ever looked at.”
+
+Madame de la Rochefidèle had an aged, cadaverous face, with a falling
+of the lower jaw which prevented her from bringing her lips together,
+and reduced her conversations to a series of impressive but
+inarticulate gutturals. She raised an antique eyeglass, elaborately
+mounted in chased silver, and looked at Newman from head to foot. Then
+she said something to which he listened deferentially, but which he
+completely failed to understand.
+
+“Madame de la Rochefidèle says that she is convinced that she must have
+seen Americans without knowing it,” Madame de Cintré explained. Newman
+thought it probable she had seen a great many things without knowing
+it; and the old lady, again addressing herself to utterance,
+declared—as interpreted by Madame de Cintré—that she wished she had
+known it.
+
+At this moment the old gentleman who had been talking to the elder
+Madame de Bellegarde drew near, leading the marquise on his arm. His
+wife pointed out Newman to him, apparently explaining his remarkable
+origin. M. de la Rochefidèle, whose old age was rosy and rotund, spoke
+very neatly and clearly, almost as prettily, Newman thought, as M.
+Nioche. When he had been enlightened, he turned to Newman with an
+inimitable elderly grace.
+
+“Monsieur is by no means the first American that I have seen,” he said.
+“Almost the first person I ever saw—to notice him—was an American.”
+
+“Ah?” said Newman, sympathetically.
+
+“The great Dr. Franklin,” said M. de la Rochefidèle. “Of course I was
+very young. He was received very well in our _monde._”
+
+“Not better than Mr. Newman,” said Madame de Bellegarde. “I beg he will
+offer his arm into the other room. I could have offered no higher
+privilege to Dr. Franklin.”
+
+Newman, complying with Madame de Bellegarde’s request, perceived that
+her two sons had returned to the drawing-room. He scanned their faces
+an instant for traces of the scene that had followed his separation
+from them, but the marquis seemed neither more nor less frigidly grand
+than usual, and Valentin was kissing ladies’ hands with at least his
+habitual air of self-abandonment to the act. Madame de Bellegarde gave
+a glance at her eldest son, and by the time she had crossed the
+threshold of her boudoir he was at her side. The room was now empty and
+offered a sufficient degree of privacy. The old lady disengaged herself
+from Newman’s arm and rested her hand on the arm of the marquis; and in
+this position she stood a moment, holding her head high and biting her
+small under-lip. I am afraid the picture was lost upon Newman, but
+Madame de Bellegarde was, in fact, at this moment a striking image of
+the dignity which—even in the case of a little time-shrunken old
+lady—may reside in the habit of unquestioned authority and the
+absoluteness of a social theory favorable to yourself.
+
+“My son has spoken to you as I desired,” she said, “and you understand
+that we shall not interfere. The rest will lie with yourself.”
+
+“M. de Bellegarde told me several things I didn’t understand,” said
+Newman, “but I made out that. You will leave me open field. I am much
+obliged.”
+
+“I wish to add a word that my son probably did not feel at liberty to
+say,” the marquise rejoined. “I must say it for my own peace of mind.
+We are stretching a point; we are doing you a great favor.”
+
+“Oh, your son said it very well; didn’t you?” said Newman.
+
+“Not so well as my mother,” declared the marquis.
+
+“I can only repeat—I am much obliged.”
+
+“It is proper I should tell you,” Madame de Bellegarde went on, “that I
+am very proud, and that I hold my head very high. I may be wrong, but I
+am too old to change. At least I know it, and I don’t pretend to
+anything else. Don’t flatter yourself that my daughter is not proud.
+She is proud in her own way—a somewhat different way from mine. You
+will have to make your terms with that. Even Valentin is proud, if you
+touch the right spot—or the wrong one. Urbain is proud; that you see
+for yourself. Sometimes I think he is a little too proud; but I
+wouldn’t change him. He is the best of my children; he cleaves to his
+old mother. But I have said enough to show you that we are all proud
+together. It is well that you should know the sort of people you have
+come among.”
+
+“Well,” said Newman, “I can only say, in return, that I am _not_ proud;
+I shan’t mind you! But you speak as if you intended to be very
+disagreeable.”
+
+“I shall not enjoy having my daughter marry you, and I shall not
+pretend to enjoy it. If you don’t mind that, so much the better.”
+
+“If you stick to your own side of the contract we shall not quarrel;
+that is all I ask of you,” said Newman. “Keep your hands off, and give
+me an open field. I am very much in earnest, and there is not the
+slightest danger of my getting discouraged or backing out. You will
+have me constantly before your eyes; if you don’t like it, I am sorry
+for you. I will do for your daughter, if she will accept me, everything
+that a man can do for a woman. I am happy to tell you that, as a
+promise—a pledge. I consider that on your side you make me an equal
+pledge. You will not back out, eh?”
+
+“I don’t know what you mean by ‘backing out,’” said the marquise. “It
+suggests a movement of which I think no Bellegarde has ever been
+guilty.”
+
+“Our word is our word,” said Urbain. “We have given it.”
+
+“Well, now,” said Newman, “I am very glad you are so proud. It makes me
+believe that you will keep it.”
+
+The marquise was silent a moment, and then, suddenly, “I shall always
+be polite to you, Mr. Newman,” she declared, “but, decidedly, I shall
+never like you.”
+
+“Don’t be too sure,” said Newman, laughing.
+
+“I am so sure that I will ask you to take me back to my armchair
+without the least fear of having my sentiments modified by the service
+you render me.” And Madame de Bellegarde took his arm, and returned to
+the salon and to her customary place.
+
+M. de la Rochefidèle and his wife were preparing to take their leave,
+and Madame de Cintré’s interview with the mumbling old lady was at an
+end. She stood looking about her, asking herself, apparently to whom
+she should next speak, when Newman came up to her.
+
+“Your mother has given me leave—very solemnly—to come here often,” he
+said. “I mean to come often.”
+
+“I shall be glad to see you,” she answered simply. And then, in a
+moment: “You probably think it very strange that there should be such a
+solemnity—as you say—about your coming.”
+
+“Well, yes; I do, rather.”
+
+“Do you remember what my brother Valentin said, the first time you came
+to see me—that we were a strange, strange family?”
+
+“It was not the first time I came, but the second,” said Newman.
+
+“Very true. Valentin annoyed me at the time, but now I know you better,
+I may tell you he was right. If you come often, you will see!” and
+Madame de Cintré turned away.
+
+Newman watched her a while, talking with other people, and then he took
+his leave. He shook hands last with Valentin de Bellegarde, who came
+out with him to the top of the staircase. “Well, you have got your
+permit,” said Valentin. “I hope you liked the process.”
+
+“I like your sister, more than ever. But don’t worry your brother any
+more for my sake,” Newman added. “I don’t mind him. I am afraid he came
+down on you in the smoking-room, after I went out.”
+
+“When my brother comes down on me,” said Valentin, “he falls hard. I
+have a peculiar way of receiving him. I must say,” he continued, “that
+they came up to the mark much sooner than I expected. I don’t
+understand it, they must have had to turn the screw pretty tight. It’s
+a tribute to your millions.”
+
+“Well, it’s the most precious one they have ever received,” said
+Newman.
+
+He was turning away when Valentin stopped him, looking at him with a
+brilliant, softly-cynical glance. “I should like to know whether,
+within a few days, you have seen your venerable friend M. Nioche.”
+
+“He was yesterday at my rooms,” Newman answered.
+
+“What did he tell you?”
+
+“Nothing particular.”
+
+“You didn’t see the muzzle of a pistol sticking out of his pocket?”
+
+“What are you driving at?” Newman demanded. “I thought he seemed rather
+cheerful for him.”
+
+Valentin broke into a laugh. “I am delighted to hear it! I win my bet.
+Mademoiselle Noémie has thrown her cap over the mill, as we say. She
+has left the paternal domicile. She is launched! And M. Nioche is
+rather cheerful—_for him!_ Don’t brandish your tomahawk at that rate; I
+have not seen her nor communicated with her since that day at the
+Louvre. Andromeda has found another Perseus than I. My information is
+exact; on such matters it always is. I suppose that now you will raise
+your protest.”
+
+“My protest be hanged!” murmured Newman, disgustedly.
+
+But his tone found no echo in that in which Valentin, with his hand on
+the door, to return to his mother’s apartment, exclaimed, “But I shall
+see her now! She is very remarkable—she is very remarkable!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Newman kept his promise, or his menace, of going often to the Rue de
+l’Université, and during the next six weeks he saw Madame de Cintré
+more times than he could have numbered. He flattered himself that he
+was not in love, but his biographer may be supposed to know better. He
+claimed, at least, none of the exemptions and emoluments of the
+romantic passion. Love, he believed, made a fool of a man, and his
+present emotion was not folly but wisdom; wisdom sound, serene,
+well-directed. What he felt was an intense, all-consuming tenderness,
+which had for its object an extraordinarily graceful and delicate, and
+at the same time impressive, woman who lived in a large gray house on
+the left bank of the Seine. This tenderness turned very often into a
+positive heartache; a sign in which, certainly, Newman ought to have
+read the appellation which science has conferred upon his sentiment.
+When the heart has a heavy weight upon it, it hardly matters whether
+the weight be of gold or of lead; when, at any rate, happiness passes
+into that place in which it becomes identical with pain, a man may
+admit that the reign of wisdom is temporarily suspended. Newman wished
+Madame de Cintré so well that nothing he could think of doing for her
+in the future rose to the high standard which his present mood had set
+itself. She seemed to him so felicitous a product of nature and
+circumstance that his invention, musing on future combinations, was
+constantly catching its breath with the fear of stumbling into some
+brutal compression or mutilation of her beautiful personal harmony.
+This is what I mean by Newman’s tenderness: Madame de Cintré pleased
+him so, exactly as she was, that his desire to interpose between her
+and the troubles of life had the quality of a young mother’s eagerness
+to protect the sleep of her first-born child. Newman was simply
+charmed, and he handled his charm as if it were a music-box which would
+stop if one shook it. There can be no better proof of the hankering
+epicure that is hidden in every man’s temperament, waiting for a signal
+from some divine confederate that he may safely peep out. Newman at
+last was enjoying, purely, freely, deeply. Certain of Madame de
+Cintré’s personal qualities—the luminous sweetness of her eyes, the
+delicate mobility of her face, the deep liquidity of her voice—filled
+all his consciousness. A rose-crowned Greek of old, gazing at a marble
+goddess with his whole bright intellect resting satisfied in the act,
+could not have been a more complete embodiment of the wisdom that loses
+itself in the enjoyment of quiet harmonies.
+
+He made no violent love to her—no sentimental speeches. He never
+trespassed on what she had made him understand was for the present
+forbidden ground. But he had, nevertheless, a comfortable sense that
+she knew better from day to day how much he admired her. Though in
+general he was no great talker, he talked much, and he succeeded
+perfectly in making her say many things. He was not afraid of boring
+her, either by his discourse or by his silence; and whether or no he
+did occasionally bore her, it is probable that on the whole she liked
+him only the better for his absence of embarrassed scruples. Her
+visitors, coming in often while Newman sat there, found a tall, lean,
+silent man in a half-lounging attitude, who laughed out sometimes when
+no one had meant to be droll, and remained grave in the presence of
+calculated witticisms, for appreciation of which he had apparently not
+the proper culture.
+
+It must be confessed that the number of subjects upon which Newman had
+no ideas was extremely large, and it must be added that as regards
+those subjects upon which he was without ideas he was also perfectly
+without words. He had little of the small change of conversation, and
+his stock of ready-made formulas and phrases was the scantiest. On the
+other hand he had plenty of attention to bestow, and his estimate of
+the importance of a topic did not depend upon the number of clever
+things he could say about it. He himself was almost never bored, and
+there was no man with whom it would have been a greater mistake to
+suppose that silence meant displeasure. What it was that entertained
+him during some of his speechless sessions I must, however, confess
+myself unable to determine. We know in a general way that a great many
+things which were old stories to a great many people had the charm of
+novelty to him, but a complete list of his new impressions would
+probably contain a number of surprises for us. He told Madame de Cintré
+a hundred long stories; he explained to her, in talking of the United
+States, the working of various local institutions and mercantile
+customs. Judging by the sequel she was interested, but one would not
+have been sure of it beforehand. As regards her own talk, Newman was
+very sure himself that she herself enjoyed it: this was as a sort of
+amendment to the portrait that Mrs. Tristram had drawn of her. He
+discovered that she had naturally an abundance of gaiety. He had been
+right at first in saying she was shy; her shyness, in a woman whose
+circumstances and tranquil beauty afforded every facility for
+well-mannered hardihood, was only a charm the more. For Newman it had
+lasted some time, and even when it went it left something behind it
+which for a while performed the same office. Was this the tearful
+secret of which Mrs. Tristram had had a glimpse, and of which, as of
+her friend’s reserve, her high-breeding, and her profundity, she had
+given a sketch of which the outlines were, perhaps, rather too heavy?
+Newman supposed so, but he found himself wondering less every day what
+Madame de Cintré’s secrets might be, and more convinced that secrets
+were, in themselves, hateful things to her. She was a woman for the
+light, not for the shade; and her natural line was not picturesque
+reserve and mysterious melancholy, but frank, joyous, brilliant action,
+with just so much meditation as was necessary, and not a grain more. To
+this, apparently, he had succeeded in bringing her back. He felt,
+himself, that he was an antidote to oppressive secrets; what he offered
+her was, in fact, above all things a vast, sunny immunity from the need
+of having any.
+
+He often passed his evenings, when Madame de Cintré had so appointed
+it, at the chilly fireside of Madame de Bellegarde, contenting himself
+with looking across the room, through narrowed eyelids, at his
+mistress, who always made a point, before her family, of talking to
+someone else. Madame de Bellegarde sat by the fire conversing neatly
+and coldly with whomsoever approached her, and glancing round the room
+with her slowly-restless eye, the effect of which, when it lighted upon
+him, was to Newman’s sense identical with that of a sudden spurt of
+damp air. When he shook hands with her he always asked her with a laugh
+whether she could “stand him” another evening, and she replied, without
+a laugh, that thank God she had always been able to do her duty.
+Newman, talking once of the marquise to Mrs. Tristram, said that after
+all it was very easy to get on with her; it always was easy to get on
+with out-and-out rascals.
+
+“And is it by that elegant term,” said Mrs. Tristram, “that you
+designate the Marquise de Bellegarde?”
+
+“Well,” said Newman, “she is wicked, she is an old sinner.”
+
+“What is her crime?” asked Mrs. Tristram.
+
+“I shouldn’t wonder if she had murdered someone—all from a sense of
+duty, of course.”
+
+“How can you be so dreadful?” sighed Mrs. Tristram.
+
+“I am not dreadful. I am speaking of her favorably.”
+
+“Pray what will you say when you want to be severe?”
+
+“I shall keep my severity for someone else—for the marquis. There’s a
+man I can’t swallow, mix the drink as I will.”
+
+“And what has _he_ done?”
+
+“I can’t quite make out; it is something dreadfully bad, something mean
+and underhand, and not redeemed by audacity, as his mother’s
+misdemeanors may have been. If he has never committed murder, he has at
+least turned his back and looked the other way while someone else was
+committing it.”
+
+In spite of this invidious hypothesis, which must be taken for nothing
+more than an example of the capricious play of “American humor,” Newman
+did his best to maintain an easy and friendly style of communication
+with M. de Bellegarde. So long as he was in personal contact with
+people he disliked extremely to have anything to forgive them, and he
+was capable of a good deal of unsuspected imaginative effort (for the
+sake of his own personal comfort) to assume for the time that they were
+good fellows. He did his best to treat the marquis as one; he believed
+honestly, moreover, that he could not, in reason, be such a confounded
+fool as he seemed. Newman’s familiarity was never importunate; his
+sense of human equality was not an aggressive taste or an æsthetic
+theory, but something as natural and organic as a physical appetite
+which had never been put on a scanty allowance and consequently was
+innocent of ungraceful eagerness. His tranquil unsuspectingness of the
+relativity of his own place in the social scale was probably irritating
+to M. de Bellegarde, who saw himself reflected in the mind of his
+potential brother-in-law in a crude and colorless form, unpleasantly
+dissimilar to the impressive image projected upon his own intellectual
+mirror. He never forgot himself for an instant, and replied to what he
+must have considered Newman’s “advances” with mechanical politeness.
+Newman, who was constantly forgetting himself, and indulging in an
+unlimited amount of irresponsible inquiry and conjecture, now and then
+found himself confronted by the conscious, ironical smile of his host.
+What the deuce M. de Bellegarde was smiling at he was at a loss to
+divine. M. de Bellegarde’s smile may be supposed to have been, for
+himself, a compromise between a great many emotions. So long as he
+smiled he was polite, and it was proper he should be polite. A smile,
+moreover, committed him to nothing more than politeness, and left the
+degree of politeness agreeably vague. A smile, too, was neither
+dissent—which was too serious—nor agreement, which might have brought
+on terrible complications. And then a smile covered his own personal
+dignity, which in this critical situation he was resolved to keep
+immaculate; it was quite enough that the glory of his house should pass
+into eclipse. Between him and Newman, his whole manner seemed to
+declare there could be no interchange of opinion; he was holding his
+breath so as not to inhale the odor of democracy. Newman was far from
+being versed in European politics, but he liked to have a general idea
+of what was going on about him, and he accordingly asked M. de
+Bellegarde several times what he thought of public affairs. M. de
+Bellegarde answered with suave concision that he thought as ill of them
+as possible, that they were going from bad to worse, and that the age
+was rotten to its core. This gave Newman, for the moment, an almost
+kindly feeling for the marquis; he pitied a man for whom the world was
+so cheerless a place, and the next time he saw M. de Bellegarde he
+attempted to call his attention to some of the brilliant features of
+the time. The marquis presently replied that he had but a single
+political conviction, which was enough for him: he believed in the
+divine right of Henry of Bourbon, Fifth of his name, to the throne of
+France. Newman stared, and after this he ceased to talk politics with
+M. de Bellegarde. He was not horrified nor scandalized, he was not even
+amused; he felt as he should have felt if he had discovered in M. de
+Bellegarde a taste for certain oddities of diet; an appetite, for
+instance, for fishbones or nutshells. Under these circumstances, of
+course, he would never have broached dietary questions with him.
+
+One afternoon, on his calling on Madame de Cintré, Newman was requested
+by the servant to wait a few moments, as his hostess was not at
+liberty. He walked about the room a while, taking up her books,
+smelling her flowers, and looking at her prints and photographs (which
+he thought prodigiously pretty), and at last he heard the opening of a
+door to which his back was turned. On the threshold stood an old woman
+whom he remembered to have met several times in entering and leaving
+the house. She was tall and straight and dressed in black, and she wore
+a cap which, if Newman had been initiated into such mysteries, would
+have been a sufficient assurance that she was not a Frenchwoman; a cap
+of pure British composition. She had a pale, decent, depressed-looking
+face, and a clear, dull, English eye. She looked at Newman a moment,
+both intently and timidly, and then she dropped a short, straight
+English curtsey.
+
+“Madame de Cintré begs you will kindly wait,” she said. “She has just
+come in; she will soon have finished dressing.”
+
+“Oh, I will wait as long as she wants,” said Newman. “Pray tell her not
+to hurry.”
+
+“Thank you, sir,” said the woman, softly; and then, instead of retiring
+with her message, she advanced into the room. She looked about her for
+a moment, and presently went to a table and began to arrange certain
+books and knick-knacks. Newman was struck with the high respectability
+of her appearance; he was afraid to address her as a servant. She
+busied herself for some moments with putting the table in order and
+pulling the curtains straight, while Newman walked slowly to and fro.
+He perceived at last from her reflection in the mirror, as he was
+passing that her hands were idle and that she was looking at him
+intently. She evidently wished to say something, and Newman, perceiving
+it, helped her to begin.
+
+“You are English?” he asked.
+
+“Yes, sir, please,” she answered, quickly and softly; “I was born in
+Wiltshire.”
+
+“And what do you think of Paris?”
+
+“Oh, I don’t think of Paris, sir,” she said in the same tone. “It is so
+long since I have been here.”
+
+“Ah, you have been here very long?”
+
+“It is more than forty years, sir. I came over with Lady Emmeline.”
+
+“You mean with old Madame de Bellegarde?”
+
+“Yes, sir. I came with her when she was married. I was my lady’s own
+woman.”
+
+“And you have been with her ever since?”
+
+“I have been in the house ever since. My lady has taken a younger
+person. You see I am very old. I do nothing regular now. But I keep
+about.”
+
+“You look very strong and well,” said Newman, observing the erectness
+of her figure, and a certain venerable rosiness in her cheek.
+
+“Thank God I am not ill, sir; I hope I know my duty too well to go
+panting and coughing about the house. But I am an old woman, sir, and
+it is as an old woman that I venture to speak to you.”
+
+“Oh, speak out,” said Newman, curiously. “You needn’t be afraid of me.”
+
+“Yes, sir. I think you are kind. I have seen you before.”
+
+“On the stairs, you mean?”
+
+“Yes, sir. When you have been coming to see the countess. I have taken
+the liberty of noticing that you come often.”
+
+“Oh yes; I come very often,” said Newman, laughing. “You need not have
+been wide-awake to notice that.”
+
+“I have noticed it with pleasure, sir,” said the ancient tirewoman,
+gravely. And she stood looking at Newman with a strange expression of
+face. The old instinct of deference and humility was there; the habit
+of decent self-effacement and knowledge of her “own place.” But there
+mingled with it a certain mild audacity, born of the occasion and of a
+sense, probably, of Newman’s unprecedented approachableness, and,
+beyond this, a vague indifference to the old proprieties; as if my
+lady’s own woman had at last begun to reflect that, since my lady had
+taken another person, she had a slight reversionary property in
+herself.
+
+“You take a great interest in the family?” said Newman.
+
+“A deep interest, sir. Especially in the countess.”
+
+“I am glad of that,” said Newman. And in a moment he added, smiling,
+“So do I!”
+
+“So I suppose, sir. We can’t help noticing these things and having our
+ideas; can we, sir?”
+
+“You mean as a servant?” said Newman.
+
+“Ah, there it is, sir. I am afraid that when I let my thoughts meddle
+with such matters I am no longer a servant. But I am so devoted to the
+countess; if she were my own child I couldn’t love her more. That is
+how I come to be so bold, sir. They say you want to marry her.”
+
+Newman eyed his interlocutress and satisfied himself that she was not a
+gossip, but a zealot; she looked anxious, appealing, discreet. “It is
+quite true,” he said. “I want to marry Madame de Cintré.”
+
+“And to take her away to America?”
+
+“I will take her wherever she wants to go.”
+
+“The farther away the better, sir!” exclaimed the old woman, with
+sudden intensity. But she checked herself, and, taking up a
+paper-weight in mosaic, began to polish it with her black apron. “I
+don’t mean anything against the house or the family, sir. But I think a
+great change would do the poor countess good. It is very sad here.”
+
+“Yes, it’s not very lively,” said Newman. “But Madame de Cintré is gay
+herself.”
+
+“She is everything that is good. You will not be vexed to hear that she
+has been gayer for a couple of months past than she had been in many a
+day before.”
+
+Newman was delighted to gather this testimony to the prosperity of his
+suit, but he repressed all violent marks of elation. “Has Madame de
+Cintré been in bad spirits before this?” he asked.
+
+“Poor lady, she had good reason. M. de Cintré was no husband for a
+sweet young lady like that. And then, as I say, it has been a sad
+house. It is better, in my humble opinion, that she were out of it. So,
+if you will excuse me for saying so, I hope she will marry you.”
+
+“I hope she will!” said Newman.
+
+“But you must not lose courage, sir, if she doesn’t make up her mind at
+once. That is what I wanted to beg of you, sir. Don’t give it up, sir.
+You will not take it ill if I say it’s a great risk for any lady at any
+time; all the more when she has got rid of one bad bargain. But if she
+can marry a good, kind, respectable gentleman, I think she had better
+make up her mind to it. They speak very well of you, sir, in the house,
+and, if you will allow me to say so, I like your face. You have a very
+different appearance from the late count, he wasn’t five feet high. And
+they say your fortune is beyond everything. There’s no harm in that. So
+I beseech you to be patient, sir, and bide your time. If I don’t say
+this to you, sir, perhaps no one will. Of course it is not for me to
+make any promises. I can answer for nothing. But I think your chance is
+not so bad, sir. I am nothing but a weary old woman in my quiet corner,
+but one woman understands another, and I think I make out the countess.
+I received her in my arms when she came into the world and her first
+wedding day was the saddest of my life. She owes it to me to show me
+another and a brighter one. If you will hold firm, sir—and you look as
+if you would—I think we may see it.”
+
+“I am much obliged to you for your encouragement,” said Newman,
+heartily. “One can’t have too much. I mean to hold firm. And if Madame
+de Cintré marries me you must come and live with her.”
+
+The old woman looked at him strangely, with her soft, lifeless eyes.
+“It may seem a heartless thing to say, sir, when one has been forty
+years in a house, but I may tell you that I should like to leave this
+place.”
+
+“Why, it’s just the time to say it,” said Newman, fervently. “After
+forty years one wants a change.”
+
+“You are very kind, sir;” and this faithful servant dropped another
+curtsey and seemed disposed to retire. But she lingered a moment and
+gave a timid, joyless smile. Newman was disappointed, and his fingers
+stole half shyly half irritably into his waistcoat-pocket. His
+informant noticed the movement. “Thank God I am not a Frenchwoman,” she
+said. “If I were, I would tell you with a brazen simper, old as I am,
+that if you please, monsieur, my information is worth something. Let me
+tell you so in my own decent English way. It _is_ worth something.”
+
+“How much, please?” said Newman.
+
+“Simply this: a promise not to hint to the countess that I have said
+these things.”
+
+“If that is all, you have it,” said Newman.
+
+“That is all, sir. Thank you, sir. Good day, sir.” And having once more
+slid down telescope-wise into her scanty petticoats, the old woman
+departed. At the same moment Madame de Cintré came in by an opposite
+door. She noticed the movement of the other _portière_ and asked Newman
+who had been entertaining him.
+
+“The British female!” said Newman. “An old lady in a black dress and a
+cap, who curtsies up and down, and expresses herself ever so well.”
+
+“An old lady who curtsies and expresses herself?... Ah, you mean poor
+Mrs. Bread. I happen to know that you have made a conquest of her.”
+
+“Mrs. Cake, she ought to be called,” said Newman. “She is very sweet.
+She is a delicious old woman.”
+
+Madame de Cintré looked at him a moment. “What can she have said to
+you? She is an excellent creature, but we think her rather dismal.”
+
+“I suppose,” Newman answered presently, “that I like her because she
+has lived near you so long. Since your birth, she told me.”
+
+“Yes,” said Madame de Cintré, simply; “she is very faithful; I can
+trust her.”
+
+Newman had never made any reflections to this lady upon her mother and
+her brother Urbain; had given no hint of the impression they made upon
+him. But, as if she had guessed his thoughts, she seemed careful to
+avoid all occasion for making him speak of them. She never alluded to
+her mother’s domestic decrees; she never quoted the opinions of the
+marquis. They had talked, however, of Valentin, and she had made no
+secret of her extreme affection for her younger brother. Newman
+listened sometimes with a certain harmless jealousy; he would have
+liked to divert some of her tender allusions to his own credit. Once
+Madame de Cintré told him with a little air of triumph about something
+that Valentin had done which she thought very much to his honor. It was
+a service he had rendered to an old friend of the family; something
+more “serious” than Valentin was usually supposed capable of being.
+Newman said he was glad to hear of it, and then began to talk about
+something which lay upon his own heart. Madame de Cintré listened, but
+after a while she said, “I don’t like the way you speak of my brother
+Valentin.” Hereupon Newman, surprised, said that he had never spoken of
+him but kindly.
+
+“It is too kindly,” said Madame de Cintré. “It is a kindness that costs
+nothing; it is the kindness you show to a child. It is as if you didn’t
+respect him.”
+
+“Respect him? Why I think I do.”
+
+“You think? If you are not sure, it is no respect.”
+
+“Do you respect him?” said Newman. “If you do, I do.”
+
+“If one loves a person, that is a question one is not bound to answer,”
+said Madame de Cintré.
+
+“You should not have asked it of me, then. I am very fond of your
+brother.”
+
+“He amuses you. But you would not like to resemble him.”
+
+“I shouldn’t like to resemble anyone. It is hard enough work resembling
+one’s self.”
+
+“What do you mean,” asked Madame de Cintré, “by resembling one’s self?”
+
+“Why, doing what is expected of one. Doing one’s duty.”
+
+“But that is only when one is very good.”
+
+“Well, a great many people are good,” said Newman. “Valentin is quite
+good enough for me.”
+
+Madame de Cintré was silent for a short time. “He is not good enough
+for me,” she said at last. “I wish he would do something.”
+
+“What can he do?” asked Newman.
+
+“Nothing. Yet he is very clever.”
+
+“It is a proof of cleverness,” said Newman, “to be happy without doing
+anything.”
+
+“I don’t think Valentin is happy, in reality. He is clever, generous,
+brave; but what is there to show for it? To me there is something sad
+in his life, and sometimes I have a sort of foreboding about him. I
+don’t know why, but I fancy he will have some great trouble—perhaps an
+unhappy end.”
+
+“Oh, leave him to me,” said Newman, jovially. “I will watch over him
+and keep harm away.”
+
+One evening, in Madame de Bellegarde’s salon, the conversation had
+flagged most sensibly. The marquis walked up and down in silence, like
+a sentinel at the door of some smooth-fronted citadel of the
+proprieties; his mother sat staring at the fire; young Madame de
+Bellegarde worked at an enormous band of tapestry. Usually there were
+three or four visitors, but on this occasion a violent storm
+sufficiently accounted for the absence of even the most devoted
+habitués. In the long silences the howling of the wind and the beating
+of the rain were distinctly audible. Newman sat perfectly still,
+watching the clock, determined to stay till the stroke of eleven, but
+not a moment longer. Madame de Cintré had turned her back to the
+circle, and had been standing for some time within the uplifted curtain
+of a window, with her forehead against the pane, gazing out into the
+deluged darkness. Suddenly she turned round toward her sister-in-law.
+
+“For Heaven’s sake,” she said, with peculiar eagerness, “go to the
+piano and play something.”
+
+Madame de Bellegarde held up her tapestry and pointed to a little white
+flower. “Don’t ask me to leave this. I am in the midst of a
+masterpiece. My flower is going to smell very sweet; I am putting in
+the smell with this gold-colored silk. I am holding my breath; I can’t
+leave off. Play something yourself.”
+
+“It is absurd for me to play when you are present,” said Madame de
+Cintré. But the next moment she went to the piano and began to strike
+the keys with vehemence. She played for some time, rapidly and
+brilliantly; when she stopped, Newman went to the piano and asked her
+to begin again. She shook her head, and, on his insisting, she said, “I
+have not been playing for you; I have been playing for myself.” She
+went back to the window again and looked out, and shortly afterwards
+left the room. When Newman took leave, Urbain de Bellegarde accompanied
+him, as he always did, just three steps down the staircase. At the
+bottom stood a servant with his overcoat. He had just put it on when he
+saw Madame de Cintré coming towards him across the vestibule.
+
+“Shall you be at home on Friday?” Newman asked.
+
+She looked at him a moment before answering his question. “You don’t
+like my mother and my brother,” she said.
+
+He hesitated a moment, and then he said softly, “No.”
+
+She laid her hand on the balustrade and prepared to ascend the stairs,
+fixing her eyes on the first step.
+
+“Yes, I shall be at home on Friday,” and she passed up the wide dusky
+staircase.
+
+On the Friday, as soon as he came in, she asked him to please to tell
+her why he disliked her family.
+
+“Dislike your family?” he exclaimed. “That has a horrid sound. I didn’t
+say so, did I? I didn’t mean it, if I did.”
+
+“I wish you would tell me what you think of them,” said Madame de
+Cintré.
+
+“I don’t think of any of them but you.”
+
+“That is because you dislike them. Speak the truth; you can’t offend
+me.”
+
+“Well, I don’t exactly love your brother,” said Newman. “I remember
+now. But what is the use of my saying so? I had forgotten it.”
+
+“You are too good-natured,” said Madame de Cintré gravely. Then, as if
+to avoid the appearance of inviting him to speak ill of the marquis,
+she turned away, motioning him to sit down.
+
+But he remained standing before her and said presently, “What is of
+much more importance is that they don’t like me.”
+
+“No—they don’t,” she said.
+
+“And don’t you think they are wrong?” Newman asked. “I don’t believe I
+am a man to dislike.”
+
+“I suppose that a man who may be liked may also be disliked. And my
+brother—my mother,” she added, “have not made you angry?”
+
+“Yes, sometimes.”
+
+“You have never shown it.”
+
+“So much the better.”
+
+“Yes, so much the better. They think they have treated you very well.”
+
+“I have no doubt they might have handled me much more roughly,” said
+Newman. “I am much obliged to them. Honestly.”
+
+“You are generous,” said Madame de Cintré. “It’s a disagreeable
+position.”
+
+“For them, you mean. Not for me.”
+
+“For me,” said Madame de Cintré.
+
+“Not when their sins are forgiven!” said Newman. “They don’t think I am
+as good as they are. I do. But we shan’t quarrel about it.”
+
+“I can’t even agree with you without saying something that has a
+disagreeable sound. The presumption was against you. That you probably
+don’t understand.”
+
+Newman sat down and looked at her for some time. “I don’t think I
+really understand it. But when you say it, I believe it.”
+
+“That’s a poor reason,” said Madame de Cintré, smiling.
+
+“No, it’s a very good one. You have a high spirit, a high standard; but
+with you it’s all natural and unaffected; you don’t seem to have stuck
+your head into a vise, as if you were sitting for the photograph of
+propriety. You think of me as a fellow who has had no idea in life but
+to make money and drive sharp bargains. That’s a fair description of
+me, but it is not the whole story. A man ought to care for something
+else, though I don’t know exactly what. I cared for money-making, but I
+never cared particularly for the money. There was nothing else to do,
+and it was impossible to be idle. I have been very easy to others, and
+to myself. I have done most of the things that people asked me—I don’t
+mean rascals. As regards your mother and your brother,” Newman added,
+“there is only one point upon which I feel that I might quarrel with
+them. I don’t ask them to sing my praises to you, but I ask them to let
+you alone. If I thought they talked ill of me to you, I should come
+down upon them.”
+
+“They have let me alone, as you say. They have not talked ill of you.”
+
+“In that case,” cried Newman, “I declare they are only too good for
+this world!”
+
+Madame de Cintré appeared to find something startling in his
+exclamation. She would, perhaps, have replied, but at this moment the
+door was thrown open and Urbain de Bellegarde stepped across the
+threshold. He appeared surprised at finding Newman, but his surprise
+was but a momentary shadow across the surface of an unwonted joviality.
+Newman had never seen the marquis so exhilarated; his pale, unlighted
+countenance had a sort of thin transfiguration. He held open the door
+for someone else to enter, and presently appeared old Madame de
+Bellegarde, leaning on the arm of a gentleman whom Newman had not seen
+before. He had already risen, and Madame de Cintré rose, as she always
+did before her mother. The marquis, who had greeted Newman almost
+genially, stood apart, slowly rubbing his hands. His mother came
+forward with her companion. She gave a majestic little nod at Newman,
+and then she released the strange gentleman, that he might make his bow
+to her daughter.
+
+“My daughter,” she said, “I have brought you an unknown relative, Lord
+Deepmere. Lord Deepmere is our cousin, but he has done only to-day what
+he ought to have done long ago—come to make our acquaintance.”
+
+Madame de Cintré smiled, and offered Lord Deepmere her hand. “It is
+very extraordinary,” said this noble laggard, “but this is the first
+time that I have ever been in Paris for more than three or four weeks.”
+
+“And how long have you been here now?” asked Madame de Cintré.
+
+“Oh, for the last two months,” said Lord Deepmere.
+
+These two remarks might have constituted an impertinence; but a glance
+at Lord Deepmere’s face would have satisfied you, as it apparently
+satisfied Madame de Cintré, that they constituted only a _naïveté_.
+When his companions were seated, Newman, who was out of the
+conversation, occupied himself with observing the newcomer.
+Observation, however, as regards Lord Deepmere’s person; had no great
+range. He was a small, meagre man, of some three and thirty years of
+age, with a bald head, a short nose and no front teeth in the upper
+jaw; he had round, candid blue eyes, and several pimples on his chin.
+He was evidently very shy, and he laughed a great deal, catching his
+breath with an odd, startling sound, as the most convenient imitation
+of repose. His physiognomy denoted great simplicity, a certain amount
+of brutality, and probable failure in the past to profit by rare
+educational advantages. He remarked that Paris was awfully jolly, but
+that for real, thorough-paced entertainment it was nothing to Dublin.
+He even preferred Dublin to London. Had Madame de Cintré ever been to
+Dublin? They must all come over there some day, and he would show them
+some Irish sport. He always went to Ireland for the fishing, and he
+came to Paris for the new Offenbach things. They always brought them
+out in Dublin, but he couldn’t wait. He had been nine times to hear La
+Pomme de Paris. Madame de Cintré, leaning back, with her arms folded,
+looked at Lord Deepmere with a more visibly puzzled face than she
+usually showed to society. Madame de Bellegarde, on the other hand,
+wore a fixed smile. The marquis said that among light operas his
+favorite was the Gazza Ladra. The marquise then began a series of
+inquiries about the duke and the cardinal, the old countess and Lady
+Barbara, after listening to which, and to Lord Deepmere’s somewhat
+irreverent responses, for a quarter of an hour, Newman rose to take his
+leave. The marquis went with him three steps into the hall.
+
+“Is he Irish?” asked Newman, nodding in the direction of the visitor.
+
+“His mother was the daughter of Lord Finucane,” said the marquis; “he
+has great Irish estates. Lady Bridget, in the complete absence of male
+heirs, either direct or collateral—a most extraordinary
+circumstance—came in for everything. But Lord Deepmere’s title is
+English and his English property is immense. He is a charming young
+man.”
+
+Newman answered nothing, but he detained the marquis as the latter was
+beginning gracefully to recede. “It is a good time for me to thank
+you,” he said, “for sticking so punctiliously to our bargain, for doing
+so much to help me on with your sister.”
+
+The marquis stared. “Really, I have done nothing that I can boast of,”
+he said.
+
+“Oh don’t be modest,” Newman answered, laughing. “I can’t flatter
+myself that I am doing so well simply by my own merit. And thank your
+mother for me, too!” And he turned away, leaving M. de Bellegarde
+looking after him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The next time Newman came to the Rue de l’Université he had the good
+fortune to find Madame de Cintré alone. He had come with a definite
+intention, and he lost no time in executing it. She wore, moreover, a
+look which he eagerly interpreted as expectancy.
+
+“I have been coming to see you for six months, now,” he said, “and I
+have never spoken to you a second time of marriage. That was what you
+asked me; I obeyed. Could any man have done better?”
+
+“You have acted with great delicacy,” said Madame de Cintré.
+
+“Well, I’m going to change now,” said Newman. “I don’t mean that I am
+going to be indelicate; but I’m going to go back to where I began. I
+_am_ back there. I have been all round the circle. Or rather, I have
+never been away from here. I have never ceased to want what I wanted
+then. Only now I am more sure of it, if possible; I am more sure of
+myself, and more sure of you. I know you better, though I don’t know
+anything I didn’t believe three months ago. You are everything—you are
+beyond everything—I can imagine or desire. You know me now; you _must_
+know me. I won’t say that you have seen the best—but you have seen the
+worst. I hope you have been thinking all this while. You must have seen
+that I was only waiting; you can’t suppose that I was changing. What
+will you say to me, now? Say that everything is clear and reasonable,
+and that I have been very patient and considerate, and deserve my
+reward. And then give me your hand. Madame de Cintré do that. Do it.”
+
+“I knew you were only waiting,” she said; “and I was very sure this day
+would come. I have thought about it a great deal. At first I was half
+afraid of it. But I am not afraid of it now.” She paused a moment, and
+then she added, “It’s a relief.”
+
+She was sitting on a low chair, and Newman was on an ottoman, near her.
+He leaned a little and took her hand, which for an instant she let him
+keep. “That means that I have not waited for nothing,” he said. She
+looked at him for a moment, and he saw her eyes fill with tears. “With
+me,” he went on, “you will be as safe—as safe”—and even in his ardor he
+hesitated a moment for a comparison—“as safe,” he said, with a kind of
+simple solemnity, “as in your father’s arms.”
+
+Still she looked at him and her tears increased. Then, abruptly, she
+buried her face on the cushioned arm of the sofa beside her chair, and
+broke into noiseless sobs. “I am weak—I am weak,” he heard her say.
+
+“All the more reason why you should give yourself up to me,” he
+answered. “Why are you troubled? There is nothing but happiness. Is
+that so hard to believe?”
+
+“To you everything seems so simple,” she said, raising her head. “But
+things are not so. I like you extremely. I liked you six months ago,
+and now I am sure of it, as you say you are sure. But it is not easy,
+simply for that, to decide to marry you. There are a great many things
+to think about.”
+
+“There ought to be only one thing to think about—that we love each
+other,” said Newman. And as she remained silent he quickly added, “Very
+good, if you can’t accept that, don’t tell me so.”
+
+“I should be very glad to think of nothing,” she said at last; “not to
+think at all; only to shut both my eyes and give myself up. But I
+can’t. I’m cold, I’m old, I’m a coward; I never supposed I should marry
+again, and it seems to me very strange I should ever have listened to
+you. When I used to think, as a girl, of what I should do if I were to
+marry freely, by my own choice, I thought of a very different man from
+you.”
+
+“That’s nothing against me,” said Newman with an immense smile; “your
+taste was not formed.”
+
+His smile made Madame de Cintré smile. “Have you formed it?” she asked.
+And then she said, in a different tone, “Where do you wish to live?”
+
+“Anywhere in the wide world you like. We can easily settle that.”
+
+“I don’t know why I ask you,” she presently continued. “I care very
+little. I think if I were to marry you I could live almost anywhere.
+You have some false ideas about me; you think that I need a great many
+things—that I must have a brilliant, worldly life. I am sure you are
+prepared to take a great deal of trouble to give me such things. But
+that is very arbitrary; I have done nothing to prove that.” She paused
+again, looking at him, and her mingled sound and silence were so sweet
+to him that he had no wish to hurry her, any more than he would have
+had a wish to hurry a golden sunrise. “Your being so different, which
+at first seemed a difficulty, a trouble, began one day to seem to me a
+pleasure, a great pleasure. I was glad you were different. And yet if I
+had said so, no one would have understood me; I don’t mean simply to my
+family.”
+
+“They would have said I was a queer monster, eh?” said Newman.
+
+“They would have said I could never be happy with you—you were too
+different; and I would have said it was just _because_ you were so
+different that I might be happy. But they would have given better
+reasons than I. My only reason”—and she paused again.
+
+But this time, in the midst of his golden sunrise, Newman felt the
+impulse to grasp at a rosy cloud. “Your only reason is that you love
+me!” he murmured with an eloquent gesture, and for want of a better
+reason Madame de Cintré reconciled herself to this one.
+
+Newman came back the next day, and in the vestibule, as he entered the
+house, he encountered his friend Mrs. Bread. She was wandering about in
+honorable idleness, and when his eyes fell upon her she delivered him
+one of her curtsies. Then turning to the servant who had admitted him,
+she said, with the combined majesty of her native superiority and of a
+rugged English accent, “You may retire; I will have the honor of
+conducting monsieur.” In spite of this combination, however, it
+appeared to Newman that her voice had a slight quaver, as if the tone
+of command were not habitual to it. The man gave her an impertinent
+stare, but he walked slowly away, and she led Newman upstairs. At half
+its course the staircase gave a bend, forming a little platform. In the
+angle of the wall stood an indifferent statue of an eighteenth-century
+nymph, simpering, sallow, and cracked. Here Mrs. Bread stopped and
+looked with shy kindness at her companion.
+
+“I know the good news, sir,” she murmured.
+
+“You have a good right to be first to know it,” said Newman. “You have
+taken such a friendly interest.”
+
+Mrs. Bread turned away and began to blow the dust off the statue, as if
+this might be mockery.
+
+“I suppose you want to congratulate me,” said Newman. “I am greatly
+obliged.” And then he added, “You gave me much pleasure the other day.”
+
+She turned around, apparently reassured. “You are not to think that I
+have been told anything,” she said; “I have only guessed. But when I
+looked at you, as you came in, I was sure I had guessed aright.”
+
+“You are very sharp,” said Newman. “I am sure that in your quiet way
+you see everything.”
+
+“I am not a fool, sir, thank God. I have guessed something else
+beside,” said Mrs. Bread.
+
+“What’s that?”
+
+“I needn’t tell you that, sir; I don’t think you would believe it. At
+any rate it wouldn’t please you.”
+
+“Oh, tell me nothing but what will please me,” laughed Newman. “That is
+the way you began.”
+
+“Well, sir, I suppose you won’t be vexed to hear that the sooner
+everything is over the better.”
+
+“The sooner we are married, you mean? The better for me, certainly.”
+
+“The better for everyone.”
+
+“The better for you, perhaps. You know you are coming to live with us,”
+said Newman.
+
+“I’m extremely obliged to you, sir, but it is not of myself I was
+thinking. I only wanted, if I might take the liberty, to recommend you
+to lose no time.”
+
+“Whom are you afraid of?”
+
+Mrs. Bread looked up the staircase and then down and then she looked at
+the undusted nymph, as if she possibly had sentient ears. “I am afraid
+of everyone,” she said.
+
+“What an uncomfortable state of mind!” said Newman. “Does ‘everyone’
+wish to prevent my marriage?”
+
+“I am afraid of already having said too much,” Mrs. Bread replied. “I
+won’t take it back, but I won’t say any more.” And she took her way up
+the staircase again and led him into Madame de Cintré’s salon.
+
+Newman indulged in a brief and silent imprecation when he found that
+Madame de Cintré was not alone. With her sat her mother, and in the
+middle of the room stood young Madame de Bellegarde, in her bonnet and
+mantle. The old marquise, who was leaning back in her chair with a hand
+clasping the knob of each arm, looked at him fixedly without moving.
+She seemed barely conscious of his greeting; she appeared to be musing
+intently. Newman said to himself that her daughter had been announcing
+her engagement and that the old lady found the morsel hard to swallow.
+But Madame de Cintré, as she gave him her hand gave him also a look by
+which she appeared to mean that he should understand something. Was it
+a warning or a request? Did she wish to enjoin speech or silence? He
+was puzzled, and young Madame de Bellegarde’s pretty grin gave him no
+information.
+
+“I have not told my mother,” said Madame de Cintré abruptly, looking at
+him.
+
+“Told me what?” demanded the marquise. “You tell me too little; you
+should tell me everything.”
+
+“That is what I do,” said Madame Urbain, with a little laugh.
+
+“Let _me_ tell your mother,” said Newman.
+
+The old lady stared at him again, and then turned to her daughter. “You
+are going to marry him?” she cried, softly.
+
+“_Oui, ma mère_,” said Madame de Cintré.
+
+“Your daughter has consented, to my great happiness,” said Newman.
+
+“And when was this arrangement made?” asked Madame de Bellegarde. “I
+seem to be picking up the news by chance!”
+
+“My suspense came to an end yesterday,” said Newman.
+
+“And how long was mine to have lasted?” said the marquise to her
+daughter. She spoke without irritation; with a sort of cold, noble
+displeasure.
+
+Madame de Cintré stood silent, with her eyes on the ground. “It is over
+now,” she said.
+
+“Where is my son—where is Urbain?” asked the marquise. “Send for your
+brother and inform him.”
+
+Young Madame de Bellegarde laid her hand on the bell-rope. “He was to
+make some visits with me, and I was to go and knock—very softly, very
+softly—at the door of his study. But he can come to me!” She pulled the
+bell, and in a few moments Mrs. Bread appeared, with a face of calm
+inquiry.
+
+“Send for your brother,” said the old lady.
+
+But Newman felt an irresistible impulse to speak, and to speak in a
+certain way. “Tell the marquis we want him,” he said to Mrs. Bread, who
+quietly retired.
+
+Young Madame de Bellegarde went to her sister-in-law and embraced her.
+Then she turned to Newman, with an intense smile. “She is charming. I
+congratulate you.”
+
+“I congratulate you, sir,” said Madame de Bellegarde, with extreme
+solemnity. “My daughter is an extraordinarily good woman. She may have
+faults, but I don’t know them.”
+
+“My mother does not often make jokes,” said Madame de Cintré; “but when
+she does they are terrible.”
+
+“She is ravishing,” the Marquise Urbain resumed, looking at her
+sister-in-law, with her head on one side. “Yes, I congratulate you.”
+
+Madame de Cintré turned away, and, taking up a piece of tapestry, began
+to ply the needle. Some minutes of silence elapsed, which were
+interrupted by the arrival of M. de Bellegarde. He came in with his hat
+in his hand, gloved, and was followed by his brother Valentin, who
+appeared to have just entered the house. M. de Bellegarde looked around
+the circle and greeted Newman with his usual finely-measured courtesy.
+Valentin saluted his mother and his sisters, and, as he shook hands
+with Newman, gave him a glance of acute interrogation.
+
+“_Arrivez donc, messieurs!_” cried young Madame de Bellegarde. “We have
+great news for you.”
+
+“Speak to your brother, my daughter,” said the old lady.
+
+Madame de Cintré had been looking at her tapestry. She raised her eyes
+to her brother. “I have accepted Mr. Newman.”
+
+“Your sister has consented,” said Newman. “You see after all, I knew
+what I was about.”
+
+“I am charmed!” said M. de Bellegarde, with superior benignity.
+
+“So am I,” said Valentin to Newman. “The marquis and I are charmed. I
+can’t marry, myself, but I can understand it. I can’t stand on my head,
+but I can applaud a clever acrobat. My dear sister, I bless your
+union.”
+
+The marquis stood looking for a while into the crown of his hat. “We
+have been prepared,” he said at last “but it is inevitable that in face
+of the event one should experience a certain emotion.” And he gave a
+most unhilarious smile.
+
+“I feel no emotion that I was not perfectly prepared for,” said his
+mother.
+
+“I can’t say that for myself,” said Newman, smiling but differently
+from the marquis. “I am happier than I expected to be. I suppose it’s
+the sight of your happiness!”
+
+“Don’t exaggerate that,” said Madame de Bellegarde, getting up and
+laying her hand upon her daughter’s arm. “You can’t expect an honest
+old woman to thank you for taking away her beautiful, only daughter.”
+
+“You forgot me, dear madame,” said the young marquise demurely.
+
+“Yes, she is very beautiful,” said Newman.
+
+“And when is the wedding, pray?” asked young Madame de Bellegarde; “I
+must have a month to think over a dress.”
+
+“That must be discussed,” said the marquise.
+
+“Oh, we will discuss it, and let you know!” Newman exclaimed.
+
+“I have no doubt we shall agree,” said Urbain.
+
+“If you don’t agree with Madame de Cintré, you will be very
+unreasonable.”
+
+“Come, come, Urbain,” said young Madame de Bellegarde, “I must go
+straight to my tailor’s.”
+
+The old lady had been standing with her hand on her daughter’s arm,
+looking at her fixedly. She gave a little sigh, and murmured, “No, I
+did _not_ expect it! You are a fortunate man,” she added, turning to
+Newman, with an expressive nod.
+
+“Oh, I know that!” he answered. “I feel tremendously proud. I feel like
+crying it on the housetops,—like stopping people in the street to tell
+them.”
+
+Madame de Bellegarde narrowed her lips. “Pray don’t,” she said.
+
+“The more people that know it, the better,” Newman declared. “I haven’t
+yet announced it here, but I telegraphed it this morning to America.”
+
+“Telegraphed it to America?” the old lady murmured.
+
+“To New York, to St. Louis, and to San Francisco; those are the
+principal cities, you know. To-morrow I shall tell my friends here.”
+
+“Have you many?” asked Madame de Bellegarde, in a tone of which I am
+afraid that Newman but partly measured the impertinence.
+
+“Enough to bring me a great many hand-shakes and congratulations. To
+say nothing,” he added, in a moment, “of those I shall receive from
+your friends.”
+
+“They will not use the telegraph,” said the marquise, taking her
+departure.
+
+M. de Bellegarde, whose wife, her imagination having apparently taken
+flight to the tailor’s, was fluttering her silken wings in emulation,
+shook hands with Newman, and said with a more persuasive accent than
+the latter had ever heard him use, “You may count upon me.” Then his
+wife led him away.
+
+Valentin stood looking from his sister to our hero. “I hope you both
+reflected seriously,” he said.
+
+Madame de Cintré smiled. “We have neither your powers of reflection nor
+your depth of seriousness; but we have done our best.”
+
+“Well, I have a great regard for each of you,” Valentin continued. “You
+are charming young people. But I am not satisfied, on the whole, that
+you belong to that small and superior class—that exquisite group
+composed of persons who are worthy to remain unmarried. These are rare
+souls; they are the salt of the earth. But I don’t mean to be
+invidious; the marrying people are often very nice.”
+
+“Valentin holds that women should marry, and that men should not,” said
+Madame de Cintré. “I don’t know how he arranges it.”
+
+“I arrange it by adoring you, my sister,” said Valentin ardently.
+“Good-bye.”
+
+“Adore someone whom you can marry,” said Newman. “I will arrange that
+for you some day. I foresee that I am going to turn apostle.”
+
+Valentin was on the threshold; he looked back a moment with a face that
+had turned grave. “I adore someone I can’t marry!” he said. And he
+dropped the _portière_ and departed.
+
+“They don’t like it,” said Newman, standing alone before Madame de
+Cintré.
+
+“No,” she said, after a moment; “they don’t like it.”
+
+“Well, now, do you mind that?” asked Newman.
+
+“Yes!” she said, after another interval.
+
+“That’s a mistake.”
+
+“I can’t help it. I should prefer that my mother were pleased.”
+
+“Why the deuce,” demanded Newman, “is she not pleased? She gave you
+leave to marry me.”
+
+“Very true; I don’t understand it. And yet I do ‘mind it,’ as you say.
+You will call it superstitious.”
+
+“That will depend upon how much you let it bother you. Then I shall
+call it an awful bore.”
+
+“I will keep it to myself,” said Madame de Cintré, “It shall not bother
+you.” And then they talked of their marriage-day, and Madame de Cintré
+assented unreservedly to Newman’s desire to have it fixed for an early
+date.
+
+Newman’s telegrams were answered with interest. Having dispatched but
+three electric missives, he received no less than eight gratulatory
+bulletins in return. He put them into his pocket-book, and the next
+time he encountered old Madame de Bellegarde drew them forth and
+displayed them to her. This, it must be confessed, was a slightly
+malicious stroke; the reader must judge in what degree the offense was
+venial. Newman knew that the marquise disliked his telegrams, though he
+could see no sufficient reason for it. Madame de Cintré, on the other
+hand, liked them, and, most of them being of a humorous cast, laughed
+at them immoderately, and inquired into the character of their authors.
+Newman, now that his prize was gained, felt a peculiar desire that his
+triumph should be manifest. He more than suspected that the Bellegardes
+were keeping quiet about it, and allowing it, in their select circle,
+but a limited resonance; and it pleased him to think that if he were to
+take the trouble he might, as he phrased it, break all the windows. No
+man likes being repudiated, and yet Newman, if he was not flattered,
+was not exactly offended. He had not this good excuse for his somewhat
+aggressive impulse to promulgate his felicity; his sentiment was of
+another quality. He wanted for once to make the heads of the house of
+Bellegarde _feel_ him; he knew not when he should have another chance.
+He had had for the past six months a sense of the old lady and her son
+looking straight over his head, and he was now resolved that they
+should toe a mark which he would give himself the satisfaction of
+drawing.
+
+“It is like seeing a bottle emptied when the wine is poured too
+slowly,” he said to Mrs. Tristram. “They make me want to joggle their
+elbows and force them to spill their wine.”
+
+To this Mrs. Tristram answered that he had better leave them alone and
+let them do things in their own way. “You must make allowances for
+them,” she said. “It is natural enough that they should hang fire a
+little. They thought they accepted you when you made your application;
+but they are not people of imagination, they could not project
+themselves into the future, and now they will have to begin again. But
+they _are_ people of honor, and they will do whatever is necessary.”
+
+Newman spent a few moments in narrow-eyed meditation. “I am not hard on
+them,” he presently said, “and to prove it I will invite them all to a
+festival.”
+
+“To a festival?”
+
+“You have been laughing at my great gilded rooms all winter; I will
+show you that they are good for something. I will give a party. What is
+the grandest thing one can do here? I will hire all the great singers
+from the opera, and all the first people from the Théâtre Français, and
+I will give an entertainment.”
+
+“And whom will you invite?”
+
+“You, first of all. And then the old lady and her son. And then
+everyone among her friends whom I have met at her house or elsewhere,
+everyone who has shown me the minimum of politeness, every duke of them
+and his wife. And then all my friends, without exception: Miss Kitty
+Upjohn, Miss Dora Finch, General Packard, C. P Hatch, and all the rest.
+And everyone shall know what it is about, that is, to celebrate my
+engagement to the Countess de Cintré. What do you think of the idea?”
+
+“I think it is odious!” said Mrs. Tristram. And then in a moment: “I
+think it is delicious!”
+
+The very next evening Newman repaired to Madame de Bellegarde’s salon,
+where he found her surrounded by her children, and invited her to honor
+his poor dwelling by her presence on a certain evening a fortnight
+distant.
+
+The marquise stared a moment. “My dear sir,” she cried, “what do you
+want to do to me?”
+
+“To make you acquainted with a few people, and then to place you in a
+very easy chair and ask you to listen to Madame Frezzolini’s singing.”
+
+“You mean to give a concert?”
+
+“Something of that sort.”
+
+“And to have a crowd of people?”
+
+“All my friends, and I hope some of yours and your daughter’s. I want
+to celebrate my engagement.”
+
+It seemed to Newman that Madame de Bellegarde turned pale. She opened
+her fan, a fine old painted fan of the last century, and looked at the
+picture, which represented a _fête champêtre_—a lady with a guitar,
+singing, and a group of dancers round a garlanded Hermes.
+
+“We go out so little,” murmured the marquis, “since my poor father’s
+death.”
+
+“But _my_ dear father is still alive, my friend,” said his wife. “I am
+only waiting for my invitation to accept it,” and she glanced with
+amiable confidence at Newman. “It will be magnificent; I am very sure
+of that.”
+
+I am sorry to say, to the discredit of Newman’s gallantry, that this
+lady’s invitation was not then and there bestowed; he was giving all
+his attention to the old marquise. She looked up at last, smiling. “I
+can’t think of letting you offer me a fête,” she said, “until I have
+offered you one. We want to present you to our friends; we will invite
+them all. We have it very much at heart. We must do things in order.
+Come to me about the 25th; I will let you know the exact day
+immediately. We shall not have anyone so fine as Madame Frezzolini, but
+we shall have some very good people. After that you may talk of your
+own fête.” The old lady spoke with a certain quick eagerness, smiling
+more agreeably as she went on.
+
+It seemed to Newman a handsome proposal, and such proposals always
+touched the sources of his good-nature. He said to Madame de Bellegarde
+that he should be glad to come on the 25th or any other day, and that
+it mattered very little whether he met his friends at her house or at
+his own. I have said that Newman was observant, but it must be admitted
+that on this occasion he failed to notice a certain delicate glance
+which passed between Madame de Bellegarde and the marquis, and which we
+may presume to have been a commentary upon the innocence displayed in
+that latter clause of his speech.
+
+Valentin de Bellegarde walked away with Newman that evening, and when
+they had left the Rue de l’Université some distance behind them he said
+reflectively, “My mother is very strong—very strong.” Then in answer to
+an interrogative movement of Newman’s he continued, “She was driven to
+the wall, but you would never have thought it. Her fête of the 25th was
+an invention of the moment. She had no idea whatever of giving a fête,
+but finding it the only issue from your proposal, she looked straight
+at the dose—excuse the expression—and bolted it, as you saw, without
+winking. She is very strong.”
+
+“Dear me!” said Newman, divided between relish and compassion. “I don’t
+care a straw for her fête, I am willing to take the will for the deed.”
+
+“No, no,” said Valentin, with a little inconsequent touch of family
+pride. “The thing will be done now, and done handsomely.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Valentin de Bellegarde’s announcement of the secession of Mademoiselle
+Nioche from her father’s domicile and his irreverent reflections upon
+the attitude of this anxious parent in so grave a catastrophe, received
+a practical commentary in the fact that M. Nioche was slow to seek
+another interview with his late pupil. It had cost Newman some disgust
+to be forced to assent to Valentin’s somewhat cynical interpretation of
+the old man’s philosophy, and, though circumstances seemed to indicate
+that he had not given himself up to a noble despair, Newman thought it
+very possible he might be suffering more keenly than was apparent. M.
+Nioche had been in the habit of paying him a respectful little visit
+every two or three weeks and his absence might be a proof quite as much
+of extreme depression as of a desire to conceal the success with which
+he had patched up his sorrow. Newman presently learned from Valentin
+several details touching this new phase of Mademoiselle Noémie’s
+career.
+
+“I told you she was remarkable,” this unshrinking observer declared,
+“and the way she has managed this performance proves it. She has had
+other chances, but she was resolved to take none but the best. She did
+you the honor to think for a while that you might be such a chance. You
+were not; so she gathered up her patience and waited a while longer. At
+last her occasion came along, and she made her move with her eyes wide
+open. I am very sure she had no innocence to lose, but she had all her
+respectability. Dubious little damsel as you thought her, she had kept
+a firm hold of that; nothing could be proved against her, and she was
+determined not to let her reputation go till she had got her
+equivalent. About her equivalent she had high ideas. Apparently her
+ideal has been satisfied. It is fifty years old, bald-headed, and deaf,
+but it is very easy about money.”
+
+“And where in the world,” asked Newman, “did you pick up this valuable
+information?”
+
+“In conversation. Remember my frivolous habits. In conversation with a
+young woman engaged in the humble trade of glove-cleaner, who keeps a
+small shop in the Rue St. Roch. M. Nioche lives in the same house, up
+six pair of stairs, across the court, in and out of whose ill-swept
+doorway Miss Noémie has been flitting for the last five years. The
+little glove-cleaner was an old acquaintance; she used to be the friend
+of a friend of mine, who has married and dropped such friends. I often
+saw her in his society. As soon as I espied her behind her clear little
+window-pane, I recollected her. I had on a spotlessly fresh pair of
+gloves, but I went in and held up my hands, and said to her, ‘Dear
+mademoiselle, what will you ask me for cleaning these?’ ‘Dear count,’
+she answered immediately, ‘I will clean them for you for nothing.’ She
+had instantly recognized me, and I had to hear her history for the last
+six years. But after that, I put her upon that of her neighbors. She
+knows and admires Noémie, and she told me what I have just repeated.”
+
+A month elapsed without M. Nioche reappearing, and Newman, who every
+morning read two or three suicides in the _Figaro_, began to suspect
+that, mortification proving stubborn, he had sought a balm for his
+wounded pride in the waters of the Seine. He had a note of M. Nioche’s
+address in his pocket-book, and finding himself one day in the
+_quartier_, he determined, in so far as he might, to clear up his
+doubts. He repaired to the house in the Rue St. Roch which bore the
+recorded number, and observed in a neighboring basement, behind a
+dangling row of neatly inflated gloves, the attentive physiognomy of
+Bellegarde’s informant—a sallow person in a dressing-gown—peering into
+the street as if she were expecting that amiable nobleman to pass
+again. But it was not to her that Newman applied; he simply asked of
+the portress if M. Nioche were at home. The portress replied, as the
+portress invariably replies, that her lodger had gone out barely three
+minutes before; but then, through the little square hole of her
+lodge-window taking the measure of Newman’s fortunes, and seeing them,
+by an unspecified process, refresh the dry places of servitude to
+occupants of fifth floors on courts, she added that M. Nioche would
+have had just time to reach the Café de la Patrie, round the second
+corner to the left, at which establishment he regularly spent his
+afternoons. Newman thanked her for the information, took the second
+turning to the left, and arrived at the Café de la Patrie. He felt a
+momentary hesitation to go in; was it not rather mean to “follow up”
+poor old Nioche at that rate? But there passed across his vision an
+image of a haggard little septuagenarian taking measured sips of a
+glass of sugar and water and finding them quite impotent to sweeten his
+desolation. He opened the door and entered, perceiving nothing at first
+but a dense cloud of tobacco smoke. Across this, however, in a corner,
+he presently descried the figure of M. Nioche, stirring the contents of
+a deep glass, with a lady seated in front of him. The lady’s back was
+turned to Newman, but M. Nioche very soon perceived and recognized his
+visitor. Newman had gone toward him, and the old man rose slowly,
+gazing at him with a more blighted expression even than usual.
+
+“If you are drinking hot punch,” said Newman, “I suppose you are not
+dead. That’s all right. Don’t move.”
+
+M. Nioche stood staring, with a fallen jaw, not daring to put out his
+hand. The lady, who sat facing him, turned round in her place and
+glanced upward with a spirited toss of her head, displaying the
+agreeable features of his daughter. She looked at Newman sharply, to
+see how he was looking at her, then—I don’t know what she
+discovered—she said graciously, “How d’ ye do, monsieur? won’t you come
+into our little corner?”
+
+“Did you come—did you come after _me?_” asked M. Nioche very softly.
+
+“I went to your house to see what had become of you. I thought you
+might be sick,” said Newman.
+
+“It is very good of you, as always,” said the old man. “No, I am not
+well. Yes, I am _seek_.”
+
+“Ask monsieur to sit down,” said Mademoiselle Nioche. “Garçon, bring a
+chair.”
+
+“Will you do us the honor to _seat?_” said M. Nioche, timorously, and
+with a double foreignness of accent.
+
+Newman said to himself that he had better see the thing out and he took
+a chair at the end of the table, with Mademoiselle Nioche on his left
+and her father on the other side. “You will take something, of course,”
+said Miss Noémie, who was sipping a glass of madeira. Newman said that
+he believed not, and then she turned to her papa with a smile. “What an
+honor, eh? he has come only for us.” M. Nioche drained his pungent
+glass at a long draught, and looked out from eyes more lachrymose in
+consequence. “But you didn’t come for me, eh?” Mademoiselle Noémie went
+on. “You didn’t expect to find me here?”
+
+Newman observed the change in her appearance. She was very elegant and
+prettier than before; she looked a year or two older, and it was
+noticeable that, to the eye, she had only gained in respectability. She
+looked “lady-like.” She was dressed in quiet colors, and wore her
+expensively unobtrusive toilet with a grace that might have come from
+years of practice. Her present self-possession and _aplomb_ struck
+Newman as really infernal, and he inclined to agree with Valentin de
+Bellegarde that the young lady was very remarkable. “No, to tell the
+truth, I didn’t come for you,” he said, “and I didn’t expect to find
+you. I was told,” he added in a moment “that you had left your father.”
+
+“_Quelle horreur!_” cried Mademoiselle Nioche with a smile. “Does one
+leave one’s father? You have the proof of the contrary.”
+
+“Yes, convincing proof,” said Newman glancing at M. Nioche. The old man
+caught his glance obliquely, with his faded, deprecating eye, and then,
+lifting his empty glass, pretended to drink again.
+
+“Who told you that?” Noémie demanded. “I know very well. It was M. de
+Bellegarde. Why don’t you say yes? You are not polite.”
+
+“I am embarrassed,” said Newman.
+
+“I set you a better example. I know M. de Bellegarde told you. He knows
+a great deal about me—or he thinks he does. He has taken a great deal
+of trouble to find out, but half of it isn’t true. In the first place,
+I haven’t left my father; I am much too fond of him. Isn’t it so,
+little father? M. de Bellegarde is a charming young man; it is
+impossible to be cleverer. I know a good deal about him too; you can
+tell him that when you next see him.”
+
+“No,” said Newman, with a sturdy grin; “I won’t carry any messages for
+you.”
+
+“Just as you please,” said Mademoiselle Nioche, “I don’t depend upon
+you, nor does M. de Bellegarde either. He is very much interested in
+me; he can be left to his own devices. He is a contrast to you.”
+
+“Oh, he is a great contrast to me, I have no doubt” said Newman. “But I
+don’t exactly know how you mean it.”
+
+“I mean it in this way. First of all, he never offered to help me to a
+_dot_ and a husband.” And Mademoiselle Nioche paused, smiling. “I won’t
+say that is in his favor, for I do you justice. What led you, by the
+way, to make me such a queer offer? You didn’t care for me.”
+
+“Oh yes, I did,” said Newman.
+
+“How so?”
+
+“It would have given me real pleasure to see you married to a
+respectable young fellow.”
+
+“With six thousand francs of income!” cried Mademoiselle Nioche. “Do
+you call that caring for me? I’m afraid you know little about women.
+You were not _galant_; you were not what you might have been.”
+
+Newman flushed a trifle fiercely. “Come!” he exclaimed “that’s rather
+strong. I had no idea I had been so shabby.”
+
+Mademoiselle Nioche smiled as she took up her muff. “It is something,
+at any rate, to have made you angry.”
+
+Her father had leaned both his elbows on the table, and his head, bent
+forward, was supported in his hands, the thin white fingers of which
+were pressed over his ears. In his position he was staring fixedly at
+the bottom of his empty glass, and Newman supposed he was not hearing.
+Mademoiselle Noémie buttoned her furred jacket and pushed back her
+chair, casting a glance charged with the consciousness of an expensive
+appearance first down over her flounces and then up at Newman.
+
+“You had better have remained an honest girl,” Newman said quietly.
+
+M. Nioche continued to stare at the bottom of his glass, and his
+daughter got up, still bravely smiling. “You mean that I look so much
+like one? That’s more than most women do nowadays. Don’t judge me yet
+awhile,” she added. “I mean to succeed; that’s what I mean to do. I
+leave you; I don’t mean to be seen in cafés, for one thing. I can’t
+think what you want of my poor father; he’s very comfortable now. It
+isn’t his fault, either. _Au revoir_, little father.” And she tapped
+the old man on the head with her muff. Then she stopped a minute,
+looking at Newman. “Tell M. de Bellegarde, when he wants news of me, to
+come and get it from _me!_” And she turned and departed, the
+white-aproned waiter, with a bow, holding the door wide open for her.
+
+M. Nioche sat motionless, and Newman hardly knew what to say to him.
+The old man looked dismally foolish. “So you determined not to shoot
+her, after all,” Newman said presently.
+
+M. Nioche, without moving, raised his eyes and gave him a long,
+peculiar look. It seemed to confess everything, and yet not to ask for
+pity, nor to pretend, on the other hand, to a rugged ability to do
+without it. It might have expressed the state of mind of an innocuous
+insect, flat in shape and conscious of the impending pressure of a
+boot-sole, and reflecting that he was perhaps too flat to be crushed.
+M. Nioche’s gaze was a profession of moral flatness. “You despise me
+terribly,” he said, in the weakest possible voice.
+
+“Oh no,” said Newman, “it is none of my business. It’s a good plan to
+take things easily.”
+
+“I made you too many fine speeches,” M. Nioche added. “I meant them at
+the time.”
+
+“I am sure I am very glad you didn’t shoot her,” said Newman. “I was
+afraid you might have shot yourself. That is why I came to look you
+up.” And he began to button his coat.
+
+“Neither,” said M. Nioche. “You despise me, and I can’t explain to you.
+I hoped I shouldn’t see you again.”
+
+“Why, that’s rather shabby,” said Newman. “You shouldn’t drop your
+friends that way. Besides, the last time you came to see me I thought
+you particularly jolly.”
+
+“Yes, I remember,” said M. Nioche musingly; “I was in a fever. I didn’t
+know what I said, what I did. It was delirium.”
+
+“Ah, well, you are quieter now.”
+
+M. Nioche was silent a moment. “As quiet as the grave,” he whispered
+softly.
+
+“Are you very unhappy?”
+
+M. Nioche rubbed his forehead slowly, and even pushed back his wig a
+little, looking askance at his empty glass. “Yes—yes. But that’s an old
+story. I have always been unhappy. My daughter does what she will with
+me. I take what she gives me, good or bad. I have no spirit, and when
+you have no spirit you must keep quiet. I shan’t trouble you any more.”
+
+“Well,” said Newman, rather disgusted at the smooth operation of the
+old man’s philosophy, “that’s as you please.”
+
+M. Nioche seemed to have been prepared to be despised but nevertheless
+he made a feeble movement of appeal from Newman’s faint praise. “After
+all,” he said, “she is my daughter, and I can still look after her. If
+she will do wrong, why she will. But there are many different paths,
+there are degrees. I can give her the benefit—give her the benefit”—and
+M. Nioche paused, staring vaguely at Newman, who began to suspect that
+his brain had softened—“the benefit of my experience,” M. Nioche added.
+
+“Your experience?” inquired Newman, both amused and amazed.
+
+“My experience of business,” said M. Nioche, gravely.
+
+“Ah, yes,” said Newman, laughing, “that will be a great advantage to
+her!” And then he said good-bye, and offered the poor, foolish old man
+his hand.
+
+M. Nioche took it and leaned back against the wall, holding it a moment
+and looking up at him. “I suppose you think my wits are going,” he
+said. “Very likely; I have always a pain in my head. That’s why I can’t
+explain, I can’t tell you. And she’s so strong, she makes me walk as
+she will, anywhere! But there’s this—there’s this.” And he stopped,
+still staring up at Newman. His little white eyes expanded and
+glittered for a moment like those of a cat in the dark. “It’s not as it
+seems. I haven’t forgiven her. Oh, no!”
+
+“That’s right; don’t,” said Newman. “She’s a bad case.”
+
+“It’s horrible, it’s horrible,” said M. Nioche; “but do you want to
+know the truth? I hate her! I take what she gives me, and I hate her
+more. To-day she brought me three hundred francs; they are here in my
+waistcoat pocket. Now I hate her almost cruelly. No, I haven’t forgiven
+her.”
+
+“Why did you accept the money?” Newman asked.
+
+“If I hadn’t,” said M. Nioche, “I should have hated her still more.
+That’s what misery is. No, I haven’t forgiven her.”
+
+“Take care you don’t hurt her!” said Newman, laughing again. And with
+this he took his leave. As he passed along the glazed side of the café,
+on reaching the street, he saw the old man motioning the waiter, with a
+melancholy gesture, to replenish his glass.
+
+One day, a week after his visit to the Café de la Patrie, he called
+upon Valentin de Bellegarde, and by good fortune found him at home.
+Newman spoke of his interview with M. Nioche and his daughter, and said
+he was afraid Valentin had judged the old man correctly. He had found
+the couple hobnobbing together in all amity; the old gentleman’s rigor
+was purely theoretic. Newman confessed that he was disappointed; he
+should have expected to see M. Nioche take high ground.
+
+“High ground, my dear fellow,” said Valentin, laughing; “there is no
+high ground for him to take. The only perceptible eminence in M.
+Nioche’s horizon is Montmartre, which is not an edifying quarter. You
+can’t go mountaineering in a flat country.”
+
+“He remarked, indeed,” said Newman, “that he has not forgiven her. But
+she’ll never find it out.”
+
+“We must do him the justice to suppose he doesn’t like the thing,”
+Valentin rejoined. “Mademoiselle Nioche is like the great artists whose
+biographies we read, who at the beginning of their career have suffered
+opposition in the domestic circle. Their vocation has not been
+recognized by their families, but the world has done it justice.
+Mademoiselle Nioche has a vocation.”
+
+“Oh, come,” said Newman, impatiently, “you take the little baggage too
+seriously.”
+
+“I know I do; but when one has nothing to think about, one must think
+of little baggages. I suppose it is better to be serious about light
+things than not to be serious at all. This little baggage entertains
+me.”
+
+“Oh, she has discovered that. She knows you have been hunting her up
+and asking questions about her. She is very much tickled by it. That’s
+rather annoying.”
+
+“Annoying, my dear fellow,” laughed Valentin; “not the least!”
+
+“Hanged if I should want to have a greedy little adventuress like that
+know I was giving myself such pains about her!” said Newman.
+
+“A pretty woman is always worth one’s pains,” objected Valentin.
+“Mademoiselle Nioche is welcome to be tickled by my curiosity, and to
+know that I am tickled that she is tickled. She is not so much tickled,
+by the way.”
+
+“You had better go and tell her,” Newman rejoined. “She gave me a
+message for you of some such drift.”
+
+“Bless your quiet imagination,” said Valentin, “I have been to see
+her—three times in five days. She is a charming hostess; we talk of
+Shakespeare and the musical glasses. She is extremely clever and a very
+curious type; not at all coarse or wanting to be coarse; determined not
+to be. She means to take very good care of herself. She is extremely
+perfect; she is as hard and clear-cut as some little figure of a
+sea-nymph in an antique intaglio, and I will warrant that she has not a
+grain more of sentiment or heart than if she was scooped out of a big
+amethyst. You can’t scratch her even with a diamond. Extremely
+pretty,—really, when you know her, she is wonderfully
+pretty,—intelligent, determined, ambitious, unscrupulous, capable of
+looking at a man strangled without changing color, she is upon my
+honor, extremely entertaining.”
+
+“It’s a fine list of attractions,” said Newman; “they would serve as a
+police-detective’s description of a favorite criminal. I should sum
+them up by another word than ‘entertaining.’”
+
+“Why, that is just the word to use. I don’t say she is laudable or
+lovable. I don’t want her as my wife or my sister. But she is a very
+curious and ingenious piece of machinery; I like to see it in
+operation.”
+
+“Well, I have seen some very curious machines too,” said Newman; “and
+once, in a needle factory, I saw a gentleman from the city, who had
+stopped too near one of them, picked up as neatly as if he had been
+prodded by a fork, swallowed down straight, and ground into small
+pieces.”
+
+Re-entering his domicile, late in the evening, three days after Madame
+de Bellegarde had made her bargain with him—the expression is
+sufficiently correct—touching the entertainment at which she was to
+present him to the world, he found on his table a card of goodly
+dimensions bearing an announcement that this lady would be at home on
+the 27th of the month, at ten o’clock in the evening. He stuck it into
+the frame of his mirror and eyed it with some complacency; it seemed an
+agreeable emblem of triumph, documentary evidence that his prize was
+gained. Stretched out in a chair, he was looking at it lovingly, when
+Valentin de Bellegarde was shown into the room. Valentin’s glance
+presently followed the direction of Newman’s, and he perceived his
+mother’s invitation.
+
+“And what have they put into the corner?” he asked. “Not the customary
+‘music,’ ‘dancing,’ or _‘tableaux vivants’?_ They ought at least to put
+‘An American.’”
+
+“Oh, there are to be several of us,” said Newman. “Mrs. Tristram told
+me to-day that she had received a card and sent an acceptance.”
+
+“Ah, then, with Mrs. Tristram and her husband you will have support. My
+mother might have put on her card ‘Three Americans.’ But I suspect you
+will not lack amusement. You will see a great many of the best people
+in France. I mean the long pedigrees and the high noses, and all that.
+Some of them are awful idiots; I advise you to take them up
+cautiously.”
+
+“Oh, I guess I shall like them,” said Newman. “I am prepared to like
+every one and everything in these days; I am in high good-humor.”
+
+Valentin looked at him a moment in silence and then dropped himself
+into a chair with an unwonted air of weariness.
+
+“Happy man!” he said with a sigh. “Take care you don’t become
+offensive.”
+
+“If anyone chooses to take offense, he may. I have a good conscience,”
+said Newman.
+
+“So you are really in love with my sister.”
+
+“Yes, sir!” said Newman, after a pause.
+
+“And she also?”
+
+“I guess she likes me,” said Newman.
+
+“What is the witchcraft you have used?” Valentin asked. “How do _you_
+make love?”
+
+“Oh, I haven’t any general rules,” said Newman. “In any way that seems
+acceptable.”
+
+“I suspect that, if one knew it,” said Valentin, laughing, “you are a
+terrible customer. You walk in seven-league boots.”
+
+“There is something the matter with you to-night,” Newman said in
+response to this. “You are vicious. Spare me all discordant sounds
+until after my marriage. Then, when I have settled down for life, I
+shall be better able to take things as they come.”
+
+“And when does your marriage take place?”
+
+“About six weeks hence.”
+
+Valentin was silent a while, and then he said, “And you feel very
+confident about the future?”
+
+“Confident. I knew what I wanted, exactly, and I know what I have got.”
+
+“You are sure you are going to be happy?”
+
+“Sure?” said Newman. “So foolish a question deserves a foolish answer.
+Yes!”
+
+“You are not afraid of anything?”
+
+“What should I be afraid of? You can’t hurt me unless you kill me by
+some violent means. That I should indeed consider a tremendous sell. I
+want to live and I mean to live. I can’t die of illness, I am too
+ridiculously tough; and the time for dying of old age won’t come round
+yet a while. I can’t lose my wife, I shall take too good care of her. I
+may lose my money, or a large part of it; but that won’t matter, for I
+shall make twice as much again. So what have I to be afraid of?”
+
+“You are not afraid it may be rather a mistake for an American man of
+business to marry a French countess?”
+
+“For the countess, possibly; but not for the man of business, if you
+mean me! But my countess shall not be disappointed; I answer for her
+happiness!” And as if he felt the impulse to celebrate his happy
+certitude by a bonfire, he got up to throw a couple of logs upon the
+already blazing hearth. Valentin watched for a few moments the
+quickened flame, and then, with his head leaning on his hand, gave a
+melancholy sigh. “Got a headache?” Newman asked.
+
+“_Je suis triste_,” said Valentin, with Gallic simplicity.
+
+“You are sad, eh? It is about the lady you said the other night that
+you adored and that you couldn’t marry?”
+
+“Did I really say that? It seemed to me afterwards that the words had
+escaped me. Before Claire it was bad taste. But I felt gloomy as I
+spoke, and I feel gloomy still. Why did you ever introduce me to that
+girl?”
+
+“Oh, it’s Noémie, is it? Lord deliver us! You don’t mean to say you are
+lovesick about her?”
+
+“Lovesick, no; it’s not a grand passion. But the cold-blooded little
+demon sticks in my thoughts; she has bitten me with those even little
+teeth of hers; I feel as if I might turn rabid and do something crazy
+in consequence. It’s very low, it’s disgustingly low. She’s the most
+mercenary little jade in Europe. Yet she really affects my peace of
+mind; she is always running in my head. It’s a striking contrast to
+your noble and virtuous attachment—a vile contrast! It is rather
+pitiful that it should be the best I am able to do for myself at my
+present respectable age. I am a nice young man, eh, _en somme?_ You
+can’t warrant my future, as you do your own.”
+
+“Drop that girl, short,” said Newman; “don’t go near her again, and
+your future will do. Come over to America and I will get you a place in
+a bank.”
+
+“It is easy to say drop her,” said Valentin, with a light laugh. “You
+can’t drop a pretty woman like that. One must be polite, even with
+Noémie. Besides, I’ll not have her suppose I am afraid of her.”
+
+“So, between politeness and vanity, you will get deeper into the mud?
+Keep them both for something better. Remember, too, that I didn’t want
+to introduce you to her; you insisted. I had a sort of uneasy feeling
+about it.”
+
+“Oh, I don’t reproach you,” said Valentin. “Heaven forbid! I wouldn’t
+for the world have missed knowing her. She is really extraordinary. The
+way she has already spread her wings is amazing. I don’t know when a
+woman has amused me more. But excuse me,” he added in an instant; “she
+doesn’t amuse you, at second hand, and the subject is an impure one.
+Let us talk of something else.” Valentin introduced another topic, but
+within five minutes Newman observed that, by a bold transition, he had
+reverted to Mademoiselle Nioche, and was giving pictures of her manners
+and quoting specimens of her _mots_. These were very witty, and, for a
+young woman who six months before had been painting the most artless
+madonnas, startlingly cynical. But at last, abruptly, he stopped,
+became thoughtful, and for some time afterwards said nothing. When he
+rose to go it was evident that his thoughts were still running upon
+Mademoiselle Nioche. “Yes, she’s a frightful little monster!” he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+The next ten days were the happiest that Newman had ever known. He saw
+Madame de Cintré every day, and never saw either old Madame de
+Bellegarde or the elder of his prospective brothers-in-law. Madame de
+Cintré at last seemed to think it becoming to apologize for their never
+being present. “They are much taken up,” she said, “with doing the
+honors of Paris to Lord Deepmere.” There was a smile in her gravity as
+she made this declaration, and it deepened as she added, “He is our
+seventh cousin, you know, and blood is thicker than water. And then, he
+is so interesting!” And with this she laughed.
+
+Newman met young Madame de Bellegarde two or three times, always
+roaming about with graceful vagueness, as if in search of an
+unattainable ideal of amusement. She always reminded him of a painted
+perfume-bottle with a crack in it; but he had grown to have a kindly
+feeling for her, based on the fact of her owing conjugal allegiance to
+Urbain de Bellegarde. He pitied M. de Bellegarde’s wife, especially
+since she was a silly, thirstily-smiling little brunette, with a
+suggestion of an unregulated heart. The small marquise sometimes looked
+at him with an intensity too marked not to be innocent, for coquetry is
+more finely shaded. She apparently wanted to ask him something or tell
+him something; he wondered what it was. But he was shy of giving her an
+opportunity, because, if her communication bore upon the aridity of her
+matrimonial lot, he was at a loss to see how he could help her. He had
+a fancy, however, of her coming up to him some day and saying (after
+looking around behind her) with a little passionate hiss, “I know you
+detest my husband; let me have the pleasure of assuring you for once
+that you are right. Pity a poor woman who is married to a clock-image
+in _papier-mâché!_” Possessing, however, in default of a competent
+knowledge of the principles of etiquette, a very downright sense of the
+“meanness” of certain actions, it seemed to him to belong to his
+position to keep on his guard; he was not going to put it into the
+power of these people to say that in their house he had done anything
+unpleasant. As it was, Madame de Bellegarde used to give him news of
+the dress she meant to wear at his wedding, and which had not yet, in
+her creative imagination, in spite of many interviews with the tailor,
+resolved itself into its composite totality. “I told you pale blue bows
+on the sleeves, at the elbows,” she said. “But to-day I don’t see my
+blue bows at all. I don’t know what has become of them. To-day I see
+pink—a tender pink. And then I pass through strange, dull phases in
+which neither blue nor pink says anything to me. And yet I must have
+the bows.”
+
+“Have them green or yellow,” said Newman.
+
+“_Malheureux!_” the little marquise would cry. “Green bows would break
+your marriage—your children would be illegitimate!”
+
+Madame de Cintré was calmly happy before the world, and Newman had the
+felicity of fancying that before him, when the world was absent, she
+was almost agitatedly happy. She said very tender things. “I take no
+pleasure in you. You never give me a chance to scold you, to correct
+you. I bargained for that, I expected to enjoy it. But you won’t do
+anything dreadful; you are dismally inoffensive. It is very stupid;
+there is no excitement for me; I might as well be marrying someone
+else.”
+
+“I am afraid it’s the worst I can do,” Newman would say in answer to
+this. “Kindly overlook the deficiency.” He assured her that he, at
+least, would never scold her; she was perfectly satisfactory. “If you
+only knew,” he said, “how exactly you are what I coveted! And I am
+beginning to understand why I coveted it; the having it makes all the
+difference that I expected. Never was a man so pleased with his good
+fortune. You have been holding your head for a week past just as I
+wanted my wife to hold hers. You say just the things I want her to say.
+You walk about the room just as I want her to walk. You have just the
+taste in dress that I want her to have. In short, you come up to the
+mark, and, I can tell you, my mark was high.”
+
+These observations seemed to make Madame de Cintré rather grave. At
+last she said, “Depend upon it, I don’t come up to the mark; your mark
+is too high. I am not all that you suppose; I am a much smaller affair.
+She is a magnificent woman, your ideal. Pray, how did she come to such
+perfection?”
+
+“She was never anything else,” Newman said.
+
+“I really believe,” Madame de Cintré went on, “that she is better than
+my own ideal. Do you know that is a very handsome compliment? Well,
+sir, I will make her my own!”
+
+Mrs. Tristram came to see her dear Claire after Newman had announced
+his engagement, and she told our hero the next day that his good
+fortune was simply absurd. “For the ridiculous part of it is,” she
+said, “that you are evidently going to be as happy as if you were
+marrying Miss Smith or Miss Thompson. I call it a brilliant match for
+you, but you get brilliancy without paying any tax upon it. Those
+things are usually a compromise, but here you have everything, and
+nothing crowds anything else out. You will be brilliantly happy as
+well.” Newman thanked her for her pleasant, encouraging way of saying
+things; no woman could encourage or discourage better. Tristram’s way
+of saying things was different; he had been taken by his wife to call
+upon Madame de Cintré, and he gave an account of the expedition.
+
+“You don’t catch me giving an opinion on your countess this time,” he
+said; “I put my foot in it once. That’s a d—d underhand thing to do, by
+the way—coming round to sound a fellow upon the woman you are going to
+marry. You deserve anything you get. Then of course you rush and tell
+her, and she takes care to make it pleasant for the poor spiteful
+wretch the first time he calls. I will do you the justice to say,
+however, that you don’t seem to have told Madame de Cintré; or if you
+have, she’s uncommonly magnanimous. She was very nice; she was
+tremendously polite. She and Lizzie sat on the sofa, pressing each
+other’s hands and calling each other _chère belle_, and Madame de
+Cintré sent me with every third word a magnificent smile, as if to give
+me to understand that I too was a handsome dear. She quite made up for
+past neglect, I assure you; she was very pleasant and sociable. Only in
+an evil hour it came into her head to say that she must present us to
+her mother—her mother wished to know your friends. I didn’t want to
+know her mother, and I was on the point of telling Lizzie to go in
+alone and let me wait for her outside. But Lizzie, with her usual
+infernal ingenuity, guessed my purpose and reduced me by a glance of
+her eye. So they marched off arm in arm, and I followed as I could. We
+found the old lady in her armchair, twiddling her aristocratic thumbs.
+She looked at Lizzie from head to foot; but at that game Lizzie, to do
+her justice, was a match for her. My wife told her we were great
+friends of Mr. Newman. The marquise started a moment, and then said,
+‘Oh, Mr. Newman! My daughter has made up her mind to marry a Mr.
+Newman.’ Then Madame de Cintré began to fondle Lizzie again, and said
+it was this dear lady that had planned the match and brought them
+together. ‘Oh, ‘tis you I have to thank for my American son-in-law,’
+the old lady said to Mrs. Tristram. ‘It was a very clever thought of
+yours. Be sure of my gratitude.’ And then she began to look at me and
+presently said, ‘Pray, are you engaged in some species of manufacture?’
+I wanted to say that I manufactured broom-sticks for old witches to
+ride on, but Lizzie got in ahead of me. ‘My husband, Madame la
+Marquise,’ she said, ‘belongs to that unfortunate class of persons who
+have no profession and no business, and do very little good in the
+world.’ To get her poke at the old woman she didn’t care where she
+shoved me. ‘Dear me,’ said the marquise, ‘we all have our duties.’ ‘I
+am sorry mine compel me to take leave of you,’ said Lizzie. And we
+bundled out again. But you have a mother-in-law, in all the force of
+the term.”
+
+“Oh,” said Newman, “my mother-in-law desires nothing better than to let
+me alone.”
+
+Betimes, on the evening of the 27th, he went to Madame de Bellegarde’s
+ball. The old house in the Rue de l’Université looked strangely
+brilliant. In the circle of light projected from the outer gate a
+detachment of the populace stood watching the carriages roll in; the
+court was illumined with flaring torches and the portico carpeted with
+crimson. When Newman arrived there were but a few people present. The
+marquise and her two daughters were at the top of the staircase, where
+the sallow old nymph in the angle peeped out from a bower of plants.
+Madame de Bellegarde, in purple and fine laces, looked like an old lady
+painted by Vandyke; Madame de Cintré was dressed in white. The old lady
+greeted Newman with majestic formality, and looking round her, called
+several of the persons who were standing near. They were elderly
+gentlemen, of what Valentin de Bellegarde had designated as the
+high-nosed category; two or three of them wore cordons and stars. They
+approached with measured alertness, and the marquise said that she
+wished to present them to Mr. Newman, who was going to marry her
+daughter. Then she introduced successively three dukes, three counts,
+and a baron. These gentlemen bowed and smiled most agreeably, and
+Newman indulged in a series of impartial hand-shakes, accompanied by a
+“Happy to make your acquaintance, sir.” He looked at Madame de Cintré,
+but she was not looking at him. If his personal self-consciousness had
+been of a nature to make him constantly refer to her, as the critic
+before whom, in company, he played his part, he might have found it a
+flattering proof of her confidence that he never caught her eyes
+resting upon him. It is a reflection Newman did not make, but we
+nevertheless risk it, that in spite of this circumstance she probably
+saw every movement of his little finger. Young Madame de Bellegarde was
+dressed in an audacious toilet of crimson crape, bestrewn with huge
+silver moons—thin crescent and full disks.
+
+“You don’t say anything about my dress,” she said to Newman.
+
+“I feel,” he answered, “as if I were looking at you through a
+telescope. It is very strange.”
+
+“If it is strange it matches the occasion. But I am not a heavenly
+body.”
+
+“I never saw the sky at midnight that particular shade of crimson,”
+said Newman.
+
+“That is my originality; anyone could have chosen blue. My
+sister-in-law would have chosen a lovely shade of blue, with a dozen
+little delicate moons. But I think crimson is much more amusing. And I
+give my idea, which is moonshine.”
+
+“Moonshine and bloodshed,” said Newman.
+
+“A murder by moonlight,” laughed Madame de Bellegarde. “What a
+delicious idea for a toilet! To make it complete, there is the silver
+dagger, you see, stuck into my hair. But here comes Lord Deepmere,” she
+added in a moment. “I must find out what he thinks of it.” Lord
+Deepmere came up, looking very red in the face, and laughing. “Lord
+Deepmere can’t decide which he prefers, my sister-in-law or me,” said
+Madame de Bellegarde. “He likes Claire because she is his cousin, and
+me because I am not. But he has no right to make love to Claire,
+whereas I am perfectly _disponible_. It is very wrong to make love to a
+woman who is engaged, but it is very wrong not to make love to a woman
+who is married.”
+
+“Oh, it’s very jolly making love to married women,” said Lord Deepmere,
+“because they can’t ask you to marry them.”
+
+“Is that what the others do, the spinsters?” Newman inquired.
+
+“Oh dear, yes,” said Lord Deepmere; “in England all the girls ask a
+fellow to marry them.”
+
+“And a fellow brutally refuses,” said Madame de Bellegarde.
+
+“Why, really, you know, a fellow can’t marry any girl that asks him,”
+said his lordship.
+
+“Your cousin won’t ask you. She is going to marry Mr. Newman.”
+
+“Oh, that’s a very different thing!” laughed Lord Deepmere.
+
+“You would have accepted _her_, I suppose. That makes me hope that
+after all you prefer me.”
+
+“Oh, when things are nice I never prefer one to the other,” said the
+young Englishman. “I take them all.”
+
+“Ah, what a horror! I won’t be taken in that way; I must be kept
+apart,” cried Madame de Bellegarde. “Mr. Newman is much better; he
+knows how to choose. Oh, he chooses as if he were threading a needle.
+He prefers Madame de Cintré to any conceivable creature or thing.”
+
+“Well, you can’t help my being her cousin,” said Lord Deepmere to
+Newman, with candid hilarity.
+
+“Oh, no, I can’t help that,” said Newman, laughing back; “neither can
+she!”
+
+“And you can’t help my dancing with her,” said Lord Deepmere, with
+sturdy simplicity.
+
+“I could prevent that only by dancing with her myself,” said Newman.
+“But unfortunately I don’t know how to dance.”
+
+“Oh, you may dance without knowing how; may you not, milord?” said
+Madame de Bellegarde. But to this Lord Deepmere replied that a fellow
+ought to know how to dance if he didn’t want to make an ass of himself;
+and at this moment Urbain de Bellegarde joined the group, slow-stepping
+and with his hands behind him.
+
+“This is a very splendid entertainment,” said Newman, cheerfully. “The
+old house looks very bright.”
+
+“If _you_ are pleased, we are content,” said the marquis, lifting his
+shoulders and bending them forward.
+
+“Oh, I suspect everyone is pleased,” said Newman. “How can they help
+being pleased when the first thing they see as they come in is your
+sister, standing there as beautiful as an angel?”
+
+“Yes, she is very beautiful,” rejoined the marquis, solemnly. “But that
+is not so great a source of satisfaction to other people, naturally, as
+to you.”
+
+“Yes, I am satisfied, marquis, I am satisfied,” said Newman, with his
+protracted enunciation. “And now tell me,” he added, looking round,
+“who some of your friends are.”
+
+M. de Bellegarde looked about him in silence, with his head bent and
+his hand raised to his lower lip, which he slowly rubbed. A stream of
+people had been pouring into the salon in which Newman stood with his
+host, the rooms were filling up and the spectacle had become brilliant.
+It borrowed its splendor chiefly from the shining shoulders and profuse
+jewels of the women, and from the voluminous elegance of their dresses.
+There were no uniforms, as Madame de Bellegarde’s door was inexorably
+closed against the myrmidons of the upstart power which then ruled the
+fortunes of France, and the great company of smiling and chattering
+faces was not graced by any very frequent suggestions of harmonious
+beauty. It is a pity, nevertheless, that Newman had not been a
+physiognomist, for a great many of the faces were irregularly
+agreeable, expressive, and suggestive. If the occasion had been
+different they would hardly have pleased him; he would have thought the
+women not pretty enough and the men too smirking; but he was now in a
+humor to receive none but agreeable impressions, and he looked no more
+narrowly than to perceive that everyone was brilliant, and to feel that
+the sun of their brilliancy was a part of his credit. “I will present
+you to some people,” said M. de Bellegarde after a while. “I will make
+a point of it, in fact. You will allow me?”
+
+“Oh, I will shake hands with anyone you want,” said Newman. “Your
+mother just introduced me to half a dozen old gentlemen. Take care you
+don’t pick up the same parties again.”
+
+“Who are the gentlemen to whom my mother presented you?”
+
+“Upon my word, I forgot them,” said Newman, laughing. “The people here
+look very much alike.”
+
+“I suspect they have not forgotten you,” said the marquis. And he began
+to walk through the rooms. Newman, to keep near him in the crowd, took
+his arm; after which for some time, the marquis walked straight along,
+in silence. At last, reaching the farther end of the suite of
+reception-rooms, Newman found himself in the presence of a lady of
+monstrous proportions, seated in a very capacious armchair, with
+several persons standing in a semicircle round her. This little group
+had divided as the marquis came up, and M. de Bellegarde stepped
+forward and stood for an instant silent and obsequious, with his hat
+raised to his lips, as Newman had seen some gentlemen stand in churches
+as soon as they entered their pews. The lady, indeed, bore a very fair
+likeness to a reverend effigy in some idolatrous shrine. She was
+monumentally stout and imperturbably serene. Her aspect was to Newman
+almost formidable; he had a troubled consciousness of a triple chin, a
+small piercing eye, a vast expanse of uncovered bosom, a nodding and
+twinkling tiara of plumes and gems, and an immense circumference of
+satin petticoat. With her little circle of beholders this remarkable
+woman reminded him of the Fat Lady at a fair. She fixed her small,
+unwinking eyes at the new-comers.
+
+“Dear duchess,” said the marquis, “let me present you our good friend
+Mr. Newman, of whom you have heard us speak. Wishing to make Mr. Newman
+known to those who are dear to us, I could not possibly fail to begin
+with you.”
+
+“Charmed, dear friend; charmed, monsieur,” said the duchess in a voice
+which, though small and shrill, was not disagreeable, while Newman
+executed his obeisance. “I came on purpose to see monsieur. I hope he
+appreciates the compliment. You have only to look at me to do so, sir,”
+she continued, sweeping her person with a much-encompassing glance.
+Newman hardly knew what to say, though it seemed that to a duchess who
+joked about her corpulence one might say almost anything. On hearing
+that the duchess had come on purpose to see Newman, the gentlemen who
+surrounded her turned a little and looked at him with sympathetic
+curiosity. The marquis with supernatural gravity mentioned to him the
+name of each, while the gentleman who bore it bowed; they were all what
+are called in France _beaux noms_. “I wanted extremely to see you,” the
+duchess went on. “_C’est positif_. In the first place, I am very fond
+of the person you are going to marry; she is the most charming creature
+in France. Mind you treat her well, or you shall hear some news of me.
+But you look as if you were good. I am told you are very remarkable. I
+have heard all sorts of extraordinary things about you. _Voyons_, are
+they true?”
+
+“I don’t know what you can have heard,” said Newman.
+
+“Oh, you have your _légende_. We have heard that you have had a career
+the most checkered, the most _bizarre_. What is that about your having
+founded a city some ten years ago in the great West, a city which
+contains to-day half a million of inhabitants? Isn’t it half a million,
+messieurs? You are exclusive proprietor of this flourishing settlement,
+and are consequently fabulously rich, and you would be richer still if
+you didn’t grant lands and houses free of rent to all new-comers who
+will pledge themselves never to smoke cigars. At this game, in three
+years, we are told, you are going to be made president of America.”
+
+The duchess recited this amazing “legend” with a smooth self-possession
+which gave the speech to Newman’s mind, the air of being a bit of
+amusing dialogue in a play, delivered by a veteran comic actress.
+Before she had ceased speaking he had burst into loud, irrepressible
+laughter. “Dear duchess, dear duchess,” the marquis began to murmur,
+soothingly. Two or three persons came to the door of the room to see
+who was laughing at the duchess. But the lady continued with the soft,
+serene assurance of a person who, as a duchess, was certain of being
+listened to, and, as a garrulous woman, was independent of the pulse of
+her auditors. “But I know you are very remarkable. You must be, to have
+endeared yourself to this good marquis and to his admirable world. They
+are very exacting. I myself am not very sure at this hour of really
+possessing it. Eh, Bellegarde? To please you, I see, one must be an
+American millionaire. But your real triumph, my dear sir, is pleasing
+the countess; she is as difficult as a princess in a fairy tale. Your
+success is a miracle. What is your secret? I don’t ask you to reveal it
+before all these gentlemen, but come and see me some day and give me a
+specimen of your talents.”
+
+“The secret is with Madame de Cintré,” said Newman. “You must ask her
+for it. It consists in her having a great deal of charity.”
+
+“Very pretty!” said the duchess. “That’s a very nice specimen, to begin
+with. What, Bellegarde, are you already taking monsieur away?”
+
+“I have a duty to perform, dear friend,” said the marquis, pointing to
+the other groups.
+
+“Ah, for you I know what that means. Well, I have seen monsieur; that
+is what I wanted. He can’t persuade me that he isn’t very clever.
+Farewell.”
+
+As Newman passed on with his host, he asked who the duchess was. “The
+greatest lady in France,” said the marquis. M. de Bellegarde then
+presented his prospective brother-in-law to some twenty other persons
+of both sexes, selected apparently for their typically august
+character. In some cases this character was written in good round hand
+upon the countenance of the wearer; in others Newman was thankful for
+such help as his companion’s impressively brief intimation contributed
+to the discovery of it. There were large, majestic men, and small
+demonstrative men; there were ugly ladies in yellow lace and quaint
+jewels, and pretty ladies with white shoulders from which jewels and
+everything else were absent. Everyone gave Newman extreme attention,
+everyone smiled, everyone was charmed to make his acquaintance,
+everyone looked at him with that soft hardness of good society which
+puts out its hand but keeps its fingers closed over the coin. If the
+marquis was going about as a bear-leader, if the fiction of Beauty and
+the Beast was supposed to have found its companion-piece, the general
+impression appeared to be that the bear was a very fair imitation of
+humanity. Newman found his reception among the marquis’s friends very
+“pleasant;” he could not have said more for it. It was pleasant to be
+treated with so much explicit politeness; it was pleasant to hear
+neatly turned civilities, with a flavor of wit, uttered from beneath
+carefully-shaped moustaches; it was pleasant to see clever
+Frenchwomen—they all seemed clever—turn their backs to their partners
+to get a good look at the strange American whom Claire de Cintré was to
+marry, and reward the object of the exhibition with a charming smile.
+At last, as he turned away from a battery of smiles and other
+amenities, Newman caught the eye of the marquis looking at him heavily;
+and thereupon, for a single instant, he checked himself. “Am I behaving
+like a d—d fool?” he asked himself. “Am I stepping about like a terrier
+on his hind legs?” At this moment he perceived Mrs. Tristram at the
+other side of the room, and he waved his hand in farewell to M. de
+Bellegarde and made his way toward her.
+
+“Am I holding my head too high?” he asked. “Do I look as if I had the
+lower end of a pulley fastened to my chin?”
+
+“You look like all happy men, very ridiculous,” said Mrs. Tristram.
+“It’s the usual thing, neither better nor worse. I have been watching
+you for the last ten minutes, and I have been watching M. de
+Bellegarde. He doesn’t like it.”
+
+“The more credit to him for putting it through,” replied Newman. “But I
+shall be generous. I shan’t trouble him any more. But I am very happy.
+I can’t stand still here. Please to take my arm and we will go for a
+walk.”
+
+He led Mrs. Tristram through all the rooms. There were a great many of
+them, and, decorated for the occasion and filled with a stately crowd,
+their somewhat tarnished nobleness recovered its lustre. Mrs. Tristram,
+looking about her, dropped a series of softly-incisive comments upon
+her fellow-guests. But Newman made vague answers; he hardly heard her,
+his thoughts were elsewhere. They were lost in a cheerful sense of
+success, of attainment and victory. His momentary care as to whether he
+looked like a fool passed away, leaving him simply with a rich
+contentment. He had got what he wanted. The savor of success had always
+been highly agreeable to him, and it had been his fortune to know it
+often. But it had never before been so sweet, been associated with so
+much that was brilliant and suggestive and entertaining. The lights,
+the flowers, the music, the crowd, the splendid women, the jewels, the
+strangeness even of the universal murmur of a clever foreign tongue
+were all a vivid symbol and assurance of his having grasped his purpose
+and forced along his groove. If Newman’s smile was larger than usual,
+it was not tickled vanity that pulled the strings; he had no wish to be
+shown with the finger or to achieve a personal success. If he could
+have looked down at the scene, invisible, from a hole in the roof, he
+would have enjoyed it quite as much. It would have spoken to him about
+his own prosperity and deepened that easy feeling about life to which,
+sooner or later, he made all experience contribute. Just now the cup
+seemed full.
+
+“It is a very pretty party,” said Mrs. Tristram, after they had walked
+a while. “I have seen nothing objectionable except my husband leaning
+against the wall and talking to an individual whom I suppose he takes
+for a duke, but whom I more than suspect to be the functionary who
+attends to the lamps. Do you think you could separate them? Knock over
+a lamp!”
+
+I doubt whether Newman, who saw no harm in Tristram’s conversing with
+an ingenious mechanic, would have complied with this request; but at
+this moment Valentin de Bellegarde drew near. Newman, some weeks
+previously, had presented Madame de Cintré’s youngest brother to Mrs.
+Tristram, for whose merits Valentin professed a discriminating relish
+and to whom he had paid several visits.
+
+“Did you ever read Keats’s Belle Dame sans Merci?” asked Mrs. Tristram.
+“You remind me of the hero of the ballad:—
+
+     ‘Oh, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
+     Alone and palely loitering?’”
+
+
+“If I am alone, it is because I have been deprived of your society,”
+said Valentin. “Besides it is good manners for no man except Newman to
+look happy. This is all to his address. It is not for you and me to go
+before the curtain.”
+
+“You promised me last spring,” said Newman to Mrs. Tristram, “that six
+months from that time I should get into a monstrous rage. It seems to
+me the time’s up, and yet the nearest I can come to doing anything
+rough now is to offer you a _café glacé_.”
+
+“I told you we should do things grandly,” said Valentin. “I don’t
+allude to the _cafés glacés_. But everyone is here, and my sister told
+me just now that Urbain had been adorable.”
+
+“He’s a good fellow, he’s a good fellow,” said Newman. “I love him as a
+brother. That reminds me that I ought to go and say something polite to
+your mother.”
+
+“Let it be something very polite indeed,” said Valentin. “It may be the
+last time you will feel so much like it!”
+
+Newman walked away, almost disposed to clasp old Madame de Bellegarde
+round the waist. He passed through several rooms and at last found the
+old marquise in the first saloon, seated on a sofa, with her young
+kinsman, Lord Deepmere, beside her. The young man looked somewhat
+bored; his hands were thrust into his pockets and his eyes were fixed
+upon the toes of his shoes, his feet being thrust out in front of him.
+Madame de Bellegarde appeared to have been talking to him with some
+intensity and to be waiting for an answer to what she had said, or for
+some sign of the effect of her words. Her hands were folded in her lap,
+and she was looking at his lordship’s simple physiognomy with an air of
+politely suppressed irritation.
+
+Lord Deepmere looked up as Newman approached, met his eyes, and changed
+color.
+
+“I am afraid I disturb an interesting interview,” said Newman.
+
+Madame de Bellegarde rose, and her companion rising at the same time,
+she put her hand into his arm. She answered nothing for an instant, and
+then, as he remained silent, she said with a smile, “It would be polite
+for Lord Deepmere to say it was very interesting.”
+
+“Oh, I’m not polite!” cried his lordship. “But it _was_ interesting.”
+
+“Madame de Bellegarde was giving you some good advice, eh?” said
+Newman; “toning you down a little?”
+
+“I was giving him some excellent advice,” said the marquise, fixing her
+fresh, cold eyes upon our hero. “It’s for him to take it.”
+
+“Take it, sir—take it,” Newman exclaimed. “Any advice the marquise
+gives you to-night must be good. For to-night, marquise, you must speak
+from a cheerful, comfortable spirit, and that makes good advice. You
+see everything going on so brightly and successfully round you. Your
+party is magnificent; it was a very happy thought. It is much better
+than that thing of mine would have been.”
+
+“If you are pleased I am satisfied,” said Madame de Bellegarde. “My
+desire was to please you.”
+
+“Do you want to please me a little more?” said Newman. “Just drop our
+lordly friend; I am sure he wants to be off and shake his heels a
+little. Then take my arm and walk through the rooms.”
+
+“My desire was to please you,” the old lady repeated. And she liberated
+Lord Deepmere, Newman rather wondering at her docility. “If this young
+man is wise,” she added, “he will go and find my daughter and ask her
+to dance.”
+
+“I have been endorsing your advice,” said Newman, bending over her and
+laughing, “I suppose I must swallow that!”
+
+Lord Deepmere wiped his forehead and departed, and Madame de Bellegarde
+took Newman’s arm. “Yes, it’s a very pleasant, sociable entertainment,”
+the latter declared, as they proceeded on their circuit. “Everyone
+seems to know everyone and to be glad to see everyone. The marquis has
+made me acquainted with ever so many people, and I feel quite like one
+of the family. It’s an occasion,” Newman continued, wanting to say
+something thoroughly kind and comfortable, “that I shall always
+remember, and remember very pleasantly.”
+
+“I think it is an occasion that we shall none of us forget,” said the
+marquise, with her pure, neat enunciation.
+
+People made way for her as she passed, others turned round and looked
+at her, and she received a great many greetings and pressings of the
+hand, all of which she accepted with the most delicate dignity. But
+though she smiled upon everyone, she said nothing until she reached the
+last of the rooms, where she found her elder son. Then, “This is
+enough, sir,” she declared with measured softness to Newman, and turned
+to the marquis. He put out both his hands and took both hers, drawing
+her to a seat with an air of the tenderest veneration. It was a most
+harmonious family group, and Newman discreetly retired. He moved
+through the rooms for some time longer, circulating freely, overtopping
+most people by his great height, renewing acquaintance with some of the
+groups to which Urbain de Bellegarde had presented him, and expending
+generally the surplus of his equanimity. He continued to find it all
+extremely agreeable; but the most agreeable things have an end, and the
+revelry on this occasion began to deepen to a close. The music was
+sounding its ultimate strains and people were looking for the marquise,
+to make their farewells. There seemed to be some difficulty in finding
+her, and Newman heard a report that she had left the ball, feeling
+faint. “She has succumbed to the emotions of the evening,” he heard a
+lady say. “Poor, dear marquise; I can imagine all that they may have
+been for her!” But he learned immediately afterwards that she had
+recovered herself and was seated in an armchair near the doorway,
+receiving parting compliments from great ladies who insisted upon her
+not rising. He himself set out in quest of Madame de Cintré. He had
+seen her move past him many times in the rapid circles of a waltz, but
+in accordance with her explicit instructions he had exchanged no words
+with her since the beginning of the evening. The whole house having
+been thrown open, the apartments of the _rez-de-chaussée_ were also
+accessible, though a smaller number of persons had gathered there.
+Newman wandered through them, observing a few scattered couples to whom
+this comparative seclusion appeared grateful and reached a small
+conservatory which opened into the garden. The end of the conservatory
+was formed by a clear sheet of glass, unmasked by plants, and admitting
+the winter starlight so directly that a person standing there would
+seem to have passed into the open air. Two persons stood there now, a
+lady and a gentleman; the lady Newman, from within the room and
+although she had turned her back to it, immediately recognized as
+Madame de Cintré. He hesitated as to whether he would advance, but as
+he did so she looked round, feeling apparently that he was there. She
+rested her eyes on him a moment and then turned again to her companion.
+
+“It is almost a pity not to tell Mr. Newman,” she said softly, but in a
+tone that Newman could hear.
+
+“Tell him if you like!” the gentleman answered, in the voice of Lord
+Deepmere.
+
+“Oh, tell me by all means!” said Newman advancing.
+
+Lord Deepmere, he observed, was very red in the face, and he had
+twisted his gloves into a tight cord as if he had been squeezing them
+dry. These, presumably, were tokens of violent emotion, and it seemed
+to Newman that the traces of corresponding agitation were visible in
+Madame de Cintré’s face. The two had been talking with much vivacity.
+“What I should tell you is only to my lord’s credit,” said Madame de
+Cintré, smiling frankly enough.
+
+“He wouldn’t like it any better for that!” said my lord, with his
+awkward laugh.
+
+“Come; what’s the mystery?” Newman demanded. “Clear it up. I don’t like
+mysteries.”
+
+“We must have some things we don’t like, and go without some we do,”
+said the ruddy young nobleman, laughing still.
+
+“It’s to Lord Deepmere’s credit, but it is not to everyone’s,” said
+Madam de Cintré. “So I shall say nothing about it. You may be sure,”
+she added; and she put out her hand to the Englishman, who took it half
+shyly, half impetuously. “And now go and dance!” she said.
+
+“Oh yes, I feel awfully like dancing!” he answered. “I shall go and get
+tipsy.” And he walked away with a gloomy guffaw.
+
+“What has happened between you?” Newman asked.
+
+“I can’t tell you—now,” said Madame de Cintré. “Nothing that need make
+you unhappy.”
+
+“Has the little Englishman been trying to make love to you?”
+
+She hesitated, and then she uttered a grave “No! he’s a very honest
+little fellow.”
+
+“But you are agitated. Something is the matter.”
+
+“Nothing, I repeat, that need make you unhappy. My agitation is over.
+Some day I will tell you what it was; not now. I can’t now!”
+
+“Well, I confess,” remarked Newman, “I don’t want to hear anything
+unpleasant. I am satisfied with everything—most of all with you. I have
+seen all the ladies and talked with a great many of them; but I am
+satisfied with you.” Madame de Cintré covered him for a moment with her
+large, soft glance, and then turned her eyes away into the starry
+night. So they stood silent a moment, side by side. “Say you are
+satisfied with me,” said Newman.
+
+He had to wait a moment for the answer; but it came at last, low yet
+distinct: “I am very happy.”
+
+It was presently followed by a few words from another source, which
+made them both turn round. “I am sadly afraid Madame de Cintré will
+take a chill. I have ventured to bring a shawl.” Mrs. Bread stood there
+softly solicitous, holding a white drapery in her hand.
+
+“Thank you,” said Madame de Cintré, “the sight of those cold stars
+gives one a sense of frost. I won’t take your shawl, but we will go
+back into the house.”
+
+She passed back and Newman followed her, Mrs. Bread standing
+respectfully aside to make way for them. Newman paused an instant
+before the old woman, and she glanced up at him with a silent greeting.
+“Oh, yes,” he said, “you must come and live with us.”
+
+“Well then, sir, if you will,” she answered, “you have not seen the
+last of me!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+Newman was fond of music and went often to the opera. A couple of
+evenings after Madame de Bellegarde’s ball he sat listening to “Don
+Giovanni,” having in honor of this work, which he had never yet seen
+represented, come to occupy his orchestra-chair before the rising of
+the curtain. Frequently he took a large box and invited a party of his
+compatriots; this was a mode of recreation to which he was much
+addicted. He liked making up parties of his friends and conducting them
+to the theatre, and taking them to drive on high drags or to dine at
+remote restaurants. He liked doing things which involved his paying for
+people; the vulgar truth is that he enjoyed “treating” them. This was
+not because he was what is called purse-proud; handling money in public
+was on the contrary positively disagreeable to him; he had a sort of
+personal modesty about it, akin to what he would have felt about making
+a toilet before spectators. But just as it was a gratification to him
+to be handsomely dressed, just so it was a private satisfaction to him
+(he enjoyed it very clandestinely) to have interposed, pecuniarily, in
+a scheme of pleasure. To set a large group of people in motion and
+transport them to a distance, to have special conveyances, to charter
+railway-carriages and steamboats, harmonized with his relish for bold
+processes, and made hospitality seem more active and more to the
+purpose. A few evenings before the occasion of which I speak he had
+invited several ladies and gentlemen to the opera to listen to Madame
+Alboni—a party which included Miss Dora Finch. It befell, however, that
+Miss Dora Finch, sitting near Newman in the box, discoursed
+brilliantly, not only during the entr’actes, but during many of the
+finest portions of the performance, so that Newman had really come away
+with an irritated sense that Madame Alboni had a thin, shrill voice,
+and that her musical phrase was much garnished with a laugh of the
+giggling order. After this he promised himself to go for a while to the
+opera alone.
+
+When the curtain had fallen upon the first act of “Don Giovanni” he
+turned round in his place to observe the house. Presently, in one of
+the boxes, he perceived Urbain de Bellegarde and his wife. The little
+marquise was sweeping the house very busily with a glass, and Newman,
+supposing that she saw him, determined to go and bid her good evening.
+M. de Bellegarde was leaning against a column, motionless, looking
+straight in front of him, with one hand in the breast of his white
+waistcoat and the other resting his hat on his thigh. Newman was about
+to leave his place when he noticed in that obscure region devoted to
+the small boxes which in France are called, not inaptly,
+“bathing-tubs,” a face which even the dim light and the distance could
+not make wholly indistinct. It was the face of a young and pretty
+woman, and it was surmounted with a _coiffure_ of pink roses and
+diamonds. This person was looking round the house, and her fan was
+moving to and fro with the most practiced grace; when she lowered it,
+Newman perceived a pair of plump white shoulders and the edge of a
+rose-colored dress. Beside her, very close to the shoulders and
+talking, apparently with an earnestness which it pleased her scantily
+to heed, sat a young man with a red face and a very low shirt-collar. A
+moment’s gazing left Newman with no doubts; the pretty young woman was
+Noémie Nioche. He looked hard into the depths of the box, thinking her
+father might perhaps be in attendance, but from what he could see the
+young man’s eloquence had no other auditor. Newman at last made his way
+out, and in doing so he passed beneath the _baignoire_ of Mademoiselle
+Noémie. She saw him as he approached and gave him a nod and smile which
+seemed meant as an assurance that she was still a good-natured girl, in
+spite of her enviable rise in the world. Newman passed into the _foyer_
+and walked through it. Suddenly he paused in front of a gentleman
+seated on one of the divans. The gentleman’s elbows were on his knees;
+he was leaning forward and staring at the pavement, lost apparently in
+meditations of a somewhat gloomy cast. But in spite of his bent head
+Newman recognized him, and in a moment sat down beside him. Then the
+gentleman looked up and displayed the expressive countenance of
+Valentin de Bellegarde.
+
+“What in the world are you thinking of so hard?” asked Newman.
+
+“A subject that requires hard thinking to do it justice,” said
+Valentin. “My immeasurable idiocy.”
+
+“What is the matter now?”
+
+“The matter now is that I am a man again, and no more a fool than
+usual. But I came within an inch of taking that girl _au sérieux_.”
+
+“You mean the young lady below stairs, in a _baignoire_ in a pink
+dress?” said Newman.
+
+“Did you notice what a brilliant kind of pink it was?” Valentin
+inquired, by way of answer. “It makes her look as white as new milk.”
+
+“White or black, as you please. But you have stopped going to see her?”
+
+“Oh, bless you, no. Why should I stop? I have changed, but she hasn’t,”
+said Valentin. “I see she is a vulgar little wretch, after all. But she
+is as amusing as ever, and one _must_ be amused.”
+
+“Well, I am glad she strikes you so unpleasantly,” Newman rejoiced. “I
+suppose you have swallowed all those fine words you used about her the
+other night. You compared her to a sapphire, or a topaz, or an
+amethyst—some precious stone; what was it?”
+
+“I don’t remember,” said Valentin, “it may have been to a carbuncle!
+But she won’t make a fool of me now. She has no real charm. It’s an
+awfully low thing to make a mistake about a person of that sort.”
+
+“I congratulate you,” Newman declared, “upon the scales having fallen
+from your eyes. It’s a great triumph; it ought to make you feel
+better.”
+
+“Yes, it makes me feel better!” said Valentin, gaily. Then, checking
+himself, he looked askance at Newman. “I rather think you are laughing
+at me. If you were not one of the family I would take it up.”
+
+“Oh, no, I’m not laughing, any more than I am one of the family. You
+make me feel badly. You are too clever a fellow, you are made of too
+good stuff, to spend your time in ups and downs over that class of
+goods. The idea of splitting hairs about Miss Nioche! It seems to me
+awfully foolish. You say you have given up taking her seriously; but
+you take her seriously so long as you take her at all.”
+
+Valentin turned round in his place and looked a while at Newman,
+wrinkling his forehead and rubbing his knees. “_Vous parlez d’or_. But
+she has wonderfully pretty arms. Would you believe I didn’t know it
+till this evening?”
+
+“But she is a vulgar little wretch, remember, all the same,” said
+Newman.
+
+“Yes; the other day she had the bad taste to begin to abuse her father,
+to his face, in my presence. I shouldn’t have expected it of her; it
+was a disappointment; heigho!”
+
+“Why, she cares no more for her father than for her door-mat,” said
+Newman. “I discovered that the first time I saw her.”
+
+“Oh, that’s another affair; she may think of the poor old beggar what
+she pleases. But it was low in her to call him bad names; it quite
+threw me off. It was about a frilled petticoat that he was to have
+fetched from the washer-woman’s; he appeared to have neglected this
+graceful duty. She almost boxed his ears. He stood there staring at her
+with his little blank eyes and smoothing his old hat with his
+coat-tail. At last he turned round and went out without a word. Then I
+told her it was in very bad taste to speak so to one’s papa. She said
+she should be so thankful to me if I would mention it to her whenever
+her taste was at fault; she had immense confidence in mine. I told her
+I couldn’t have the bother of forming her manners; I had had an idea
+they were already formed, after the best models. She had disappointed
+me. But I shall get over it,” said Valentin, gaily.
+
+“Oh, time’s a great consoler!” Newman answered with humorous sobriety.
+He was silent a moment, and then he added, in another tone, “I wish you
+would think of what I said to you the other day. Come over to America
+with us, and I will put you in the way of doing some business. You have
+a very good head, if you will only use it.”
+
+Valentin made a genial grimace. “My head is much obliged to you. Do you
+mean the place in a bank?”
+
+“There are several places, but I suppose you would consider the bank
+the most aristocratic.”
+
+Valentin burst into a laugh. “My dear fellow, at night all cats are
+gray! When one derogates there are no degrees.”
+
+Newman answered nothing for a minute. Then, “I think you will find
+there are degrees in success,” he said with a certain dryness.
+
+Valentin had leaned forward again, with his elbows on his knees, and he
+was scratching the pavement with his stick. At last he said, looking
+up, “Do you really think I ought to do something?”
+
+Newman laid his hand on his companion’s arm and looked at him a moment
+through sagaciously-narrowed eyelids. “Try it and see. You are not good
+enough for it, but we will stretch a point.”
+
+“Do you really think I can make some money? I should like to see how it
+feels to have a little.”
+
+“Do what I tell you, and you shall be rich,” said Newman. “Think of
+it.” And he looked at his watch and prepared to resume his way to
+Madame de Bellegarde’s box.
+
+“Upon my word I will think of it,” said Valentin. “I will go and listen
+to Mozart another half hour—I can always think better to music—and
+profoundly meditate upon it.”
+
+The marquis was with his wife when Newman entered their box; he was
+bland, remote, and correct as usual; or, as it seemed to Newman, even
+more than usual.
+
+“What do you think of the opera?” asked our hero. “What do you think of
+the Don?”
+
+“We all know what Mozart is,” said the marquis; “our impressions don’t
+date from this evening. Mozart is youth, freshness, brilliancy,
+facility—a little too great facility, perhaps. But the execution is
+here and there deplorably rough.”
+
+“I am very curious to see how it ends,” said Newman.
+
+“You speak as if it were a _feuilleton_ in the _Figaro_,” observed the
+marquis. “You have surely seen the opera before?”
+
+“Never,” said Newman. “I am sure I should have remembered it. Donna
+Elvira reminds me of Madame de Cintré; I don’t mean in her
+circumstances, but in the music she sings.”
+
+“It is a very nice distinction,” laughed the marquis lightly. “There is
+no great possibility, I imagine, of Madame de Cintré being forsaken.”
+
+“Not much!” said Newman. “But what becomes of the Don?”
+
+“The devil comes down—or comes up,” said Madame de Bellegarde, “and
+carries him off. I suppose Zerlina reminds you of me.”
+
+“I will go to the _foyer_ for a few moments,” said the marquis, “and
+give you a chance to say that the commander—the man of stone—resembles
+me.” And he passed out of the box.
+
+The little marquise stared an instant at the velvet ledge of the
+balcony, and then murmured, “Not a man of stone, a man of wood.” Newman
+had taken her husband’s empty chair. She made no protest, and then she
+turned suddenly and laid her closed fan upon his arm. “I am very glad
+you came in,” she said. “I want to ask you a favor. I wanted to do so
+on Thursday, at my mother-in-law’s ball, but you would give me no
+chance. You were in such very good spirits that I thought you might
+grant my little favor then; not that you look particularly doleful now.
+It is something you must promise me; now is the time to take you; after
+you are married you will be good for nothing. Come, promise!”
+
+“I never sign a paper without reading it first,” said Newman. “Show me
+your document.”
+
+“No, you must sign with your eyes shut; I will hold your hand. Come,
+before you put your head into the noose. You ought to be thankful to me
+for giving you a chance to do something amusing.”
+
+“If it is so amusing,” said Newman, “it will be in even better season
+after I am married.”
+
+“In other words,” cried Madame de Bellegarde, “you will not do it at
+all. You will be afraid of your wife.”
+
+“Oh, if the thing is intrinsically improper,” said Newman, “I won’t go
+into it. If it is not, I will do it after my marriage.”
+
+“You talk like a treatise on logic, and English logic into the
+bargain!” exclaimed Madame de Bellegarde. “Promise, then, after you are
+married. After all, I shall enjoy keeping you to it.”
+
+“Well, then, after I am married,” said Newman serenely.
+
+The little marquise hesitated a moment, looking at him, and he wondered
+what was coming. “I suppose you know what my life is,” she presently
+said. “I have no pleasure, I see nothing, I do nothing. I live in Paris
+as I might live at Poitiers. My mother-in-law calls me—what is the
+pretty word?—a gad-about? accuses me of going to unheard-of places, and
+thinks it ought to be joy enough for me to sit at home and count over
+my ancestors on my fingers. But why should I bother about my ancestors?
+I am sure they never bothered about me. I don’t propose to live with a
+green shade on my eyes; I hold that things were made to look at. My
+husband, you know, has principles, and the first on the list is that
+the Tuileries are dreadfully vulgar. If the Tuileries are vulgar, his
+principles are tiresome. If I chose I might have principles quite as
+well as he. If they grew on one’s family tree I should only have to
+give mine a shake to bring down a shower of the finest. At any rate, I
+prefer clever Bonapartes to stupid Bourbons.”
+
+“Oh, I see; you want to go to court,” said Newman, vaguely conjecturing
+that she might wish him to appeal to the United States legation to
+smooth her way to the imperial halls.
+
+The marquise gave a little sharp laugh. “You are a thousand miles away.
+I will take care of the Tuileries myself; the day I decide to go they
+will be very glad to have me. Sooner or later I shall dance in an
+imperial quadrille. I know what you are going to say: ‘How will you
+dare?’ But I _shall_ dare. I am afraid of my husband; he is soft,
+smooth, irreproachable; everything that you know; but I am afraid of
+him—horribly afraid of him. And yet I shall arrive at the Tuileries.
+But that will not be this winter, nor perhaps next, and meantime I must
+live. For the moment, I want to go somewhere else; it’s my dream. I
+want to go to the Bal Bullier.”
+
+“To the Bal Bullier?” repeated Newman, for whom the words at first
+meant nothing.
+
+“The ball in the Latin Quarter, where the students dance with their
+mistresses. Don’t tell me you have not heard of it.”
+
+“Oh yes,” said Newman; “I have heard of it; I remember now. I have even
+been there. And you want to go there?”
+
+“It is silly, it is low, it is anything you please. But I want to go.
+Some of my friends have been, and they say it is awfully _drôle_. My
+friends go everywhere; it is only I who sit moping at home.”
+
+“It seems to me you are not at home now,” said Newman, “and I shouldn’t
+exactly say you were moping.”
+
+“I am bored to death. I have been to the opera twice a week for the
+last eight years. Whenever I ask for anything my mouth is stopped with
+that: Pray, madam, haven’t you an opera box? Could a woman of taste
+want more? In the first place, my opera box was down in my _contrat_;
+they have to give it to me. To-night, for instance, I should have
+preferred a thousand times to go to the Palais Royal. But my husband
+won’t go to the Palais Royal because the ladies of the court go there
+so much. You may imagine, then, whether he would take me to Bullier’s;
+he says it is a mere imitation—and a bad one—of what they do at the
+Princess Kleinfuss’s. But as I don’t go to the Princess Kleinfuss’s,
+the next best thing is to go to Bullier’s. It is my dream, at any rate,
+it’s a fixed idea. All I ask of you is to give me your arm; you are
+less compromising than anyone else. I don’t know why, but you are. I
+can arrange it. I shall risk something, but that is my own affair.
+Besides, fortune favors the bold. Don’t refuse me; it is my dream!”
+
+Newman gave a loud laugh. It seemed to him hardly worth while to be the
+wife of the Marquis de Bellegarde, a daughter of the crusaders, heiress
+of six centuries of glories and traditions, to have centred one’s
+aspirations upon the sight of a couple of hundred young ladies kicking
+off young men’s hats. It struck him as a theme for the moralist; but he
+had no time to moralize upon it. The curtain rose again; M. de
+Bellegarde returned, and Newman went back to his seat.
+
+He observed that Valentin de Bellegarde had taken his place in the
+_baignoire_ of Mademoiselle Nioche, behind this young lady and her
+companion, where he was visible only if one carefully looked for him.
+In the next act Newman met him in the lobby and asked him if he had
+reflected upon possible emigration. “If you really meant to meditate,”
+he said, “you might have chosen a better place for it.”
+
+“Oh, the place was not bad,” said Valentin. “I was not thinking of that
+girl. I listened to the music, and, without thinking of the play or
+looking at the stage, I turned over your proposal. At first it seemed
+quite fantastic. And then a certain fiddle in the orchestra—I could
+distinguish it—began to say as it scraped away, ‘Why not, why not?’ And
+then, in that rapid movement, all the fiddles took it up and the
+conductor’s stick seemed to beat it in the air: ‘Why not, why not?’ I’m
+sure I can’t say! I don’t see why not. I don’t see why I shouldn’t do
+something. It appears to me really a very bright idea. This sort of
+thing is certainly very stale. And then I could come back with a trunk
+full of dollars. Besides, I might possibly find it amusing. They call
+me a _raffiné_; who knows but that I might discover an unsuspected
+charm in shop-keeping? It would really have a certain romantic,
+picturesque side; it would look well in my biography. It would look as
+if I were a strong man, a first-rate man, a man who dominated
+circumstances.”
+
+“Never mind how it would look,” said Newman. “It always looks well to
+have half a million of dollars. There is no reason why you shouldn’t
+have them if you will mind what I tell you—I alone—and not talk to
+other parties.” He passed his arm into that of his companion, and the
+two walked for some time up and down one of the less frequented
+corridors. Newman’s imagination began to glow with the idea of
+converting his bright, impracticable friend into a first-class man of
+business. He felt for the moment a sort of spiritual zeal, the zeal of
+the propagandist. Its ardor was in part the result of that general
+discomfort which the sight of all uninvested capital produced in him;
+so fine an intelligence as Bellegarde’s ought to be dedicated to high
+uses. The highest uses known to Newman’s experience were certain
+transcendent sagacities in the handling of railway stock. And then his
+zeal was quickened by his personal kindness for Valentin; he had a sort
+of pity for him which he was well aware he never could have made the
+Comte de Bellegarde understand. He never lost a sense of its being
+pitiable that Valentin should think it a large life to revolve in
+varnished boots between the Rue d’Anjou and the Rue de l’Université,
+taking the Boulevard des Italiens on the way, when over there in
+America one’s promenade was a continent, and one’s Boulevard stretched
+from New York to San Francisco. It mortified him, moreover, to think
+that Valentin lacked money; there was a painful grotesqueness in it. It
+affected him as the ignorance of a companion, otherwise without
+reproach, touching some rudimentary branch of learning would have done.
+There were things that one knew about as a matter of course, he would
+have said in such a case. Just so, if one pretended to be easy in the
+world, one had money as a matter of course, one had made it! There was
+something almost ridiculously anomalous to Newman in the sight of
+lively pretensions unaccompanied by large investments in railroads;
+though I may add that he would not have maintained that such
+investments were in themselves a proper ground for pretensions. “I will
+make you do something,” he said to Valentin; “I will put you through. I
+know half a dozen things in which we can make a place for you. You will
+see some lively work. It will take you a little while to get used to
+the life, but you will work in before long, and at the end of six
+months—after you have done a thing or two on your own account—you will
+like it. And then it will be very pleasant for you, having your sister
+over there. It will be pleasant for her to have you, too. Yes,
+Valentin,” continued Newman, pressing his friend’s arm genially, “I
+think I see just the opening for you. Keep quiet and I’ll push you
+right in.”
+
+Newman pursued this favoring strain for some time longer. The two men
+strolled about for a quarter of an hour. Valentin listened and
+questioned, many of his questions making Newman laugh loud at the
+_naïveté_ of his ignorance of the vulgar processes of money-getting;
+smiling himself, too, half ironical and half curious. And yet he was
+serious; he was fascinated by Newman’s plain prose version of the
+legend of El Dorado. It is true, however, that though to accept an
+“opening” in an American mercantile house might be a bold, original,
+and in its consequences extremely agreeable thing to do, he did not
+quite see himself objectively doing it. So that when the bell rang to
+indicate the close of the entr’acte, there was a certain mock-heroism
+in his saying, with his brilliant smile, “Well, then, put me through;
+push me in! I make myself over to you. Dip me into the pot and turn me
+into gold.”
+
+They had passed into the corridor which encircled the row of
+_baignoires_, and Valentin stopped in front of the dusky little box in
+which Mademoiselle Nioche had bestowed herself, laying his hand on the
+doorknob. “Oh, come, are you going back there?” asked Newman.
+
+“_Mon Dieu, oui_,” said Valentin.
+
+“Haven’t you another place?”
+
+“Yes, I have my usual place, in the stalls.”
+
+“You had better go and occupy it, then.”
+
+“I see her very well from there, too,” added Valentin, serenely, “and
+to-night she is worth seeing. But,” he added in a moment, “I have a
+particular reason for going back just now.”
+
+“Oh, I give you up,” said Newman. “You are infatuated!”
+
+“No, it is only this. There is a young man in the box whom I shall
+annoy by going in, and I want to annoy him.”
+
+“I am sorry to hear it,” said Newman. “Can’t you leave the poor fellow
+alone?”
+
+“No, he has given me cause. The box is not his. Noémie came in alone
+and installed herself. I went and spoke to her, and in a few moments
+she asked me to go and get her fan from the pocket of her cloak, which
+the _ouvreuse_ had carried off. In my absence this gentleman came in
+and took the chair beside Noémie in which I had been sitting. My
+reappearance disgusted him, and he had the grossness to show it. He
+came within an ace of being impertinent. I don’t know who he is; he is
+some vulgar wretch. I can’t think where she picks up such
+acquaintances. He has been drinking, too, but he knows what he is
+about. Just now, in the second act, he was unmannerly again. I shall
+put in another appearance for ten minutes—time enough to give him an
+opportunity to commit himself, if he feels inclined. I really can’t let
+the brute suppose that he is keeping me out of the box.”
+
+“My dear fellow,” said Newman, remonstrantly, “what child’s play! You
+are not going to pick a quarrel about that girl, I hope.”
+
+“That girl has nothing to do with it, and I have no intention of
+picking a quarrel. I am not a bully nor a fire-eater. I simply wish to
+make a point that a gentleman must.”
+
+“Oh, damn your point!” said Newman. “That is the trouble with you
+Frenchmen; you must be always making points. Well,” he added, “be
+short. But if you are going in for this kind of thing, we must ship you
+off to America in advance.”
+
+“Very good,” Valentin answered, “whenever you please. But if I go to
+America, I must not let this gentleman suppose that it is to run away
+from him.”
+
+And they separated. At the end of the act Newman observed that Valentin
+was still in the _baignoire_. He strolled into the corridor again,
+expecting to meet him, and when he was within a few yards of
+Mademoiselle Nioche’s box saw his friend pass out, accompanied by the
+young man who had been seated beside its fair occupant. The two
+gentlemen walked with some quickness of step to a distant part of the
+lobby, where Newman perceived them stop and stand talking. The manner
+of each was perfectly quiet, but the stranger, who looked flushed, had
+begun to wipe his face very emphatically with his pocket-handkerchief.
+By this time Newman was abreast of the _baignoire_; the door had been
+left ajar, and he could see a pink dress inside. He immediately went
+in. Mademoiselle Nioche turned and greeted him with a brilliant smile.
+
+“Ah, you have at last decided to come and see me?” she exclaimed. “You
+just save your politeness. You find me in a fine moment. Sit down.”
+There was a very becoming little flush in her cheek, and her eye had a
+noticeable spark. You would have said that she had received some very
+good news.
+
+“Something has happened here!” said Newman, without sitting down.
+
+“You find me in a very fine moment,” she repeated. “Two gentlemen—one
+of them is M. de Bellegarde, the pleasure of whose acquaintance I owe
+to you—have just had words about your humble servant. Very big words
+too. They can’t come off without crossing swords. A duel—that will give
+me a push!” cried Mademoiselle Noémie clapping her little hands.
+“_C’est ça qui pose une femme!_”
+
+“You don’t mean to say that Bellegarde is going to fight about _you!_”
+exclaimed Newman disgustedly.
+
+“Nothing else!” and she looked at him with a hard little smile. “No,
+no, you are not _galant!_ And if you prevent this affair I shall owe
+you a grudge—and pay my debt!”
+
+Newman uttered an imprecation which, though brief—it consisted simply
+of the interjection “Oh!” followed by a geographical, or more
+correctly, perhaps a theological noun in four letters—had better not be
+transferred to these pages. He turned his back without more ceremony
+upon the pink dress and went out of the box. In the corridor he found
+Valentin and his companion walking towards him. The latter was
+thrusting a card into his waistcoat pocket. Mademoiselle Noémie’s
+jealous votary was a tall, robust young man with a thick nose, a
+prominent blue eye, a Germanic physiognomy, and a massive watch-chain.
+When they reached the box, Valentin with an emphasized bow made way for
+him to pass in first. Newman touched Valentin’s arm as a sign that he
+wished to speak with him, and Bellegarde answered that he would be with
+him in an instant. Valentin entered the box after the robust young man,
+but a couple of minutes afterwards he reappeared, largely smiling.
+
+“She is immensely tickled,” he said. “She says we will make her
+fortune. I don’t want to be fatuous, but I think it is very possible.”
+
+“So you are going to fight?” said Newman.
+
+“My dear fellow, don’t look so mortally disgusted. It was not my
+choice. The thing is all arranged.”
+
+“I told you so!” groaned Newman.
+
+“I told _him_ so,” said Valentin, smiling.
+
+“What did he do to you?”
+
+“My good friend, it doesn’t matter what. He used an expression—I took
+it up.”
+
+“But I insist upon knowing; I can’t, as your elder brother, have you
+rushing into this sort of nonsense.”
+
+“I am very much obliged to you,” said Valentin. “I have nothing to
+conceal, but I can’t go into particulars now and here.”
+
+“We will leave this place, then. You can tell me outside.”
+
+“Oh no, I can’t leave this place, why should I hurry away? I will go to
+my orchestra-stall and sit out the opera.”
+
+“You will not enjoy it; you will be preoccupied.”
+
+Valentin looked at him a moment, colored a little, smiled, and patted
+him on the arm. “You are delightfully simple! Before an affair a man is
+quiet. The quietest thing I can do is to go straight to my place.”
+
+“Ah,” said Newman, “you want her to see you there—you and your
+quietness. I am not so simple! It is a poor business.”
+
+Valentin remained, and the two men, in their respective places, sat out
+the rest of the performance, which was also enjoyed by Mademoiselle
+Nioche and her truculent admirer. At the end Newman joined Valentin
+again, and they went into the street together. Valentin shook his head
+at his friend’s proposal that he should get into Newman’s own vehicle,
+and stopped on the edge of the pavement. “I must go off alone,” he
+said; “I must look up a couple of friends who will take charge of this
+matter.”
+
+“I will take charge of it,” Newman declared. “Put it into my hands.”
+
+“You are very kind, but that is hardly possible. In the first place,
+you are, as you said just now, almost my brother; you are about to
+marry my sister. That alone disqualifies you; it casts doubts on your
+impartiality. And if it didn’t, it would be enough for me that I
+strongly suspect you of disapproving of the affair. You would try to
+prevent a meeting.”
+
+“Of course I should,” said Newman. “Whoever your friends are, I hope
+they will do that.”
+
+“Unquestionably they will. They will urge that excuses be made, proper
+excuses. But you would be too good-natured. You won’t do.”
+
+Newman was silent a moment. He was keenly annoyed, but he saw it was
+useless to attempt interference. “When is this precious performance to
+come off?” he asked.
+
+“The sooner the better,” said Valentin. “The day after to-morrow, I
+hope.”
+
+“Well,” said Newman, “I have certainly a claim to know the facts. I
+can’t consent to shut my eyes to the matter.”
+
+“I shall be most happy to tell you the facts,” said Valentin. “They are
+very simple, and it will be quickly done. But now everything depends on
+my putting my hands on my friends without delay. I will jump into a
+cab; you had better drive to my room and wait for me there. I will turn
+up at the end of an hour.”
+
+Newman assented protestingly, let his friend go, and then betook
+himself to the picturesque little apartment in the Rue d’Anjou. It was
+more than an hour before Valentin returned, but when he did so he was
+able to announce that he had found one of his desired friends, and that
+this gentleman had taken upon himself the care of securing an
+associate. Newman had been sitting without lights by Valentin’s faded
+fire, upon which he had thrown a log; the blaze played over the
+richly-encumbered little sitting-room and produced fantastic gleams and
+shadows. He listened in silence to Valentin’s account of what had
+passed between him and the gentleman whose card he had in his pocket—M.
+Stanislas Kapp, of Strasbourg—after his return to Mademoiselle Nioche’s
+box. This hospitable young lady had espied an acquaintance on the other
+side of the house, and had expressed her displeasure at his not having
+the civility to come and pay her a visit. “Oh, let him alone!” M.
+Stanislas Kapp had hereupon exclaimed. “There are too many people in
+the box already.” And he had fixed his eyes with a demonstrative stare
+upon M. de Bellegarde. Valentin had promptly retorted that if there
+were too many people in the box it was easy for M. Kapp to diminish the
+number. “I shall be most happy to open the door for _you!_” M. Kapp
+exclaimed. “I shall be delighted to fling you into the pit!” Valentin
+had answered. “Oh, do make a rumpus and get into the papers!” Miss
+Noémie had gleefully ejaculated. “M. Kapp, turn him out; or, M. de
+Bellegarde, pitch him into the pit, into the orchestra—anywhere! I
+don’t care who does which, so long as you make a scene.” Valentin
+answered that they would make no scene, but that the gentleman would be
+so good as to step into the corridor with him. In the corridor, after a
+brief further exchange of words, there had been an exchange of cards.
+M. Stanislas Kapp was very stiff. He evidently meant to force his
+offence home.
+
+“The man, no doubt, was insolent,” Newman said; “but if you hadn’t gone
+back into the box the thing wouldn’t have happened.”
+
+“Why, don’t you see,” Valentin replied, “that the event proves the
+extreme propriety of my going back into the box? M. Kapp wished to
+provoke me; he was awaiting his chance. In such a case—that is, when he
+has been, so to speak, notified—a man must be on hand to receive the
+provocation. My not returning would simply have been tantamount to my
+saying to M. Stanislas Kapp, ‘Oh, if you are going to be
+disagreeable’”— —
+
+“‘You must manage it by yourself; damned if I’ll help you!’ That would
+have been a thoroughly sensible thing to say. The only attraction for
+you seems to have been the prospect of M. Kapp’s impertinence,” Newman
+went on. “You told me you were not going back for that girl.”
+
+“Oh, don’t mention that girl any more,” murmured Valentin. “She’s a
+bore.”
+
+“With all my heart. But if that is the way you feel about her, why
+couldn’t you let her alone?”
+
+Valentin shook his head with a fine smile. “I don’t think you quite
+understand, and I don’t believe I can make you. She understood the
+situation; she knew what was in the air; she was watching us.”
+
+“A cat may look at a king! What difference does that make?”
+
+“Why, a man can’t back down before a woman.”
+
+“I don’t call her a woman. You said yourself she was a stone,” cried
+Newman.
+
+“Well,” Valentin rejoined, “there is no disputing about tastes. It’s a
+matter of feeling; it’s measured by one’s sense of honor.”
+
+“Oh, confound your sense of honor!” cried Newman.
+
+“It is vain talking,” said Valentin; “words have passed, and the thing
+is settled.”
+
+Newman turned away, taking his hat. Then pausing with his hand on the
+door, “What are you going to use?” he asked.
+
+“That is for M. Stanislas Kapp, as the challenged party, to decide. My
+own choice would be a short, light sword. I handle it well. I’m an
+indifferent shot.”
+
+Newman had put on his hat; he pushed it back, gently scratching his
+forehead, high up. “I wish it were pistols,” he said. “I could show you
+how to lodge a bullet!”
+
+Valentin broke into a laugh. “What is it some English poet says about
+consistency? It’s a flower, or a star, or a jewel. Yours has the beauty
+of all three!” But he agreed to see Newman again on the morrow, after
+the details of his meeting with M. Stanislas Kapp should have been
+arranged.
+
+In the course of the day Newman received three lines from him, saying
+that it had been decided that he should cross the frontier, with his
+adversary, and that he was to take the night express to Geneva. He
+should have time, however, to dine with Newman. In the afternoon Newman
+called upon Madame de Cintré, but his visit was brief. She was as
+gracious and sympathetic as he had ever found her, but she was sad, and
+she confessed, on Newman’s charging her with her red eyes, that she had
+been crying. Valentin had been with her a couple of hours before, and
+his visit had left her with a painful impression. He had laughed and
+gossiped, he had brought her no bad news, he had only been, in his
+manner, rather more affectionate than usual. His fraternal tenderness
+had touched her, and on his departure she had burst into tears. She had
+felt as if something strange and sad were going to happen; she had
+tried to reason away the fancy, and the effort had only given her a
+headache. Newman, of course, was perforce tongue-tied about Valentin’s
+projected duel, and his dramatic talent was not equal to satirizing
+Madame de Cintré’s presentiment as pointedly as perfect security
+demanded. Before he went away he asked Madame de Cintré whether
+Valentin had seen his mother.
+
+“Yes,” she said, “but he didn’t make her cry.”
+
+It was in Newman’s own apartment that Valentin dined, having brought
+his portmanteau, so that he might adjourn directly to the railway. M.
+Stanislas Kapp had positively declined to make excuses, and he, on his
+side, obviously, had none to offer. Valentin had found out with whom he
+was dealing. M. Stanislas Kapp was the son of and heir of a rich brewer
+of Strasbourg, a youth of a sanguineous—and sanguinary—temperament. He
+was making ducks and drakes of the paternal brewery, and although he
+passed in a general way for a good fellow, he had already been observed
+to be quarrelsome after dinner. “_Que voulez-vous?_” said Valentin.
+“Brought up on beer, he can’t stand champagne.” He had chosen pistols.
+Valentin, at dinner, had an excellent appetite; he made a point, in
+view of his long journey, of eating more than usual. He took the
+liberty of suggesting to Newman a slight modification in the
+composition of a certain fish-sauce; he thought it would be worth
+mentioning to the cook. But Newman had no thoughts for fish-sauce; he
+felt thoroughly discontented. As he sat and watched his amiable and
+clever companion going through his excellent repast with the delicate
+deliberation of hereditary epicurism, the folly of so charming a fellow
+traveling off to expose his agreeable young life for the sake of M.
+Stanislas and Mademoiselle Noémie struck him with intolerable force. He
+had grown fond of Valentin, he felt now how fond; and his sense of
+helplessness only increased his irritation.
+
+“Well, this sort of thing may be all very well,” he cried at last, “but
+I declare I don’t see it. I can’t stop you, perhaps, but at least I can
+protest. I do protest, violently.”
+
+“My dear fellow, don’t make a scene,” said Valentin. “Scenes in these
+cases are in very bad taste.”
+
+“Your duel itself is a scene,” said Newman; “that’s all it is! It’s a
+wretched theatrical affair. Why don’t you take a band of music with you
+outright? It’s d—d barbarous and it’s d—d corrupt, both.”
+
+“Oh, I can’t begin, at this time of day, to defend the theory of
+dueling,” said Valentin. “It is our custom, and I think it is a good
+thing. Quite apart from the goodness of the cause in which a duel may
+be fought, it has a kind of picturesque charm which in this age of vile
+prose seems to me greatly to recommend it. It’s a remnant of a
+higher-tempered time; one ought to cling to it. Depend upon it, a duel
+is never amiss.”
+
+“I don’t know what you mean by a higher-tempered time,” said Newman.
+“Because your great-grandfather was an ass, is that any reason why you
+should be? For my part I think we had better let our temper take care
+of itself; it generally seems to me quite high enough; I am not afraid
+of being too meek. If your great-grandfather were to make himself
+unpleasant to me, I think I could manage him yet.”
+
+“My dear friend,” said Valentin, smiling, “you can’t invent anything
+that will take the place of satisfaction for an insult. To demand it
+and to give it are equally excellent arrangements.”
+
+“Do you call this sort of thing satisfaction?” Newman asked. “Does it
+satisfy you to receive a present of the carcass of that coarse fop?
+does it gratify you to make him a present of yours? If a man hits you,
+hit him back; if a man libels you, haul him up.”
+
+“Haul him up, into court? Oh, that is very nasty!” said Valentin.
+
+“The nastiness is his—not yours. And for that matter, what you are
+doing is not particularly nice. You are too good for it. I don’t say
+you are the most useful man in the world, or the cleverest, or the most
+amiable. But you are too good to go and get your throat cut for a
+prostitute.”
+
+Valentin flushed a little, but he laughed. “I shan’t get my throat cut
+if I can help it. Moreover, one’s honor hasn’t two different measures.
+It only knows that it is hurt; it doesn’t ask when, or how, or where.”
+
+“The more fool it is!” said Newman.
+
+Valentin ceased to laugh; he looked grave. “I beg you not to say any
+more,” he said. “If you do I shall almost fancy you don’t care
+about—about”—and he paused.
+
+“About what?”
+
+“About that matter—about one’s honor.”
+
+“Fancy what you please,” said Newman. “Fancy while you are at it that I
+care about _you_—though you are not worth it. But come back without
+damage,” he added in a moment, “and I will forgive you. And then,” he
+continued, as Valentin was going, “I will ship you straight off to
+America.”
+
+“Well,” answered Valentin, “if I am to turn over a new page, this may
+figure as a tail-piece to the old.” And then he lit another cigar and
+departed.
+
+“Blast that girl!” said Newman as the door closed upon Valentin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+Newman went the next morning to see Madame de Cintré, timing his visit
+so as to arrive after the noonday breakfast. In the court of the
+_hôtel_, before the portico, stood Madame de Bellegarde’s old square
+carriage. The servant who opened the door answered Newman’s inquiry
+with a slightly embarrassed and hesitating murmur, and at the same
+moment Mrs. Bread appeared in the background, dim-visaged as usual, and
+wearing a large black bonnet and shawl.
+
+“What is the matter?” asked Newman. “Is Madame la Comtesse at home, or
+not?”
+
+Mrs. Bread advanced, fixing her eyes upon him: he observed that she
+held a sealed letter, very delicately, in her fingers. “The countess
+has left a message for you, sir; she has left this,” said Mrs. Bread,
+holding out the letter, which Newman took.
+
+“Left it? Is she out? Is she gone away?”
+
+“She is going away, sir; she is leaving town,” said Mrs. Bread.
+
+“Leaving town!” exclaimed Newman. “What has happened?”
+
+“It is not for me to say, sir,” said Mrs. Bread, with her eyes on the
+ground. “But I thought it would come.”
+
+“What would come, pray?” Newman demanded. He had broken the seal of the
+letter, but he still questioned. “She is in the house? She is visible?”
+
+“I don’t think she expected you this morning,” the old waiting-woman
+replied. “She was to leave immediately.”
+
+“Where is she going?”
+
+“To Fleurières.”
+
+“To Fleurières? But surely I can see her?”
+
+Mrs. Bread hesitated a moment, and then clasping together her two
+hands, “I will take you!” she said. And she led the way upstairs. At
+the top of the staircase she paused and fixed her dry, sad eyes upon
+Newman. “Be very easy with her,” she said; “she is most unhappy!” Then
+she went on to Madame de Cintré’s apartment; Newman, perplexed and
+alarmed, followed her rapidly. Mrs. Bread threw open the door, and
+Newman pushed back the curtain at the farther side of its deep
+embrasure. In the middle of the room stood Madame de Cintré; her face
+was pale and she was dressed for traveling. Behind her, before the
+fire-place, stood Urbain de Bellegarde, looking at his finger-nails;
+near the marquis sat his mother, buried in an armchair, and with her
+eyes immediately fixing themselves upon Newman. He felt, as soon as he
+entered the room, that he was in the presence of something evil; he was
+startled and pained, as he would have been by a threatening cry in the
+stillness of the night. He walked straight to Madame de Cintré and
+seized her by the hand.
+
+“What is the matter?” he asked commandingly; “what is happening?”
+
+Urbain de Bellegarde stared, then left his place and came and leaned
+upon his mother’s chair, behind. Newman’s sudden irruption had
+evidently discomposed both mother and son. Madame de Cintré stood
+silent, with her eyes resting upon Newman’s. She had often looked at
+him with all her soul, as it seemed to him; but in this present gaze
+there was a sort of bottomless depth. She was in distress; it was the
+most touching thing he had ever seen. His heart rose into his throat,
+and he was on the point of turning to her companions, with an angry
+challenge; but she checked him, pressing the hand that held her own.
+
+“Something very grave has happened,” she said. “I cannot marry you.”
+
+Newman dropped her hand and stood staring, first at her and then at the
+others. “Why not?” he asked, as quietly as possible.
+
+Madame de Cintré almost smiled, but the attempt was strange. “You must
+ask my mother, you must ask my brother.”
+
+“Why can’t she marry me?” said Newman, looking at them.
+
+Madame de Bellegarde did not move in her place, but she was as pale as
+her daughter. The marquis looked down at her. She said nothing for some
+moments, but she kept her keen, clear eyes upon Newman, bravely. The
+marquis drew himself up and looked at the ceiling. “It’s impossible!”
+he said softly.
+
+“It’s improper,” said Madame de Bellegarde.
+
+Newman began to laugh. “Oh, you are fooling!” he exclaimed.
+
+“My sister, you have no time; you are losing your train,” said the
+marquis.
+
+“Come, is he mad?” asked Newman.
+
+“No; don’t think that,” said Madame de Cintré. “But I am going away.”
+
+“Where are you going?”
+
+“To the country, to Fleurières; to be alone.”
+
+“To leave me?” said Newman, slowly.
+
+“I can’t see you, now,” said Madame de Cintré.
+
+“_Now_—why not?”
+
+“I am ashamed,” said Madame de Cintré, simply.
+
+Newman turned toward the marquis. “What have you done to her—what does
+it mean?” he asked with the same effort at calmness, the fruit of his
+constant practice in taking things easily. He was excited, but
+excitement with him was only an intenser deliberateness; it was the
+swimmer stripped.
+
+“It means that I have given you up,” said Madame de Cintré. “It means
+that.”
+
+Her face was too charged with tragic expression not fully to confirm
+her words. Newman was profoundly shocked, but he felt as yet no
+resentment against her. He was amazed, bewildered, and the presence of
+the old marquise and her son seemed to smite his eyes like the glare of
+a watchman’s lantern. “Can’t I see you alone?” he asked.
+
+“It would be only more painful. I hoped I should not see you—I should
+escape. I wrote to you. Good-bye.” And she put out her hand again.
+
+Newman put both his own into his pockets. “I will go with you,” he
+said.
+
+She laid her two hands on his arm. “Will you grant me a last request?”
+and as she looked at him, urging this, her eyes filled with tears. “Let
+me go alone—let me go in peace. I can’t call it peace—it’s death. But
+let me bury myself. So—good-bye.”
+
+Newman passed his hand into his hair and stood slowly rubbing his head
+and looking through his keenly-narrowed eyes from one to the other of
+the three persons before him. His lips were compressed, and the two
+lines which had formed themselves beside his mouth might have made it
+appear at a first glance that he was smiling. I have said that his
+excitement was an intenser deliberateness, and now he looked grimly
+deliberate. “It seems very much as if you had interfered, marquis,” he
+said slowly. “I thought you said you wouldn’t interfere. I know you
+don’t like me; but that doesn’t make any difference. I thought you
+promised me you wouldn’t interfere. I thought you swore on your honor
+that you wouldn’t interfere. Don’t you remember, marquis?”
+
+The marquis lifted his eyebrows; but he was apparently determined to be
+even more urbane than usual. He rested his two hands upon the back of
+his mother’s chair and bent forward, as if he were leaning over the
+edge of a pulpit or a lecture-desk. He did not smile, but he looked
+softly grave. “Excuse me, sir,” he said, “I assured you that I would
+not influence my sister’s decision. I adhered, to the letter, to my
+engagement. Did I not, sister?”
+
+“Don’t appeal, my son,” said the marquise, “your word is sufficient.”
+
+“Yes—she accepted me,” said Newman. “That is very true, I can’t deny
+that. At least,” he added, in a different tone, turning to Madame de
+Cintré, “you _did_ accept me?”
+
+Something in the tone seemed to move her strongly. She turned away,
+burying her face in her hands.
+
+“But you have interfered now, haven’t you?” inquired Newman of the
+marquis.
+
+“Neither then nor now have I attempted to influence my sister. I used
+no persuasion then, I have used no persuasion to-day.”
+
+“And what have you used?”
+
+“We have used authority,” said Madame de Bellegarde in a rich,
+bell-like voice.
+
+“Ah, you have used authority,” Newman exclaimed. “They have used
+authority,” he went on, turning to Madame de Cintré. “What is it? how
+did they use it?”
+
+“My mother commanded,” said Madame de Cintré.
+
+“Commanded you to give me up—I see. And you obey—I see. But why do you
+obey?” asked Newman.
+
+Madame de Cintré looked across at the old marquise; her eyes slowly
+measured her from head to foot. “I am afraid of my mother,” she said.
+
+Madame de Bellegarde rose with a certain quickness, crying, “This is a
+most indecent scene!”
+
+“I have no wish to prolong it,” said Madame de Cintré; and turning to
+the door she put out her hand again. “If you can pity me a little, let
+me go alone.”
+
+Newman shook her hand quietly and firmly. “I’ll come down there,” he
+said. The _portière_ dropped behind her, and Newman sank with a long
+breath into the nearest chair. He leaned back in it, resting his hands
+on the knobs of the arms and looking at Madame de Bellegarde and
+Urbain. There was a long silence. They stood side by side, with their
+heads high and their handsome eyebrows arched.
+
+“So you make a distinction?” Newman said at last. “You make a
+distinction between persuading and commanding? It’s very neat. But the
+distinction is in favor of commanding. That rather spoils it.”
+
+“We have not the least objection to defining our position,” said M. de
+Bellegarde. “We understand that it should not at first appear to you
+quite clear. We rather expected, indeed, that you should not do us
+justice.”
+
+“Oh, I’ll do you justice,” said Newman. “Don’t be afraid. Please
+proceed.”
+
+The marquise laid her hand on her son’s arm, as if to deprecate the
+attempt to define their position. “It is quite useless,” she said, “to
+try and arrange this matter so as to make it agreeable to you. It can
+never be agreeable to you. It is a disappointment, and disappointments
+are unpleasant. I thought it over carefully and tried to arrange it
+better; but I only gave myself a headache and lost my sleep. Say what
+we will, you will think yourself ill-treated, and you will publish your
+wrongs among your friends. But we are not afraid of that. Besides, your
+friends are not our friends, and it will not matter. Think of us as you
+please. I only beg you not to be violent. I have never in my life been
+present at a violent scene of any kind, and at my age I can’t be
+expected to begin.”
+
+“Is _that_ all you have got to say?” asked Newman, slowly rising out of
+his chair. “That’s a poor show for a clever lady like you, marquise.
+Come, try again.”
+
+“My mother goes to the point, with her usual honesty and intrepidity,”
+said the marquis, toying with his watch-guard. “But it is perhaps well
+to say a little more. We of course quite repudiate the charge of having
+broken faith with you. We left you entirely at liberty to make yourself
+agreeable to my sister. We left her quite at liberty to entertain your
+proposal. When she accepted you we said nothing. We therefore quite
+observed our promise. It was only at a later stage of the affair, and
+on quite a different basis, as it were, that we determined to speak. It
+would have been better, perhaps, if we had spoken before. But really,
+you see, nothing has yet been done.”
+
+“Nothing has yet been done?” Newman repeated the words, unconscious of
+their comical effect. He had lost the sense of what the marquis was
+saying; M. de Bellegarde’s superior style was a mere humming in his
+ears. All that he understood, in his deep and simple indignation, was
+that the matter was not a violent joke, and that the people before him
+were perfectly serious. “Do you suppose I can take this?” he asked. “Do
+you suppose it can matter to me what you say? Do you suppose I can
+seriously listen to you? You are simply crazy!”
+
+Madame de Bellegarde gave a rap with her fan in the palm of her hand.
+“If you don’t take it you can leave it, sir. It matters very little
+what you do. My daughter has given you up.”
+
+“She doesn’t mean it,” Newman declared after a moment.
+
+“I think I can assure you that she does,” said the marquis.
+
+“Poor woman, what damnable thing have you done to her?” cried Newman.
+
+“Gently, gently!” murmured M. de Bellegarde.
+
+“She told you,” said the old lady. “I commanded her.”
+
+Newman shook his head, heavily. “This sort of thing can’t be, you
+know,” he said. “A man can’t be used in this fashion. You have got no
+right; you have got no power.”
+
+“My power,” said Madame de Bellegarde, “is in my children’s obedience.”
+
+“In their fear, your daughter said. There is something very strange in
+it. Why should your daughter be afraid of you?” added Newman, after
+looking a moment at the old lady. “There is some foul play.”
+
+The marquise met his gaze without flinching, and as if she did not hear
+or heed what he said. “I did my best,” she said, quietly. “I could
+endure it no longer.”
+
+“It was a bold experiment!” said the marquis.
+
+Newman felt disposed to walk to him, clutch his neck with his fingers
+and press his windpipe with his thumb. “I needn’t tell you how you
+strike me,” he said; “of course you know that. But I should think you
+would be afraid of your friends—all those people you introduced me to
+the other night. There were some very nice people among them; you may
+depend upon it there were some honest men and women.”
+
+“Our friends approve us,” said M. de Bellegarde, “there is not a family
+among them that would have acted otherwise. And however that may be, we
+take the cue from no one. The Bellegardes have been used to set the
+example, not to wait for it.”
+
+“You would have waited long before anyone would have set you such an
+example as this,” exclaimed Newman. “Have I done anything wrong?” he
+demanded. “Have I given you reason to change your opinion? Have you
+found out anything against me? I can’t imagine.”
+
+“Our opinion,” said Madame de Bellegarde, “is quite the same as at
+first—exactly. We have no ill-will towards yourself; we are very far
+from accusing you of misconduct. Since your relations with us began you
+have been, I frankly confess, less—less peculiar than I expected. It is
+not your disposition that we object to, it is your antecedents. We
+really cannot reconcile ourselves to a commercial person. We fancied in
+an evil hour that we could; it was a great misfortune. We determined to
+persevere to the end, and to give you every advantage. I was resolved
+that you should have no reason to accuse me of want of loyalty. We let
+the thing certainly go very far; we introduced you to our friends. To
+tell the truth, it was that, I think, that broke me down. I succumbed
+to the scene that took place on Thursday night in these rooms. You must
+excuse me if what I say is disagreeable to you, but we cannot release
+ourselves without an explanation.”
+
+“There can be no better proof of our good faith,” said the marquis,
+“than our committing ourselves to you in the eyes of the world the
+other evening. We endeavored to bind ourselves—to tie our hands, as it
+were.”
+
+“But it was that,” added his mother, “that opened our eyes and broke
+our bonds. We should have been most uncomfortable! You know,” she added
+in a moment, “that you were forewarned. I told you we were very proud.”
+
+Newman took up his hat and began mechanically to smooth it; the very
+fierceness of his scorn kept him from speaking. “You are not proud
+enough,” he observed at last.
+
+“In all this matter,” said the marquis, smiling, “I really see nothing
+but our humility.”
+
+“Let us have no more discussion than is necessary,” resumed Madame de
+Bellegarde. “My daughter told you everything when she said she gave you
+up.”
+
+“I am not satisfied about your daughter,” said Newman; “I want to know
+what you did to her. It is all very easy talking about authority and
+saying you commanded her. She didn’t accept me blindly, and she
+wouldn’t have given me up blindly. Not that I believe yet she has
+really given me up; she will talk it over with me. But you have
+frightened her, you have bullied her, you have _hurt_ her. What was it
+you did to her?”
+
+“I did very little!” said Madame de Bellegarde, in a tone which gave
+Newman a chill when he afterwards remembered it.
+
+“Let me remind you that we offered you these explanations,” the marquis
+observed, “with the express understanding that you should abstain from
+violence of language.”
+
+“I am not violent,” Newman answered, “it is you who are violent! But I
+don’t know that I have much more to say to you. What you expect of me,
+apparently, is to go my way, thanking you for favors received, and
+promising never to trouble you again.”
+
+“We expect of you to act like a clever man,” said Madame de Bellegarde.
+“You have shown yourself that already, and what we have done is
+altogether based upon your being so. When one must submit, one must.
+Since my daughter absolutely withdraws, what will be the use of your
+making a noise?”
+
+“It remains to be seen whether your daughter absolutely withdraws. Your
+daughter and I are still very good friends; nothing is changed in that.
+As I say, I will talk it over with her.”
+
+“That will be of no use,” said the old lady. “I know my daughter well
+enough to know that words spoken as she just now spoke to you are
+final. Besides, she has promised me.”
+
+“I have no doubt her promise is worth a great deal more than your own,”
+said Newman; “nevertheless I don’t give her up.”
+
+“Just as you please! But if she won’t even see you,—and she won’t,—your
+constancy must remain purely Platonic.”
+
+Poor Newman was feigning a greater confidence than he felt. Madame de
+Cintré’s strange intensity had in fact struck a chill to his heart; her
+face, still impressed upon his vision, had been a terribly vivid image
+of renunciation. He felt sick, and suddenly helpless. He turned away
+and stood for a moment with his hand on the door; then he faced about
+and after the briefest hesitation broke out with a different accent.
+“Come, think of what this must be to me, and let her alone! Why should
+you object to me so—what’s the matter with me? I can’t hurt you. I
+wouldn’t if I could. I’m the most unobjectionable fellow in the world.
+What if I am a commercial person? What under the sun do you mean? A
+commercial person? I will be any sort of a person you want. I never
+talked to you about business. Let her go, and I will ask no questions.
+I will take her away, and you shall never see me or hear of me again. I
+will stay in America if you like. I’ll sign a paper promising never to
+come back to Europe! All I want is not to lose her!”
+
+Madame de Bellegarde and her son exchanged a glance of lucid irony, and
+Urbain said, “My dear sir, what you propose is hardly an improvement.
+We have not the slightest objection to seeing you, as an amiable
+foreigner, and we have every reason for not wishing to be eternally
+separated from my sister. We object to the marriage; and in that way,”
+and M. de Bellegarde gave a small, thin laugh, “she would be more
+married than ever.”
+
+“Well, then,” said Newman, “where is this place of yours—Fleurières? I
+know it is near some old city on a hill.”
+
+“Precisely. Poitiers is on a hill,” said Madame de Bellegarde. “I don’t
+know how old it is. We are not afraid to tell you.”
+
+“It is Poitiers, is it? Very good,” said Newman. “I shall immediately
+follow Madame de Cintré.”
+
+“The trains after this hour won’t serve you,” said Urbain.
+
+“I shall hire a special train!”
+
+“That will be a very silly waste of money,” said Madame de Bellegarde.
+
+“It will be time enough to talk about waste three days hence,” Newman
+answered; and clapping his hat on his head, he departed.
+
+He did not immediately start for Fleurières; he was too stunned and
+wounded for consecutive action. He simply walked; he walked straight
+before him, following the river, till he got out of the _enceinte_ of
+Paris. He had a burning, tingling sense of personal outrage. He had
+never in his life received so absolute a check; he had never been
+pulled up, or, as he would have said, “let down,” so short; and he
+found the sensation intolerable; he strode along, tapping the trees and
+lamp-posts fiercely with his stick and inwardly raging. To lose Madame
+de Cintré after he had taken such jubilant and triumphant possession of
+her was as great an affront to his pride as it was an injury to his
+happiness. And to lose her by the interference and the dictation of
+others, by an impudent old woman and a pretentious fop stepping in with
+their “authority”! It was too preposterous, it was too pitiful. Upon
+what he deemed the unblushing treachery of the Bellegardes Newman
+wasted little thought; he consigned it, once for all, to eternal
+perdition. But the treachery of Madame de Cintré herself amazed and
+confounded him; there was a key to the mystery, of course, but he
+groped for it in vain. Only three days had elapsed since she stood
+beside him in the starlight, beautiful and tranquil as the trust with
+which he had inspired her, and told him that she was happy in the
+prospect of their marriage. What was the meaning of the change? of what
+infernal potion had she tasted? Poor Newman had a terrible apprehension
+that she had really changed. His very admiration for her attached the
+idea of force and weight to her rupture. But he did not rail at her as
+false, for he was sure she was unhappy. In his walk he had crossed one
+of the bridges of the Seine, and he still followed, unheedingly, the
+long, unbroken quay. He had left Paris behind him, and he was almost in
+the country; he was in the pleasant suburb of Auteuil. He stopped at
+last, looked around him without seeing or caring for its pleasantness,
+and then slowly turned and at a slower pace retraced his steps. When he
+came abreast of the fantastic embankment known as the Trocadero, he
+reflected, through his throbbing pain, that he was near Mrs. Tristram’s
+dwelling, and that Mrs. Tristram, on particular occasions, had much of
+a woman’s kindness in her utterance. He felt that he needed to pour out
+his ire and he took the road to her house. Mrs. Tristram was at home
+and alone, and as soon as she had looked at him, on his entering the
+room, she told him that she knew what he had come for. Newman sat down
+heavily, in silence, looking at her.
+
+“They have backed out!” she said. “Well, you may think it strange, but
+I felt something the other night in the air.” Presently he told her his
+story; she listened, with her eyes fixed on him. When he had finished
+she said quietly, “They want her to marry Lord Deepmere.” Newman
+stared. He did not know that she knew anything about Lord Deepmere.
+“But I don’t think she will,” Mrs. Tristram added.
+
+“_She_ marry that poor little cub!” cried Newman. “Oh, Lord! And yet,
+why did she refuse me?”
+
+“But that isn’t the only thing,” said Mrs. Tristram. “They really
+couldn’t endure you any longer. They had overrated their courage. I
+must say, to give the devil his due, that there is something rather
+fine in that. It was your commercial quality in the abstract they
+couldn’t swallow. That is really aristocratic. They wanted your money,
+but they have given you up for an idea.”
+
+Newman frowned most ruefully, and took up his hat again. “I thought you
+would encourage me!” he said, with almost childlike sadness.
+
+“Excuse me,” she answered very gently. “I feel none the less sorry for
+you, especially as I am at the bottom of your troubles. I have not
+forgotten that I suggested the marriage to you. I don’t believe that
+Madame de Cintré has any intention of marrying Lord Deepmere. It is
+true he is not younger than she, as he looks. He is thirty-three years
+old; I looked in the Peerage. But no—I can’t believe her so horribly,
+cruelly false.”
+
+“Please say nothing against her,” said Newman.
+
+“Poor woman, she _is_ cruel. But of course you will go after her and
+you will plead powerfully. Do you know that as you are now,” Mrs.
+Tristram pursued, with characteristic audacity of comment, “you are
+extremely eloquent, even without speaking? To resist you a woman must
+have a very fixed idea in her head. I wish I had done you a wrong, that
+you might come to me in that fine fashion! But go to Madame de Cintré
+at any rate, and tell her that she is a puzzle even to me. I am very
+curious to see how far family discipline will go.”
+
+Newman sat a while longer, leaning his elbows on his knees and his head
+in his hands, and Mrs. Tristram continued to temper charity with
+philosophy and compassion with criticism. At last she inquired, “And
+what does the Count Valentin say to it?” Newman started; he had not
+thought of Valentin and his errand on the Swiss frontier since the
+morning. The reflection made him restless again, and he took his leave.
+He went straight to his apartment, where, upon the table of the
+vestibule, he found a telegram. It ran (with the date and place) as
+follows: “I am seriously ill; please to come to me as soon as possible.
+V. B.” Newman groaned at this miserable news, and at the necessity of
+deferring his journey to the Château de Fleurières. But he wrote to
+Madame de Cintré these few lines; they were all he had time for:—
+
+“I don’t give you up, and I don’t really believe you give me up. I
+don’t understand it, but we shall clear it up together. I can’t follow
+you to-day, as I am called to see a friend at a distance who is very
+ill, perhaps dying. But I shall come to you as soon as I can leave my
+friend. Why shouldn’t I say that he is your brother? C. N.”
+
+After this he had only time to catch the night express to Geneva.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+Newman possessed a remarkable talent for sitting still when it was
+necessary, and he had an opportunity to use it on his journey to
+Switzerland. The successive hours of the night brought him no sleep,
+but he sat motionless in his corner of the railway-carriage, with his
+eyes closed, and the most observant of his fellow-travelers might have
+envied him his apparent slumber. Toward morning slumber really came, as
+an effect of mental rather than of physical fatigue. He slept for a
+couple of hours, and at last, waking, found his eyes resting upon one
+of the snow-powdered peaks of the Jura, behind which the sky was just
+reddening with the dawn. But he saw neither the cold mountain nor the
+warm sky; his consciousness began to throb again, on the very instant,
+with a sense of his wrong. He got out of the train half an hour before
+it reached Geneva, in the cold morning twilight, at the station
+indicated in Valentin’s telegram. A drowsy station-master was on the
+platform with a lantern, and the hood of his overcoat over his head,
+and near him stood a gentleman who advanced to meet Newman. This
+personage was a man of forty, with a tall lean figure, a sallow face, a
+dark eye, a neat moustache, and a pair of fresh gloves. He took off his
+hat, looking very grave, and pronounced Newman’s name. Our hero
+assented and said, “You are M. de Bellegarde’s friend?”
+
+“I unite with you in claiming that sad honor,” said the gentleman. “I
+had placed myself at M. de Bellegarde’s service in this melancholy
+affair, together with M. de Grosjoyaux, who is now at his bedside. M.
+de Grosjoyaux, I believe, has had the honor of meeting you in Paris,
+but as he is a better nurse than I he remained with our poor friend.
+Bellegarde has been eagerly expecting you.”
+
+“And how is Bellegarde?” said Newman. “He was badly hit?”
+
+“The doctor has condemned him; we brought a surgeon with us. But he
+will die in the best sentiments. I sent last evening for the curé of
+the nearest French village, who spent an hour with him. The curé was
+quite satisfied.”
+
+“Heaven forgive us!” groaned Newman. “I would rather the doctor were
+satisfied! And can he see me—shall he know me?”
+
+“When I left him, half an hour ago, he had fallen asleep after a
+feverish, wakeful night. But we shall see.” And Newman’s companion
+proceeded to lead the way out of the station to the village, explaining
+as he went that the little party was lodged in the humblest of Swiss
+inns, where, however, they had succeeded in making M. de Bellegarde
+much more comfortable than could at first have been expected. “We are
+old companions in arms,” said Valentin’s second; “it is not the first
+time that one of us has helped the other to lie easily. It is a very
+nasty wound, and the nastiest thing about it is that Bellegarde’s
+adversary was not shot. He put his bullet where he could. It took it
+into its head to walk straight into Bellegarde’s left side, just below
+the heart.”
+
+As they picked their way in the gray, deceptive dawn, between the
+manure-heaps of the village street, Newman’s new acquaintance narrated
+the particulars of the duel. The conditions of the meeting had been
+that if the first exchange of shots should fail to satisfy one of the
+two gentlemen, a second should take place. Valentin’s first bullet had
+done exactly what Newman’s companion was convinced he had intended it
+to do; it had grazed the arm of M. Stanislas Kapp, just scratching the
+flesh. M. Kapp’s own projectile, meanwhile, had passed at ten good
+inches from the person of Valentin. The representatives of M. Stanislas
+had demanded another shot, which was granted. Valentin had then fired
+aside and the young Alsatian had done effective execution. “I saw, when
+we met him on the ground,” said Newman’s informant, “that he was not
+going to be _commode_. It is a kind of bovine temperament.” Valentin
+had immediately been installed at the inn, and M. Stanislas and his
+friends had withdrawn to regions unknown. The police authorities of the
+canton had waited upon the party at the inn, had been extremely
+majestic, and had drawn up a long _procès-verbal_; but it was probable
+that they would wink at so very gentlemanly a bit of bloodshed. Newman
+asked whether a message had not been sent to Valentin’s family, and
+learned that up to a late hour on the preceding evening Valentin had
+opposed it. He had refused to believe his wound was dangerous. But
+after his interview with the curé he had consented, and a telegram had
+been dispatched to his mother. “But the marquise had better hurry!”
+said Newman’s conductor.
+
+“Well, it’s an abominable affair!” said Newman. “That’s all I have to
+say!” To say this, at least, in a tone of infinite disgust was an
+irresistible need.
+
+“Ah, you don’t approve?” questioned his conductor, with curious
+urbanity.
+
+“Approve?” cried Newman. “I wish that when I had him there, night
+before last, I had locked him up in my _cabinet de toilette!_”
+
+Valentin’s late second opened his eyes, and shook his head up and down
+two or three times, gravely, with a little flute-like whistle. But they
+had reached the inn, and a stout maid-servant in a night-cap was at the
+door with a lantern, to take Newman’s traveling-bag from the porter who
+trudged behind him. Valentin was lodged on the ground-floor at the back
+of the house, and Newman’s companion went along a stone-faced passage
+and softly opened a door. Then he beckoned to Newman, who advanced and
+looked into the room, which was lighted by a single shaded candle.
+Beside the fire sat M. de Grosjoyaux asleep in his dressing-gown—a
+little plump, fair man whom Newman had seen several times in Valentin’s
+company. On the bed lay Valentin, pale and still, with his eyes
+closed—a figure very shocking to Newman, who had seen it hitherto awake
+to its fingertips. M. de Grosjoyaux’s colleague pointed to an open door
+beyond, and whispered that the doctor was within, keeping guard. So
+long as Valentin slept, or seemed to sleep, of course Newman could not
+approach him; so our hero withdrew for the present, committing himself
+to the care of the half-waked _bonne_. She took him to a room
+above-stairs, and introduced him to a bed on which a magnified bolster,
+in yellow calico, figured as a counterpane. Newman lay down, and, in
+spite of his counterpane, slept for three or four hours. When he awoke,
+the morning was advanced and the sun was filling his window, and he
+heard, outside of it, the clucking of hens. While he was dressing there
+came to his door a messenger from M. de Grosjoyaux and his companion
+proposing that he should breakfast with them. Presently he went
+downstairs to the little stone-paved dining-room, where the
+maid-servant, who had taken off her night-cap, was serving the repast.
+M. de Grosjoyaux was there, surprisingly fresh for a gentleman who had
+been playing sick-nurse half the night, rubbing his hands and watching
+the breakfast table attentively. Newman renewed acquaintance with him,
+and learned that Valentin was still sleeping; the surgeon, who had had
+a fairly tranquil night, was at present sitting with him. Before M. de
+Grosjoyaux’s associate reappeared, Newman learned that his name was M.
+Ledoux, and that Bellegarde’s acquaintance with him dated from the days
+when they served together in the Pontifical Zouaves. M. Ledoux was the
+nephew of a distinguished Ultramontane bishop. At last the bishop’s
+nephew came in with a toilet in which an ingenious attempt at harmony
+with the peculiar situation was visible, and with a gravity tempered by
+a decent deference to the best breakfast that the Croix Helvétique had
+ever set forth. Valentin’s servant, who was allowed only in scanty
+measure the honor of watching with his master, had been lending a light
+Parisian hand in the kitchen. The two Frenchmen did their best to prove
+that if circumstances might overshadow, they could not really obscure,
+the national talent for conversation, and M. Ledoux delivered a neat
+little eulogy on poor Bellegarde, whom he pronounced the most charming
+Englishman he had ever known.
+
+“Do you call him an Englishman?” Newman asked.
+
+M. Ledoux smiled a moment and then made an epigram. _“C’est plus qu’un
+Anglais—c’est un Anglomane!”_ Newman said soberly that he had never
+noticed it; and M. de Grosjoyaux remarked that it was really too soon
+to deliver a funeral oration upon poor Bellegarde. “Evidently,” said M.
+Ledoux. “But I couldn’t help observing this morning to Mr. Newman that
+when a man has taken such excellent measures for his salvation as our
+dear friend did last evening, it seems almost a pity he should put it
+in peril again by returning to the world.” M. Ledoux was a great
+Catholic, and Newman thought him a queer mixture. His countenance, by
+daylight, had a sort of amiably saturnine cast; he had a very large
+thin nose, and looked like a Spanish picture. He appeared to think
+dueling a very perfect arrangement, provided, if one should get hit,
+one could promptly see the priest. He seemed to take a great
+satisfaction in Valentin’s interview with the curé, and yet his
+conversation did not at all indicate a sanctimonious habit of mind. M.
+Ledoux had evidently a high sense of the becoming, and was prepared to
+be urbane and tasteful on all points. He was always furnished with a
+smile (which pushed his moustache up under his nose) and an
+explanation. _Savoir-vivre_—knowing how to live—was his specialty, in
+which he included knowing how to die; but, as Newman reflected, with a
+good deal of dumb irritation, he seemed disposed to delegate to others
+the application of his learning on this latter point. M. de Grosjoyaux
+was of quite another complexion, and appeared to regard his friend’s
+theological unction as the sign of an inaccessibly superior mind. He
+was evidently doing his utmost, with a kind of jovial tenderness, to
+make life agreeable to Valentin to the last, and help him as little as
+possible to miss the Boulevard des Italiens; but what chiefly occupied
+his mind was the mystery of a bungling brewer’s son making so neat a
+shot. He himself could snuff a candle, etc., and yet he confessed that
+he could not have done better than this. He hastened to add that on the
+present occasion he would have made a point of not doing so well. It
+was not an occasion for that sort of murderous work, _que diable!_ He
+would have picked out some quiet fleshy spot and just tapped it with a
+harmless ball. M. Stanislas Kapp had been deplorably heavy-handed; but
+really, when the world had come to that pass that one granted a meeting
+to a brewer’s son!... This was M. de Grosjoyaux’s nearest approach to a
+generalization. He kept looking through the window, over the shoulder
+of M. Ledoux, at a slender tree which stood at the end of a lane,
+opposite to the inn, and seemed to be measuring its distance from his
+extended arm and secretly wishing that, since the subject had been
+introduced, propriety did not forbid a little speculative
+pistol-practice.
+
+Newman was in no humor to enjoy good company. He could neither eat nor
+talk; his soul was sore with grief and anger, and the weight of his
+double sorrow was intolerable. He sat with his eyes fixed upon his
+plate, counting the minutes, wishing at one moment that Valentin would
+see him and leave him free to go in quest of Madame de Cintré and his
+lost happiness, and mentally calling himself a vile brute the next, for
+the impatient egotism of the wish. He was very poor company, himself,
+and even his acute preoccupation and his general lack of the habit of
+pondering the impression he produced did not prevent him from
+reflecting that his companions must be puzzled to see how poor
+Bellegarde came to take such a fancy to this taciturn Yankee that he
+must needs have him at his death-bed. After breakfast he strolled forth
+alone into the village and looked at the fountain, the geese, the open
+barn doors, the brown, bent old women, showing their hugely darned
+stocking-heels at the ends of their slowly-clicking sabots, and the
+beautiful view of snowy Alps and purple Jura at either end of the
+little street. The day was brilliant; early spring was in the air and
+in the sunshine, and the winter’s damp was trickling out of the cottage
+eaves. It was birth and brightness for all nature, even for chirping
+chickens and waddling goslings, and it was to be death and burial for
+poor, foolish, generous, delightful Bellegarde. Newman walked as far as
+the village church, and went into the small graveyard beside it, where
+he sat down and looked at the awkward tablets which were planted
+around. They were all sordid and hideous, and Newman could feel nothing
+but the hardness and coldness of death. He got up and came back to the
+inn, where he found M. Ledoux having coffee and a cigarette at a little
+green table which he had caused to be carried into the small garden.
+Newman, learning that the doctor was still sitting with Valentin, asked
+M. Ledoux if he might not be allowed to relieve him; he had a great
+desire to be useful to his poor friend. This was easily arranged; the
+doctor was very glad to go to bed. He was a youthful and rather jaunty
+practitioner, but he had a clever face, and the ribbon of the Legion of
+Honor in his buttonhole; Newman listened attentively to the
+instructions he gave him before retiring, and took mechanically from
+his hand a small volume which the surgeon recommended as a help to
+wakefulness, and which turned out to be an old copy of “Les Liaisons
+Dangereuses.”
+
+Valentin was still lying with his eyes closed, and there was no visible
+change in his condition. Newman sat down near him, and for a long time
+narrowly watched him. Then his eyes wandered away with his thoughts
+upon his own situation, and rested upon the chain of the Alps,
+disclosed by the drawing of the scant white cotton curtain of the
+window, through which the sunshine passed and lay in squares upon the
+red-tiled floor. He tried to interweave his reflections with hope, but
+he only half succeeded. What had happened to him seemed to have, in its
+violence and audacity, the force of a real calamity—the strength and
+insolence of Destiny herself. It was unnatural and monstrous, and he
+had no arms against it. At last a sound struck upon the stillness, and
+he heard Valentin’s voice.
+
+“It can’t be about _me_ you are pulling that long face!” He found, when
+he turned, that Valentin was lying in the same position; but his eyes
+were open, and he was even trying to smile. It was with a very slender
+strength that he returned the pressure of Newman’s hand. “I have been
+watching you for a quarter of an hour,” Valentin went on; “you have
+been looking as black as thunder. You are greatly disgusted with me, I
+see. Well, of course! So am I!”
+
+“Oh, I shall not scold you,” said Newman. “I feel too badly. And how
+are you getting on?”
+
+“Oh, I’m getting off! They have quite settled that; haven’t they?”
+
+“That’s for you to settle; you can get well if you try,” said Newman,
+with resolute cheerfulness.
+
+“My dear fellow, how can I try? Trying is violent exercise, and that
+sort of thing isn’t in order for a man with a hole in his side as big
+as your hat, that begins to bleed if he moves a hair’s-breadth. I knew
+you would come,” he continued; “I knew I should wake up and find you
+here; so I’m not surprised. But last night I was very impatient. I
+didn’t see how I could keep still until you came. It was a matter of
+keeping still, just like this; as still as a mummy in his case. You
+talk about trying; I tried that! Well, here I am yet—these twenty
+hours. It seems like twenty days.” Bellegarde talked slowly and feebly,
+but distinctly enough. It was visible, however, that he was in extreme
+pain, and at last he closed his eyes. Newman begged him to remain
+silent and spare himself; the doctor had left urgent orders. “Oh,” said
+Valentin, “let us eat and drink, for to-morrow—to-morrow”—and he paused
+again. “No, not to-morrow, perhaps, but to-day. I can’t eat and drink,
+but I can talk. What’s to be gained, at this pass, by
+renun—renunciation? I mustn’t use such big words. I was always a
+chatterer; Lord, how I have talked in my day!”
+
+“That’s a reason for keeping quiet now,” said Newman. “We know how well
+you talk, you know.”
+
+But Valentin, without heeding him, went on in the same weak, dying
+drawl. “I wanted to see you because you have seen my sister. Does she
+know—will she come?”
+
+Newman was embarrassed. “Yes, by this time she must know.”
+
+“Didn’t you tell her?” Valentin asked. And then, in a moment, “Didn’t
+you bring me any message from her?” His eyes rested upon Newman’s with
+a certain soft keenness.
+
+“I didn’t see her after I got your telegram,” said Newman. “I wrote to
+her.”
+
+“And she sent you no answer?”
+
+Newman was obliged to reply that Madame de Cintré had left Paris. “She
+went yesterday to Fleurières.”
+
+“Yesterday—to Fleurières? Why did she go to Fleurières? What day is
+this? What day was yesterday? Ah, then I shan’t see her,” said Valentin
+sadly. “Fleurières is too far!” And then he closed his eyes again.
+Newman sat silent, summoning pious invention to his aid, but he was
+relieved at finding that Valentin was apparently too weak to reason or
+to be curious. Bellegarde, however, presently went on. “And my
+mother—and my brother—will they come? Are they at Fleurières?”
+
+“They were in Paris, but I didn’t see them, either,” Newman answered.
+“If they received your telegram in time, they will have started this
+morning. Otherwise they will be obliged to wait for the night-express,
+and they will arrive at the same hour as I did.”
+
+“They won’t thank me—they won’t thank me,” Valentin murmured. “They
+will pass an atrocious night, and Urbain doesn’t like the early morning
+air. I don’t remember ever in my life to have seen him before
+noon—before breakfast. No one ever saw him. We don’t know how he is
+then. Perhaps he’s different. Who knows? Posterity, perhaps, will know.
+That’s the time he works, in his _cabinet_, at the history of the
+Princesses. But I had to send for them—hadn’t I? And then I want to see
+my mother sit there where you sit, and say good-bye to her. Perhaps,
+after all, I don’t know her, and she will have some surprise for me.
+Don’t think you know her yet, yourself; perhaps she may surprise _you_.
+But if I can’t see Claire, I don’t care for anything. I have been
+thinking of it—and in my dreams, too. Why did she go to Fleurières
+to-day? She never told me. What has happened? Ah, she ought to have
+guessed I was here—this way. It is the first time in her life she ever
+disappointed me. Poor Claire!”
+
+“You know we are not man and wife quite yet,—your sister and I,” said
+Newman. “She doesn’t yet account to me for all her actions.” And, after
+a fashion, he smiled.
+
+Valentin looked at him a moment. “Have you quarreled?”
+
+“Never, never, never!” Newman exclaimed.
+
+“How happily you say that!” said Valentin. “You are going to be
+happy—_va!_” In answer to this stroke of irony, none the less powerful
+for being so unconscious, all poor Newman could do was to give a
+helpless and transparent stare. Valentin continued to fix him with his
+own rather over-bright gaze, and presently he said, “But something _is_
+the matter with you. I watched you just now; you haven’t a bridegroom’s
+face.”
+
+“My dear fellow,” said Newman, “how can I show _you_ a bridegroom’s
+face? If you think I enjoy seeing you lie there and not being able to
+help you”—
+
+“Why, you are just the man to be cheerful; don’t forfeit your rights!
+I’m a proof of your wisdom. When was a man ever gloomy when he could
+say, ‘I told you so?’ You told me so, you know. You did what you could
+about it. You said some very good things; I have thought them over.
+But, my dear friend, I was right, all the same. This is the regular
+way.”
+
+“I didn’t do what I ought,” said Newman. “I ought to have done
+something else.”
+
+“For instance?”
+
+“Oh, something or other. I ought to have treated you as a small boy.”
+
+“Well, I’m a very small boy, now,” said Valentin. “I’m rather less than
+an infant. An infant is helpless, but it’s generally voted promising.
+I’m not promising, eh? Society can’t lose a less valuable member.”
+
+Newman was strongly moved. He got up and turned his back upon his
+friend and walked away to the window, where he stood looking out, but
+only vaguely seeing. “No, I don’t like the look of your back,” Valentin
+continued. “I have always been an observer of backs; yours is quite out
+of sorts.”
+
+Newman returned to his bedside and begged him to be quiet. “Be quiet
+and get well,” he said. “That’s what you must do. Get well and help
+me.”
+
+“I told you you were in trouble! How can I help you?” Valentin asked.
+
+“I’ll let you know when you are better. You were always curious; there
+is something to get well for!” Newman answered, with resolute
+animation.
+
+Valentin closed his eyes and lay a long time without speaking. He
+seemed even to have fallen asleep. But at the end of half an hour he
+began to talk again. “I am rather sorry about that place in the bank.
+Who knows but that I might have become another Rothschild? But I wasn’t
+meant for a banker; bankers are not so easy to kill. Don’t you think I
+have been very easy to kill? It’s not like a serious man. It’s really
+very mortifying. It’s like telling your hostess you must go, when you
+count upon her begging you to stay, and then finding she does no such
+thing. ‘Really—so soon? You’ve only just come!’ Life doesn’t make me
+any such polite little speech.”
+
+Newman for some time said nothing, but at last he broke out. “It’s a
+bad case—it’s a bad case—it’s the worst case I ever met. I don’t want
+to say anything unpleasant, but I can’t help it. I’ve seen men dying
+before—and I’ve seen men shot. But it always seemed more natural; they
+were not so clever as you. Damnation—damnation! You might have done
+something better than this. It’s about the meanest winding-up of a
+man’s affairs that I can imagine!”
+
+Valentin feebly waved his hand to and fro. “Don’t insist—don’t insist!
+It is mean—decidedly mean. For you see at the bottom—down at the
+bottom, in a little place as small as the end of a wine funnel—I agree
+with you!”
+
+A few moments after this the doctor put his head through the
+half-opened door and, perceiving that Valentin was awake, came in and
+felt his pulse. He shook his head and declared that he had talked too
+much—ten times too much. “Nonsense!” said Valentin; “a man sentenced to
+death can never talk too much. Have you never read an account of an
+execution in a newspaper? Don’t they always set a lot of people at the
+prisoner—lawyers, reporters, priests—to make him talk? But it’s not Mr.
+Newman’s fault; he sits there as mum as a death’s-head.”
+
+The doctor observed that it was time his patient’s wound should be
+dressed again; MM. de Grosjoyaux and Ledoux, who had already witnessed
+this delicate operation, taking Newman’s place as assistants. Newman
+withdrew and learned from his fellow-watchers that they had received a
+telegram from Urbain de Bellegarde to the effect that their message had
+been delivered in the Rue de l’Université too late to allow him to take
+the morning train, but that he would start with his mother in the
+evening. Newman wandered away into the village again, and walked about
+restlessly for two or three hours. The day seemed terribly long. At
+dusk he came back and dined with the doctor and M. Ledoux. The dressing
+of Valentin’s wound had been a very critical operation; the doctor
+didn’t really see how he was to endure a repetition of it. He then
+declared that he must beg of Mr. Newman to deny himself for the present
+the satisfaction of sitting with M. de Bellegarde; more than anyone
+else, apparently, he had the flattering but inconvenient privilege of
+exciting him. M. Ledoux, at this, swallowed a glass of wine in silence;
+he must have been wondering what the deuce Bellegarde found so exciting
+in the American.
+
+Newman, after dinner, went up to his room, where he sat for a long time
+staring at his lighted candle, and thinking that Valentin was dying
+downstairs. Late, when the candle had burnt low, there came a soft rap
+at his door. The doctor stood there with a candlestick and a shrug.
+
+“He must amuse himself still!” said Valentin’s medical adviser. “He
+insists upon seeing you, and I am afraid you must come. I think at this
+rate, that he will hardly outlast the night.”
+
+Newman went back to Valentin’s room, which he found lighted by a taper
+on the hearth. Valentin begged him to light a candle. “I want to see
+your face,” he said. “They say you excite me,” he went on, as Newman
+complied with this request, “and I confess I do feel excited. But it
+isn’t you—it’s my own thoughts. I have been thinking—thinking. Sit down
+there and let me look at you again.” Newman seated himself, folded his
+arms, and bent a heavy gaze upon his friend. He seemed to be playing a
+part, mechanically, in a lugubrious comedy. Valentin looked at him for
+some time. “Yes, this morning I was right; you have something on your
+mind heavier than Valentin de Bellegarde. Come, I’m a dying man and
+it’s indecent to deceive me. Something happened after I left Paris. It
+was not for nothing that my sister started off at this season of the
+year for Fleurières. Why was it? It sticks in my crop. I have been
+thinking it over, and if you don’t tell me I shall guess.”
+
+“I had better not tell you,” said Newman. “It won’t do you any good.”
+
+“If you think it will do me any good not to tell me, you are very much
+mistaken. There is trouble about your marriage.”
+
+“Yes,” said Newman. “There is trouble about my marriage.”
+
+“Good!” And Valentin was silent again. “They have stopped it.”
+
+“They have stopped it,” said Newman. Now that he had spoken out, he
+found a satisfaction in it which deepened as he went on. “Your mother
+and brother have broken faith. They have decided that it can’t take
+place. They have decided that I am not good enough, after all. They
+have taken back their word. Since you insist, there it is!”
+
+Valentin gave a sort of groan, lifted his hands a moment, and then let
+them drop.
+
+“I am sorry not to have anything better to tell you about them,” Newman
+pursued. “But it’s not my fault. I was, indeed, very unhappy when your
+telegram reached me; I was quite upside down. You may imagine whether I
+feel any better now.”
+
+Valentin moaned gaspingly, as if his wound were throbbing. “Broken
+faith, broken faith!” he murmured. “And my sister—my sister?”
+
+“Your sister is very unhappy; she has consented to give me up. I don’t
+know why. I don’t know what they have done to her; it must be something
+pretty bad. In justice to her you ought to know it. They have made her
+suffer. I haven’t seen her alone, but only before them! We had an
+interview yesterday morning. They came out flat, in so many words. They
+told me to go about my business. It seems to me a very bad case. I’m
+angry, I’m sore, I’m sick.”
+
+Valentin lay there staring, with his eyes more brilliantly lighted, his
+lips soundlessly parted, and a flush of color in his pale face. Newman
+had never before uttered so many words in the plaintive key, but now,
+in speaking to Valentin in the poor fellow’s extremity, he had a
+feeling that he was making his complaint somewhere within the presence
+of the power that men pray to in trouble; he felt his outgush of
+resentment as a sort of spiritual privilege.
+
+“And Claire,”—said Bellegarde,—“Claire? She has given you up?”
+
+“I don’t really believe it,” said Newman.
+
+“No. Don’t believe it, don’t believe it. She is gaining time; excuse
+her.”
+
+“I pity her!” said Newman.
+
+“Poor Claire!” murmured Valentin. “But they—but they”—and he paused
+again. “You saw them; they dismissed you, face to face?”
+
+“Face to face. They were very explicit.”
+
+“What did they say?”
+
+“They said they couldn’t stand a commercial person.”
+
+Valentin put out his hand and laid it upon Newman’s arm. “And about
+their promise—their engagement with you?”
+
+“They made a distinction. They said it was to hold good only until
+Madame de Cintré accepted me.”
+
+Valentin lay staring a while, and his flush died away. “Don’t tell me
+any more,” he said at last. “I’m ashamed.”
+
+“You? You are the soul of honor,” said Newman simply.
+
+Valentin groaned and turned away his head. For some time nothing more
+was said. Then Valentin turned back again and found a certain force to
+press Newman’s arm. “It’s very bad—very bad. When my people—when my
+race—come to that, it is time for me to withdraw. I believe in my
+sister; she will explain. Excuse her. If she can’t—if she can’t,
+forgive her. She has suffered. But for the others it is very bad—very
+bad. You take it very hard? No, it’s a shame to make you say so.” He
+closed his eyes and again there was a silence. Newman felt almost awed;
+he had evoked a more solemn spirit than he expected. Presently Valentin
+looked at him again, removing his hand from his arm. “I apologize,” he
+said. “Do you understand? Here on my death-bed. I apologize for my
+family. For my mother. For my brother. For the ancient house of
+Bellegarde. _Voilà!_” he added softly.
+
+Newman for an answer took his hand and pressed it with a world of
+kindness. Valentin remained quiet, and at the end of half an hour the
+doctor softly came in. Behind him, through the half-open door, Newman
+saw the two questioning faces of MM. de Grosjoyaux and Ledoux. The
+doctor laid his hand on Valentin’s wrist and sat looking at him. He
+gave no sign and the two gentlemen came in, M. Ledoux having first
+beckoned to someone outside. This was M. le Curé, who carried in his
+hand an object unknown to Newman, and covered with a white napkin. M.
+le Curé was short, round, and red: he advanced, pulling off his little
+black cap to Newman, and deposited his burden on the table; and then he
+sat down in the best armchair, with his hands folded across his person.
+The other gentlemen had exchanged glances which expressed unanimity as
+to the timeliness of their presence. But for a long time Valentin
+neither spoke nor moved. It was Newman’s belief, afterwards, that M. le
+Curé went to sleep. At last abruptly, Valentin pronounced Newman’s
+name. His friend went to him, and he said in French, “You are not
+alone. I want to speak to you alone.” Newman looked at the doctor, and
+the doctor looked at the curé, who looked back at him; and then the
+doctor and the curé, together, gave a shrug. “Alone—for five minutes,”
+Valentin repeated. “Please leave us.”
+
+The curé took up his burden again and led the way out, followed by his
+companions. Newman closed the door behind them and came back to
+Valentin’s bedside. Bellegarde had watched all this intently.
+
+“It’s very bad, it’s very bad,” he said, after Newman had seated
+himself close to him. “The more I think of it the worse it is.”
+
+“Oh, don’t think of it,” said Newman.
+
+But Valentin went on, without heeding him. “Even if they should come
+round again, the shame—the baseness—is there.”
+
+“Oh, they won’t come round!” said Newman.
+
+“Well, you can make them.”
+
+“Make them?”
+
+“I can tell you something—a great secret—an immense secret. You can use
+it against them—frighten them, force them.”
+
+“A secret!” Newman repeated. The idea of letting Valentin, on his
+death-bed, confide him an “immense secret” shocked him, for the moment,
+and made him draw back. It seemed an illicit way of arriving at
+information, and even had a vague analogy with listening at a keyhole.
+Then, suddenly, the thought of “forcing” Madame de Bellegarde and her
+son became attractive, and Newman bent his head closer to Valentin’s
+lips. For some time, however, the dying man said nothing more. He only
+lay and looked at his friend with his kindled, expanded, troubled eye,
+and Newman began to believe that he had spoken in delirium. But at last
+he said,—
+
+“There was something done—something done at Fleurières. It was foul
+play. My father—something happened to him. I don’t know; I have been
+ashamed—afraid to know. But I know there is something. My mother
+knows—Urbain knows.”
+
+“Something happened to your father?” said Newman, urgently.
+
+Valentin looked at him, still more wide-eyed. “He didn’t get well.”
+
+“Get well of what?”
+
+But the immense effort which Valentin had made, first to decide to
+utter these words and then to bring them out, appeared to have taken
+his last strength. He lapsed again into silence, and Newman sat
+watching him. “Do you understand?” he began again, presently. “At
+Fleurières. You can find out. Mrs. Bread knows. Tell her I begged you
+to ask her. Then tell them that, and see. It may help you. If not, tell
+everyone. It will—it will”—here Valentin’s voice sank to the feeblest
+murmur—“it will avenge you!”
+
+The words died away in a long, soft groan. Newman stood up, deeply
+impressed, not knowing what to say; his heart was beating violently.
+“Thank you,” he said at last. “I am much obliged.” But Valentin seemed
+not to hear him, he remained silent, and his silence continued. At last
+Newman went and opened the door. M. le Curé re-entered, bearing his
+sacred vessel and followed by the three gentlemen and by Valentin’s
+servant. It was almost processional.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+Valentin de Bellegarde died tranquilly, just as the cold faint March
+dawn began to illumine the faces of the little knot of friends gathered
+about his bedside. An hour afterwards Newman left the inn and drove to
+Geneva; he was naturally unwilling to be present at the arrival of
+Madame de Bellegarde and her first-born. At Geneva, for the moment, he
+remained. He was like a man who has had a fall and wants to sit still
+and count his bruises. He instantly wrote to Madame de Cintré, relating
+to her the circumstances of her brother’s death—with certain
+exceptions—and asking her what was the earliest moment at which he
+might hope that she would consent to see him. M. Ledoux had told him
+that he had reason to know that Valentin’s will—Bellegarde had a great
+deal of elegant personal property to dispose of—contained a request
+that he should be buried near his father in the churchyard of
+Fleurières, and Newman intended that the state of his own relations
+with the family should not deprive him of the satisfaction of helping
+to pay the last earthly honors to the best fellow in the world. He
+reflected that Valentin’s friendship was older than Urbain’s enmity,
+and that at a funeral it was easy to escape notice. Madame de Cintré’s
+answer to his letter enabled him to time his arrival at Fleurières.
+This answer was very brief; it ran as follows:—
+
+“I thank you for your letter, and for your being with Valentin. It is a
+most inexpressible sorrow to me that I was not. To see you will be
+nothing but a distress to me; there is no need, therefore, to wait for
+what you call brighter days. It is all one now, and I shall have no
+brighter days. Come when you please; only notify me first. My brother
+is to be buried here on Friday, and my family is to remain here. C. de
+C.”
+
+As soon as he received this letter Newman went straight to Paris and to
+Poitiers. The journey took him far southward, through green Touraine
+and across the far-shining Loire, into a country where the early spring
+deepened about him as he went. But he had never made a journey during
+which he heeded less what he would have called the lay of the land. He
+obtained lodging at the inn at Poitiers, and the next morning drove in
+a couple of hours to the village of Fleurières. But here, preoccupied
+though he was, he could not fail to notice the picturesqueness of the
+place. It was what the French call a _petit bourg_; it lay at the base
+of a sort of huge mound on the summit of which stood the crumbling
+ruins of a feudal castle, much of whose sturdy material, as well as
+that of the wall which dropped along the hill to enclose the clustered
+houses defensively, had been absorbed into the very substance of the
+village. The church was simply the former chapel of the castle,
+fronting upon its grass-grown court, which, however, was of generous
+enough width to have given up its quaintest corner to a little
+graveyard. Here the very headstones themselves seemed to sleep, as they
+slanted into the grass; the patient elbow of the rampart held them
+together on one side, and in front, far beneath their mossy lids, the
+green plains and blue distances stretched away. The way to church, up
+the hill, was impracticable to vehicles. It was lined with peasants,
+two or three rows deep, who stood watching old Madame de Bellegarde
+slowly ascend it, on the arm of her elder son, behind the pall-bearers
+of the other. Newman chose to lurk among the common mourners who
+murmured “Madame la Comtesse” as a tall figure veiled in black passed
+before them. He stood in the dusky little church while the service was
+going forward, but at the dismal tomb-side he turned away and walked
+down the hill. He went back to Poitiers, and spent two days in which
+patience and impatience were singularly commingled. On the third day he
+sent Madame de Cintré a note, saying that he would call upon her in the
+afternoon, and in accordance with this he again took his way to
+Fleurières. He left his vehicle at the tavern in the village street,
+and obeyed the simple instructions which were given him for finding the
+château.
+
+“It is just beyond there,” said the landlord, and pointed to the
+tree-tops of the park, above the opposite houses. Newman followed the
+first cross-road to the right—it was bordered with mouldy cottages—and
+in a few moments saw before him the peaked roofs of the towers.
+Advancing farther, he found himself before a vast iron gate, rusty and
+closed; here he paused a moment, looking through the bars. The château
+was near the road; this was at once its merit and its defect; but its
+aspect was extremely impressive. Newman learned afterwards, from a
+guide-book of the province, that it dated from the time of Henry IV. It
+presented to the wide, paved area which preceded it and which was edged
+with shabby farm-buildings an immense façade of dark time-stained
+brick, flanked by two low wings, each of which terminated in a little
+Dutch-looking pavilion capped with a fantastic roof. Two towers rose
+behind, and behind the towers was a mass of elms and beeches, now just
+faintly green.
+
+But the great feature was a wide, green river which washed the
+foundations of the château. The building rose from an island in the
+circling stream, so that this formed a perfect moat spanned by a
+two-arched bridge without a parapet. The dull brick walls, which here
+and there made a grand, straight sweep; the ugly little cupolas of the
+wings, the deep-set windows, the long, steep pinnacles of mossy slate,
+all mirrored themselves in the tranquil river. Newman rang at the gate,
+and was almost frightened at the tone with which a big rusty bell above
+his head replied to him. An old woman came out from the gate-house and
+opened the creaking portal just wide enough for him to pass, and he
+went in, across the dry, bare court and the little cracked white slabs
+of the causeway on the moat. At the door of the château he waited for
+some moments, and this gave him a chance to observe that Fleurières was
+not “kept up,” and to reflect that it was a melancholy place of
+residence. “It looks,” said Newman to himself—and I give the comparison
+for what it is worth—“like a Chinese penitentiary.” At last the door
+was opened by a servant whom he remembered to have seen in the Rue de
+l’Université. The man’s dull face brightened as he perceived our hero,
+for Newman, for indefinable reasons, enjoyed the confidence of the
+liveried gentry. The footman led the way across a great central
+vestibule, with a pyramid of plants in tubs in the middle of glass
+doors all around, to what appeared to be the principal drawing-room of
+the château. Newman crossed the threshold of a room of superb
+proportions, which made him feel at first like a tourist with a
+guide-book and a cicerone awaiting a fee. But when his guide had left
+him alone, with the observation that he would call Madame la Comtesse,
+Newman perceived that the salon contained little that was remarkable
+save a dark ceiling with curiously carved rafters, some curtains of
+elaborate, antiquated tapestry, and a dark oaken floor, polished like a
+mirror. He waited some minutes, walking up and down; but at length, as
+he turned at the end of the room, he saw that Madame de Cintré had come
+in by a distant door. She wore a black dress, and she stood looking at
+him. As the length of the immense room lay between them he had time to
+look at her before they met in the middle of it.
+
+He was dismayed at the change in her appearance. Pale, heavy-browed,
+almost haggard with a sort of monastic rigidity in her dress, she had
+little but her pure features in common with the woman whose radiant
+good grace he had hitherto admired. She let her eyes rest on his own,
+and she let him take her hand; but her eyes looked like two rainy
+autumn moons, and her touch was portentously lifeless.
+
+“I was at your brother’s funeral,” Newman said. “Then I waited three
+days. But I could wait no longer.”
+
+“Nothing can be lost or gained by waiting,” said Madame de Cintré. “But
+it was very considerate of you to wait, wronged as you have been.”
+
+“I’m glad you think I have been wronged,” said Newman, with that oddly
+humorous accent with which he often uttered words of the gravest
+meaning.
+
+“Do I need to say so?” she asked. “I don’t think I have wronged,
+seriously, many persons; certainly not consciously. To you, to whom I
+have done this hard and cruel thing, the only reparation I can make is
+to say, ‘I know it, I feel it!’ The reparation is pitifully small!”
+
+“Oh, it’s a great step forward!” said Newman, with a gracious smile of
+encouragement. He pushed a chair towards her and held it, looking at
+her urgently. She sat down, mechanically, and he seated himself near
+her; but in a moment he got up, restlessly, and stood before her. She
+remained seated, like a troubled creature who had passed through the
+stage of restlessness.
+
+“I say nothing is to be gained by my seeing you,” she went on, “and yet
+I am very glad you came. Now I can tell you what I feel. It is a
+selfish pleasure, but it is one of the last I shall have.” And she
+paused, with her great misty eyes fixed upon him. “I know how I have
+deceived and injured you; I know how cruel and cowardly I have been. I
+see it as vividly as you do—I feel it to the ends of my fingers.” And
+she unclasped her hands, which were locked together in her lap, lifted
+them, and dropped them at her side. “Anything that you may have said of
+me in your angriest passion is nothing to what I have said to myself.”
+
+“In my angriest passion,” said Newman, “I have said nothing hard of
+you. The very worst thing I have said of you yet is that you are the
+loveliest of women.” And he seated himself before her again abruptly.
+
+She flushed a little, but even her flush was pale. “That is because you
+think I will come back. But I will not come back. It is in that hope
+you have come here, I know; I am very sorry for you. I would do almost
+anything for you. To say that, after what I have done, seems simply
+impudent; but what can I say that will not seem impudent? To wrong you
+and apologize—that is easy enough. I should not have wronged you.” She
+stopped a moment, looking at him, and motioned him to let her go on. “I
+ought never to have listened to you at first; that was the wrong. No
+good could come of it. I felt it, and yet I listened; that was your
+fault. I liked you too much; I believed in you.”
+
+“And don’t you believe in me now?”
+
+“More than ever. But now it doesn’t matter. I have given you up.”
+
+Newman gave a powerful thump with his clenched fist upon his knee.
+“Why, why, why?” he cried. “Give me a reason—a decent reason. You are
+not a child—you are not a minor, nor an idiot. You are not obliged to
+drop me because your mother told you to. Such a reason isn’t worthy of
+you.”
+
+“I know that; it’s not worthy of me. But it’s the only one I have to
+give. After all,” said Madame de Cintré, throwing out her hands, “think
+me an idiot and forget me! That will be the simplest way.”
+
+Newman got up and walked away with a crushing sense that his cause was
+lost, and yet with an equal inability to give up fighting. He went to
+one of the great windows, and looked out at the stiffly embanked river
+and the formal gardens which lay beyond it. When he turned round,
+Madame de Cintré had risen; she stood there silent and passive. “You
+are not frank,” said Newman; “you are not honest. Instead of saying
+that you are imbecile, you should say that other people are wicked.
+Your mother and your brother have been false and cruel; they have been
+so to me, and I am sure they have been so to you. Why do you try to
+shield them? Why do you sacrifice me to them? I’m not false; I’m not
+cruel. You don’t know what you give up; I can tell you that—you don’t.
+They bully you and plot about you; and I—I”—And he paused, holding out
+his hands. She turned away and began to leave him. “You told me the
+other day that you were afraid of your mother,” he said, following her.
+“What did you mean?”
+
+Madame de Cintré shook her head. “I remember; I was sorry afterwards.”
+
+“You were sorry when she came down and put on the thumbscrews. In God’s
+name what _is_ it she does to you?”
+
+“Nothing. Nothing that you can understand. And now that I have given
+you up, I must not complain of her to you.”
+
+“That’s no reasoning!” cried Newman. “Complain of her, on the contrary.
+Tell me all about it, frankly and trustfully, as you ought, and we will
+talk it over so satisfactorily that you won’t give me up.”
+
+Madame de Cintré looked down some moments, fixedly; and then, raising
+her eyes, she said, “One good at least has come of this: I have made
+you judge me more fairly. You thought of me in a way that did me great
+honor; I don’t know why you had taken it into your head. But it left me
+no loophole for escape—no chance to be the common, weak creature I am.
+It was not my fault; I warned you from the first. But I ought to have
+warned you more. I ought to have convinced you that I was doomed to
+disappoint you. But I _was_, in a way, too proud. You see what my
+superiority amounts to, I hope!” she went on, raising her voice with a
+tremor which even then and there Newman thought beautiful. “I am too
+proud to be honest, I am not too proud to be faithless. I am timid and
+cold and selfish. I am afraid of being uncomfortable.”
+
+“And you call marrying me uncomfortable!” said Newman staring.
+
+Madame de Cintré blushed a little and seemed to say that if begging his
+pardon in words was impudent, she might at least thus mutely express
+her perfect comprehension of his finding her conduct odious. “It is not
+marrying you; it is doing all that would go with it. It’s the rupture,
+the defiance, the insisting upon being happy in my own way. What right
+have I to be happy when—when”—And she paused.
+
+“When what?” said Newman.
+
+“When others have been most unhappy!”
+
+“What others?” Newman asked. “What have you to do with any others but
+me? Besides you said just now that you wanted happiness, and that you
+should find it by obeying your mother. You contradict yourself.”
+
+“Yes, I contradict myself; that shows you that I am not even
+intelligent.”
+
+“You are laughing at me!” cried Newman. “You are mocking me!”
+
+She looked at him intently, and an observer might have said that she
+was asking herself whether she might not most quickly end their common
+pain by confessing that she was mocking him. “No; I am not,” she
+presently said.
+
+“Granting that you are not intelligent,” he went on, “that you are
+weak, that you are common, that you are nothing that I have believed
+you were—what I ask of you is not heroic effort, it is a very common
+effort. There is a great deal on my side to make it easy. The simple
+truth is that you don’t care enough about me to make it.”
+
+“I am cold,” said Madame de Cintré, “I am as cold as that flowing
+river.”
+
+Newman gave a great rap on the floor with his stick, and a long, grim
+laugh. “Good, good!” he cried. “You go altogether too far—you overshoot
+the mark. There isn’t a woman in the world as bad as you would make
+yourself out. I see your game; it’s what I said. You are blackening
+yourself to whiten others. You don’t want to give me up, at all; you
+like me—you like me. I know you do; you have shown it, and I have felt
+it. After that, you may be as cold as you please! They have bullied
+you, I say; they have tortured you. It’s an outrage, and I insist upon
+saving you from the extravagance of your own generosity. Would you chop
+off your hand if your mother requested it?”
+
+Madame de Cintré looked a little frightened. “I spoke of my mother too
+blindly, the other day. I am my own mistress, by law and by her
+approval. She can do nothing to me; she has done nothing. She has never
+alluded to those hard words I used about her.”
+
+“She has made you feel them, I’ll promise you!” said Newman.
+
+“It’s my conscience that makes me feel them.”
+
+“Your conscience seems to me to be rather mixed!” exclaimed Newman,
+passionately.
+
+“It has been in great trouble, but now it is very clear,” said Madame
+de Cintré. “I don’t give you up for any worldly advantage or for any
+worldly happiness.”
+
+“Oh, you don’t give me up for Lord Deepmere, I know,” said Newman. “I
+won’t pretend, even to provoke you, that I think that. But that’s what
+your mother and your brother wanted, and your mother, at that
+villainous ball of hers—I liked it at the time, but the very thought of
+it now makes me rabid—tried to push him on to make up to you.”
+
+“Who told you this?” said Madame de Cintré softly.
+
+“Not Valentin. I observed it. I guessed it. I didn’t know at the time
+that I was observing it, but it stuck in my memory. And afterwards, you
+recollect, I saw Lord Deepmere with you in the conservatory. You said
+then that you would tell me at another time what he had said to you.”
+
+“That was before—before _this_,” said Madame de Cintré.
+
+“It doesn’t matter,” said Newman; “and, besides, I think I know. He’s
+an honest little Englishman. He came and told you what your mother was
+up to—that she wanted him to supplant me; not being a commercial
+person. If he would make you an offer she would undertake to bring you
+over and give me the slip. Lord Deepmere isn’t very intellectual, so
+she had to spell it out to him. He said he admired you ‘no end,’ and
+that he wanted you to know it; but he didn’t like being mixed up with
+that sort of underhand work, and he came to you and told tales. That
+was about the amount of it, wasn’t it? And then you said you were
+perfectly happy.”
+
+“I don’t see why we should talk of Lord Deepmere,” said Madame de
+Cintré. “It was not for that you came here. And about my mother, it
+doesn’t matter what you suspect and what you know. When once my mind
+has been made up, as it is now, I should not discuss these things.
+Discussing anything, now, is very idle. We must try and live each as we
+can. I believe you will be happy again; even, sometimes, when you think
+of me. When you do so, think this—that it was not easy, and that I did
+the best I could. I have things to reckon with that you don’t know. I
+mean I have feelings. I must do as they force me—I must, I must. They
+would haunt me otherwise,” she cried, with vehemence; “they would kill
+me!”
+
+“I know what your feelings are: they are superstitions! They are the
+feeling that, after all, though I _am_ a good fellow, I have been in
+business; the feeling that your mother’s looks are law and your
+brother’s words are gospel; that you all hang together, and that it’s a
+part of the everlasting proprieties that they should have a hand in
+everything you do. It makes my blood boil. That _is_ cold; you are
+right. And what I feel here,” and Newman struck his heart and became
+more poetical than he knew, “is a glowing fire!”
+
+A spectator less preoccupied than Madame de Cintré’s distracted wooer
+would have felt sure from the first that her appealing calm of manner
+was the result of violent effort, in spite of which the tide of
+agitation was rapidly rising. On these last words of Newman’s it
+overflowed, though at first she spoke low, for fear of her voice
+betraying her. “No. I was not right—I am not cold! I believe that if I
+am doing what seems so bad, it is not mere weakness and falseness. Mr.
+Newman, it’s like a religion. I can’t tell you—I can’t! It’s cruel of
+you to insist. I don’t see why I shouldn’t ask you to believe me—and
+pity me. It’s like a religion. There’s a curse upon the house; I don’t
+know what—I don’t know why—don’t ask me. We must all bear it. I have
+been too selfish; I wanted to escape from it. You offered me a great
+chance—besides my liking you. It seemed good to change completely, to
+break, to go away. And then I admired you. But I can’t—it has overtaken
+and come back to me.” Her self-control had now completely abandoned
+her, and her words were broken with long sobs. “Why do such dreadful
+things happen to us—why is my brother Valentin killed, like a beast in
+the midst of his youth and his gaiety and his brightness and all that
+we loved him for? Why are there things I can’t ask about—that I am
+afraid to know? Why are there places I can’t look at, sounds I can’t
+hear? Why is it given to me to choose, to decide, in a case so hard and
+so terrible as this? I am not meant for that—I am not made for boldness
+and defiance. I was made to be happy in a quiet, natural way.” At this
+Newman gave a most expressive groan, but Madame de Cintré went on. “I
+was made to do gladly and gratefully what is expected of me. My mother
+has always been very good to me; that’s all I can say. I must not judge
+her; I must not criticize her. If I did, it would come back to me. I
+can’t change!”
+
+“No,” said Newman, bitterly; “_I_ must change—if I break in two in the
+effort!”
+
+“You are different. You are a man; you will get over it. You have all
+kinds of consolation. You were born—you were trained, to changes.
+Besides—besides, I shall always think of you.”
+
+“I don’t care for that!” cried Newman. “You are cruel—you are terribly
+cruel. God forgive you! You may have the best reasons and the finest
+feelings in the world; that makes no difference. You are a mystery to
+me; I don’t see how such hardness can go with such loveliness.”
+
+Madame de Cintré fixed him a moment with her swimming eyes. “You
+believe I am hard, then?”
+
+Newman answered her look, and then broke out, “You are a perfect,
+faultless creature! Stay by me!”
+
+“Of course I am hard,” she went on. “Whenever we give pain we are hard.
+And we _must_ give pain; that’s the world,—the hateful, miserable
+world! Ah!” and she gave a long, deep sigh, “I can’t even say I am glad
+to have known you—though I am. That too is to wrong you. I can say
+nothing that is not cruel. Therefore let us part, without more of this.
+Good-bye!” And she put out her hand.
+
+Newman stood and looked at it without taking it, and raised his eyes to
+her face. He felt, himself, like shedding tears of rage. “What are you
+going to do?” he asked. “Where are you going?”
+
+“Where I shall give no more pain and suspect no more evil. I am going
+out of the world.”
+
+“Out of the world?”
+
+“I am going into a convent.”
+
+“Into a convent!” Newman repeated the words with the deepest dismay; it
+was as if she had said she was going into an hospital. “Into a
+convent—_you!_”
+
+“I told you that it was not for my worldly advantage or pleasure I was
+leaving you.”
+
+But still Newman hardly understood. “You are going to be a nun,” he
+went on, “in a cell—for life—with a gown and white veil?”
+
+“A nun—a Carmelite nun,” said Madame de Cintré. “For life, with God’s
+leave.”
+
+The idea struck Newman as too dark and horrible for belief, and made
+him feel as he would have done if she had told him that she was going
+to mutilate her beautiful face, or drink some potion that would make
+her mad. He clasped his hands and began to tremble, visibly.
+
+“Madame de Cintré, don’t, don’t!” he said. “I beseech you! On my knees,
+if you like, I’ll beseech you.”
+
+She laid her hand upon his arm, with a tender, pitying, almost
+reassuring gesture. “You don’t understand,” she said. “You have wrong
+ideas. It’s nothing horrible. It is only peace and safety. It is to be
+out of the world, where such troubles as this come to the innocent, to
+the best. And for life—that’s the blessing of it! They can’t begin
+again.”
+
+Newman dropped into a chair and sat looking at her with a long,
+inarticulate murmur. That this superb woman, in whom he had seen all
+human grace and household force, should turn from him and all the
+brightness that he offered her—him and his future and his fortune and
+his fidelity—to muffle herself in ascetic rags and entomb herself in a
+cell was a confounding combination of the inexorable and the grotesque.
+As the image deepened before him the grotesque seemed to expand and
+overspread it; it was a reduction to the absurd of the trial to which
+he was subjected. “You—you a nun!” he exclaimed; “you with your beauty
+defaced—you behind locks and bars! Never, never, if I can prevent it!”
+And he sprang to his feet with a violent laugh.
+
+“You can’t prevent it,” said Madame de Cintré, “and it ought—a
+little—to satisfy you. Do you suppose I will go on living in the world,
+still beside you, and yet not with you? It is all arranged. Good-bye,
+good-bye.”
+
+This time he took her hand, took it in both his own. “Forever?” he
+said. Her lips made an inaudible movement and his own uttered a deep
+imprecation. She closed her eyes, as if with the pain of hearing it;
+then he drew her towards him and clasped her to his breast. He kissed
+her white face; for an instant she resisted and for a moment she
+submitted; then, with force, she disengaged herself and hurried away
+over the long shining floor. The next moment the door closed behind
+her.
+
+Newman made his way out as he could.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+There is a pretty public walk at Poitiers, laid out upon the crest of
+the high hill around which the little city clusters, planted with thick
+trees and looking down upon the fertile fields in which the old English
+princes fought for their right and held it. Newman paced up and down
+this quiet promenade for the greater part of the next day and let his
+eyes wander over the historic prospect; but he would have been sadly at
+a loss to tell you afterwards whether the latter was made up of
+coal-fields or of vineyards. He was wholly given up to his grievance,
+of which reflection by no means diminished the weight. He feared that
+Madame de Cintré was irretrievably lost; and yet, as he would have said
+himself, he didn’t see his way clear to giving her up. He found it
+impossible to turn his back upon Fleurières and its inhabitants; it
+seemed to him that some germ of hope or reparation must lurk there
+somewhere, if he could only stretch his arm out far enough to pluck it.
+It was as if he had his hand on a door-knob and were closing his
+clenched fist upon it: he had thumped, he had called, he had pressed
+the door with his powerful knee and shaken it with all his strength,
+and dead, damning silence had answered him. And yet something held him
+there—something hardened the grasp of his fingers. Newman’s
+satisfaction had been too intense, his whole plan too deliberate and
+mature, his prospect of happiness too rich and comprehensive for this
+fine moral fabric to crumble at a stroke. The very foundation seemed
+fatally injured, and yet he felt a stubborn desire still to try to save
+the edifice. He was filled with a sorer sense of wrong than he had ever
+known, or than he had supposed it possible he should know. To accept
+his injury and walk away without looking behind him was a stretch of
+good-nature of which he found himself incapable. He looked behind him
+intently and continually, and what he saw there did not assuage his
+resentment. He saw himself trustful, generous, liberal, patient, easy,
+pocketing frequent irritation and furnishing unlimited modesty. To have
+eaten humble pie, to have been snubbed and patronized and satirized and
+have consented to take it as one of the conditions of the bargain—to
+have done this, and done it all for nothing, surely gave one a right to
+protest. And to be turned off because one was a commercial person! As
+if he had ever talked or dreamt of the commercial since his connection
+with the Bellegardes began—as if he had made the least circumstance of
+the commercial—as if he would not have consented to confound the
+commercial fifty times a day, if it might have increased by a hair’s
+breadth the chance of the Bellegardes’ not playing him a trick! Granted
+that being commercial was fair ground for having a trick played upon
+one, how little they knew about the class so designed and its
+enterprising way of not standing upon trifles! It was in the light of
+his injury that the weight of Newman’s past endurance seemed so heavy;
+his actual irritation had not been so great, merged as it was in his
+vision of the cloudless blue that overarched his immediate wooing. But
+now his sense of outrage was deep, rancorous, and ever present; he felt
+that he was a good fellow wronged. As for Madame de Cintré’s conduct,
+it struck him with a kind of awe, and the fact that he was powerless to
+understand it or feel the reality of its motives only deepened the
+force with which he had attached himself to her. He had never let the
+fact of her Catholicism trouble him; Catholicism to him was nothing but
+a name, and to express a mistrust of the form in which her religious
+feelings had moulded themselves would have seemed to him on his own
+part a rather pretentious affectation of Protestant zeal. If such
+superb white flowers as that could bloom in Catholic soil, the soil was
+not insalubrious. But it was one thing to be a Catholic, and another to
+turn nun—on your hand! There was something lugubriously comical in the
+way Newman’s thoroughly contemporaneous optimism was confronted with
+this dusky old-world expedient. To see a woman made for him and for
+motherhood to his children juggled away in this tragic travesty—it was
+a thing to rub one’s eyes over, a nightmare, an illusion, a hoax. But
+the hours passed away without disproving the thing, and leaving him
+only the after-sense of the vehemence with which he had embraced Madame
+de Cintré. He remembered her words and her looks; he turned them over
+and tried to shake the mystery out of them and to infuse them with an
+endurable meaning. What had she meant by her feeling being a kind of
+religion? It was the religion simply of the family laws, the religion
+of which her implacable little mother was the high priestess. Twist the
+thing about as her generosity would, the one certain fact was that they
+had used force against her. Her generosity had tried to screen them,
+but Newman’s heart rose into his throat at the thought that they should
+go scot-free.
+
+The twenty-four hours wore themselves away, and the next morning Newman
+sprang to his feet with the resolution to return to Fleurières and
+demand another interview with Madame de Bellegarde and her son. He lost
+no time in putting it into practice. As he rolled swiftly over the
+excellent road in the little calèche furnished him at the inn at
+Poitiers, he drew forth, as it were, from the very safe place in his
+mind to which he had consigned it, the last information given him by
+poor Valentin. Valentin had told him he could do something with it, and
+Newman thought it would be well to have it at hand. This was of course
+not the first time, lately, that Newman had given it his attention. It
+was information in the rough,—it was dark and puzzling; but Newman was
+neither helpless nor afraid. Valentin had evidently meant to put him in
+possession of a powerful instrument, though he could not be said to
+have placed the handle very securely within his grasp. But if he had
+not really told him the secret, he had at least given him the clew to
+it—a clew of which that queer old Mrs. Bread held the other end. Mrs.
+Bread had always looked to Newman as if she knew secrets; and as he
+apparently enjoyed her esteem, he suspected she might be induced to
+share her knowledge with him. So long as there was only Mrs. Bread to
+deal with, he felt easy. As to what there was to find out, he had only
+one fear—that it might not be bad enough. Then, when the image of the
+marquise and her son rose before him again, standing side by side, the
+old woman’s hand in Urbain’s arm, and the same cold, unsociable
+fixedness in the eyes of each, he cried out to himself that the fear
+was groundless. There was blood in the secret at the very least! He
+arrived at Fleurières almost in a state of elation; he had satisfied
+himself, logically, that in the presence of his threat of exposure they
+would, as he mentally phrased it, rattle down like unwound buckets. He
+remembered indeed that he must first catch his hare—first ascertain
+what there was to expose; but after that, why shouldn’t his happiness
+be as good as new again? Mother and son would drop their lovely victim
+in terror and take to hiding, and Madame de Cintré, left to herself,
+would surely come back to him. Give her a chance and she would rise to
+the surface, return to the light. How could she fail to perceive that
+his house would be much the most comfortable sort of convent?
+
+Newman, as he had done before, left his conveyance at the inn and
+walked the short remaining distance to the château. When he reached the
+gate, however, a singular feeling took possession of him—a feeling
+which, strange as it may seem, had its source in its unfathomable good
+nature. He stood there a while, looking through the bars at the large,
+time-stained face of the edifice, and wondering to what crime it was
+that the dark old house, with its flowery name, had given convenient
+occasion. It had given occasion, first and last, to tyrannies and
+sufferings enough, Newman said to himself; it was an evil-looking place
+to live in. Then, suddenly, came the reflection—What a horrible
+rubbish-heap of iniquity to fumble in! The attitude of inquisitor
+turned its ignobler face, and with the same movement Newman declared
+that the Bellegardes should have another chance. He would appeal once
+more directly to their sense of fairness, and not to their fear, and if
+they should be accessible to reason, he need know nothing worse about
+them than what he already knew. That was bad enough.
+
+The gate-keeper let him in through the same stiff crevice as before,
+and he passed through the court and over the little rustic bridge on
+the moat. The door was opened before he had reached it, and, as if to
+put his clemency to rout with the suggestion of a richer opportunity,
+Mrs. Bread stood there awaiting him. Her face, as usual, looked as
+hopelessly blank as the tide-smoothed sea-sand, and her black garments
+seemed of an intenser sable. Newman had already learned that her
+strange inexpressiveness could be a vehicle for emotion, and he was not
+surprised at the muffled vivacity with which she whispered, “I thought
+you would try again, sir. I was looking out for you.”
+
+“I am glad to see you,” said Newman; “I think you are my friend.”
+
+Mrs. Bread looked at him opaquely. “I wish you well sir; but it’s vain
+wishing now.”
+
+“You know, then, how they have treated me?”
+
+“Oh, sir,” said Mrs. Bread, dryly, “I know everything.”
+
+Newman hesitated a moment. “Everything?”
+
+Mrs. Bread gave him a glance somewhat more lucent. “I know at least too
+much, sir.”
+
+“One can never know too much. I congratulate you. I have come to see
+Madame de Bellegarde and her son,” Newman added. “Are they at home? If
+they are not, I will wait.”
+
+“My lady is always at home,” Mrs. Bread replied, “and the marquis is
+mostly with her.”
+
+“Please then tell them—one or the other, or both—that I am here and
+that I desire to see them.”
+
+Mrs. Bread hesitated. “May I take a great liberty, sir?”
+
+“You have never taken a liberty but you have justified it,” said
+Newman, with diplomatic urbanity.
+
+Mrs. Bread dropped her wrinkled eyelids as if she were curtseying; but
+the curtsey stopped there; the occasion was too grave. “You have come
+to plead with them again, sir? Perhaps you don’t know this—that Madame
+de Cintré returned this morning to Paris.”
+
+“Ah, she’s gone!” And Newman, groaning, smote the pavement with his
+stick.
+
+“She has gone straight to the convent—the Carmelites they call it. I
+see you know, sir. My lady and the marquis take it very ill. It was
+only last night she told them.”
+
+“Ah, she had kept it back, then?” cried Newman. “Good, good! And they
+are very fierce?”
+
+“They are not pleased,” said Mrs. Bread. “But they may well dislike it.
+They tell me it’s most dreadful, sir; of all the nuns in Christendom
+the Carmelites are the worst. You may say they are really not human,
+sir; they make you give up everything—forever. And to think of _her_
+there! If I was one that cried, sir, I could cry.”
+
+Newman looked at her an instant. “We mustn’t cry, Mrs. Bread; we must
+act. Go and call them!” And he made a movement to enter farther.
+
+But Mrs. Bread gently checked him. “May I take another liberty? I am
+told you were with my dearest Mr. Valentin, in his last hours. If you
+would tell me a word about him! The poor count was my own boy, sir; for
+the first year of his life he was hardly out of my arms; I taught him
+to speak. And the count spoke so well, sir! He always spoke well to his
+poor old Bread. When he grew up and took his pleasure he always had a
+kind word for me. And to die in that wild way! They have a story that
+he fought with a wine-merchant. I can’t believe that, sir! And was he
+in great pain?”
+
+“You are a wise, kind old woman, Mrs. Bread,” said Newman. “I hoped I
+might see you with my own children in your arms. Perhaps I shall, yet.”
+And he put out his hand. Mrs. Bread looked for a moment at his open
+palm, and then, as if fascinated by the novelty of the gesture,
+extended her own ladylike fingers. Newman held her hand firmly and
+deliberately, fixing his eyes upon her. “You want to know all about Mr.
+Valentin?” he said.
+
+“It would be a sad pleasure, sir.”
+
+“I can tell you everything. Can you sometimes leave this place?”
+
+“The château, sir? I really don’t know. I never tried.”
+
+“Try, then; try hard. Try this evening, at dusk. Come to me in the old
+ruin there on the hill, in the court before the church. I will wait for
+you there; I have something very important to tell you. An old woman
+like you can do as she pleases.”
+
+Mrs. Bread stared, wondering, with parted lips. “Is it from the count,
+sir?” she asked.
+
+“From the count—from his death-bed,” said Newman.
+
+“I will come, then. I will be bold, for once, for _him_.”
+
+She led Newman into the great drawing-room with which he had already
+made acquaintance, and retired to execute his commands. Newman waited a
+long time; at last he was on the point of ringing and repeating his
+request. He was looking round him for a bell when the marquis came in
+with his mother on his arm. It will be seen that Newman had a logical
+mind when I say that he declared to himself, in perfect good faith, as
+a result of Valentin’s dark hints, that his adversaries looked grossly
+wicked. “There is no mistake about it now,” he said to himself as they
+advanced. “They’re a bad lot; they have pulled off the mask.” Madame de
+Bellegarde and her son certainly bore in their faces the signs of
+extreme perturbation; they looked like people who had passed a
+sleepless night. Confronted, moreover, with an annoyance which they
+hoped they had disposed of, it was not natural that they should have
+any very tender glances to bestow upon Newman. He stood before them,
+and such eye-beams as they found available they leveled at him; Newman
+feeling as if the door of a sepulchre had suddenly been opened, and the
+damp darkness were being exhaled.
+
+“You see I have come back,” he said. “I have come to try again.”
+
+“It would be ridiculous,” said M. de Bellegarde, “to pretend that we
+are glad to see you or that we don’t question the taste of your visit.”
+
+“Oh, don’t talk about taste,” said Newman, with a laugh, “or that will
+bring us round to yours! If I consulted my taste I certainly shouldn’t
+come to see you. Besides, I will make as short work as you please.
+Promise me to raise the blockade—to set Madame de Cintré at liberty—and
+I will retire instantly.”
+
+“We hesitated as to whether we would see you,” said Madame de
+Bellegarde; “and we were on the point of declining the honor. But it
+seemed to me that we should act with civility, as we have always done,
+and I wished to have the satisfaction of informing you that there are
+certain weaknesses that people of our way of feeling can be guilty of
+but once.”
+
+“You may be weak but once, but you will be audacious many times,
+madam,” Newman answered. “I didn’t come however, for conversational
+purposes. I came to say this, simply: that if you will write
+immediately to your daughter that you withdraw your opposition to her
+marriage, I will take care of the rest. You don’t want her to turn
+nun—you know more about the horrors of it than I do. Marrying a
+commercial person is better than that. Give me a letter to her, signed
+and sealed, saying you retract and that she may marry me with your
+blessing, and I will take it to her at the convent and bring her out.
+There’s your chance—I call those easy terms.”
+
+“We look at the matter otherwise, you know. We call them very hard
+terms,” said Urbain de Bellegarde. They had all remained standing
+rigidly in the middle of the room. “I think my mother will tell you
+that she would rather her daughter should become Sœur Catherine than
+Mrs. Newman.”
+
+But the old lady, with the serenity of supreme power, let her son make
+her epigrams for her. She only smiled, almost sweetly, shaking her head
+and repeating, “But once, Mr. Newman; but once!”
+
+Nothing that Newman had ever seen or heard gave him such a sense of
+marble hardness as this movement and the tone that accompanied it.
+“Could anything compel you?” he asked. “Do you know of anything that
+would force you?”
+
+“This language, sir,” said the marquis, “addressed to people in
+bereavement and grief is beyond all qualification.”
+
+“In most cases,” Newman answered, “your objection would have some
+weight, even admitting that Madame de Cintré’s present intentions make
+time precious. But I have thought of what you speak of, and I have come
+here to-day without scruple simply because I consider your brother and
+you two very different parties. I see no connection between you. Your
+brother was ashamed of you. Lying there wounded and dying, the poor
+fellow apologized to me for your conduct. He apologized to me for that
+of his mother.”
+
+For a moment the effect of these words was as if Newman had struck a
+physical blow. A quick flush leaped into the faces of Madame de
+Bellegarde and her son, and they exchanged a glance like a twinkle of
+steel. Urbain uttered two words which Newman but half heard, but of
+which the sense came to him as it were in the reverberation of the
+sound, “_Le misérable!_”
+
+“You show little respect for the living,” said Madame de Bellegarde,
+“but at least respect the dead. Don’t profane—don’t insult—the memory
+of my innocent son.”
+
+“I speak the simple truth,” Newman declared, “and I speak it for a
+purpose. I repeat it—distinctly. Your son was utterly disgusted—your
+son apologized.”
+
+Urbain de Bellegarde was frowning portentously, and Newman supposed he
+was frowning at poor Valentin’s invidious image. Taken by surprise, his
+scant affection for his brother had made a momentary concession to
+dishonor. But not for an appreciable instant did his mother lower her
+flag. “You are immensely mistaken, sir,” she said. “My son was
+sometimes light, but he was never indecent. He died faithful to his
+name.”
+
+“You simply misunderstood him,” said the marquis, beginning to rally.
+“You affirm the impossible!”
+
+“Oh, I don’t care for poor Valentin’s apology,” said Newman. “It was
+far more painful than pleasant to me. This atrocious thing was not his
+fault; he never hurt me, or anyone else; he was the soul of honor. But
+it shows how he took it.”
+
+“If you wish to prove that my poor brother, in his last moments, was
+out of his head, we can only say that under the melancholy
+circumstances nothing was more possible. But confine yourself to that.”
+
+“He was quite in his right mind,” said Newman, with gentle but
+dangerous doggedness; “I have never seen him so bright and clever. It
+was terrible to see that witty, capable fellow dying such a death. You
+know I was very fond of your brother. And I have further proof of his
+sanity,” Newman concluded.
+
+The marquise gathered herself together majestically. “This is too
+gross!” she cried. “We decline to accept your story, sir—we repudiate
+it. Urbain, open the door.” She turned away, with an imperious motion
+to her son, and passed rapidly down the length of the room. The marquis
+went with her and held the door open. Newman was left standing.
+
+He lifted his finger, as a sign to M. de Bellegarde, who closed the
+door behind his mother and stood waiting. Newman slowly advanced, more
+silent, for the moment, than life. The two men stood face to face. Then
+Newman had a singular sensation; he felt his sense of injury almost
+brimming over into jocularity. “Come,” he said, “you don’t treat me
+well; at least admit that.”
+
+M. de Bellegarde looked at him from head to foot, and then, in the most
+delicate, best-bred voice, “I detest you personally,” he said.
+
+“That’s the way I feel to you, but for politeness sake I don’t say it,”
+said Newman. “It’s singular I should want so much to be your
+brother-in-law, but I can’t give it up. Let me try once more.” And he
+paused a moment. “You have a secret—you have a skeleton in the closet.”
+M. de Bellegarde continued to look at him hard, but Newman could not
+see whether his eyes betrayed anything; the look of his eyes was always
+so strange. Newman paused again, and then went on. “You and your mother
+have committed a crime.” At this M. de Bellegarde’s eyes certainly did
+change; they seemed to flicker, like blown candles. Newman could see
+that he was profoundly startled; but there was something admirable in
+his self-control.
+
+“Continue,” said M. de Bellegarde.
+
+Newman lifted a finger and made it waver a little in the air. “Need I
+continue? You are trembling.”
+
+“Pray where did you obtain this interesting information?” M. de
+Bellegarde asked, very softly.
+
+“I shall be strictly accurate,” said Newman. “I won’t pretend to know
+more than I do. At present that is all I know. You have done something
+that you must hide, something that would damn you if it were known,
+something that would disgrace the name you are so proud of. I don’t
+know what it is, but I can find out. Persist in your present course and
+I _will_ find out. Change it, let your sister go in peace, and I will
+leave you alone. It’s a bargain?”
+
+The marquis almost succeeded in looking untroubled; the breaking up of
+the ice in his handsome countenance was an operation that was
+necessarily gradual. But Newman’s mildly-syllabled argumentation seemed
+to press, and press, and presently he averted his eyes. He stood some
+moments, reflecting.
+
+“My brother told you this,” he said, looking up.
+
+Newman hesitated a moment. “Yes, your brother told me.”
+
+The marquis smiled, handsomely. “Didn’t I say that he was out of his
+mind?”
+
+“He was out of his mind if I don’t find out. He was very much in it if
+I do.”
+
+M. de Bellegarde gave a shrug. “Eh, sir, find out or not, as you
+please.”
+
+“I don’t frighten you?” demanded Newman.
+
+“That’s for you to judge.”
+
+“No, it’s for you to judge, at your leisure. Think it over, feel
+yourself all round. I will give you an hour or two. I can’t give you
+more, for how do we know how fast they may be making Madame de Cintré a
+nun? Talk it over with your mother; let her judge whether she is
+frightened. I don’t believe she is as easily frightened, in general, as
+you; but you will see. I will go and wait in the village, at the inn,
+and I beg you to let me know as soon as possible. Say by three o’clock.
+A simple _yes_ or _no_ on paper will do. Only, you know, in case of a
+_yes_ I shall expect you, this time, to stick to your bargain.” And
+with this Newman opened the door and let himself out. The marquis did
+not move, and Newman, retiring, gave him another look. “At the inn, in
+the village,” he repeated. Then he turned away altogether and passed
+out of the house.
+
+He was extremely excited by what he had been doing, for it was
+inevitable that there should be a certain emotion in calling up the
+spectre of dishonor before a family a thousand years old. But he went
+back to the inn and contrived to wait there, deliberately, for the next
+two hours. He thought it more than probable that Urbain de Bellegarde
+would give no sign; for an answer to his challenge, in either sense,
+would be a confession of guilt. What he most expected was silence—in
+other words defiance. But he prayed that, as he imagined it, his shot
+might bring them down. It did bring, by three o’clock, a note,
+delivered by a footman; a note addressed in Urbain de Bellegarde’s
+handsome English hand. It ran as follows:—
+
+“I cannot deny myself the satisfaction of letting you know that I
+return to Paris, to-morrow, with my mother, in order that we may see my
+sister and confirm her in the resolution which is the most effectual
+reply to your audacious pertinacity.
+
+“HENRI-URBAIN DE BELLEGARDE.”
+
+
+Newman put the letter into his pocket, and continued his walk up and
+down the inn-parlor. He had spent most of his time, for the past week,
+in walking up and down. He continued to measure the length of the
+little _salle_ of the Armes de France until the day began to wane, when
+he went out to keep his rendezvous with Mrs. Bread. The path which led
+up the hill to the ruin was easy to find, and Newman in a short time
+had followed it to the top. He passed beneath the rugged arch of the
+castle wall, and looked about him in the early dusk for an old woman in
+black. The castle yard was empty, but the door of the church was open.
+Newman went into the little nave and of course found a deeper dusk than
+without. A couple of tapers, however, twinkled on the altar and just
+enabled him to perceive a figure seated by one of the pillars. Closer
+inspection helped him to recognize Mrs. Bread, in spite of the fact
+that she was dressed with unwonted splendor. She wore a large black
+silk bonnet, with imposing bows of crape, and an old black satin dress
+disposed itself in vaguely lustrous folds about her person. She had
+judged it proper to the occasion to appear in her stateliest apparel.
+She had been sitting with her eyes fixed upon the ground, but when
+Newman passed before her she looked up at him, and then she rose.
+
+“Are you a Catholic, Mrs. Bread?” he asked.
+
+“No, sir; I’m a good Church-of-England woman, very Low,” she answered.
+“But I thought I should be safer in here than outside. I was never out
+in the evening before, sir.”
+
+“We shall be safer,” said Newman, “where no one can hear us.” And he
+led the way back into the castle court and then followed a path beside
+the church, which he was sure must lead into another part of the ruin.
+He was not deceived. It wandered along the crest of the hill and
+terminated before a fragment of wall pierced by a rough aperture which
+had once been a door. Through this aperture Newman passed and found
+himself in a nook peculiarly favorable to quiet conversation, as
+probably many an earnest couple, otherwise assorted than our friends,
+had assured themselves. The hill sloped abruptly away, and on the
+remnant of its crest were scattered two or three fragments of stone.
+Beneath, over the plain, lay the gathered twilight, through which, in
+the near distance, gleamed two or three lights from the château. Mrs.
+Bread rustled slowly after her guide, and Newman, satisfying himself
+that one of the fallen stones was steady, proposed to her to sit upon
+it. She cautiously complied, and he placed himself upon another, near
+her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+“I am very much obliged to you for coming,” Newman said. “I hope it
+won’t get you into trouble.”
+
+“I don’t think I shall be missed. My lady, in these days, is not fond
+of having me about her.” This was said with a certain fluttered
+eagerness which increased Newman’s sense of having inspired the old
+woman with confidence.
+
+“From the first, you know,” he answered, “you took an interest in my
+prospects. You were on my side. That gratified me, I assure you. And
+now that you know what they have done to me, I am sure you are with me
+all the more.”
+
+“They have not done well—I must say it,” said Mrs. Bread. “But you
+mustn’t blame the poor countess; they pressed her hard.”
+
+“I would give a million of dollars to know what they did to her!” cried
+Newman.
+
+Mrs. Bread sat with a dull, oblique gaze fixed upon the lights of the
+château. “They worked on her feelings; they knew that was the way. She
+is a delicate creature. They made her feel wicked. She is only too
+good.”
+
+“Ah, they made her feel wicked,” said Newman, slowly; and then he
+repeated it. “They made her feel wicked,—they made her feel wicked.”
+The words seemed to him for the moment a vivid description of infernal
+ingenuity.
+
+“It was because she was so good that she gave up—poor sweet lady!”
+added Mrs. Bread.
+
+“But she was better to them than to me,” said Newman.
+
+“She was afraid,” said Mrs. Bread, very confidently; “she has always
+been afraid, or at least for a long time. That was the real trouble,
+sir. She was like a fair peach, I may say, with just one little speck.
+She had one little sad spot. You pushed her into the sunshine, sir, and
+it almost disappeared. Then they pulled her back into the shade and in
+a moment it began to spread. Before we knew it she was gone. She was a
+delicate creature.”
+
+This singular attestation of Madame de Cintré’s delicacy, for all its
+singularity, set Newman’s wound aching afresh. “I see,” he presently
+said; “she knew something bad about her mother.”
+
+“No, sir, she knew nothing,” said Mrs. Bread, holding her head very
+stiff and keeping her eyes fixed upon the glimmering windows of the
+château.
+
+“She guessed something, then, or suspected it.”
+
+“She was afraid to know,” said Mrs. Bread.
+
+“But _you_ know, at any rate,” said Newman.
+
+She slowly turned her vague eyes upon Newman, squeezing her hands
+together in her lap. “You are not quite faithful, sir. I thought it was
+to tell me about Mr. Valentin you asked me to come here.”
+
+“Oh, the more we talk of Mr. Valentin the better,” said Newman. “That’s
+exactly what I want. I was with him, as I told you, in his last hour.
+He was in a great deal of pain, but he was quite himself. You know what
+that means; he was bright and lively and clever.”
+
+“Oh, he would always be clever, sir,” said Mrs. Bread. “And did he know
+of your trouble?”
+
+“Yes, he guessed it of himself.”
+
+“And what did he say to it?”
+
+“He said it was a disgrace to his name—but it was not the first.”
+
+“Lord, Lord!” murmured Mrs. Bread.
+
+“He said that his mother and his brother had once put their heads
+together and invented something even worse.”
+
+“You shouldn’t have listened to that, sir.”
+
+“Perhaps not. But I _did_ listen, and I don’t forget it. Now I want to
+know what it is they did.”
+
+Mrs. Bread gave a soft moan. “And you have enticed me up into this
+strange place to tell you?”
+
+“Don’t be alarmed,” said Newman. “I won’t say a word that shall be
+disagreeable to you. Tell me as it suits you, and when it suits you.
+Only remember that it was Mr. Valentin’s last wish that you should.”
+
+“Did he say that?”
+
+“He said it with his last breath—‘Tell Mrs. Bread I told you to ask
+her.’”
+
+“Why didn’t he tell you himself?”
+
+“It was too long a story for a dying man; he had no breath left in his
+body. He could only say that he wanted me to know—that, wronged as I
+was, it was my right to know.”
+
+“But how will it help you, sir?” said Mrs. Bread.
+
+“That’s for me to decide. Mr. Valentin believed it would, and that’s
+why he told me. Your name was almost the last word he spoke.”
+
+Mrs. Bread was evidently awe-struck by this statement; she shook her
+clasped hands slowly up and down. “Excuse me, sir,” she said, “if I
+take a great liberty. Is it the solemn truth you are speaking? I _must_
+ask you that; must I not, sir?”
+
+“There’s no offense. It _is_ the solemn truth; I solemnly swear it. Mr.
+Valentin himself would certainly have told me more if he had been
+able.”
+
+“Oh, sir, if he knew more!”
+
+“Don’t you suppose he did?”
+
+“There’s no saying what he knew about anything,” said Mrs. Bread, with
+a mild head-shake. “He was so mightily clever. He could make you
+believe he knew things that he didn’t, and that he didn’t know others
+that he had better not have known.”
+
+“I suspect he knew something about his brother that kept the marquis
+civil to him,” Newman propounded; “he made the marquis feel him. What
+he wanted now was to put me in his place; he wanted to give me a chance
+to make the marquis feel _me_.”
+
+“Mercy on us!” cried the old waiting-woman, “how wicked we all are!”
+
+“I don’t know,” said Newman; “some of us are wicked, certainly. I am
+very angry, I am very sore, and I am very bitter, but I don’t know that
+I am wicked. I have been cruelly injured. They have hurt me, and I want
+to hurt them. I don’t deny that; on the contrary, I tell you plainly
+that it is the use I want to make of your secret.”
+
+Mrs. Bread seemed to hold her breath. “You want to publish them—you
+want to shame them?”
+
+“I want to bring them down,—down, down, down! I want to turn the tables
+upon them—I want to mortify them as they mortified me. They took me up
+into a high place and made me stand there for all the world to see me,
+and then they stole behind me and pushed me into this bottomless pit,
+where I lie howling and gnashing my teeth! I made a fool of myself
+before all their friends; but I shall make something worse of them.”
+
+This passionate sally, which Newman uttered with the greater fervor
+that it was the first time he had had a chance to say all this aloud,
+kindled two small sparks in Mrs. Bread’s fixed eyes. “I suppose you
+have a right to your anger, sir; but think of the dishonor you will
+draw down on Madame de Cintré.”
+
+“Madame de Cintré is buried alive,” cried Newman. “What are honor or
+dishonor to her? The door of the tomb is at this moment closing behind
+her.”
+
+“Yes, it’s most awful,” moaned Mrs. Bread.
+
+“She has moved off, like her brother Valentin, to give me room to work.
+It’s as if it were done on purpose.”
+
+“Surely,” said Mrs. Bread, apparently impressed by the ingenuity of
+this reflection. She was silent for some moments; then she added, “And
+would you bring my lady before the courts?”
+
+“The courts care nothing for my lady,” Newman replied. “If she has
+committed a crime, she will be nothing for the courts but a wicked old
+woman.”
+
+“And will they hang her, sir?”
+
+“That depends upon what she has done.” And Newman eyed Mrs. Bread
+intently.
+
+“It would break up the family most terribly, sir!”
+
+“It’s time such a family should be broken up!” said Newman, with a
+laugh.
+
+“And me at my age out of place, sir!” sighed Mrs. Bread.
+
+“Oh, I will take care of you! You shall come and live with me. You
+shall be my housekeeper, or anything you like. I will pension you for
+life.”
+
+“Dear, dear, sir, you think of everything.” And she seemed to fall
+a-brooding.
+
+Newman watched her a while, and then he said suddenly. “Ah, Mrs. Bread,
+you are too fond of my lady!”
+
+She looked at him as quickly. “I wouldn’t have you say that, sir. I
+don’t think it any part of my duty to be fond of my lady. I have served
+her faithfully this many a year; but if she were to die to-morrow, I
+believe, before Heaven I shouldn’t shed a tear for her.” Then, after a
+pause, “I have no reason to love her!” Mrs. Bread added. “The most she
+has done for me has been not to turn me out of the house.” Newman felt
+that decidedly his companion was more and more confidential—that if
+luxury is corrupting, Mrs. Bread’s conservative habits were already
+relaxed by the spiritual comfort of this preconcerted interview, in a
+remarkable locality, with a free-spoken millionaire. All his native
+shrewdness admonished him that his part was simply to let her take her
+time—let the charm of the occasion work. So he said nothing; he only
+looked at her kindly. Mrs. Bread sat nursing her lean elbows. “My lady
+once did me a great wrong,” she went on at last. “She has a terrible
+tongue when she is vexed. It was many a year ago, but I have never
+forgotten it. I have never mentioned it to a human creature; I have
+kept my grudge to myself. I dare say I have been wicked, but my grudge
+has grown old with me. It has grown good for nothing, too, I dare say;
+but it has lived along, as I have lived. It will die when I die,—not
+before!”
+
+“And what _is_ your grudge?” Newman asked.
+
+Mrs. Bread dropped her eyes and hesitated. “If I were a foreigner, sir,
+I should make less of telling you; it comes harder to a decent
+Englishwoman. But I sometimes think I have picked up too many foreign
+ways. What I was telling you belongs to a time when I was much younger
+and very different looking to what I am now. I had a very high color,
+sir, if you can believe it, indeed I was a very smart lass. My lady was
+younger, too, and the late marquis was youngest of all—I mean in the
+way he went on, sir; he had a very high spirit; he was a magnificent
+man. He was fond of his pleasure, like most foreigners, and it must be
+owned that he sometimes went rather below him to take it. My lady was
+often jealous, and, if you’ll believe it, sir, she did me the honor to
+be jealous of me. One day I had a red ribbon in my cap, and my lady
+flew out at me and ordered me to take it off. She accused me of putting
+it on to make the marquis look at me. I don’t know that I was
+impertinent, but I spoke up like an honest girl and didn’t count my
+words. A red ribbon indeed! As if it was my ribbons the marquis looked
+at! My lady knew afterwards that I was perfectly respectable, but she
+never said a word to show that she believed it. But the marquis did!”
+Mrs. Bread presently added, “I took off my red ribbon and put it away
+in a drawer, where I have kept it to this day. It’s faded now, it’s a
+very pale pink; but there it lies. My grudge has faded, too; the red
+has all gone out of it; but it lies here yet.” And Mrs. Bread stroked
+her black satin bodice.
+
+Newman listened with interest to this decent narrative, which seemed to
+have opened up the deeps of memory to his companion. Then, as she
+remained silent, and seemed to be losing herself in retrospective
+meditation upon her perfect respectability, he ventured upon a short
+cut to his goal. “So Madame de Bellegarde was jealous; I see. And M. de
+Bellegarde admired pretty women, without distinction of class. I
+suppose one mustn’t be hard upon him, for they probably didn’t all
+behave so properly as you. But years afterwards it could hardly have
+been jealousy that turned Madame de Bellegarde into a criminal.”
+
+Mrs. Bread gave a weary sigh. “We are using dreadful words, sir, but I
+don’t care now. I see you have your idea, and I have no will of my own.
+My will was the will of my children, as I called them; but I have lost
+my children now. They are dead—I may say it of both of them; and what
+should I care for the living? What is anyone in the house to me
+now—what am I to them? My lady objects to me—she has objected to me
+these thirty years. I should have been glad to be something to young
+Madame de Bellegarde, though I never was nurse to the present marquis.
+When he was a baby I was too young; they wouldn’t trust me with him.
+But his wife told her own maid, Mamselle Clarisse, the opinion she had
+of me. Perhaps you would like to hear it, sir.”
+
+“Oh, immensely,” said Newman.
+
+“She said that if I would sit in her children’s schoolroom I should do
+very well for a penwiper! When things have come to that I don’t think I
+need stand upon ceremony.”
+
+“Decidedly not,” said Newman. “Go on, Mrs. Bread.”
+
+Mrs. Bread, however, relapsed again into troubled dumbness, and all
+Newman could do was to fold his arms and wait. But at last she appeared
+to have set her memories in order. “It was when the late marquis was an
+old man and his eldest son had been two years married. It was when the
+time came on for marrying Mademoiselle Claire; that’s the way they talk
+of it here, you know, sir. The marquis’s health was bad; he was very
+much broken down. My lady had picked out M. de Cintré, for no good
+reason that I could see. But there are reasons, I very well know, that
+are beyond me, and you must be high in the world to understand them.
+Old M. de Cintré was very high, and my lady thought him almost as good
+as herself; that’s saying a good deal. Mr. Urbain took sides with his
+mother, as he always did. The trouble, I believe, was that my lady
+would give very little money, and all the other gentlemen asked more.
+It was only M. de Cintré that was satisfied. The Lord willed it he
+should have that one soft spot; it was the only one he had. He may have
+been very grand in his birth, and he certainly was very grand in his
+bows and speeches; but that was all the grandeur he had. I think he was
+like what I have heard of comedians; not that I have ever seen one. But
+I know he painted his face. He might paint it all he would; he could
+never make me like it! The marquis couldn’t abide him, and declared
+that sooner than take such a husband as that Mademoiselle Claire should
+take none at all. He and my lady had a great scene; it came even to our
+ears in the servants’ hall. It was not their first quarrel, if the
+truth must be told. They were not a loving couple, but they didn’t
+often come to words, because, I think, neither of them thought the
+other’s doings worth the trouble. My lady had long ago got over her
+jealousy, and she had taken to indifference. In this, I must say, they
+were well matched. The marquis was very easy-going; he had a most
+gentlemanly temper. He got angry only once a year, but then it was very
+bad. He always took to bed directly afterwards. This time I speak of he
+took to bed as usual, but he never got up again. I’m afraid the poor
+gentleman was paying for his dissipation; isn’t it true they mostly do,
+sir, when they get old? My lady and Mr. Urbain kept quiet, but I know
+my lady wrote letters to M. de Cintré. The marquis got worse and the
+doctors gave him up. My lady, she gave him up too, and if the truth
+must be told, she gave him up gladly. When once he was out of the way
+she could do what she pleased with her daughter, and it was all
+arranged that my poor innocent child should be handed over to M. de
+Cintré. You don’t know what Mademoiselle was in those days, sir; she
+was the sweetest young creature in France, and knew as little of what
+was going on around her as the lamb does of the butcher. I used to
+nurse the marquis, and I was always in his room. It was here at
+Fleurières, in the autumn. We had a doctor from Paris, who came and
+stayed two or three weeks in the house. Then there came two others, and
+there was a consultation, and these two others, as I said, declared
+that the marquis couldn’t be saved. After this they went off, pocketing
+their fees, but the other one stayed and did what he could. The marquis
+himself kept crying out that he wouldn’t die, that he didn’t want to
+die, that he would live and look after his daughter. Mademoiselle
+Claire and the viscount—that was Mr. Valentin, you know—were both in
+the house. The doctor was a clever man,—that I could see myself,—and I
+think he believed that the marquis might get well. We took good care of
+him, he and I, between us, and one day, when my lady had almost ordered
+her mourning, my patient suddenly began to mend. He got better and
+better, till the doctor said he was out of danger. What was killing him
+was the dreadful fits of pain in his stomach. But little by little they
+stopped, and the poor marquis began to make his jokes again. The doctor
+found something that gave him great comfort—some white stuff that we
+kept in a great bottle on the chimney-piece. I used to give it to the
+marquis through a glass tube; it always made him easier. Then the
+doctor went away, after telling me to keep on giving him the mixture
+whenever he was bad. After that there was a little doctor from
+Poitiers, who came every day. So we were alone in the house—my lady and
+her poor husband and their three children. Young Madame de Bellegarde
+had gone away, with her little girl, to her mothers. You know she is
+very lively, and her maid told me that she didn’t like to be where
+people were dying.” Mrs. Bread paused a moment, and then she went on
+with the same quiet consistency. “I think you have guessed, sir, that
+when the marquis began to turn my lady was disappointed.” And she
+paused again, bending upon Newman a face which seemed to grow whiter as
+the darkness settled down upon them.
+
+Newman had listened eagerly—with an eagerness greater even than that
+with which he had bent his ear to Valentin de Bellegarde’s last words.
+Every now and then, as his companion looked up at him, she reminded him
+of an ancient tabby cat, protracting the enjoyment of a dish of milk.
+Even her triumph was measured and decorous; the faculty of exultation
+had been chilled by disuse. She presently continued. “Late one night I
+was sitting by the marquis in his room, the great red room in the west
+tower. He had been complaining a little, and I gave him a spoonful of
+the doctor’s dose. My lady had been there in the early part of the
+evening; she sat far more than an hour by his bed. Then she went away
+and left me alone. After midnight she came back, and her eldest son was
+with her. They went to the bed and looked at the marquis, and my lady
+took hold of his hand. Then she turned to me and said he was not so
+well; I remember how the marquis, without saying anything, lay staring
+at her. I can see his white face, at this moment, in the great black
+square between the bed-curtains. I said I didn’t think he was very bad;
+and she told me to go to bed—she would sit a while with him. When the
+marquis saw me going he gave a sort of groan, and called out to me not
+to leave him; but Mr. Urbain opened the door for me and pointed the way
+out. The present marquis—perhaps you have noticed, sir—has a very proud
+way of giving orders, and I was there to take orders. I went to my
+room, but I wasn’t easy; I couldn’t tell you why. I didn’t undress; I
+sat there waiting and listening. For what, would you have said, sir? I
+couldn’t have told you; for surely a poor gentleman might be
+comfortable with his wife and his son. It was as if I expected to hear
+the marquis moaning after me again. I listened, but I heard nothing. It
+was a very still night; I never knew a night so still. At last the very
+stillness itself seemed to frighten me, and I came out of my room and
+went very softly downstairs. In the anteroom, outside of the marquis’s
+chamber, I found Mr. Urbain walking up and down. He asked me what I
+wanted, and I said I came back to relieve my lady. He said _he_ would
+relieve my lady, and ordered me back to bed; but as I stood there,
+unwilling to turn away, the door of the room opened and my lady came
+out. I noticed she was very pale; she was very strange. She looked a
+moment at the count and at me, and then she held out her arms to the
+count. He went to her, and she fell upon him and hid her face. I went
+quickly past her into the room and to the marquis’s bed. He was lying
+there, very white, with his eyes shut, like a corpse. I took hold of
+his hand and spoke to him, and he felt to me like a dead man. Then I
+turned round; my lady and Mr. Urbain were there. ‘My poor Bread,’ said
+my lady, ‘M. le Marquis is gone.’ Mr. Urbain knelt down by the bed and
+said softly, ‘_Mon père, mon père_.’ I thought it wonderful strange,
+and asked my lady what in the world had happened, and why she hadn’t
+called me. She said nothing had happened; that she had only been
+sitting there with the marquis, very quiet. She had closed her eyes,
+thinking she might sleep, and she had slept, she didn’t know how long.
+When she woke up he was dead. ‘It’s death, my son, it’s death,’ she
+said to the count. Mr. Urbain said they must have the doctor,
+immediately, from Poitiers, and that he would ride off and fetch him.
+He kissed his father’s face, and then he kissed his mother and went
+away. My lady and I stood there at the bedside. As I looked at the poor
+marquis it came into my head that he was not dead, that he was in a
+kind of swoon. And then my lady repeated, ‘My poor Bread, it’s death,
+it’s death;’ and I said, ‘Yes, my lady, it’s certainly death.’ I said
+just the opposite to what I believed; it was my notion. Then my lady
+said we must wait for the doctor, and we sat there and waited. It was a
+long time; the poor marquis neither stirred nor changed. ‘I have seen
+death before,’ said my lady, ‘and it’s terribly like this.’ ‘Yes,
+please, my lady,’ said I; and I kept thinking. The night wore away
+without the count’s coming back, and my lady began to be frightened.
+She was afraid he had had an accident in the dark, or met with some
+wild people. At last she got so restless that she went below to watch
+in the court for her son’s return. I sat there alone and the marquis
+never stirred.”
+
+Here Mrs. Bread paused again, and the most artistic of romancers could
+not have been more effective. Newman made a movement as if he were
+turning over the page of a novel. “So he _was_ dead!” he exclaimed.
+
+“Three days afterwards he was in his grave,” said Mrs. Bread,
+sententiously. “In a little while I went away to the front of the house
+and looked out into the court, and there, before long, I saw Mr. Urbain
+ride in alone. I waited a bit, to hear him come upstairs with his
+mother, but they stayed below, and I went back to the marquis’s room. I
+went to the bed and held up the light to him, but I don’t know why I
+didn’t let the candlestick fall. The marquis’s eyes were open—open
+wide! they were staring at me. I knelt down beside him and took his
+hands, and begged him to tell me, in the name of wonder, whether he was
+alive or dead. Still he looked at me a long time, and then he made me a
+sign to put my ear close to him: ‘I am dead,’ he said, ‘I am dead. The
+marquise has killed me.’ I was all in a tremble; I didn’t understand
+him. He seemed both a man and a corpse, if you can fancy, sir. ‘But
+you’ll get well now, sir,’ I said. And then he whispered again, ever so
+weak; ‘I wouldn’t get well for a kingdom. I wouldn’t be that woman’s
+husband again.’ And then he said more; he said she had murdered him. I
+asked him what she had done to him, but he only replied, ‘Murder,
+murder. And she’ll kill my daughter,’ he said; ‘my poor unhappy child.’
+And he begged me to prevent that, and then he said that he was dying,
+that he was dead. I was afraid to move or to leave him; I was almost
+dead myself. All of a sudden he asked me to get a pencil and write for
+him; and then I had to tell him that I couldn’t manage a pencil. He
+asked me to hold him up in bed while he wrote himself, and I said he
+could never, never do such a thing. But he seemed to have a kind of
+terror that gave him strength. I found a pencil in the room and a piece
+of paper and a book, and I put the paper on the book and the pencil
+into his hand, and moved the candle near him. You will think all this
+very strange, sir; and very strange it was. The strangest part of it
+was that I believed he was dying, and that I was eager to help him to
+write. I sat on the bed and put my arm round him, and held him up. I
+felt very strong; I believe I could have lifted him and carried him. It
+was a wonder how he wrote, but he did write, in a big scratching hand;
+he almost covered one side of the paper. It seemed a long time; I
+suppose it was three or four minutes. He was groaning, terribly, all
+the while. Then he said it was ended, and I let him down upon his
+pillows and he gave me the paper and told me to fold it, and hide it,
+and give it to those who would act upon it. ‘Whom do you mean?’ I said.
+‘Who are those who will act upon it?’ But he only groaned, for an
+answer; he couldn’t speak, for weakness. In a few minutes he told me to
+go and look at the bottle on the chimney-piece. I knew the bottle he
+meant; the white stuff that was good for his stomach. I went and looked
+at it, but it was empty. When I came back his eyes were open and he was
+staring at me; but soon he closed them and he said no more. I hid the
+paper in my dress; I didn’t look at what was written upon it, though I
+can read very well, sir, if I haven’t any handwriting. I sat down near
+the bed, but it was nearly half an hour before my lady and the count
+came in. The marquis looked as he did when they left him, and I never
+said a word about his having been otherwise. Mr. Urbain said that the
+doctor had been called to a person in childbirth, but that he promised
+to set out for Fleurières immediately. In another half hour he arrived,
+and as soon as he had examined the marquis he said that we had had a
+false alarm. The poor gentleman was very low, but he was still living.
+I watched my lady and her son when he said this, to see if they looked
+at each other, and I am obliged to admit that they didn’t. The doctor
+said there was no reason he should die; he had been going on so well.
+And then he wanted to know how he had suddenly fallen off; he had left
+him so very hearty. My lady told her little story again—what she had
+told Mr. Urbain and me—and the doctor looked at her and said nothing.
+He stayed all the next day at the château, and hardly left the marquis.
+I was always there. Mademoiselle and Mr. Valentin came and looked at
+their father, but he never stirred. It was a strange, deathly stupor.
+My lady was always about; her face was as white as her husband’s, and
+she looked very proud, as I had seen her look when her orders or her
+wishes had been disobeyed. It was as if the poor marquis had defied
+her; and the way she took it made me afraid of her. The apothecary from
+Poitiers kept the marquis along through the day, and we waited for the
+other doctor from Paris, who, as I told you, had been staying at
+Fleurières. They had telegraphed for him early in the morning, and in
+the evening he arrived. He talked a bit outside with the doctor from
+Poitiers, and then they came in to see the marquis together. I was with
+him, and so was Mr. Urbain. My lady had been to receive the doctor from
+Paris, and she didn’t come back with him into the room. He sat down by
+the marquis; I can see him there now, with his hand on the marquis’s
+wrist, and Mr. Urbain watching him with a little looking-glass in his
+hand. ‘I’m sure he’s better,’ said the little doctor from Poitiers;
+‘I’m sure he’ll come back.’ A few moments after he had said this the
+marquis opened his eyes, as if he were waking up, and looked at us,
+from one to the other. I saw him look at me very softly, as you’d say.
+At the same moment my lady came in on tiptoe; she came up to the bed
+and put in her head between me and the count. The marquis saw her and
+gave a long, most wonderful moan. He said something we couldn’t
+understand, and he seemed to have a kind of spasm. He shook all over
+and then closed his eyes, and the doctor jumped up and took hold of my
+lady. He held her for a moment a bit roughly. The marquis was stone
+dead! This time there were those there that knew.”
+
+Newman felt as if he had been reading by starlight the report of highly
+important evidence in a great murder case. “And the paper—the paper!”
+he said, excitedly. “What was written upon it?”
+
+“I can’t tell you, sir,” answered Mrs. Bread. “I couldn’t read it; it
+was in French.”
+
+“But could no one else read it?”
+
+“I never asked a human creature.”
+
+“No one has ever seen it?”
+
+“If you see it you’ll be the first.”
+
+Newman seized the old woman’s hand in both his own and pressed it
+vigorously. “I thank you ever so much for that,” he cried. “I want to
+be the first, I want it to be my property and no one else’s! You’re the
+wisest old woman in Europe. And what did you do with the paper?” This
+information had made him feel extraordinarily strong. “Give it to me
+quick!”
+
+Mrs. Bread got up with a certain majesty. “It is not so easy as that,
+sir. If you want the paper, you must wait.”
+
+“But waiting is horrible, you know,” urged Newman.
+
+“I am sure _I_ have waited; I have waited these many years,” said Mrs.
+Bread.
+
+“That is very true. You have waited for me. I won’t forget it. And yet,
+how comes it you didn’t do as M. de Bellegarde said, show the paper to
+someone?”
+
+“To whom should I show it?” answered Mrs. Bread, mournfully. “It was
+not easy to know, and many’s the night I have lain awake thinking of
+it. Six months afterwards, when they married Mademoiselle to her
+vicious old husband, I was very near bringing it out. I thought it was
+my duty to do something with it, and yet I was mightily afraid. I
+didn’t know what was written on the paper or how bad it might be, and
+there was no one I could trust enough to ask. And it seemed to me a
+cruel kindness to do that sweet young creature, letting her know that
+her father had written her mother down so shamefully; for that’s what
+he did, I suppose. I thought she would rather be unhappy with her
+husband than be unhappy that way. It was for her and for my dear Mr.
+Valentin I kept quiet. Quiet I call it, but for me it was a weary
+quietness. It worried me terribly, and it changed me altogether. But
+for others I held my tongue, and no one, to this hour, knows what
+passed between the poor marquis and me.”
+
+“But evidently there were suspicions,” said Newman. “Where did Mr.
+Valentin get his ideas?”
+
+“It was the little doctor from Poitiers. He was very ill-satisfied, and
+he made a great talk. He was a sharp Frenchman, and coming to the
+house, as he did day after day, I suppose he saw more than he seemed to
+see. And indeed the way the poor marquis went off as soon as his eyes
+fell on my lady was a most shocking sight for anyone. The medical
+gentleman from Paris was much more accommodating, and he hushed up the
+other. But for all he could do Mr. Valentin and Mademoiselle heard
+something; they knew their father’s death was somehow against nature.
+Of course they couldn’t accuse their mother, and, as I tell you, I was
+as dumb as that stone. Mr. Valentin used to look at me sometimes, and
+his eyes seemed to shine, as if he were thinking of asking me
+something. I was dreadfully afraid he would speak, and I always looked
+away and went about my business. If I were to tell him, I was sure he
+would hate me afterwards, and that I could never have borne. Once I
+went up to him and took a great liberty; I kissed him, as I had kissed
+him when he was a child. ‘You oughtn’t to look so sad, sir,’ I said;
+‘believe your poor old Bread. Such a gallant, handsome young man can
+have nothing to be sad about.’ And I think he understood me; he
+understood that I was begging off, and he made up his mind in his own
+way. He went about with his unasked question in his mind, as I did with
+my untold tale; we were both afraid of bringing dishonor on a great
+house. And it was the same with Mademoiselle. She didn’t know what
+happened; she wouldn’t know. My lady and Mr. Urbain asked me no
+questions because they had no reason. I was as still as a mouse. When I
+was younger my lady thought me a hussy, and now she thought me a fool.
+How should I have any ideas?”
+
+“But you say the little doctor from Poitiers made a talk,” said Newman.
+“Did no one take it up?”
+
+“I heard nothing of it, sir. They are always talking scandal in these
+foreign countries you may have noticed—and I suppose they shook their
+heads over Madame de Bellegarde. But after all, what could they say?
+The marquis had been ill, and the marquis had died; he had as good a
+right to die as anyone. The doctor couldn’t say he had not come
+honestly by his cramps. The next year the little doctor left the place
+and bought a practice in Bordeaux, and if there has been any gossip it
+died out. And I don’t think there could have been much gossip about my
+lady that anyone would listen to. My lady is so very respectable.”
+
+Newman, at this last affirmation, broke into an immense, resounding
+laugh. Mrs. Bread had begun to move away from the spot where they were
+sitting, and he helped her through the aperture in the wall and along
+the homeward path. “Yes,” he said, “my lady’s respectability is
+delicious; it will be a great crash!” They reached the empty space in
+front of the church, where they stopped a moment, looking at each other
+with something of an air of closer fellowship—like two sociable
+conspirators. “But what was it,” said Newman, “what was it she did to
+her husband? She didn’t stab him or poison him.”
+
+“I don’t know, sir; no one saw it.”
+
+“Unless it was Mr. Urbain. You say he was walking up and down, outside
+the room. Perhaps he looked through the keyhole. But no; I think that
+with his mother he would take it on trust.”
+
+“You may be sure I have often thought of it,” said Mrs. Bread. “I am
+sure she didn’t touch him with her hands. I saw nothing on him,
+anywhere. I believe it was in this way. He had a fit of his great pain,
+and he asked her for his medicine. Instead of giving it to him she went
+and poured it away, before his eyes. Then he saw what she meant, and,
+weak and helpless as he was, he was frightened, he was terrified. ‘You
+want to kill me,’ he said. ‘Yes, M. le Marquis, I want to kill you,’
+says my lady, and sits down and fixes her eyes upon him. You know my
+lady’s eyes, I think, sir; it was with them she killed him; it was with
+the terrible strong will she put into them. It was like a frost on
+flowers.”
+
+“Well, you are a very intelligent woman; you have shown great
+discretion,” said Newman. “I shall value your services as housekeeper
+extremely.”
+
+They had begun to descend the hill, and Mrs. Bread said nothing until
+they reached the foot. Newman strolled lightly beside her; his head was
+thrown back and he was gazing at all the stars; he seemed to himself to
+be riding his vengeance along the Milky Way. “So you are serious, sir,
+about that?” said Mrs. Bread, softly.
+
+“About your living with me? Why of course I will take care of you to
+the end of your days. You can’t live with those people any longer. And
+you oughtn’t to, you know, after this. You give me the paper, and you
+move away.”
+
+“It seems very flighty in me to be taking a new place at this time of
+life,” observed Mrs. Bread, lugubriously. “But if you are going to turn
+the house upside down, I would rather be out of it.”
+
+“Oh,” said Newman, in the cheerful tone of a man who feels rich in
+alternatives. “I don’t think I shall bring in the constables, if that’s
+what you mean. Whatever Madame de Bellegarde did, I am afraid the law
+can’t take hold of it. But I am glad of that; it leaves it altogether
+to me!”
+
+“You are a mighty bold gentleman, sir,” murmured Mrs. Bread, looking at
+him round the edge of her great bonnet.
+
+He walked with her back to the château; the curfew had tolled for the
+laborious villagers of Fleurières, and the street was unlighted and
+empty. She promised him that he should have the marquis’s manuscript in
+half an hour. Mrs. Bread choosing not to go in by the great gate, they
+passed round by a winding lane to a door in the wall of the park, of
+which she had the key, and which would enable her to enter the château
+from behind. Newman arranged with her that he should await outside the
+wall her return with the coveted document.
+
+She went in, and his half hour in the dusky lane seemed very long. But
+he had plenty to think about. At last the door in the wall opened and
+Mrs. Bread stood there, with one hand on the latch and the other
+holding out a scrap of white paper, folded small. In a moment he was
+master of it, and it had passed into his waistcoat pocket. “Come and
+see me in Paris,” he said; “we are to settle your future, you know; and
+I will translate poor M. de Bellegarde’s French to you.” Never had he
+felt so grateful as at this moment for M. Nioche’s instructions.
+
+Mrs. Bread’s dull eyes had followed the disappearance of the paper, and
+she gave a heavy sigh. “Well, you have done what you would with me,
+sir, and I suppose you will do it again. You _must_ take care of me
+now. You are a terribly positive gentleman.”
+
+“Just now,” said Newman, “I’m a terribly impatient gentleman!” And he
+bade her good-night and walked rapidly back to the inn. He ordered his
+vehicle to be prepared for his return to Poitiers, and then he shut the
+door of the common salle and strode toward the solitary lamp on the
+chimney-piece. He pulled out the paper and quickly unfolded it. It was
+covered with pencil-marks, which at first, in the feeble light, seemed
+indistinct. But Newman’s fierce curiosity forced a meaning from the
+tremulous signs. The English of them was as follows:—
+
+“My wife has tried to kill me, and she has done it; I am dying, dying
+horribly. It is to marry my dear daughter to M. de Cintré. With all my
+soul I protest,—I forbid it. I am not insane,—ask the doctors, ask Mrs.
+B——. It was alone with me here, to-night; she attacked me and put me to
+death. It is murder, if murder ever was. Ask the doctors.
+
+“HENRI-URBAIN DE BELLEGARDE”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+Newman returned to Paris the second day after his interview with Mrs.
+Bread. The morrow he had spent at Poitiers, reading over and over again
+the little document which he had lodged in his pocket-book, and
+thinking what he would do in the circumstances and how he would do it.
+He would not have said that Poitiers was an amusing place; yet the day
+seemed very short. Domiciled once more in the Boulevard Haussmann, he
+walked over to the Rue de l’Université and inquired of Madame de
+Bellegarde’s portress whether the marquise had come back. The portress
+told him that she had arrived, with M. le Marquis, on the preceding
+day, and further informed him that if he desired to enter, Madame de
+Bellegarde and her son were both at home. As she said these words the
+little white-faced old woman who peered out of the dusky gate-house of
+the Hôtel de Bellegarde gave a small wicked smile—a smile which seemed
+to Newman to mean, “Go in if you dare!” She was evidently versed in the
+current domestic history; she was placed where she could feel the pulse
+of the house. Newman stood a moment, twisting his moustache and looking
+at her; then he abruptly turned away. But this was not because he was
+afraid to go in—though he doubted whether, if he did so, he should be
+able to make his way, unchallenged, into the presence of Madame de
+Cintré’s relatives. Confidence—excessive confidence, perhaps—quite as
+much as timidity prompted his retreat. He was nursing his thunderbolt;
+he loved it; he was unwilling to part with it. He seemed to be holding
+it aloft in the rumbling, vaguely-flashing air, directly over the heads
+of his victims, and he fancied he could see their pale, upturned faces.
+Few specimens of the human countenance had ever given him such pleasure
+as these, lighted in the lurid fashion I have hinted at, and he was
+disposed to sip the cup of contemplative revenge in a leisurely
+fashion. It must be added, too, that he was at a loss to see exactly
+how he could arrange to witness the operation of his thunder. To send
+in his card to Madame de Bellegarde would be a waste of ceremony; she
+would certainly decline to receive him. On the other hand he could not
+force his way into her presence. It annoyed him keenly to think that he
+might be reduced to the blind satisfaction of writing her a letter; but
+he consoled himself in a measure with the reflection that a letter
+might lead to an interview. He went home, and feeling rather
+tired—nursing a vengeance was, it must be confessed, a rather fatiguing
+process; it took a good deal out of one—flung himself into one of his
+brocaded fauteuils, stretched his legs, thrust his hands into his
+pockets, and, while he watched the reflected sunset fading from the
+ornate house-tops on the opposite side of the Boulevard, began mentally
+to compose a cool epistle to Madame de Bellegarde. While he was so
+occupied his servant threw open the door and announced ceremoniously,
+“Madame Brett!”
+
+Newman roused himself, expectantly, and in a few moments perceived upon
+his threshold the worthy woman with whom he had conversed to such good
+purpose on the starlit hill-top of Fleurières. Mrs. Bread had made for
+this visit the same toilet as for her former expedition. Newman was
+struck with her distinguished appearance. His lamp was not lit, and as
+her large, grave face gazed at him through the light dusk from under
+the shadow of her ample bonnet, he felt the incongruity of such a
+person presenting herself as a servant. He greeted her with high
+geniality and bade her come in and sit down and make herself
+comfortable. There was something which might have touched the springs
+both of mirth and of melancholy in the ancient maidenliness with which
+Mrs. Bread endeavored to comply with these directions. She was not
+playing at being fluttered, which would have been simply ridiculous;
+she was doing her best to carry herself as a person so humble that, for
+her, even embarrassment would have been pretentious; but evidently she
+had never dreamed of its being in her horoscope to pay a visit, at
+night-fall, to a friendly single gentleman who lived in
+theatrical-looking rooms on one of the new Boulevards.
+
+“I truly hope I am not forgetting my place, sir,” she murmured.
+
+“Forgetting your place?” cried Newman. “Why, you are remembering it.
+This is your place, you know. You are already in my service; your
+wages, as housekeeper, began a fortnight ago. I can tell you my house
+wants keeping! Why don’t you take off your bonnet and stay?”
+
+“Take off my bonnet?” said Mrs. Bread, with timid literalness. “Oh,
+sir, I haven’t my cap. And with your leave, sir, I couldn’t keep house
+in my best gown.”
+
+“Never mind your gown,” said Newman, cheerfully. “You shall have a
+better gown than that.”
+
+Mrs. Bread stared solemnly and then stretched her hands over her
+lustreless satin skirt, as if the perilous side of her situation were
+defining itself. “Oh, sir, I am fond of my own clothes,” she murmured.
+
+“I hope you have left those wicked people, at any rate,” said Newman.
+
+“Well, sir, here I am!” said Mrs. Bread. “That’s all I can tell you.
+Here I sit, poor Catherine Bread. It’s a strange place for me to be. I
+don’t know myself; I never supposed I was so bold. But indeed, sir, I
+have gone as far as my own strength will bear me.”
+
+“Oh, come, Mrs. Bread,” said Newman, almost caressingly, “don’t make
+yourself uncomfortable. Now’s the time to feel lively, you know.”
+
+She began to speak again with a trembling voice. “I think it would be
+more respectable if I could—if I could”—and her voice trembled to a
+pause.
+
+“If you could give up this sort of thing altogether?” said Newman
+kindly, trying to anticipate her meaning, which he supposed might be a
+wish to retire from service.
+
+“If I could give up everything, sir! All I should ask is a decent
+Protestant burial.”
+
+“Burial!” cried Newman, with a burst of laughter. “Why, to bury you now
+would be a sad piece of extravagance. It’s only rascals who have to be
+buried to get respectable. Honest folks like you and me can live our
+time out—and live together. Come! Did you bring your baggage?”
+
+“My box is locked and corded; but I haven’t yet spoken to my lady.”
+
+“Speak to her, then, and have done with it. I should like to have your
+chance!” cried Newman.
+
+“I would gladly give it you, sir. I have passed some weary hours in my
+lady’s dressing-room; but this will be one of the longest. She will tax
+me with ingratitude.”
+
+“Well,” said Newman, “so long as you can tax her with murder—”
+
+“Oh, sir, I can’t; not I,” sighed Mrs. Bread.
+
+“You don’t mean to say anything about it? So much the better. Leave
+that to me.”
+
+“If she calls me a thankless old woman,” said Mrs. Bread, “I shall have
+nothing to say. But it is better so,” she softly added. “She shall be
+my lady to the last. That will be more respectable.”
+
+“And then you will come to me and I shall be your gentleman,” said
+Newman; “that will be more respectable still!”
+
+Mrs. Bread rose, with lowered eyes, and stood a moment; then, looking
+up, she rested her eyes upon Newman’s face. The disordered proprieties
+were somehow settling to rest. She looked at Newman so long and so
+fixedly, with such a dull, intense devotedness, that he himself might
+have had a pretext for embarrassment. At last she said gently, “You are
+not looking well, sir.”
+
+“That’s natural enough,” said Newman. “I have nothing to feel well
+about. To be very indifferent and very fierce, very dull and very
+jovial, very sick and very lively, all at once,—why, it rather mixes
+one up.”
+
+Mrs. Bread gave a noiseless sigh. “I can tell you something that will
+make you feel duller still, if you want to feel all one way. About
+Madame de Cintré.”
+
+“What can you tell me?” Newman demanded. “Not that you have seen her?”
+
+She shook her head. “No, indeed, sir, nor ever shall. That’s the
+dullness of it. Nor my lady. Nor M. de Bellegarde.”
+
+“You mean that she is kept so close.”
+
+“Close, close,” said Mrs. Bread, very softly.
+
+These words, for an instant, seemed to check the beating of Newman’s
+heart. He leaned back in his chair, staring up at the old woman. “They
+have tried to see her, and she wouldn’t—she couldn’t?”
+
+“She refused—forever! I had it from my lady’s own maid,” said Mrs.
+Bread, “who had it from my lady. To speak of it to such a person my
+lady must have felt the shock. Madame de Cintré won’t see them now, and
+now is her only chance. A while hence she will have no chance.”
+
+“You mean the other women—the mothers, the daughters, the sisters; what
+is it they call them?—won’t let her?”
+
+“It is what they call the rule of the house,—or of the order, I
+believe,” said Mrs. Bread. “There is no rule so strict as that of the
+Carmelites. The bad women in the reformatories are fine ladies to them.
+They wear old brown cloaks—so the _femme de chambre_ told me—that you
+wouldn’t use for a horse blanket. And the poor countess was so fond of
+soft-feeling dresses; she would never have anything stiff! They sleep
+on the ground,” Mrs. Bread went on; “they are no better, no
+better,”—and she hesitated for a comparison,—“they are no better than
+tinkers’ wives. They give up everything, down to the very name their
+poor old nurses called them by. They give up father and mother, brother
+and sister,—to say nothing of other persons,” Mrs. Bread delicately
+added. “They wear a shroud under their brown cloaks and a rope round
+their waists, and they get up on winter nights and go off into cold
+places to pray to the Virgin Mary. The Virgin Mary is a hard mistress!”
+
+Mrs. Bread, dwelling on these terrible facts, sat dry-eyed and pale,
+with her hands clasped in her satin lap. Newman gave a melancholy groan
+and fell forward, leaning his head on his hands. There was a long
+silence, broken only by the ticking of the great gilded clock on the
+chimney-piece.
+
+“Where is this place—where is the convent?” Newman asked at last,
+looking up.
+
+“There are two houses,” said Mrs. Bread. “I found out; I thought you
+would like to know—though it’s poor comfort, I think. One is in the
+Avenue de Messine; they have learned that Madame de Cintré is there.
+The other is in the Rue d’Enfer. That’s a terrible name; I suppose you
+know what it means.”
+
+Newman got up and walked away to the end of his long room. When he came
+back Mrs. Bread had got up, and stood by the fire with folded hands.
+“Tell me this,” he said. “Can I get near her—even if I don’t see her?
+Can I look through a grating, or some such thing, at the place where
+she is?”
+
+It is said that all women love a lover, and Mrs. Bread’s sense of the
+pre-established harmony which kept servants in their “place,” even as
+planets in their orbits (not that Mrs. Bread had ever consciously
+likened herself to a planet), barely availed to temper the maternal
+melancholy with which she leaned her head on one side and gazed at her
+new employer. She probably felt for the moment as if, forty years
+before, she had held him also in her arms. “That wouldn’t help you,
+sir. It would only make her seem farther away.”
+
+“I want to go there, at all events,” said Newman. “Avenue de Messine,
+you say? And what is it they call themselves?”
+
+“Carmelites,” said Mrs. Bread.
+
+“I shall remember that.”
+
+Mrs. Bread hesitated a moment, and then, “It’s my duty to tell you
+this, sir,” she went on. “The convent has a chapel, and some people are
+admitted on Sunday to the mass. You don’t see the poor creatures that
+are shut up there, but I am told you can hear them sing. It’s a wonder
+they have any heart for singing! Some Sunday I shall make bold to go.
+It seems to me I should know _her_ voice in fifty.”
+
+Newman looked at his visitor very gratefully; then he held out his hand
+and shook hers. “Thank you,” he said. “If anyone can get in, I will.” A
+moment later Mrs. Bread proposed, deferentially, to retire, but he
+checked her and put a lighted candle into her hand. “There are half a
+dozen rooms there I don’t use,” he said, pointing through an open door.
+“Go and look at them and take your choice. You can live in the one you
+like best.” From this bewildering opportunity Mrs. Bread at first
+recoiled; but finally, yielding to Newman’s gentle, reassuring push,
+she wandered off into the dusk with her tremulous taper. She remained
+absent a quarter of an hour, during which Newman paced up and down,
+stopped occasionally to look out of the window at the lights on the
+Boulevard, and then resumed his walk. Mrs. Bread’s relish for her
+investigation apparently increased as she proceeded; but at last she
+reappeared and deposited her candlestick on the chimney-piece.
+
+“Well, have you picked one out?” asked Newman.
+
+“A room, sir? They are all too fine for a dingy old body like me. There
+isn’t one that hasn’t a bit of gilding.”
+
+“It’s only tinsel, Mrs. Bread,” said Newman. “If you stay there a while
+it will all peel off of itself.” And he gave a dismal smile.
+
+“Oh, sir, there are things enough peeling off already!” rejoined Mrs.
+Bread, with a head-shake. “Since I was there I thought I would look
+about me. I don’t believe you know, sir. The corners are most dreadful.
+You do want a housekeeper, that you do; you want a tidy Englishwoman
+that isn’t above taking hold of a broom.”
+
+Newman assured her that he suspected, if he had not measured, his
+domestic abuses, and that to reform them was a mission worthy of her
+powers. She held her candlestick aloft again and looked around the
+salon with compassionate glances; then she intimated that she accepted
+the mission, and that its sacred character would sustain her in her
+rupture with Madame de Bellegarde. With this she curtsied herself away.
+
+She came back the next day with her worldly goods, and Newman, going
+into his drawing-room, found her upon her aged knees before a divan,
+sewing up some detached fringe. He questioned her as to her
+leave-taking with her late mistress, and she said it had proved easier
+than she feared. “I was perfectly civil, sir, but the Lord helped me to
+remember that a good woman has no call to tremble before a bad one.”
+
+“I should think so!” cried Newman. “And does she know you have come to
+me?”
+
+“She asked me where I was going, and I mentioned your name,” said Mrs.
+Bread.
+
+“What did she say to that?”
+
+“She looked at me very hard, and she turned very red. Then she bade me
+leave her. I was all ready to go, and I had got the coachman, who is an
+Englishman, to bring down my poor box and to fetch me a cab. But when I
+went down myself to the gate I found it closed. My lady had sent orders
+to the porter not to let me pass, and by the same orders the porter’s
+wife—she is a dreadful sly old body—had gone out in a cab to fetch home
+M. de Bellegarde from his club.”
+
+Newman slapped his knee. “She _is_ scared! she _is_ scared!” he cried,
+exultantly.
+
+“I was frightened too, sir,” said Mrs. Bread, “but I was also mightily
+vexed. I took it very high with the porter and asked him by what right
+he used violence to an honorable Englishwoman who had lived in the
+house for thirty years before he was heard of. Oh, sir, I was very
+grand, and I brought the man down. He drew his bolts and let me out,
+and I promised the cabman something handsome if he would drive fast.
+But he was terribly slow; it seemed as if we should never reach your
+blessed door. I am all of a tremble still; it took me five minutes,
+just now, to thread my needle.”
+
+Newman told her, with a gleeful laugh, that if she chose she might have
+a little maid on purpose to thread her needles; and he went away
+murmuring to himself again that the old woman _was_ scared—she _was_
+scared!
+
+He had not shown Mrs. Tristram the little paper that he carried in his
+pocket-book, but since his return to Paris he had seen her several
+times, and she had told him that he seemed to her to be in a strange
+way—an even stranger way than his sad situation made natural. Had his
+disappointment gone to his head? He looked like a man who was going to
+be ill, and yet she had never seen him more restless and active. One
+day he would sit hanging his head and looking as if he were firmly
+resolved never to smile again; another he would indulge in laughter
+that was almost unseemly and make jokes that were bad even for him. If
+he was trying to carry off his sorrow, he at such times really went too
+far. She begged him of all things not to be “strange.” Feeling in a
+measure responsible as she did for the affair which had turned out so
+ill for him, she could endure anything but his strangeness. He might be
+melancholy if he would, or he might be stoical; he might be cross and
+cantankerous with her and ask her why she had ever dared to meddle with
+his destiny: to this she would submit; for this she would make
+allowances. Only, for Heaven’s sake, let him not be incoherent. That
+would be extremely unpleasant. It was like people talking in their
+sleep; they always frightened her. And Mrs. Tristram intimated that,
+taking very high ground as regards the moral obligation which events
+had laid upon her, she proposed not to rest quiet until she should have
+confronted him with the least inadequate substitute for Madame de
+Cintré that the two hemispheres contained.
+
+“Oh,” said Newman, “we are even now, and we had better not open a new
+account! You may bury me some day, but you shall never marry me. It’s
+too rough. I hope, at any rate,” he added, “that there is nothing
+incoherent in this—that I want to go next Sunday to the Carmelite
+chapel in the Avenue de Messine. You know one of the Catholic
+ministers—an abbé, is that it?—I have seen him here, you know; that
+motherly old gentleman with the big waistband. Please ask him if I need
+a special leave to go in, and if I do, beg him to obtain it for me.”
+
+Mrs. Tristram gave expression to the liveliest joy. “I am so glad you
+have asked me to do something!” she cried. “You shall get into the
+chapel if the abbé is disfrocked for his share in it.” And two days
+afterwards she told him that it was all arranged; the abbé was
+enchanted to serve him, and if he would present himself civilly at the
+convent gate there would be no difficulty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+Sunday was as yet two days off; but meanwhile, to beguile his
+impatience, Newman took his way to the Avenue de Messine and got what
+comfort he could in staring at the blank outer wall of Madame de
+Cintré’s present residence. The street in question, as some travelers
+will remember, adjoins the Parc Monceau, which is one of the prettiest
+corners of Paris. The quarter has an air of modern opulence and
+convenience which seems at variance with the ascetic institution, and
+the impression made upon Newman’s gloomily-irritated gaze by the
+fresh-looking, windowless expanse behind which the woman he loved was
+perhaps even then pledging herself to pass the rest of her days was
+less exasperating than he had feared. The place suggested a convent
+with the modern improvements—an asylum in which privacy, though
+unbroken, might be not quite identical with privation, and meditation,
+though monotonous, might be of a cheerful cast. And yet he knew the
+case was otherwise; only at present it was not a reality to him. It was
+too strange and too mocking to be real; it was like a page torn out of
+a romance, with no context in his own experience.
+
+On Sunday morning, at the hour which Mrs. Tristram had indicated, he
+rang at the gate in the blank wall. It instantly opened and admitted
+him into a clean, cold-looking court, from beyond which a dull, plain
+edifice looked down upon him. A robust lay sister with a cheerful
+complexion emerged from a porter’s lodge, and, on his stating his
+errand, pointed to the open door of the chapel, an edifice which
+occupied the right side of the court and was preceded by the high
+flight of steps. Newman ascended the steps and immediately entered the
+open door. Service had not yet begun; the place was dimly lighted, and
+it was some moments before he could distinguish its features. Then he
+saw it was divided by a large close iron screen into two unequal
+portions. The altar was on the hither side of the screen, and between
+it and the entrance were disposed several benches and chairs. Three or
+four of these were occupied by vague, motionless figures—figures that
+he presently perceived to be women, deeply absorbed in their devotion.
+The place seemed to Newman very cold; the smell of the incense itself
+was cold. Besides this there was a twinkle of tapers and here and there
+a glow of colored glass. Newman seated himself; the praying women kept
+still, with their backs turned. He saw they were visitors like himself
+and he would have liked to see their faces; for he believed that they
+were the mourning mothers and sisters of other women who had had the
+same pitiless courage as Madame de Cintré. But they were better off
+than he, for they at least shared the faith to which the others had
+sacrificed themselves. Three or four persons came in; two of them were
+elderly gentlemen. Everyone was very quiet. Newman fastened his eyes
+upon the screen behind the altar. That was the convent, the real
+convent, the place where she was. But he could see nothing; no light
+came through the crevices. He got up and approached the partition very
+gently, trying to look through. But behind it there was darkness, with
+nothing stirring. He went back to his place, and after that a priest
+and two altar boys came in and began to say mass.
+
+Newman watched their genuflections and gyrations with a grim, still
+enmity; they seemed aids and abettors of Madame de Cintré’s desertion;
+they were mouthing and droning out their triumph. The priest’s long,
+dismal intonings acted upon his nerves and deepened his wrath; there
+was something defiant in his unintelligible drawl; it seemed meant for
+Newman himself. Suddenly there arose from the depths of the chapel,
+from behind the inexorable grating, a sound which drew his attention
+from the altar—the sound of a strange, lugubrious chant, uttered by
+women’s voices. It began softly, but it presently grew louder, and as
+it increased it became more of a wail and a dirge. It was the chant of
+the Carmelite nuns, their only human utterance. It was their dirge over
+their buried affections and over the vanity of earthly desires. At
+first Newman was bewildered—almost stunned—by the strangeness of the
+sound; then, as he comprehended its meaning, he listened intently and
+his heart began to throb. He listened for Madame de Cintré’s voice, and
+in the very heart of the tuneless harmony he imagined he made it out.
+(We are obliged to believe that he was wrong, inasmuch as she had
+obviously not yet had time to become a member of the invisible
+sisterhood.) The chant kept on, mechanical and monotonous, with dismal
+repetitions and despairing cadences. It was hideous, it was horrible;
+as it continued, Newman felt that he needed all his self-control. He
+was growing more agitated; he felt tears in his eyes. At last, as in
+its full force the thought came over him that this confused, impersonal
+wail was all that either he or the world she had deserted should ever
+hear of the voice he had found so sweet, he felt that he could bear it
+no longer. He rose abruptly and made his way out. On the threshold he
+paused, listened again to the dreary strain, and then hastily descended
+into the court. As he did so he saw the good sister with the
+high-colored cheeks and the fanlike frill to her coiffure, who had
+admitted him, was in conference at the gate with two persons who had
+just come in. A second glance informed him that these persons were
+Madame de Bellegarde and her son, and that they were about to avail
+themselves of that method of approach to Madame de Cintré which Newman
+had found but a mockery of consolation. As he crossed the court M. de
+Bellegarde recognized him; the marquis was coming to the steps, leading
+his mother. The old lady also gave Newman a look, and it resembled that
+of her son. Both faces expressed a franker perturbation, something more
+akin to the humbleness of dismay, than Newman had yet seen in them.
+Evidently he startled the Bellegardes, and they had not their grand
+behavior immediately in hand. Newman hurried past them, guided only by
+the desire to get out of the convent walls and into the street. The
+gate opened itself at his approach; he strode over the threshold and it
+closed behind him. A carriage which appeared to have been standing
+there, was just turning away from the sidewalk. Newman looked at it for
+a moment, blankly; then he became conscious, through the dusky mist
+that swam before his eyes, that a lady seated in it was bowing to him.
+The vehicle had turned away before he recognized her; it was an ancient
+landau with one half the cover lowered. The lady’s bow was very
+positive and accompanied with a smile; a little girl was seated beside
+her. He raised his hat, and then the lady bade the coachman stop. The
+carriage halted again beside the pavement, and she sat there and
+beckoned to Newman—beckoned with the demonstrative grace of Madame
+Urbain de Bellegarde. Newman hesitated a moment before he obeyed her
+summons, during this moment he had time to curse his stupidity for
+letting the others escape him. He had been wondering how he could get
+at them; fool that he was for not stopping them then and there! What
+better place than beneath the very prison walls to which they had
+consigned the promise of his joy? He had been too bewildered to stop
+them, but now he felt ready to wait for them at the gate. Madame
+Urbain, with a certain attractive petulance, beckoned to him again, and
+this time he went over to the carriage. She leaned out and gave him her
+hand, looking at him kindly, and smiling.
+
+“Ah, monsieur,” she said, “you don’t include me in your wrath? I had
+nothing to do with it.”
+
+“Oh, I don’t suppose _you_ could have prevented it!” Newman answered in
+a tone which was not that of studied gallantry.
+
+“What you say is too true for me to resent the small account it makes
+of my influence. I forgive you, at any rate, because you look as if you
+had seen a ghost.”
+
+“I have!” said Newman.
+
+“I am glad, then, I didn’t go in with Madame de Bellegarde and my
+husband. You must have seen them, eh? Was the meeting affectionate? Did
+you hear the chanting? They say it’s like the lamentations of the
+damned. I wouldn’t go in: one is certain to hear that soon enough. Poor
+Claire—in a white shroud and a big brown cloak! That’s the _toilette_
+of the Carmelites, you know. Well, she was always fond of long, loose
+things. But I must not speak of her to you; only I must say that I am
+very sorry for you, that if I could have helped you I would, and that I
+think everyone has been very shabby. I was afraid of it, you know; I
+felt it in the air for a fortnight before it came. When I saw you at my
+mother-in-law’s ball, taking it all so easily, I felt as if you were
+dancing on your grave. But what could I do? I wish you all the good I
+can think of. You will say that isn’t much! Yes; they have been very
+shabby; I am not a bit afraid to say it; I assure you everyone thinks
+so. We are not all like that. I am sorry I am not going to see you
+again; you know I think you very good company. I would prove it by
+asking you to get into the carriage and drive with me for a quarter of
+an hour, while I wait for my mother-in-law. Only if we were
+seen—considering what has passed, and everyone knows you have been
+turned away—it might be thought I was going a little too far, even for
+me. But I shall see you sometimes—somewhere, eh? You know”—this was
+said in English—“we have a plan for a little amusement.”
+
+Newman stood there with his hand on the carriage-door listening to this
+consolatory murmur with an unlighted eye. He hardly knew what Madame de
+Bellegarde was saying; he was only conscious that she was chattering
+ineffectively. But suddenly it occurred to him that, with her pretty
+professions, there was a way of making her effective; she might help
+him to get at the old woman and the marquis. “They are coming back
+soon—your companions?” he said. “You are waiting for them?”
+
+“They will hear the mass out; there is nothing to keep them longer.
+Claire has refused to see them.”
+
+“I want to speak to them,” said Newman; “and you can help me, you can
+do me a favor. Delay your return for five minutes and give me a chance
+at them. I will wait for them here.”
+
+Madame de Bellegarde clasped her hands with a tender grimace. “My poor
+friend, what do you want to do to them? To beg them to come back to
+you? It will be wasted words. They will never come back!”
+
+“I want to speak to them, all the same. Pray do what I ask you. Stay
+away and leave them to me for five minutes; you needn’t be afraid; I
+shall not be violent; I am very quiet.”
+
+“Yes, you look very quiet! If they had _le cœur tendre_ you would move
+them. But they haven’t! However, I will do better for you than what you
+propose. The understanding is not that I shall come back for them. I am
+going into the Parc Monceau with my little girl to give her a walk, and
+my mother-in-law, who comes so rarely into this quarter, is to profit
+by the same opportunity to take the air. We are to wait for her in the
+park, where my husband is to bring her to us. Follow me now; just
+within the gates I shall get out of my carriage. Sit down on a chair in
+some quiet corner and I will bring them near you. There’s devotion for
+you! _Le reste vous regarde_.”
+
+This proposal seemed to Newman extremely felicitous; it revived his
+drooping spirit, and he reflected that Madame Urbain was not such a
+goose as she seemed. He promised immediately to overtake her, and the
+carriage drove away.
+
+The Parc Monceau is a very pretty piece of landscape-gardening, but
+Newman, passing into it, bestowed little attention upon its elegant
+vegetation, which was full of the freshness of spring. He found Madame
+de Bellegarde promptly, seated in one of the quiet corners of which she
+had spoken, while before her, in the alley, her little girl, attended
+by the footman and the lap-dog, walked up and down as if she were
+taking a lesson in deportment. Newman sat down beside the mamma, and
+she talked a great deal, apparently with the design of convincing him
+that—if he would only see it—poor dear Claire did not belong to the
+most fascinating type of woman. She was too tall and thin, too stiff
+and cold; her mouth was too wide and her nose too narrow. She had no
+dimples anywhere. And then she was eccentric, eccentric in cold blood;
+she was an Anglaise, after all. Newman was very impatient; he was
+counting the minutes until his victims should reappear. He sat silent,
+leaning upon his cane, looking absently and insensibly at the little
+marquise. At length Madame de Bellegarde said she would walk toward the
+gate of the park and meet her companions; but before she went she
+dropped her eyes, and, after playing a moment with the lace of her
+sleeve, looked up again at Newman.
+
+“Do you remember,” she asked, “the promise you made me three weeks
+ago?” And then, as Newman, vainly consulting his memory, was obliged to
+confess that the promise had escaped it, she declared that he had made
+her, at the time, a very queer answer—an answer at which, viewing it in
+the light of the sequel, she had fair ground for taking offense. “You
+promised to take me to Bullier’s after your marriage. After your
+marriage—you made a great point of that. Three days after that your
+marriage was broken off. Do you know, when I heard the news, the first
+thing I said to myself? ‘Oh heaven, now he won’t go with me to
+Bullier’s!’ And I really began to wonder if you had not been expecting
+the rupture.”
+
+“Oh, my dear lady,” murmured Newman, looking down the path to see if
+the others were not coming.
+
+“I shall be good-natured,” said Madame de Bellegarde. “One must not ask
+too much of a gentleman who is in love with a cloistered nun. Besides,
+I can’t go to Bullier’s while we are in mourning. But I haven’t given
+it up for that. The _partie_ is arranged; I have my cavalier. Lord
+Deepmere, if you please! He has gone back to his dear Dublin; but a few
+months hence I am to name any evening and he will come over from
+Ireland, on purpose. That’s what I call gallantry!”
+
+Shortly after this Madame de Bellegarde walked away with her little
+girl. Newman sat in his place; the time seemed terribly long. He felt
+how fiercely his quarter of an hour in the convent chapel had raked
+over the glowing coals of his resentment. Madame de Bellegarde kept him
+waiting, but she proved as good as her word. At last she reappeared at
+the end of the path, with her little girl and her footman; beside her
+slowly walked her husband, with his mother on his arm. They were a long
+time advancing, during which Newman sat unmoved. Tingling as he was
+with passion, it was extremely characteristic of him that he was able
+to moderate his expression of it, as he would have turned down a
+flaring gas-burner. His native coolness, shrewdness, and
+deliberateness, his life-long submissiveness to the sentiment that
+words were acts and acts were steps in life, and that in this matter of
+taking steps curveting and prancing were exclusively reserved for
+quadrupeds and foreigners—all this admonished him that rightful wrath
+had no connection with being a fool and indulging in spectacular
+violence. So as he rose, when old Madame de Bellegarde and her son were
+close to him, he only felt very tall and light. He had been sitting
+beside some shrubbery, in such a way as not to be noticeable at a
+distance; but M. de Bellegarde had evidently already perceived him. His
+mother and he were holding their course, but Newman stepped in front of
+them, and they were obliged to pause. He lifted his hat slightly, and
+looked at them for a moment; they were pale with amazement and disgust.
+
+“Excuse me for stopping you,” he said in a low tone, “but I must profit
+by the occasion. I have ten words to say to you. Will you listen to
+them?”
+
+The marquis glared at him and then turned to his mother. “Can Mr.
+Newman possibly have anything to say that is worth our listening to?”
+
+“I assure you I have something,” said Newman, “besides, it is my duty
+to say it. It’s a notification—a warning.”
+
+“Your duty?” said old Madame de Bellegarde, her thin lips curving like
+scorched paper. “That is your affair, not ours.”
+
+Madame Urbain meanwhile had seized her little girl by the hand, with a
+gesture of surprise and impatience which struck Newman, intent as he
+was upon his own words, with its dramatic effectiveness. “If Mr. Newman
+is going to make a scene in public,” she exclaimed, “I will take my
+poor child out of the _mêlée_. She is too young to see such
+naughtiness!” and she instantly resumed her walk.
+
+“You had much better listen to me,” Newman went on. “Whether you do or
+not, things will be disagreeable for you; but at any rate you will be
+prepared.”
+
+“We have already heard something of your threats,” said the marquis,
+“and you know what we think of them.”
+
+“You think a good deal more than you admit. A moment,” Newman added in
+reply to an exclamation of the old lady. “I remember perfectly that we
+are in a public place, and you see I am very quiet. I am not going to
+tell your secret to the passers-by; I shall keep it, to begin with, for
+certain picked listeners. Anyone who observes us will think that we are
+having a friendly chat, and that I am complimenting you, madam, on your
+venerable virtues.”
+
+The marquis gave three short sharp raps on the ground with his stick.
+“I demand of you to step out of our path!” he hissed.
+
+Newman instantly complied, and M. de Bellegarde stepped forward with
+his mother. Then Newman said, “Half an hour hence Madame de Bellegarde
+will regret that she didn’t learn exactly what I mean.”
+
+The marquise had taken a few steps, but at these words she paused,
+looking at Newman with eyes like two scintillating globules of ice.
+“You are like a peddler with something to sell,” she said, with a
+little cold laugh which only partially concealed the tremor in her
+voice.
+
+“Oh, no, not to sell,” Newman rejoined; “I give it to you for nothing.”
+And he approached nearer to her, looking her straight in the eyes. “You
+killed your husband,” he said, almost in a whisper. “That is, you tried
+once and failed, and then, without trying, you succeeded.”
+
+Madame de Bellegarde closed her eyes and gave a little cough, which, as
+a piece of dissimulation, struck Newman as really heroic. “Dear
+mother,” said the marquis, “does this stuff amuse you so much?”
+
+“The rest is more amusing,” said Newman. “You had better not lose it.”
+
+Madame de Bellegarde opened her eyes; the scintillations had gone out
+of them; they were fixed and dead. But she smiled superbly with her
+narrow little lips, and repeated Newman’s word. “Amusing? Have I killed
+someone else?”
+
+“I don’t count your daughter,” said Newman, “though I might! Your
+husband knew what you were doing. I have a proof of it whose existence
+you have never suspected.” And he turned to the marquis, who was
+terribly white—whiter than Newman had ever seen anyone out of a
+picture. “A paper written by the hand, and signed with the name, of
+Henri-Urbain de Bellegarde. Written after you, madam, had left him for
+dead, and while you, sir, had gone—not very fast—for the doctor.”
+
+The marquis looked at his mother; she turned away, looking vaguely
+round her. “I must sit down,” she said in a low tone, going toward the
+bench on which Newman had been sitting.
+
+“Couldn’t you have spoken to me alone?” said the marquis to Newman,
+with a strange look.
+
+“Well, yes, if I could have been sure of speaking to your mother alone,
+too,” Newman answered. “But I have had to take you as I could get you.”
+
+Madame de Bellegarde, with a movement very eloquent of what he would
+have called her “grit,” her steel-cold pluck and her instinctive appeal
+to her own personal resources, drew her hand out of her son’s arm and
+went and seated herself upon the bench. There she remained, with her
+hands folded in her lap, looking straight at Newman. The expression of
+her face was such that he fancied at first that she was smiling; but he
+went and stood in front of her and saw that her elegant features were
+distorted by agitation. He saw, however, equally, that she was
+resisting her agitation with all the rigor of her inflexible will, and
+there was nothing like either fear or submission in her stony stare.
+She had been startled, but she was not terrified. Newman had an
+exasperating feeling that she would get the better of him still; he
+would not have believed it possible that he could so utterly fail to be
+touched by the sight of a woman (criminal or other) in so tight a
+place. Madame de Bellegarde gave a glance at her son which seemed
+tantamount to an injunction to be silent and leave her to her own
+devices. The marquis stood beside her, with his hands behind him,
+looking at Newman.
+
+“What paper is this you speak of?” asked the old lady, with an
+imitation of tranquillity which would have been applauded in a veteran
+actress.
+
+“Exactly what I have told you,” said Newman. “A paper written by your
+husband after you had left him for dead, and during the couple of hours
+before you returned. You see he had the time; you shouldn’t have stayed
+away so long. It declares distinctly his wife’s murderous intent.”
+
+“I should like to see it,” Madame de Bellegarde observed.
+
+“I thought you might,” said Newman, “and I have taken a copy.” And he
+drew from his waistcoat pocket a small, folded sheet.
+
+“Give it to my son,” said Madame de Bellegarde. Newman handed it to the
+marquis, whose mother, glancing at him, said simply, “Look at it.” M.
+de Bellegarde’s eyes had a pale eagerness which it was useless for him
+to try to dissimulate; he took the paper in his light-gloved fingers
+and opened it. There was a silence, during which he read it. He had
+more than time to read it, but still he said nothing; he stood staring
+at it. “Where is the original?” asked Madame de Bellegarde, in a voice
+which was really a consummate negation of impatience.
+
+“In a very safe place. Of course I can’t show you that,” said Newman.
+“You might want to take hold of it,” he added with conscious
+quaintness. “But that’s a very correct copy—except, of course, the
+handwriting. I am keeping the original to show someone else.”
+
+M. de Bellegarde at last looked up, and his eyes were still very eager.
+“To whom do you mean to show it?”
+
+“Well, I’m thinking of beginning with the duchess,” said Newman; “that
+stout lady I saw at your ball. She asked me to come and see her, you
+know. I thought at the moment I shouldn’t have much to say to her; but
+my little document will give us something to talk about.”
+
+“You had better keep it, my son,” said Madame de Bellegarde.
+
+“By all means,” said Newman; “keep it and show it to your mother when
+you get home.”
+
+“And after showing it to the duchess?”—asked the marquis, folding the
+paper and putting it away.
+
+“Well, I’ll take up the dukes,” said Newman. “Then the counts and the
+barons—all the people you had the cruelty to introduce me to in a
+character of which you meant immediately to deprive me. I have made out
+a list.”
+
+For a moment neither Madame de Bellegarde nor her son said a word; the
+old lady sat with her eyes upon the ground; M. de Bellegarde’s blanched
+pupils were fixed upon her face. Then, looking at Newman, “Is that all
+you have to say?” she asked.
+
+“No, I want to say a few words more. I want to say that I hope you
+quite understand what I’m about. This is my revenge, you know. You have
+treated me before the world—convened for the express purpose—as if I
+were not good enough for you. I mean to show the world that, however
+bad I may be, you are not quite the people to say it.”
+
+Madame de Bellegarde was silent again, and then she broke her silence.
+Her self-possession continued to be extraordinary. “I needn’t ask you
+who has been your accomplice. Mrs. Bread told me that you had purchased
+her services.”
+
+“Don’t accuse Mrs. Bread of venality,” said Newman. “She has kept your
+secret all these years. She has given you a long respite. It was
+beneath her eyes your husband wrote that paper; he put it into her
+hands with a solemn injunction that she was to make it public. She was
+too good-hearted to make use of it.”
+
+The old lady appeared for an instant to hesitate, and then, “She was my
+husband’s mistress,” she said, softly. This was the only concession to
+self-defense that she condescended to make.
+
+“I doubt that,” said Newman.
+
+Madame de Bellegarde got up from her bench. “It was not to your
+opinions I undertook to listen, and if you have nothing left but them
+to tell me I think this remarkable interview may terminate.” And
+turning to the marquis she took his arm again. “My son,” she said, “say
+something!”
+
+M. de Bellegarde looked down at his mother, passing his hand over his
+forehead, and then, tenderly, caressingly, “What shall I say?” he
+asked.
+
+“There is only one thing to say,” said the Marquise. “That it was
+really not worth while to have interrupted our walk.”
+
+But the marquis thought he could improve this. “Your paper’s a
+forgery,” he said to Newman.
+
+Newman shook his head a little, with a tranquil smile. “M. de
+Bellegarde,” he said, “your mother does better. She has done better all
+along, from the first of my knowing you. You’re a mighty plucky woman,
+madam,” he continued. “It’s a great pity you have made me your enemy. I
+should have been one of your greatest admirers.”
+
+“_Mon pauvre ami_,” said Madame de Bellegarde to her son in French, and
+as if she had not heard these words, “you must take me immediately to
+my carriage.”
+
+Newman stepped back and let them leave him; he watched them a moment
+and saw Madame Urbain, with her little girl, come out of a by-path to
+meet them. The old lady stooped and kissed her grandchild. “Damn it,
+she _is_ plucky!” said Newman, and he walked home with a slight sense
+of being balked. She was so inexpressively defiant! But on reflection
+he decided that what he had witnessed was no real sense of security,
+still less a real innocence. It was only a very superior style of
+brazen assurance. “Wait till she reads the paper!” he said to himself;
+and he concluded that he should hear from her soon.
+
+He heard sooner than he expected. The next morning, before midday, when
+he was about to give orders for his breakfast to be served, M. de
+Bellegarde’s card was brought to him. “She has read the paper and she
+has passed a bad night,” said Newman. He instantly admitted his
+visitor, who came in with the air of the ambassador of a great power
+meeting the delegate of a barbarous tribe whom an absurd accident had
+enabled for the moment to be abominably annoying. The ambassador, at
+all events, had passed a bad night, and his faultlessly careful toilet
+only threw into relief the frigid rancor in his eyes and the mottled
+tones of his refined complexion. He stood before Newman a moment,
+breathing quickly and softly, and shaking his forefinger curtly as his
+host pointed to a chair.
+
+“What I have come to say is soon said,” he declared “and can only be
+said without ceremony.”
+
+“I am good for as much or for as little as you desire,” said Newman.
+
+The marquis looked round the room a moment, and then, “On what terms
+will you part with your scrap of paper?”
+
+“On none!” And while Newman, with his head on one side and his hands
+behind him sounded the marquis’s turbid gaze with his own, he added,
+“Certainly, that is not worth sitting down about.”
+
+M. de Bellegarde meditated a moment, as if he had not heard Newman’s
+refusal. “My mother and I, last evening,” he said, “talked over your
+story. You will be surprised to learn that we think your little
+document is—a”—and he held back his word a moment—“is genuine.”
+
+“You forget that with you I am used to surprises!” exclaimed Newman,
+with a laugh.
+
+“The very smallest amount of respect that we owe to my father’s
+memory,” the marquis continued, “makes us desire that he should not be
+held up to the world as the author of so—so infernal an attack upon the
+reputation of a wife whose only fault was that she had been submissive
+to accumulated injury.”
+
+“Oh, I see,” said Newman. “It’s for your father’s sake.” And he laughed
+the laugh in which he indulged when he was most amused—a noiseless
+laugh, with his lips closed.
+
+But M. de Bellegarde’s gravity held good. “There are a few of my
+father’s particular friends for whom the knowledge of so—so unfortunate
+an—inspiration—would be a real grief. Even say we firmly established by
+medical evidence the presumption of a mind disordered by fever, _il en
+resterait quelque chose_. At the best it would look ill in him. Very
+ill!”
+
+“Don’t try medical evidence,” said Newman. “Don’t touch the doctors and
+they won’t touch you. I don’t mind your knowing that I have not written
+to them.”
+
+Newman fancied that he saw signs in M. de Bellegarde’s discolored mask
+that this information was extremely pertinent. But it may have been
+merely fancy; for the marquis remained majestically argumentative. “For
+instance, Madame d’Outreville,” he said, “of whom you spoke yesterday.
+I can imagine nothing that would shock her more.”
+
+“Oh, I am quite prepared to shock Madame d’Outreville, you know. That’s
+on the cards. I expect to shock a great many people.”
+
+M. de Bellegarde examined for a moment the stitching on the back of one
+of his gloves. Then, without looking up, “We don’t offer you money,” he
+said. “That we supposed to be useless.”
+
+Newman, turning away, took a few turns about the room and then came
+back. “What _do_ you offer me? By what I can make out, the generosity
+is all to be on my side.”
+
+The marquis dropped his arms at his side and held his head a little
+higher. “What we offer you is a chance—a chance that a gentleman should
+appreciate. A chance to abstain from inflicting a terrible blot upon
+the memory of a man who certainly had his faults, but who, personally,
+had done you no wrong.”
+
+“There are two things to say to that,” said Newman. “The first is, as
+regards appreciating your ‘chance,’ that you don’t consider me a
+gentleman. That’s your great point you know. It’s a poor rule that
+won’t work both ways. The second is that—well, in a word, you are
+talking great nonsense!”
+
+Newman, who in the midst of his bitterness had, as I have said, kept
+well before his eyes a certain ideal of saying nothing rude, was
+immediately somewhat regretfully conscious of the sharpness of these
+words. But he speedily observed that the marquis took them more quietly
+than might have been expected. M. de Bellegarde, like the stately
+ambassador that he was, continued the policy of ignoring what was
+disagreeable in his adversary’s replies. He gazed at the gilded
+arabesques on the opposite wall, and then presently transferred his
+glance to Newman, as if he too were a large grotesque in a rather
+vulgar system of chamber-decoration. “I suppose you know that as
+regards yourself it won’t do at all.”
+
+“How do you mean it won’t do?”
+
+“Why, of course you damn yourself. But I suppose that’s in your
+programme. You propose to throw mud at us; you believe, you hope, that
+some of it may stick. We know, of course, it can’t,” explained the
+marquis in a tone of conscious lucidity; “but you take the chance, and
+are willing at any rate to show that you yourself have dirty hands.”
+
+“That’s a good comparison; at least half of it is,” said Newman. “I
+take the chance of something sticking. But as regards my hands, they
+are clean. I have taken the matter up with my finger-tips.”
+
+M. de Bellegarde looked a moment into his hat. “All our friends are
+quite with us,” he said. “They would have done exactly as we have
+done.”
+
+“I shall believe that when I hear them say it. Meanwhile I shall think
+better of human nature.”
+
+The marquis looked into his hat again. “Madame de Cintré was extremely
+fond of her father. If she knew of the existence of the few written
+words of which you propose to make this scandalous use, she would
+demand of you proudly for his sake to give it up to her, and she would
+destroy it without reading it.”
+
+“Very possibly,” Newman rejoined. “But she will not know. I was in that
+convent yesterday and I know what _she_ is doing. Lord deliver us! You
+can guess whether it made me feel forgiving!”
+
+M. de Bellegarde appeared to have nothing more to suggest; but he
+continued to stand there, rigid and elegant, as a man who believed that
+his mere personal presence had an argumentative value. Newman watched
+him, and, without yielding an inch on the main issue, felt an
+incongruously good-natured impulse to help him to retreat in good
+order.
+
+“Your visit’s a failure, you see,” he said. “You offer too little.”
+
+“Propose something yourself,” said the marquis.
+
+“Give me back Madame de Cintré in the same state in which you took her
+from me.”
+
+M. de Bellegarde threw back his head and his pale face flushed.
+“Never!” he said.
+
+“You can’t!”
+
+“We wouldn’t if we could! In the sentiment which led us to deprecate
+her marriage nothing is changed.”
+
+“‘Deprecate’ is good!” cried Newman. “It was hardly worth while to come
+here only to tell me that you are not ashamed of yourselves. I could
+have guessed that!”
+
+The marquis slowly walked toward the door, and Newman, following,
+opened it for him. “What you propose to do will be very disagreeable,”
+M. de Bellegarde said. “That is very evident. But it will be nothing
+more.”
+
+“As I understand it,” Newman answered, “that will be quite enough!”
+
+M. de Bellegarde stood for a moment looking on the ground, as if he
+were ransacking his ingenuity to see what else he could do to save his
+father’s reputation. Then, with a little cold sigh, he seemed to
+signify that he regretfully surrendered the late marquis to the penalty
+of his turpitude. He gave a hardly perceptible shrug, took his neat
+umbrella from the servant in the vestibule, and, with his gentlemanly
+walk, passed out. Newman stood listening till he heard the door close;
+then he slowly exclaimed, “Well, I ought to begin to be satisfied now!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+Newman called upon the comical duchess and found her at home. An old
+gentleman with a high nose and a gold-headed cane was just taking leave
+of her; he made Newman a protracted obeisance as he retired, and our
+hero supposed that he was one of the mysterious grandees with whom he
+had shaken hands at Madame de Bellegarde’s ball. The duchess, in her
+armchair, from which she did not move, with a great flower-pot on one
+side of her, a pile of pink-covered novels on the other, and a large
+piece of tapestry depending from her lap, presented an expansive and
+imposing front; but her aspect was in the highest degree gracious, and
+there was nothing in her manner to check the effusion of his
+confidence. She talked to him about flowers and books, getting launched
+with marvelous promptitude; about the theatres, about the peculiar
+institutions of his native country, about the humidity of Paris about
+the pretty complexions of the American ladies, about his impressions of
+France and his opinion of its female inhabitants. All this was a
+brilliant monologue on the part of the duchess, who, like many of her
+country-women, was a person of an affirmative rather than an
+interrogative cast of mind, who made _mots_ and put them herself into
+circulation, and who was apt to offer you a present of a convenient
+little opinion, neatly enveloped in the gilt paper of a happy
+Gallicism. Newman had come to her with a grievance, but he found
+himself in an atmosphere in which apparently no cognizance was taken of
+grievance; an atmosphere into which the chill of discomfort had never
+penetrated, and which seemed exclusively made up of mild, sweet, stale
+intellectual perfumes. The feeling with which he had watched Madame
+d’Outreville at the treacherous festival of the Bellegardes came back
+to him; she struck him as a wonderful old lady in a comedy,
+particularly well up in her part. He observed before long that she
+asked him no questions about their common friends; she made no allusion
+to the circumstances under which he had been presented to her. She
+neither feigned ignorance of a change in these circumstances nor
+pretended to condole with him upon it; but she smiled and discoursed
+and compared the tender-tinted wools of her tapestry, as if the
+Bellegardes and their wickedness were not of this world. “She is
+fighting shy!” said Newman to himself; and, having made the
+observation, he was prompted to observe, farther, how the duchess would
+carry off her indifference. She did so in a masterly manner. There was
+not a gleam of disguised consciousness in those small, clear,
+demonstrative eyes which constituted her nearest claim to personal
+loveliness, there was not a symptom of apprehension that Newman would
+trench upon the ground she proposed to avoid. “Upon my word, she does
+it very well,” he tacitly commented. “They all hold together bravely,
+and, whether anyone else can trust them or not, they can certainly
+trust each other.”
+
+Newman, at this juncture, fell to admiring the duchess for her fine
+manners. He felt, most accurately, that she was not a grain less urbane
+than she would have been if his marriage were still in prospect; but he
+felt also that she was not a particle more urbane. He had come, so
+reasoned the duchess—Heaven knew why he had come, after what had
+happened; and for the half hour, therefore, she would be _charmante_.
+But she would never see him again. Finding no ready-made opportunity to
+tell his story, Newman pondered these things more dispassionately than
+might have been expected; he stretched his legs, as usual, and even
+chuckled a little, appreciatively and noiselessly. And then as the
+duchess went on relating a _mot_ with which her mother had snubbed the
+great Napoleon, it occurred to Newman that her evasion of a chapter of
+French history more interesting to himself might possibly be the result
+of an extreme consideration for his feelings. Perhaps it was delicacy
+on the duchess’s part—not policy. He was on the point of saying
+something himself, to make the chance which he had determined to give
+her still better, when the servant announced another visitor. The
+duchess, on hearing the name—it was that of an Italian prince—gave a
+little imperceptible pout, and said to Newman, rapidly: “I beg you to
+remain; I desire this visit to be short.” Newman said to himself, at
+this, that Madame d’Outreville intended, after all, that they should
+discuss the Bellegardes together.
+
+The prince was a short, stout man, with a head disproportionately
+large. He had a dusky complexion and a bushy eyebrow, beneath which his
+eye wore a fixed and somewhat defiant expression; he seemed to be
+challenging you to insinuate that he was top-heavy. The duchess,
+judging from her charge to Newman, regarded him as a bore; but this was
+not apparent from the unchecked flow of her conversation. She made a
+fresh series of _mots_, characterized with great felicity the Italian
+intellect and the taste of the figs at Sorrento, predicted the ultimate
+future of the Italian kingdom (disgust with the brutal Sardinian rule
+and complete reversion, throughout the peninsula, to the sacred sway of
+the Holy Father), and, finally, gave a history of the love affairs of
+the Princess X——. This narrative provoked some rectifications on the
+part of the prince, who, as he said, pretended to know something about
+that matter; and having satisfied himself that Newman was in no
+laughing mood, either with regard to the size of his head or anything
+else, he entered into the controversy with an animation for which the
+duchess, when she set him down as a bore, could not have been prepared.
+The sentimental vicissitudes of the Princess X—— led to a discussion of
+the heart history of Florentine nobility in general; the duchess had
+spent five weeks in Florence and had gathered much information on the
+subject. This was merged, in turn, in an examination of the Italian
+heart _per se_. The duchess took a brilliantly heterodox view—thought
+it the least susceptible organ of its kind that she had ever
+encountered, related examples of its want of susceptibility, and at
+last declared that for her the Italians were a people of ice. The
+prince became flame to refute her, and his visit really proved
+charming. Newman was naturally out of the conversation; he sat with his
+head a little on one side, watching the interlocutors. The duchess, as
+she talked, frequently looked at him with a smile, as if to intimate,
+in the charming manner of her nation, that it lay only with him to say
+something very much to the point. But he said nothing at all, and at
+last his thoughts began to wander. A singular feeling came over him—a
+sudden sense of the folly of his errand. What under the sun had he to
+say to the duchess, after all? Wherein would it profit him to tell her
+that the Bellegardes were traitors and that the old lady, into the
+bargain was a murderess? He seemed morally to have turned a sort of
+somersault, and to find things looking differently in consequence. He
+felt a sudden stiffening of his will and quickening of his reserve.
+What in the world had he been thinking of when he fancied the duchess
+could help him, and that it would conduce to his comfort to make her
+think ill of the Bellegardes? What did her opinion of the Bellegardes
+matter to him? It was only a shade more important than the opinion the
+Bellegardes entertained of her. The duchess help him—that cold, stout,
+soft, artificial woman help him?—she who in the last twenty minutes had
+built up between them a wall of polite conversation in which she
+evidently flattered herself that he would never find a gate. Had it
+come to that—that he was asking favors of conceited people, and
+appealing for sympathy where he had no sympathy to give? He rested his
+arms on his knees, and sat for some minutes staring into his hat. As he
+did so his ears tingled—he had come very near being an ass. Whether or
+no the duchess would hear his story, he wouldn’t tell it. Was he to sit
+there another half hour for the sake of exposing the Bellegardes? The
+Bellegardes be hanged! He got up abruptly, and advanced to shake hands
+with his hostess.
+
+“You can’t stay longer?” she asked very graciously.
+
+“I am afraid not,” he said.
+
+She hesitated a moment, and then, “I had an idea you had something
+particular to say to me,” she declared.
+
+Newman looked at her; he felt a little dizzy; for the moment he seemed
+to be turning his somersault again. The little Italian prince came to
+his help: “Ah, madam, who has not that?” he softly sighed.
+
+“Don’t teach Mr. Newman to say _fadaises_,” said the duchess. “It is
+his merit that he doesn’t know how.”
+
+“Yes, I don’t know how to say _fadaises_,” said Newman, “and I don’t
+want to say anything unpleasant.”
+
+“I am sure you are very considerate,” said the duchess with a smile;
+and she gave him a little nod for good-bye with which he took his
+departure.
+
+Once in the street, he stood for some time on the pavement, wondering
+whether, after all, he was not an ass not to have discharged his
+pistol. And then again he decided that to talk to anyone whomsoever
+about the Bellegardes would be extremely disagreeable to him. The least
+disagreeable thing, under the circumstances, was to banish them from
+his mind, and never think of them again. Indecision had not hitherto
+been one of Newman’s weaknesses, and in this case it was not of long
+duration. For three days after this he did not, or at least he tried
+not to, think of the Bellegardes. He dined with Mrs. Tristram, and on
+her mentioning their name, he begged her almost severely to desist.
+This gave Tom Tristram a much-coveted opportunity to offer his
+condolences.
+
+He leaned forward, laying his hand on Newman’s arm compressing his lips
+and shaking his head. “The fact is my dear fellow, you see, that you
+ought never to have gone into it. It was not your doing, I know—it was
+all my wife. If you want to come down on her, I’ll stand off; I give
+you leave to hit her as hard as you like. You know she has never had a
+word of reproach from me in her life, and I think she is in need of
+something of the kind. Why didn’t you listen to _me?_ You know I didn’t
+believe in the thing. I thought it at the best an amiable delusion. I
+don’t profess to be a Don Juan or a gay Lothario,—that class of man,
+you know; but I do pretend to know something about the harder sex. I
+have never disliked a woman in my life that she has not turned out
+badly. I was not at all deceived in Lizzie, for instance; I always had
+my doubts about her. Whatever you may think of my present situation, I
+must at least admit that I got into it with my eyes open. Now suppose
+you had got into something like this box with Madame de Cintré. You may
+depend upon it she would have turned out a stiff one. And upon my word
+I don’t see where you could have found your comfort. Not from the
+marquis, my dear Newman; he wasn’t a man you could go and talk things
+over with in a sociable, common-sense way. Did he ever seem to want to
+have you on the premises—did he ever try to see you alone? Did he ever
+ask you to come and smoke a cigar with him of an evening, or step in,
+when you had been calling on the ladies, and take something? I don’t
+think you would have got much encouragement out of _him_. And as for
+the old lady, she struck one as an uncommonly strong dose. They have a
+great expression here, you know; they call it ‘sympathetic.’ Everything
+is sympathetic—or ought to be. Now Madame de Bellegarde is about as
+sympathetic as that mustard-pot. They’re a d—d cold-blooded lot, any
+way; I felt it awfully at that ball of theirs. I felt as if I were
+walking up and down in the Armory, in the Tower of London! My dear boy,
+don’t think me a vulgar brute for hinting at it, but you may depend
+upon it, all they wanted was your money. I know something about that; I
+can tell when people want one’s money! Why they stopped wanting yours I
+don’t know; I suppose because they could get someone else’s without
+working so hard for it. It isn’t worth finding out. It may be that it
+was not Madame de Cintré that backed out first, very likely the old
+woman put her up to it. I suspect she and her mother are really as
+thick as thieves, eh? You are well out of it, my boy; make up your mind
+to that. If I express myself strongly it is all because I love you so
+much; and from that point of view I may say I should as soon have
+thought of making up to that piece of pale high-mightiness as I should
+have thought of making up to the Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde.”
+
+Newman sat gazing at Tristram during this harangue with a lack-lustre
+eye; never yet had he seemed to himself to have outgrown so completely
+the phase of equal comradeship with Tom Tristram. Mrs. Tristram’s
+glance at her husband had more of a spark; she turned to Newman with a
+slightly lurid smile. “You must at least do justice,” she said, “to the
+felicity with which Mr. Tristram repairs the indiscretions of a too
+zealous wife.”
+
+But even without the aid of Tom Tristram’s conversational felicities,
+Newman would have begun to think of the Bellegardes again. He could
+cease to think of them only when he ceased to think of his loss and
+privation, and the days had as yet but scantily lightened the weight of
+this incommodity. In vain Mrs. Tristram begged him to cheer up; she
+assured him that the sight of his countenance made her miserable.
+
+“How can I help it?” he demanded with a trembling voice. “I feel like a
+widower—and a widower who has not even the consolation of going to
+stand beside the grave of his wife—who has not the right to wear so
+much mourning as a weed on his hat. I feel,” he added in a moment “as
+if my wife had been murdered and her assassins were still at large.”
+
+Mrs. Tristram made no immediate rejoinder, but at last she said, with a
+smile which, in so far as it was a forced one, was less successfully
+simulated than such smiles, on her lips, usually were; “Are you very
+sure that you would have been happy?”
+
+Newman stared a moment, and then shook his head. “That’s weak,” he
+said; “that won’t do.”
+
+“Well,” said Mrs. Tristram with a more triumphant bravery, “I don’t
+believe you would have been happy.”
+
+Newman gave a little laugh. “Say I should have been miserable, then;
+it’s a misery I should have preferred to any happiness.”
+
+Mrs. Tristram began to muse. “I should have been curious to see; it
+would have been very strange.”
+
+“Was it from curiosity that you urged me to try and marry her?”
+
+“A little,” said Mrs. Tristram, growing still more audacious. Newman
+gave her the one angry look he had been destined ever to give her,
+turned away and took up his hat. She watched him a moment, and then she
+said, “That sounds very cruel, but it is less so than it sounds.
+Curiosity has a share in almost everything I do. I wanted very much to
+see, first, whether such a marriage could actually take place; second,
+what would happen if it should take place.”
+
+“So you didn’t believe,” said Newman, resentfully.
+
+“Yes, I believed—I believed that it would take place, and that you
+would be happy. Otherwise I should have been, among my speculations, a
+very heartless creature. _But_,” she continued, laying her hand upon
+Newman’s arm and hazarding a grave smile, “it was the highest flight
+ever taken by a tolerably bold imagination!”
+
+Shortly after this she recommended him to leave Paris and travel for
+three months. Change of scene would do him good, and he would forget
+his misfortune sooner in absence from the objects which had witnessed
+it. “I really feel,” Newman rejoined, “as if to leave _you_, at least,
+would do me good—and cost me very little effort. You are growing
+cynical, you shock me and pain me.”
+
+“Very good,” said Mrs. Tristram, good-naturedly or cynically, as may be
+thought most probable. “I shall certainly see you again.”
+
+Newman was very willing to get away from Paris; the brilliant streets
+he had walked through in his happier hours, and which then seemed to
+wear a higher brilliancy in honor of his happiness, appeared now to be
+in the secret of his defeat and to look down upon it in shining
+mockery. He would go somewhere; he cared little where; and he made his
+preparations. Then, one morning, at haphazard, he drove to the train
+that would transport him to Boulogne and dispatch him thence to the
+shores of Britain. As he rolled along in the train he asked himself
+what had become of his revenge, and he was able to say that it was
+provisionally pigeon-holed in a very safe place; it would keep till
+called for.
+
+He arrived in London in the midst of what is called “the season,” and
+it seemed to him at first that he might here put himself in the way of
+being diverted from his heavy-heartedness. He knew no one in all
+England, but the spectacle of the mighty metropolis roused him somewhat
+from his apathy. Anything that was enormous usually found favor with
+Newman, and the multitudinous energies and industries of England
+stirred within him a dull vivacity of contemplation. It is on record
+that the weather, at that moment, was of the finest English quality; he
+took long walks and explored London in every direction; he sat by the
+hour in Kensington Gardens and beside the adjoining Drive, watching the
+people and the horses and the carriages; the rosy English beauties, the
+wonderful English dandies, and the splendid flunkies. He went to the
+opera and found it better than in Paris; he went to the theatre and
+found a surprising charm in listening to dialogue the finest points of
+which came within the range of his comprehension. He made several
+excursions into the country, recommended by the waiter at his hotel,
+with whom, on this and similar points, he had established confidential
+relations. He watched the deer in Windsor Forest and admired the Thames
+from Richmond Hill; he ate white-bait and brown-bread and butter at
+Greenwich, and strolled in the grassy shadow of the cathedral of
+Canterbury. He also visited the Tower of London and Madame Tussaud’s
+exhibition. One day he thought he would go to Sheffield, and then,
+thinking again, he gave it up. Why should he go to Sheffield? He had a
+feeling that the link which bound him to a possible interest in the
+manufacture of cutlery was broken. He had no desire for an “inside
+view” of any successful enterprise whatever, and he would not have
+given the smallest sum for the privilege of talking over the details of
+the most “splendid” business with the shrewdest of overseers.
+
+One afternoon he had walked into Hyde Park, and was slowly threading
+his way through the human maze which edges the Drive. The stream of
+carriages was no less dense, and Newman, as usual, marveled at the
+strange, dingy figures which he saw taking the air in some of the
+stateliest vehicles. They reminded him of what he had read of eastern
+and southern countries, in which grotesque idols and fetiches were
+sometimes taken out of their temples and carried abroad in golden
+chariots to be displayed to the multitude. He saw a great many pretty
+cheeks beneath high-plumed hats as he squeezed his way through serried
+waves of crumpled muslin; and sitting on little chairs at the base of
+the great serious English trees, he observed a number of quiet-eyed
+maidens who seemed only to remind him afresh that the magic of beauty
+had gone out of the world with Madame de Cintré: to say nothing of
+other damsels, whose eyes were not quiet, and who struck him still more
+as a satire on possible consolation. He had been walking for some time,
+when, directly in front of him, borne back by the summer breeze, he
+heard a few words uttered in that bright Parisian idiom from which his
+ears had begun to alienate themselves. The voice in which the words
+were spoken made them seem even more like a thing with which he had
+once been familiar, and as he bent his eyes it lent an identity to the
+commonplace elegance of the back hair and shoulders of a young lady
+walking in the same direction as himself. Mademoiselle Nioche,
+apparently, had come to seek a more rapid advancement in London, and
+another glance led Newman to suppose that she had found it. A gentleman
+was strolling beside her, lending a most attentive ear to her
+conversation and too entranced to open his lips. Newman did not hear
+his voice, but perceived that he presented the dorsal expression of a
+well-dressed Englishman. Mademoiselle Nioche was attracting attention:
+the ladies who passed her turned round to survey the Parisian
+perfection of her toilet. A great cataract of flounces rolled down from
+the young lady’s waist to Newman’s feet; he had to step aside to avoid
+treading upon them. He stepped aside, indeed, with a decision of
+movement which the occasion scarcely demanded; for even this imperfect
+glimpse of Miss Noémie had excited his displeasure. She seemed an
+odious blot upon the face of nature; he wanted to put her out of his
+sight. He thought of Valentin de Bellegarde, still green in the earth
+of his burial—his young life clipped by this flourishing impudence. The
+perfume of the young lady’s finery sickened him; he turned his head and
+tried to deflect his course; but the pressure of the crowd kept him
+near her a few minutes longer, so that he heard what she was saying.
+
+“Ah, I am sure he will miss me,” she murmured. “It was very cruel in me
+to leave him; I am afraid you will think me a very heartless creature.
+He might perfectly well have come with us. I don’t think he is very
+well,” she added; “it seemed to me to-day that he was not very gay.”
+
+Newman wondered whom she was talking about, but just then an opening
+among his neighbors enabled him to turn away, and he said to himself
+that she was probably paying a tribute to British propriety and playing
+at tender solicitude about her papa. Was that miserable old man still
+treading the path of vice in her train? Was he still giving her the
+benefit of his experience of affairs, and had he crossed the sea to
+serve as her interpreter? Newman walked some distance farther, and then
+began to retrace his steps taking care not to traverse again the orbit
+of Mademoiselle Nioche. At last he looked for a chair under the trees,
+but he had some difficulty in finding an empty one. He was about to
+give up the search when he saw a gentleman rise from the seat he had
+been occupying, leaving Newman to take it without looking at his
+neighbors. He sat there for some time without heeding them; his
+attention was lost in the irritation and bitterness produced by his
+recent glimpse of Miss Noémie’s iniquitous vitality. But at the end of
+a quarter of an hour, dropping his eyes, he perceived a small pug-dog
+squatted upon the path near his feet—a diminutive but very perfect
+specimen of its interesting species. The pug was sniffing at the
+fashionable world, as it passed him, with his little black muzzle, and
+was kept from extending his investigation by a large blue ribbon
+attached to his collar with an enormous rosette and held in the hand of
+a person seated next to Newman. To this person Newman transferred his
+attention, and immediately perceived that he was the object of all that
+of his neighbor, who was staring up at him from a pair of little fixed
+white eyes. These eyes Newman instantly recognized; he had been sitting
+for the last quarter of an hour beside M. Nioche. He had vaguely felt
+that someone was staring at him. M. Nioche continued to stare; he
+appeared afraid to move, even to the extent of evading Newman’s glance.
+
+“Dear me,” said Newman; “are you here, too?” And he looked at his
+neighbor’s helplessness more grimly than he knew. M. Nioche had a new
+hat and a pair of kid gloves; his clothes, too, seemed to belong to a
+more recent antiquity than of yore. Over his arm was suspended a lady’s
+mantilla—a light and brilliant tissue, fringed with white lace—which
+had apparently been committed to his keeping; and the little dog’s blue
+ribbon was wound tightly round his hand. There was no expression of
+recognition in his face—or of anything indeed save a sort of feeble,
+fascinated dread; Newman looked at the pug and the lace mantilla, and
+then he met the old man’s eyes again. “You know me, I see,” he pursued.
+“You might have spoken to me before.” M. Nioche still said nothing, but
+it seemed to Newman that his eyes began faintly to water. “I didn’t
+expect,” our hero went on, “to meet you so far from—from the Café de la
+Patrie.” The old man remained silent, but decidedly Newman had touched
+the source of tears. His neighbor sat staring and Newman added, “What’s
+the matter, M. Nioche? You used to talk—to talk very prettily. Don’t
+you remember you even gave lessons in conversation?”
+
+At this M. Nioche decided to change his attitude. He stooped and picked
+up the pug, lifted it to his face and wiped his eyes on its little soft
+back. “I’m afraid to speak to you,” he presently said, looking over the
+puppy’s shoulder. “I hoped you wouldn’t notice me. I should have moved
+away, but I was afraid that if I moved you would notice me. So I sat
+very still.”
+
+“I suspect you have a bad conscience, sir,” said Newman.
+
+The old man put down the little dog and held it carefully in his lap.
+Then he shook his head, with his eyes still fixed upon his
+interlocutor. “No, Mr. Newman, I have a good conscience,” he murmured.
+
+“Then why should you want to slink away from me?”
+
+“Because—because you don’t understand my position.”
+
+“Oh, I think you once explained it to me,” said Newman. “But it seems
+improved.”
+
+“Improved!” exclaimed M. Nioche, under his breath. “Do you call this
+improvement?” And he glanced at the treasures in his arms.
+
+“Why, you are on your travels,” Newman rejoined. “A visit to London in
+the season is certainly a sign of prosperity.”
+
+M. Nioche, in answer to this cruel piece of irony, lifted the puppy up
+to his face again, peering at Newman with his small blank eye-holes.
+There was something almost imbecile in the movement, and Newman hardly
+knew whether he was taking refuge in a convenient affectation of
+unreason, or whether he had in fact paid for his dishonor by the loss
+of his wits. In the latter case, just now, he felt little more tenderly
+to the foolish old man than in the former. Responsible or not, he was
+equally an accomplice of his detestably mischievous daughter. Newman
+was going to leave him abruptly, when a ray of entreaty appeared to
+disengage itself from the old man’s misty gaze. “Are you going away?”
+he asked.
+
+“Do you want me to stay?” said Newman.
+
+“I should have left you—from consideration. But my dignity suffers at
+your leaving me—that way.”
+
+“Have you got anything particular to say to me?”
+
+M. Nioche looked around him to see that no one was listening, and then
+he said, very softly but distinctly, “I have _not_ forgiven her!”
+
+Newman gave a short laugh, but the old man seemed for the moment not to
+perceive it; he was gazing away, absently, at some metaphysical image
+of his implacability. “It doesn’t much matter whether you forgive her
+or not,” said Newman. “There are other people who won’t, I assure you.”
+
+“What has she done?” M. Nioche softly questioned, turning round again.
+“I don’t know what she does, you know.”
+
+“She has done a devilish mischief; it doesn’t matter what,” said
+Newman. “She’s a nuisance; she ought to be stopped.”
+
+M. Nioche stealthily put out his hand and laid it very gently upon
+Newman’s arm. “Stopped, yes,” he whispered. “That’s it. Stopped short.
+She is running away—she must be stopped.” Then he paused a moment and
+looked round him. “I mean to stop her,” he went on. “I am only waiting
+for my chance.”
+
+“I see,” said Newman, laughing briefly again. “She is running away and
+you are running after her. You have run a long distance!”
+
+But M. Nioche stared insistently: “I shall stop her!” he softly
+repeated.
+
+He had hardly spoken when the crowd in front of them separated, as if
+by the impulse to make way for an important personage. Presently,
+through the opening, advanced Mademoiselle Nioche, attended by the
+gentleman whom Newman had lately observed. His face being now presented
+to our hero, the latter recognized the irregular features, the hardly
+more regular complexion, and the amiable expression of Lord Deepmere.
+Noémie, on finding herself suddenly confronted with Newman, who, like
+M. Nioche, had risen from his seat, faltered for a barely perceptible
+instant. She gave him a little nod, as if she had seen him yesterday,
+and then, with a good-natured smile, “_Tiens_, how we keep meeting!”
+she said. She looked consummately pretty, and the front of her dress
+was a wonderful work of art. She went up to her father, stretching out
+her hands for the little dog, which he submissively placed in them, and
+she began to kiss it and murmur over it: “To think of leaving him all
+alone,—what a wicked, abominable creature he must believe me! He has
+been very unwell,” she added, turning and affecting to explain to
+Newman, with a spark of infernal impudence, fine as a needlepoint, in
+her eye. “I don’t think the English climate agrees with him.”
+
+“It seems to agree wonderfully well with his mistress,” said Newman.
+
+“Do you mean me? I have never been better, thank you,” Miss Noémie
+declared. “But with _milord_”—and she gave a brilliant glance at her
+late companion—“how can one help being well?” She seated herself in the
+chair from which her father had risen, and began to arrange the little
+dog’s rosette.
+
+Lord Deepmere carried off such embarrassment as might be incidental to
+this unexpected encounter with the inferior grace of a male and a
+Briton. He blushed a good deal, and greeted the object of his late
+momentary aspiration to rivalry in the favor of a person other than the
+mistress of the invalid pug with an awkward nod and a rapid
+ejaculation—an ejaculation to which Newman, who often found it hard to
+understand the speech of English people, was able to attach no meaning.
+Then the young man stood there, with his hand on his hip, and with a
+conscious grin, staring askance at Miss Noémie. Suddenly an idea seemed
+to strike him, and he said, turning to Newman, “Oh, you know her?”
+
+“Yes,” said Newman, “I know her. I don’t believe you do.”
+
+“Oh dear, yes, I do!” said Lord Deepmere, with another grin. “I knew
+her in Paris—by my poor cousin Bellegarde, you know. He knew her, poor
+fellow, didn’t he? It was she, you know, who was at the bottom of his
+affair. Awfully sad, wasn’t it?” continued the young man, talking off
+his embarrassment as his simple nature permitted. “They got up some
+story about its being for the Pope; about the other man having said
+something against the Pope’s morals. They always do that, you know.
+They put it on the Pope because Bellegarde was once in the Zouaves. But
+it was about _her_ morals—_she_ was the Pope!” Lord Deepmere pursued,
+directing an eye illumined by this pleasantry toward Mademoiselle
+Nioche, who was bending gracefully over her lap-dog, apparently
+absorbed in conversation with it. “I dare say you think it rather odd
+that I should—ah—keep up the acquaintance,” the young man resumed; “but
+she couldn’t help it, you know, and Bellegarde was only my twentieth
+cousin. I dare say you think it’s rather cheeky, my showing with her in
+Hyde Park, but you see she isn’t known yet, and she’s in such very good
+form——” And Lord Deepmere’s conclusion was lost in the attesting glance
+which he again directed toward the young lady.
+
+Newman turned away; he was having more of her than he relished. M.
+Nioche had stepped aside on his daughter’s approach, and he stood
+there, within a very small compass, looking down hard at the ground. It
+had never yet, as between him and Newman, been so apposite to place on
+record the fact that he had not forgiven his daughter. As Newman was
+moving away he looked up and drew near to him, and Newman, seeing the
+old man had something particular to say, bent his head for an instant.
+
+“You will see it some day in the papers,” murmured M. Nioche.
+
+Our hero departed to hide his smile, and to this day, though the
+newspapers form his principal reading, his eyes have not been arrested
+by any paragraph forming a sequel to this announcement.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+In that uninitiated observation of the great spectacle of English life
+upon which I have touched, it might be supposed that Newman passed a
+great many dull days. But the dullness of his days pleased him; his
+melancholy, which was settling into a secondary stage, like a healing
+wound, had in it a certain acrid, palatable sweetness. He had company
+in his thoughts, and for the present he wanted no other. He had no
+desire to make acquaintances, and he left untouched a couple of notes
+of introduction which had been sent him by Tom Tristram. He thought a
+great deal of Madame de Cintré—sometimes with a dogged tranquillity
+which might have seemed, for a quarter of an hour at a time, a near
+neighbor to forgetfulness. He lived over again the happiest hours he
+had known—that silver chain of numbered days in which his afternoon
+visits, tending sensibly to the ideal result, had subtilized his good
+humor to a sort of spiritual intoxication. He came back to reality,
+after such reveries, with a somewhat muffled shock; he had begun to
+feel the need of accepting the unchangeable. At other times the reality
+became an infamy again and the unchangeable an imposture, and he gave
+himself up to his angry restlessness till he was weary. But on the
+whole he fell into a rather reflective mood. Without in the least
+intending it or knowing it, he attempted to read the moral of his
+strange misadventure. He asked himself, in his quieter hours, whether
+perhaps, after all, he _was_ more commercial than was pleasant. We know
+that it was in obedience to a strong reaction against questions
+exclusively commercial that he had come out to pick up æsthetic
+entertainment in Europe; it may therefore be understood that he was
+able to conceive that a man might be too commercial. He was very
+willing to grant it, but the concession, as to his own case, was not
+made with any very oppressive sense of shame. If he had been too
+commercial, he was ready to forget it, for in being so he had done no
+man any wrong that might not be as easily forgotten. He reflected with
+sober placidity that at least there were no monuments of his “meanness”
+scattered about the world. If there was any reason in the nature of
+things why his connection with business should have cast a shadow upon
+a connection—even a connection broken—with a woman justly proud, he was
+willing to sponge it out of his life forever. The thing seemed a
+possibility; he could not feel it, doubtless, as keenly as some people,
+and it hardly seemed worth while to flap his wings very hard to rise to
+the idea; but he could feel it enough to make any sacrifice that still
+remained to be made. As to what such sacrifice was now to be made to,
+here Newman stopped short before a blank wall over which there
+sometimes played a shadowy imagery. He had a fancy of carrying out his
+life as he would have directed it if Madame de Cintré had been left to
+him—of making it a religion to do nothing that she would have disliked.
+In this, certainly, there was no sacrifice; but there was a pale,
+oblique ray of inspiration. It would be lonely entertainment—a good
+deal like a man talking to himself in the mirror for want of better
+company. Yet the idea yielded Newman several half hours’ dumb
+exaltation as he sat, with his hands in his pockets and his legs
+stretched, over the relics of an expensively poor dinner, in the
+undying English twilight. If, however, his commercial imagination was
+dead, he felt no contempt for the surviving actualities begotten by it.
+He was glad he had been prosperous and had been a great man of business
+rather than a small one; he was extremely glad he was rich. He felt no
+impulse to sell all he had and give to the poor, or to retire into
+meditative economy and asceticism. He was glad he was rich and
+tolerably young; if it was possible to think too much about buying and
+selling, it was a gain to have a good slice of life left in which not
+to think about them. Come, what should he think about now? Again and
+again Newman could think only of one thing; his thoughts always came
+back to it, and as they did so, with an emotional rush which seemed
+physically to express itself in a sudden upward choking, he leaned
+forward—the waiter having left the room—and, resting his arms on the
+table, buried his troubled face.
+
+He remained in England till midsummer, and spent a month in the
+country, wandering about cathedrals, castles, and ruins. Several times,
+taking a walk from his inn into meadows and parks, he stopped by a
+well-worn stile, looked across through the early evening at a gray
+church tower, with its dusky nimbus of thick-circling swallows, and
+remembered that this might have been part of the entertainment of his
+honeymoon. He had never been so much alone or indulged so little in
+accidental dialogue. The period of recreation appointed by Mrs.
+Tristram had at last expired, and he asked himself what he should do
+now. Mrs. Tristram had written to him, proposing to him that he should
+join her in the Pyrenees; but he was not in the humor to return to
+France. The simplest thing was to repair to Liverpool and embark on the
+first American steamer. Newman made his way to the great seaport and
+secured his berth; and the night before sailing he sat in his room at
+the hotel, staring down, vacantly and wearily, at an open portmanteau.
+A number of papers were lying upon it, which he had been meaning to
+look over; some of them might conveniently be destroyed. But at last he
+shuffled them roughly together, and pushed them into a corner of the
+valise; they were business papers, and he was in no humor for sifting
+them. Then he drew forth his pocket-book and took out a paper of
+smaller size than those he had dismissed. He did not unfold it; he
+simply sat looking at the back of it. If he had momentarily entertained
+the idea of destroying it, the idea quickly expired. What the paper
+suggested was the feeling that lay in his innermost heart and that no
+reviving cheerfulness could long quench—the feeling that after all and
+above all he was a good fellow wronged. With it came a hearty hope that
+the Bellegardes were enjoying their suspense as to what he would do
+yet. The more it was prolonged the more they would enjoy it! He had
+hung fire once, yes; perhaps, in his present queer state of mind, he
+might hang fire again. But he restored the little paper to his
+pocket-book very tenderly, and felt better for thinking of the suspense
+of the Bellegardes. He felt better every time he thought of it after
+that, as he sailed the summer seas. He landed in New York and journeyed
+across the continent to San Francisco, and nothing that he observed by
+the way contributed to mitigate his sense of being a good fellow
+wronged.
+
+He saw a great many other good fellows—his old friends—but he told none
+of them of the trick that had been played him. He said simply that the
+lady he was to have married had changed her mind, and when he was asked
+if he had changed his own, he said, “Suppose we change the subject.” He
+told his friends that he had brought home no “new ideas” from Europe,
+and his conduct probably struck them as an eloquent proof of failing
+invention. He took no interest in chatting about his affairs and
+manifested no desire to look over his accounts. He asked half a dozen
+questions which, like those of an eminent physician inquiring for
+particular symptoms, showed that he still knew what he was talking
+about; but he made no comments and gave no directions. He not only
+puzzled the gentlemen on the stock exchange, but he was himself
+surprised at the extent of his indifference. As it seemed only to
+increase, he made an effort to combat it; he tried to interest himself
+and to take up his old occupations. But they appeared unreal to him; do
+what he would he somehow could not believe in them. Sometimes he began
+to fear that there was something the matter with his head; that his
+brain, perhaps, had softened, and that the end of his strong activities
+had come. This idea came back to him with an exasperating force. A
+hopeless, helpless loafer, useful to no one and detestable to
+himself—this was what the treachery of the Bellegardes had made of him.
+In his restless idleness he came back from San Francisco to New York,
+and sat for three days in the lobby of his hotel, looking out through a
+huge wall of plate-glass at the unceasing stream of pretty girls in
+Parisian-looking dresses, undulating past with little parcels nursed
+against their neat figures. At the end of three days he returned to San
+Francisco, and having arrived there he wished he had stayed away. He
+had nothing to do, his occupation was gone, and it seemed to him that
+he should never find it again. He had nothing to do _here_, he
+sometimes said to himself; but there was something beyond the ocean
+that he was still to do; something that he had left undone
+experimentally and speculatively, to see if it could content itself to
+remain undone. But it was not content: it kept pulling at his
+heartstrings and thumping at his reason; it murmured in his ears and
+hovered perpetually before his eyes. It interposed between all new
+resolutions and their fulfillment; it seemed like a stubborn ghost,
+dumbly entreating to be laid. Till that was done he should never be
+able to do anything else.
+
+One day, toward the end of the winter, after a long interval, he
+received a letter from Mrs. Tristram, who apparently was animated by a
+charitable desire to amuse and distract her correspondent. She gave him
+much Paris gossip, talked of General Packard and Miss Kitty Upjohn,
+enumerated the new plays at the theatre, and enclosed a note from her
+husband, who had gone down to spend a month at Nice. Then came her
+signature, and after this her postscript. The latter consisted of these
+few lines: “I heard three days since from my friend, the Abbé Aubert,
+that Madame de Cintré last week took the veil at the Carmelites. It was
+on her twenty-seventh birthday, and she took the name of her,
+patroness, St. Veronica. Sister Veronica has a lifetime before her!”
+
+This letter came to Newman in the morning; in the evening he started
+for Paris. His wound began to ache with its first fierceness, and
+during his long bleak journey the thought of Madame de Cintré’s
+“life-time,” passed within prison walls on whose outer side he might
+stand, kept him perpetual company. Now he would fix himself in Paris
+forever; he would extort a sort of happiness from the knowledge that if
+she was not there, at least the stony sepulchre that held her was. He
+descended, unannounced, upon Mrs. Bread, whom he found keeping lonely
+watch in his great empty saloons on the Boulevard Haussmann. They were
+as neat as a Dutch village, Mrs. Bread’s only occupation had been
+removing individual dust-particles. She made no complaint, however, of
+her loneliness, for in her philosophy a servant was but a mysteriously
+projected machine, and it would be as fantastic for a housekeeper to
+comment upon a gentleman’s absences as for a clock to remark upon not
+being wound up. No particular clock, Mrs. Bread supposed, went all the
+time, and no particular servant could enjoy all the sunshine diffused
+by the career of an exacting master. She ventured, nevertheless, to
+express a modest hope that Newman meant to remain a while in Paris.
+Newman laid his hand on hers and shook it gently. “I mean to remain
+forever,” he said.
+
+He went after this to see Mrs. Tristram, to whom he had telegraphed,
+and who expected him. She looked at him a moment and shook her head.
+“This won’t do,” she said; “you have come back too soon.” He sat down
+and asked about her husband and her children, tried even to inquire
+about Miss Dora Finch. In the midst of this—“Do you know where she is?”
+he asked, abruptly.
+
+Mrs. Tristram hesitated a moment; of course he couldn’t mean Miss Dora
+Finch. Then she answered, properly: “She has gone to the other house—in
+the Rue d’Enfer.” After Newman had sat a while longer looking very
+sombre, she went on: “You are not so good a man as I thought. You are
+more—you are more—”
+
+“More what?” Newman asked.
+
+“More unforgiving.”
+
+“Good God!” cried Newman; “do you expect me to forgive?”
+
+“No, not that. I have forgiven, so of course you can’t. But you might
+forget! You have a worse temper about it than I should have expected.
+You look wicked—you look dangerous.”
+
+“I may be dangerous,” he said; “but I am not wicked. No, I am not
+wicked.” And he got up to go. Mrs. Tristram asked him to come back to
+dinner; but he answered that he did not feel like pledging himself to
+be present at an entertainment, even as a solitary guest. Later in the
+evening, if he should be able, he would come.
+
+He walked away through the city, beside the Seine and over it, and took
+the direction of the Rue d’Enfer. The day had the softness of early
+spring; but the weather was gray and humid. Newman found himself in a
+part of Paris which he little knew—a region of convents and prisons, of
+streets bordered by long dead walls and traversed by a few wayfarers.
+At the intersection of two of these streets stood the house of the
+Carmelites—a dull, plain edifice, with a high-shouldered blank wall all
+round it. From without Newman could see its upper windows, its steep
+roof and its chimneys. But these things revealed no symptoms of human
+life; the place looked dumb, deaf, inanimate. The pale, dead,
+discolored wall stretched beneath it, far down the empty side street—a
+vista without a human figure. Newman stood there a long time; there
+were no passers; he was free to gaze his fill. This seemed the goal of
+his journey; it was what he had come for. It was a strange
+satisfaction, and yet it was a satisfaction; the barren stillness of
+the place seemed to be his own release from ineffectual longing. It
+told him that the woman within was lost beyond recall, and that the
+days and years of the future would pile themselves above her like the
+huge immovable slab of a tomb. These days and years, in this place,
+would always be just so gray and silent. Suddenly, from the thought of
+their seeing him stand there, again the charm utterly departed. He
+would never stand there again; it was gratuitous dreariness. He turned
+away with a heavy heart, but with a heart lighter than the one he had
+brought. Everything was over, and he too at last could rest. He walked
+down through narrow, winding streets to the edge of the Seine again,
+and there he saw, close above him, the soft, vast towers of Notre Dame.
+He crossed one of the bridges and stood a moment in the empty place
+before the great cathedral; then he went in beneath the grossly-imaged
+portals. He wandered some distance up the nave and sat down in the
+splendid dimness. He sat a long time; he heard far-away bells chiming
+off, at long intervals, to the rest of the world. He was very tired;
+this was the best place he could be in. He said no prayers; he had no
+prayers to say. He had nothing to be thankful for, and he had nothing
+to ask; nothing to ask, because now he must take care of himself. But a
+great cathedral offers a very various hospitality, and Newman sat in
+his place, because while he was there he was out of the world. The most
+unpleasant thing that had ever happened to him had reached its formal
+conclusion, as it were; he could close the book and put it away. He
+leaned his head for a long time on the chair in front of him; when he
+took it up he felt that he was himself again. Somewhere in his mind, a
+tight knot seemed to have loosened. He thought of the Bellegardes; he
+had almost forgotten them. He remembered them as people he had meant to
+do something to. He gave a groan as he remembered what he had meant to
+do; he was annoyed at having meant to do it; the bottom, suddenly, had
+fallen out of his revenge. Whether it was Christian charity or
+unregenerate good nature—what it was, in the background of his soul—I
+don’t pretend to say; but Newman’s last thought was that of course he
+would let the Bellegardes go.
+
+If he had spoken it aloud he would have said that he didn’t want to
+hurt them. He was ashamed of having wanted to hurt them. They had hurt
+him, but such things were really not his game. At last he got up and
+came out of the darkening church; not with the elastic step of a man
+who had won a victory or taken a resolve, but strolling soberly, like a
+good-natured man who is still a little ashamed.
+
+Going home, he said to Mrs. Bread that he must trouble her to put back
+his things into the portmanteau she had unpacked the evening before.
+His gentle stewardess looked at him through eyes a trifle bedimmed.
+“Dear me, sir,” she exclaimed, “I thought you said that you were going
+to stay forever.”
+
+“I meant that I was going to stay away forever,” said Newman kindly.
+And since his departure from Paris on the following day he has
+certainly not returned. The gilded apartments I have so often spoken of
+stand ready to receive him; but they serve only as a spacious residence
+for Mrs. Bread, who wanders eternally from room to room, adjusting the
+tassels of the curtains, and keeps her wages, which are regularly
+brought her by a banker’s clerk, in a great pink Sèvres vase on the
+drawing-room mantelshelf.
+
+Late in the evening Newman went to Mrs. Tristram’s and found Tom
+Tristram by the domestic fireside. “I’m glad to see you back in Paris,”
+this gentleman declared. “You know it’s really the only place for a
+white man to live.” Mr. Tristram made his friend welcome, according to
+his own rosy light, and offered him a convenient _résumé_ of the
+Franco-American gossip of the last six months. Then at last he got up
+and said he would go for half an hour to the club. “I suppose a man who
+has been for six months in California wants a little intellectual
+conversation. I’ll let my wife have a go at you.”
+
+Newman shook hands heartily with his host, but did not ask him to
+remain; and then he relapsed into his place on the sofa, opposite to
+Mrs. Tristram. She presently asked him what he had done after leaving
+her. “Nothing particular,” said Newman.
+
+“You struck me,” she rejoined, “as a man with a plot in his head. You
+looked as if you were bent on some sinister errand, and after you had
+left me I wondered whether I ought to have let you go.”
+
+“I only went over to the other side of the river—to the Carmelites,”
+said Newman.
+
+Mrs. Tristram looked at him a moment and smiled. “What did you do
+there? Try to scale the wall?”
+
+“I did nothing. I looked at the place for a few minutes and then came
+away.”
+
+Mrs. Tristram gave him a sympathetic glance. “You didn’t happen to meet
+M. de Bellegarde,” she asked, “staring hopelessly at the convent wall
+as well? I am told he takes his sister’s conduct very hard.”
+
+“No, I didn’t meet him, I am happy to say,” Newman answered, after a
+pause.
+
+“They are in the country,” Mrs. Tristram went on; “at—what is the name
+of the place?—Fleurières. They returned there at the time you left
+Paris and have been spending the year in extreme seclusion. The little
+marquise must enjoy it; I expect to hear that she has eloped with her
+daughter’s music-master!”
+
+Newman was looking at the light wood-fire; but he listened to this with
+extreme interest. At last he spoke: “I mean never to mention the name
+of those people again, and I don’t want to hear anything more about
+them.” And then he took out his pocket-book and drew forth a scrap of
+paper. He looked at it an instant, then got up and stood by the fire.
+“I am going to burn them up,” he said. “I am glad to have you as a
+witness. There they go!” And he tossed the paper into the flame.
+
+Mrs. Tristram sat with her embroidery needle suspended. “What is that
+paper?” she asked.
+
+Newman leaning against the fireplace, stretched his arms and drew a
+longer breath than usual. Then after a moment, “I can tell you now,” he
+said. “It was a paper containing a secret of the Bellegardes—something
+which would damn them if it were known.”
+
+Mrs. Tristram dropped her embroidery with a reproachful moan. “Ah, why
+didn’t you show it to me?”
+
+“I thought of showing it to you—I thought of showing it to everyone. I
+thought of paying my debt to the Bellegardes that way. So I told them,
+and I frightened them. They have been staying in the country as you
+tell me, to keep out of the explosion. But I have given it up.”
+
+Mrs. Tristram began to take slow stitches again. “Have you quite given
+it up?”
+
+“Oh yes.”
+
+“Is it very bad, this secret?”
+
+“Yes, very bad.”
+
+“For myself,” said Mrs. Tristram, “I am sorry you have given it up. I
+should have liked immensely to see your paper. They have wronged me
+too, you know, as your sponsor and guarantee, and it would have served
+for my revenge as well. How did you come into possession of your
+secret?”
+
+“It’s a long story. But honestly, at any rate.”
+
+“And they knew you were master of it?”
+
+“Oh, I told them.”
+
+“Dear me, how interesting!” cried Mrs. Tristram. “And you humbled them
+at your feet?”
+
+Newman was silent a moment. “No, not at all. They pretended not to
+care—not to be afraid. But I know they did care—they were afraid.”
+
+“Are you very sure?”
+
+Newman stared a moment. “Yes, I’m sure.”
+
+Mrs. Tristram resumed her slow stitches. “They defied you, eh?”
+
+“Yes,” said Newman, “it was about that.”
+
+“You tried by the threat of exposure to make them retract?” Mrs.
+Tristram pursued.
+
+“Yes, but they wouldn’t. I gave them their choice, and they chose to
+take their chance of bluffing off the charge and convicting me of
+fraud. But they _were_ frightened,” Newman added, “and I have had all
+the vengeance I want.”
+
+“It is most provoking,” said Mrs. Tristram, “to hear you talk of the
+‘charge’ when the charge is burnt up. Is it quite consumed?” she asked,
+glancing at the fire.
+
+Newman assured her that there was nothing left of it. “Well then,” she
+said, “I suppose there is no harm in saying that you probably did not
+make them so very uncomfortable. My impression would be that since, as
+you say, they defied you, it was because they believed that, after all,
+you would never really come to the point. Their confidence, after
+counsel taken of each other, was not in their innocence, nor in their
+talent for bluffing things off; it was in your remarkable good nature!
+You see they were right.”
+
+Newman instinctively turned to see if the little paper was in fact
+consumed; but there was nothing left of it.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold;'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The American, by Henry James</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
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+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The American</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Henry James</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Release Date: November, 1994 [eBook #177]<br />
+[Most recently updated: February 23, 2021]</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Pauline J. Iacono, John Hamm and David Widger</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AMERICAN ***</div>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="cover " />
+</div>
+
+<h1>The American</h1>
+
+<h2>by Henry James</h2>
+
+<h4>1877</h4>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01">CHAPTER I</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap02">CHAPTER II</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap03">CHAPTER III</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap04">CHAPTER IV</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap05">CHAPTER V</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap06">CHAPTER VI</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap07">CHAPTER VII</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap08">CHAPTER VIII</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap09">CHAPTER IX</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap10">CHAPTER X</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap11">CHAPTER XI</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap12">CHAPTER XII</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap13">CHAPTER XIII</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap14">CHAPTER XIV</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap15">CHAPTER XV</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap16">CHAPTER XVI</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap17">CHAPTER XVII</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap18">CHAPTER XVIII</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap19">CHAPTER XIX</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap20">CHAPTER XX</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap21">CHAPTER XXI</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap22">CHAPTER XXII</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap23">CHAPTER XXIII</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap24">CHAPTER XXIV</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap25">CHAPTER XXV</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap26">CHAPTER XXVI</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap01"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<p>
+On a brilliant day in May, in the year 1868, a gentleman was reclining at his
+ease on the great circular divan which at that period occupied the centre of
+the Salon Carré, in the Museum of the Louvre. This commodious ottoman has since
+been removed, to the extreme regret of all weak-kneed lovers of the fine arts,
+but the gentleman in question had taken serene possession of its softest spot,
+and, with his head thrown back and his legs outstretched, was staring at
+Murillo&rsquo;s beautiful moon-borne Madonna in profound enjoyment of his
+posture. He had removed his hat, and flung down beside him a little red
+guide-book and an opera-glass. The day was warm; he was heated with walking,
+and he repeatedly passed his handkerchief over his forehead, with a somewhat
+wearied gesture. And yet he was evidently not a man to whom fatigue was
+familiar; long, lean, and muscular, he suggested the sort of vigor that is
+commonly known as &ldquo;toughness.&rdquo; But his exertions on this particular
+day had been of an unwonted sort, and he had performed great physical feats
+which left him less jaded than his tranquil stroll through the Louvre. He had
+looked out all the pictures to which an asterisk was affixed in those
+formidable pages of fine print in his Bädeker; his attention had been strained
+and his eyes dazzled, and he had sat down with an æsthetic headache. He had
+looked, moreover, not only at all the pictures, but at all the copies that were
+going forward around them, in the hands of those innumerable young women in
+irreproachable toilets who devote themselves, in France, to the propagation of
+masterpieces, and if the truth must be told, he had often admired the copy much
+more than the original. His physiognomy would have sufficiently indicated that
+he was a shrewd and capable fellow, and in truth he had often sat up all night
+over a bristling bundle of accounts, and heard the cock crow without a yawn.
+But Raphael and Titian and Rubens were a new kind of arithmetic, and they
+inspired our friend, for the first time in his life, with a vague
+self-mistrust.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An observer with anything of an eye for national types would have had no
+difficulty in determining the local origin of this undeveloped connoisseur, and
+indeed such an observer might have felt a certain humorous relish of the almost
+ideal completeness with which he filled out the national mould. The gentleman
+on the divan was a powerful specimen of an American. But he was not only a fine
+American; he was in the first place, physically, a fine man. He appeared to
+possess that kind of health and strength which, when found in perfection, are
+the most impressive&mdash;the physical capital which the owner does nothing to
+&ldquo;keep up.&rdquo; If he was a muscular Christian, it was quite without
+knowing it. If it was necessary to walk to a remote spot, he walked, but he had
+never known himself to &ldquo;exercise.&rdquo; He had no theory with regard to
+cold bathing or the use of Indian clubs; he was neither an oarsman, a rifleman,
+nor a fencer&mdash;he had never had time for these amusements&mdash;and he was
+quite unaware that the saddle is recommended for certain forms of indigestion.
+He was by inclination a temperate man; but he had supped the night before his
+visit to the Louvre at the Café Anglais&mdash;someone had told him it was an
+experience not to be omitted&mdash;and he had slept none the less the sleep of
+the just. His usual attitude and carriage were of a rather relaxed and lounging
+kind, but when under a special inspiration, he straightened himself, he looked
+like a grenadier on parade. He never smoked. He had been assured&mdash;such
+things are said&mdash;that cigars were excellent for the health, and he was
+quite capable of believing it; but he knew as little about tobacco as about
+hom&oelig;opathy. He had a very well-formed head, with a shapely, symmetrical
+balance of the frontal and the occipital development, and a good deal of
+straight, rather dry brown hair. His complexion was brown, and his nose had a
+bold well-marked arch. His eye was of a clear, cold gray, and save for a rather
+abundant moustache he was clean-shaved. He had the flat jaw and sinewy neck
+which are frequent in the American type; but the traces of national origin are
+a matter of expression even more than of feature, and it was in this respect
+that our friend&rsquo;s countenance was supremely eloquent. The discriminating
+observer we have been supposing might, however, perfectly have measured its
+expressiveness, and yet have been at a loss to describe it. It had that typical
+vagueness which is not vacuity, that blankness which is not simplicity, that
+look of being committed to nothing in particular, of standing in an attitude of
+general hospitality to the chances of life, of being very much at one&rsquo;s
+own disposal so characteristic of many American faces. It was our
+friend&rsquo;s eye that chiefly told his story; an eye in which innocence and
+experience were singularly blended. It was full of contradictory suggestions,
+and though it was by no means the glowing orb of a hero of romance, you could
+find in it almost anything you looked for. Frigid and yet friendly, frank yet
+cautious, shrewd yet credulous, positive yet sceptical, confident yet shy,
+extremely intelligent and extremely good-humored, there was something vaguely
+defiant in its concessions, and something profoundly reassuring in its reserve.
+The cut of this gentleman&rsquo;s moustache, with the two premature wrinkles in
+the cheek above it, and the fashion of his garments, in which an exposed
+shirt-front and a cerulean cravat played perhaps an obtrusive part, completed
+the conditions of his identity. We have approached him, perhaps, at a not
+especially favorable moment; he is by no means sitting for his portrait. But
+listless as he lounges there, rather baffled on the æsthetic question, and
+guilty of the damning fault (as we have lately discovered it to be) of
+confounding the merit of the artist with that of his work (for he admires the
+squinting Madonna of the young lady with the boyish coiffure, because he thinks
+the young lady herself uncommonly taking), he is a sufficiently promising
+acquaintance. Decision, salubrity, jocosity, prosperity, seem to hover within
+his call; he is evidently a practical man, but the idea in his case, has
+undefined and mysterious boundaries, which invite the imagination to bestir
+itself on his behalf.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the little copyist proceeded with her work, she sent every now and then a
+responsive glance toward her admirer. The cultivation of the fine arts appeared
+to necessitate, to her mind, a great deal of by-play, a great standing off with
+folded arms and head drooping from side to side, stroking of a dimpled chin
+with a dimpled hand, sighing and frowning and patting of the foot, fumbling in
+disordered tresses for wandering hair-pins. These performances were accompanied
+by a restless glance, which lingered longer than elsewhere upon the gentleman
+we have described. At last he rose abruptly, put on his hat, and approached the
+young lady. He placed himself before her picture and looked at it for some
+moments, during which she pretended to be quite unconscious of his inspection.
+Then, addressing her with the single word which constituted the strength of his
+French vocabulary, and holding up one finger in a manner which appeared to him
+to illuminate his meaning, &ldquo;<i>Combien?</i>&rdquo; he abruptly demanded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The artist stared a moment, gave a little pout, shrugged her shoulders, put
+down her palette and brushes, and stood rubbing her hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How much?&rdquo; said our friend, in English.
+&ldquo;<i>Combien?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Monsieur wishes to buy it?&rdquo; asked the young lady in French.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very pretty, <i>splendide. Combien?</i>&rdquo; repeated the American.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It pleases monsieur, my little picture? It&rsquo;s a very beautiful
+subject,&rdquo; said the young lady.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Madonna, yes; I am not a Catholic, but I want to buy it.
+<i>Combien?</i> Write it here.&rdquo; And he took a pencil from his pocket and
+showed her the fly-leaf of his guide-book. She stood looking at him and
+scratching her chin with the pencil. &ldquo;Is it not for sale?&rdquo; he
+asked. And as she still stood reflecting, and looking at him with an eye which,
+in spite of her desire to treat this avidity of patronage as a very old story,
+betrayed an almost touching incredulity, he was afraid he had offended her. She
+was simply trying to look indifferent, and wondering how far she might go.
+&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t made a mistake&mdash;<i>pas insulté</i>, no?&rdquo; her
+interlocutor continued. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you understand a little
+English?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young lady&rsquo;s aptitude for playing a part at short notice was
+remarkable. She fixed him with her conscious, perceptive eye and asked him if
+he spoke no French. Then, &ldquo;<i>Donnez!</i>&rdquo; she said briefly, and
+took the open guide-book. In the upper corner of the fly-leaf she traced a
+number, in a minute and extremely neat hand. Then she handed back the book and
+took up her palette again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our friend read the number: &ldquo;2,000 francs.&rdquo; He said nothing for a
+time, but stood looking at the picture, while the copyist began actively to
+dabble with her paint. &ldquo;For a copy, isn&rsquo;t that a good deal?&rdquo;
+he asked at last. &ldquo;<i>Pas beaucoup?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young lady raised her eyes from her palette, scanned him from head to foot,
+and alighted with admirable sagacity upon exactly the right answer. &ldquo;Yes,
+it&rsquo;s a good deal. But my copy has remarkable qualities, it is worth
+nothing less.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The gentleman in whom we are interested understood no French, but I have said
+he was intelligent, and here is a good chance to prove it. He apprehended, by a
+natural instinct, the meaning of the young woman&rsquo;s phrase, and it
+gratified him to think that she was so honest. Beauty, talent, virtue; she
+combined everything! &ldquo;But you must finish it,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;<i>finish</i>, you know;&rdquo; and he pointed to the unpainted hand of
+the figure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, it shall be finished in perfection; in the perfection of
+perfections!&rdquo; cried mademoiselle; and to confirm her promise, she
+deposited a rosy blotch in the middle of the Madonna&rsquo;s cheek.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the American frowned. &ldquo;Ah, too red, too red!&rdquo; he rejoined.
+&ldquo;Her complexion,&rdquo; pointing to the Murillo, &ldquo;is&mdash;more
+delicate.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Delicate? Oh, it shall be delicate, monsieur; delicate as Sèvres
+<i>biscuit</i>. I am going to tone that down; I know all the secrets of my art.
+And where will you allow us to send it to you? Your address?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My address? Oh yes!&rdquo; And the gentleman drew a card from his
+pocket-book and wrote something upon it. Then hesitating a moment he said,
+&ldquo;If I don&rsquo;t like it when it it&rsquo;s finished, you know, I shall
+not be obliged to take it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young lady seemed as good a guesser as himself. &ldquo;Oh, I am very sure
+that monsieur is not capricious,&rdquo; she said with a roguish smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Capricious?&rdquo; And at this monsieur began to laugh. &ldquo;Oh no,
+I&rsquo;m not capricious. I am very faithful. I am very constant.
+<i>Comprenez?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Monsieur is constant; I understand perfectly. It&rsquo;s a rare virtue.
+To recompense you, you shall have your picture on the first possible day; next
+week&mdash;as soon as it is dry. I will take the card of monsieur.&rdquo; And
+she took it and read his name: &ldquo;Christopher Newman.&rdquo; Then she tried
+to repeat it aloud, and laughed at her bad accent. &ldquo;Your English names
+are so droll!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Droll?&rdquo; said Mr. Newman, laughing too. &ldquo;Did you ever hear of
+Christopher Columbus?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Bien sûr!</i> He invented America; a very great man. And is he your
+patron?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My patron?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your patron-saint, in the calendar.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, exactly; my parents named me for him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Monsieur is American?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you see it?&rdquo; monsieur inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you mean to carry my little picture away over there?&rdquo; and she
+explained her phrase with a gesture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I mean to buy a great many pictures&mdash;<i>beaucoup,
+beaucoup</i>,&rdquo; said Christopher Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The honor is not less for me,&rdquo; the young lady answered, &ldquo;for
+I am sure monsieur has a great deal of taste.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you must give me your card,&rdquo; Newman said; &ldquo;your card,
+you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young lady looked severe for an instant, and then said, &ldquo;My father
+will wait upon you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this time Mr. Newman&rsquo;s powers of divination were at fault.
+&ldquo;Your card, your address,&rdquo; he simply repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My address?&rdquo; said mademoiselle. Then with a little shrug,
+&ldquo;Happily for you, you are an American! It is the first time I ever gave
+my card to a gentleman.&rdquo; And, taking from her pocket a rather greasy
+portemonnaie, she extracted from it a small glazed visiting card, and presented
+the latter to her patron. It was neatly inscribed in pencil, with a great many
+flourishes, &ldquo;Mlle. Noémie Nioche.&rdquo; But Mr. Newman, unlike his
+companion, read the name with perfect gravity; all French names to him were
+equally droll.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And precisely, here is my father, who has come to escort me home,&rdquo;
+said Mademoiselle Noémie. &ldquo;He speaks English. He will arrange with
+you.&rdquo; And she turned to welcome a little old gentleman who came shuffling
+up, peering over his spectacles at Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. Nioche wore a glossy wig, of an unnatural color which overhung his little
+meek, white, vacant face, and left it hardly more expressive than the
+unfeatured block upon which these articles are displayed in the barber&rsquo;s
+window. He was an exquisite image of shabby gentility. His scant ill-made coat,
+desperately brushed, his darned gloves, his highly polished boots, his rusty,
+shapely hat, told the story of a person who had &ldquo;had losses&rdquo; and
+who clung to the spirit of nice habits even though the letter had been
+hopelessly effaced. Among other things M. Nioche had lost courage. Adversity
+had not only ruined him, it had frightened him, and he was evidently going
+through his remnant of life on tiptoe, for fear of waking up the hostile fates.
+If this strange gentleman was saying anything improper to his daughter, M.
+Nioche would entreat him huskily, as a particular favor, to forbear; but he
+would admit at the same time that he was very presumptuous to ask for
+particular favors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Monsieur has bought my picture,&rdquo; said Mademoiselle Noémie.
+&ldquo;When it&rsquo;s finished you&rsquo;ll carry it to him in a cab.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In a cab!&rdquo; cried M. Nioche; and he stared, in a bewildered way, as
+if he had seen the sun rising at midnight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you the young lady&rsquo;s father?&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;I
+think she said you speak English.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Speak English&mdash;yes,&rdquo; said the old man slowly rubbing his
+hands. &ldquo;I will bring it in a cab.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Say something, then,&rdquo; cried his daughter. &ldquo;Thank him a
+little&mdash;not too much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A little, my daughter, a little?&rdquo; said M. Nioche perplexed.
+&ldquo;How much?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Two thousand!&rdquo; said Mademoiselle Noémie. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t make a
+fuss or he&rsquo;ll take back his word.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Two thousand!&rdquo; cried the old man, and he began to fumble for his
+snuff-box. He looked at Newman from head to foot; he looked at his daughter and
+then at the picture. &ldquo;Take care you don&rsquo;t spoil it!&rdquo; he cried
+almost sublimely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We must go home,&rdquo; said Mademoiselle Noémie. &ldquo;This is a good
+day&rsquo;s work. Take care how you carry it!&rdquo; And she began to put up
+her utensils.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How can I thank you?&rdquo; said M. Nioche. &ldquo;My English does not
+suffice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish I spoke French as well,&rdquo; said Newman, good-naturedly.
+&ldquo;Your daughter is very clever.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, sir!&rdquo; and M. Nioche looked over his spectacles with tearful
+eyes and nodded several times with a world of sadness. &ldquo;She has had an
+education&mdash;<i>très-supérieure!</i> Nothing was spared. Lessons in pastel
+at ten francs the lesson, lessons in oil at twelve francs. I didn&rsquo;t look
+at the francs then. She&rsquo;s an <i>artiste</i>, eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do I understand you to say that you have had reverses?&rdquo; asked
+Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reverses? Oh, sir, misfortunes&mdash;terrible.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Unsuccessful in business, eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very unsuccessful, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, never fear, you&rsquo;ll get on your legs again,&rdquo; said Newman
+cheerily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old man drooped his head on one side and looked at him with an expression
+of pain, as if this were an unfeeling jest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What does he say?&rdquo; demanded Mademoiselle Noémie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. Nioche took a pinch of snuff. &ldquo;He says I will make my fortune
+again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps he will help you. And what else?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He says thou art very clever.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is very possible. You believe it yourself, my father?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Believe it, my daughter? With this evidence!&rdquo; And the old man
+turned afresh, with a staring, wondering homage, to the audacious daub on the
+easel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ask him, then, if he would not like to learn French.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To learn French?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To take lessons.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To take lessons, my daughter? From thee?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;From you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;From me, my child? How should I give lessons?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Pas de raisons!</i> Ask him immediately!&rdquo; said Mademoiselle
+Noémie, with soft brevity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. Nioche stood aghast, but under his daughter&rsquo;s eye he collected his
+wits, and, doing his best to assume an agreeable smile, he executed her
+commands. &ldquo;Would it please you to receive instruction in our beautiful
+language?&rdquo; he inquired, with an appealing quaver.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To study French?&rdquo; asked Newman, staring.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. Nioche pressed his finger-tips together and slowly raised his shoulders.
+&ldquo;A little conversation!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Conversation&mdash;that&rsquo;s it!&rdquo; murmured Mademoiselle Noémie,
+who had caught the word. &ldquo;The conversation of the best society.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Our French conversation is famous, you know,&rdquo; M. Nioche ventured
+to continue. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a great talent.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But isn&rsquo;t it awfully difficult?&rdquo; asked Newman, very simply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not to a man of <i>esprit</i>, like monsieur, an admirer of beauty in
+every form!&rdquo; and M. Nioche cast a significant glance at his
+daughter&rsquo;s Madonna.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t fancy myself chattering French!&rdquo; said Newman with a
+laugh. &ldquo;And yet, I suppose that the more a man knows the better.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Monsieur expresses that very happily. <i>Hélas, oui!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose it would help me a great deal, knocking about Paris, to know
+the language.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, there are so many things monsieur must want to say: difficult
+things!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Everything I want to say is difficult. But you give lessons?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor M. Nioche was embarrassed; he smiled more appealingly. &ldquo;I am not a
+regular professor,&rdquo; he admitted. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t nevertheless tell
+him that I&rsquo;m a professor,&rdquo; he said to his daughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell him it&rsquo;s a very exceptional chance,&rdquo; answered
+Mademoiselle Noémie; &ldquo;an <i>homme du monde</i>&mdash;one gentleman
+conversing with another! Remember what you are&mdash;what you have been!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A teacher of languages in neither case! Much more formerly and much less
+to-day! And if he asks the price of the lessons?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He won&rsquo;t ask it,&rdquo; said Mademoiselle Noémie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What he pleases, I may say?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never! That&rsquo;s bad style.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If he asks, then?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mademoiselle Noémie had put on her bonnet and was tying the ribbons. She
+smoothed them out, with her soft little chin thrust forward. &ldquo;Ten
+francs,&rdquo; she said quickly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, my daughter! I shall never dare.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t dare, then! He won&rsquo;t ask till the end of the lessons,
+and then I will make out the bill.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. Nioche turned to the confiding foreigner again, and stood rubbing his hands,
+with an air of seeming to plead guilty which was not intenser only because it
+was habitually so striking. It never occurred to Newman to ask him for a
+guarantee of his skill in imparting instruction; he supposed of course M.
+Nioche knew his own language, and his appealing forlornness was quite the
+perfection of what the American, for vague reasons, had always associated with
+all elderly foreigners of the lesson-giving class. Newman had never reflected
+upon philological processes. His chief impression with regard to ascertaining
+those mysterious correlatives of his familiar English vocables which were
+current in this extraordinary city of Paris was, that it was simply a matter of
+a good deal of unwonted and rather ridiculous muscular effort on his own part.
+&ldquo;How did you learn English?&rdquo; he asked of the old man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When I was young, before my miseries. Oh, I was wide awake, then. My
+father was a great <i>commerçant</i>; he placed me for a year in a
+counting-house in England. Some of it stuck to me; but much I have
+forgotten!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How much French can I learn in a month?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What does he say?&rdquo; asked Mademoiselle Noémie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. Nioche explained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He will speak like an angel!&rdquo; said his daughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the native integrity which had been vainly exerted to secure M.
+Nioche&rsquo;s commercial prosperity flickered up again. &ldquo;<i>Dame</i>,
+monsieur!&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;All I can teach you!&rdquo; And then,
+recovering himself at a sign from his daughter, &ldquo;I will wait upon you at
+your hotel.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes, I should like to learn French,&rdquo; Newman went on, with
+democratic confidingness. &ldquo;Hang me if I should ever have thought of it! I
+took for granted it was impossible. But if you learned my language, why
+shouldn&rsquo;t I learn yours?&rdquo; and his frank, friendly laugh drew the
+sting from the jest. &ldquo;Only, if we are going to converse, you know, you
+must think of something cheerful to converse about.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are very good, sir; I am overcome!&rdquo; said M. Nioche, throwing
+out his hands. &ldquo;But you have cheerfulness and happiness for two!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no,&rdquo; said Newman more seriously. &ldquo;You must be bright and
+lively; that&rsquo;s part of the bargain.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. Nioche bowed, with his hand on his heart. &ldquo;Very well, sir; you have
+already made me lively.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come and bring me my picture then; I will pay you for it, and we will
+talk about that. That will be a cheerful subject!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mademoiselle Noémie had collected her accessories, and she gave the precious
+Madonna in charge to her father, who retreated backwards out of sight, holding
+it at arm&rsquo;s-length and reiterating his obeisance. The young lady gathered
+her shawl about her like a perfect Parisienne, and it was with the smile of a
+Parisienne that she took leave of her patron.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap02"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<p>
+He wandered back to the divan and seated himself on the other side, in view of
+the great canvas on which Paul Veronese had depicted the marriage-feast of
+Cana. Wearied as he was he found the picture entertaining; it had an illusion
+for him; it satisfied his conception, which was ambitious, of what a splendid
+banquet should be. In the left-hand corner of the picture is a young woman with
+yellow tresses confined in a golden head-dress; she is bending forward and
+listening, with the smile of a charming woman at a dinner-party, to her
+neighbor. Newman detected her in the crowd, admired her, and perceived that she
+too had her votive copyist&mdash;a young man with his hair standing on end.
+Suddenly he became conscious of the germ of the mania of the
+&ldquo;collector;&rdquo; he had taken the first step; why should he not go on?
+It was only twenty minutes before that he had bought the first picture of his
+life, and now he was already thinking of art-patronage as a fascinating
+pursuit. His reflections quickened his good-humor, and he was on the point of
+approaching the young man with another &ldquo;<i>Combien?</i>&rdquo; Two or
+three facts in this relation are noticeable, although the logical chain which
+connects them may seem imperfect. He knew Mademoiselle Nioche had asked too
+much; he bore her no grudge for doing so, and he was determined to pay the
+young man exactly the proper sum. At this moment, however, his attention was
+attracted by a gentleman who had come from another part of the room and whose
+manner was that of a stranger to the gallery, although he was equipped with
+neither guide-book nor opera-glass. He carried a white sun-umbrella, lined with
+blue silk, and he strolled in front of the Paul Veronese, vaguely looking at
+it, but much too near to see anything but the grain of the canvas. Opposite to
+Christopher Newman he paused and turned, and then our friend, who had been
+observing him, had a chance to verify a suspicion aroused by an imperfect view
+of his face. The result of this larger scrutiny was that he presently sprang to
+his feet, strode across the room, and, with an outstretched hand, arrested the
+gentleman with the blue-lined umbrella. The latter stared, but put out his hand
+at a venture. He was corpulent and rosy, and though his countenance, which was
+ornamented with a beautiful flaxen beard, carefully divided in the middle and
+brushed outward at the sides, was not remarkable for intensity of expression,
+he looked like a person who would willingly shake hands with anyone. I know not
+what Newman thought of his face, but he found a want of response in his grasp.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, come, come,&rdquo; he said, laughing; &ldquo;don&rsquo;t say, now,
+you don&rsquo;t know me&mdash;if I have <i>not</i> got a white parasol!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sound of his voice quickened the other&rsquo;s memory, his face expanded to
+its fullest capacity, and he also broke into a laugh. &ldquo;Why,
+Newman&mdash;I&rsquo;ll be blowed! Where in the world&mdash;I declare&mdash;who
+would have thought? You know you have changed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t!&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not for the better, no doubt. When did you get here?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Three days ago.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why didn&rsquo;t you let me know?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I had no idea <i>you</i> were here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have been here these six years.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It must be eight or nine since we met.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Something of that sort. We were very young.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was in St. Louis, during the war. You were in the army.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no, not I! But you were.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I believe I was.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You came out all right?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I came out with my legs and arms&mdash;and with satisfaction. All that
+seems very far away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And how long have you been in Europe?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Seventeen days.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;First time?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, very much so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Made your everlasting fortune?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Christopher Newman was silent a moment, and then with a tranquil smile he
+answered, &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And come to Paris to spend it, eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, we shall see. So they carry those parasols here&mdash;the
+men-folk?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course they do. They&rsquo;re great things. They understand comfort
+out here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where do you buy them?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Anywhere, everywhere.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, Tristram, I&rsquo;m glad to get hold of you. You can show me the
+ropes. I suppose you know Paris inside out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Tristram gave a mellow smile of self-gratulation. &ldquo;Well, I guess
+there are not many men that can show me much. I&rsquo;ll take care of
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a pity you were not here a few minutes ago. I have just
+bought a picture. You might have put the thing through for me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bought a picture?&rdquo; said Mr. Tristram, looking vaguely round at the
+walls. &ldquo;Why, do they sell them?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I mean a copy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I see. These,&rdquo; said Mr. Tristram, nodding at the Titians and
+Vandykes, &ldquo;these, I suppose, are originals.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hope so,&rdquo; cried Newman. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want a copy of a
+copy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Mr. Tristram, mysteriously, &ldquo;you can never tell.
+They imitate, you know, so deucedly well. It&rsquo;s like the jewellers, with
+their false stones. Go into the Palais Royal, there; you see
+&lsquo;Imitation&rsquo; on half the windows. The law obliges them to stick it
+on, you know; but you can&rsquo;t tell the things apart. To tell the
+truth,&rdquo; Mr. Tristram continued, with a wry face, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t do
+much in pictures. I leave that to my wife.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, you have got a wife?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t I mention it? She&rsquo;s a very nice woman; you must know
+her. She&rsquo;s up there in the Avenue d&rsquo;Iéna.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So you are regularly fixed&mdash;house and children and all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, a tip-top house and a couple of youngsters.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Christopher Newman, stretching his arms a little, with
+a sigh, &ldquo;I envy you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no! you don&rsquo;t!&rdquo; answered Mr. Tristram, giving him a
+little poke with his parasol.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I beg your pardon; I do!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, you won&rsquo;t, then, when&mdash;when&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t certainly mean when I have seen your
+establishment?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When you have seen Paris, my boy. You want to be your own master
+here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I have been my own master all my life, and I&rsquo;m tired of
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, try Paris. How old are you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thirty-six.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>C&rsquo;est le bel âge</i>, as they say here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What does that mean?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It means that a man shouldn&rsquo;t send away his plate till he has
+eaten his fill.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All that? I have just made arrangements to take French lessons.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, you don&rsquo;t want any lessons. You&rsquo;ll pick it up. I never
+took any.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose you speak French as well as English?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Better!&rdquo; said Mr. Tristram, roundly. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a splendid
+language. You can say all sorts of bright things in it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I suppose,&rdquo; said Christopher Newman, with an earnest desire
+for information, &ldquo;that you must be bright to begin with.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not a bit; that&rsquo;s just the beauty of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two friends, as they exchanged these remarks, had remained standing where
+they met, and leaning against the rail which protected the pictures. Mr.
+Tristram at last declared that he was overcome with fatigue and should be happy
+to sit down. Newman recommended in the highest terms the great divan on which
+he had been lounging, and they prepared to seat themselves. &ldquo;This is a
+great place; isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; said Newman, with ardor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Great place, great place. Finest thing in the world.&rdquo; And then,
+suddenly, Mr. Tristram hesitated and looked about him. &ldquo;I suppose they
+won&rsquo;t let you smoke here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman stared. &ldquo;Smoke? I&rsquo;m sure I don&rsquo;t know. You know the
+regulations better than I.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I? I never was here before!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never! in six years?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I believe my wife dragged me here once when we first came to Paris, but
+I never found my way back.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you say you know Paris so well!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t call this Paris!&rdquo; cried Mr. Tristram, with
+assurance. &ldquo;Come; let&rsquo;s go over to the Palais Royal and have a
+smoke.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t smoke,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A drink, then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Mr. Tristram led his companion away. They passed through the glorious halls
+of the Louvre, down the staircases, along the cool, dim galleries of sculpture,
+and out into the enormous court. Newman looked about him as he went, but he
+made no comments, and it was only when they at last emerged into the open air
+that he said to his friend, &ldquo;It seems to me that in your place I should
+have come here once a week.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, no you wouldn&rsquo;t!&rdquo; said Mr. Tristram. &ldquo;You think
+so, but you wouldn&rsquo;t. You wouldn&rsquo;t have had time. You would always
+mean to go, but you never would go. There&rsquo;s better fun than that, here in
+Paris. Italy&rsquo;s the place to see pictures; wait till you get there. There
+you have to go; you can&rsquo;t do anything else. It&rsquo;s an awful country;
+you can&rsquo;t get a decent cigar. I don&rsquo;t know why I went in there,
+to-day; I was strolling along, rather hard up for amusement. I sort of noticed
+the Louvre as I passed, and I thought I would go in and see what was going on.
+But if I hadn&rsquo;t found you there I should have felt rather sold. Hang it,
+I don&rsquo;t care for pictures; I prefer the reality!&rdquo; And Mr. Tristram
+tossed off this happy formula with an assurance which the numerous class of
+persons suffering from an overdose of &ldquo;culture&rdquo; might have envied
+him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two gentlemen proceeded along the Rue de Rivoli and into the Palais Royal,
+where they seated themselves at one of the little tables stationed at the door
+of the café which projects into the great open quadrangle. The place was filled
+with people, the fountains were spouting, a band was playing, clusters of
+chairs were gathered beneath all the lime-trees, and buxom, white-capped
+nurses, seated along the benches, were offering to their infant charges the
+amplest facilities for nutrition. There was an easy, homely gaiety in the whole
+scene, and Christopher Newman felt that it was most characteristically
+Parisian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And now,&rdquo; began Mr. Tristram, when they had tested the decoction
+which he had caused to be served to them, &ldquo;now just give an account of
+yourself. What are your ideas, what are your plans, where have you come from
+and where are you going? In the first place, where are you staying?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;At the Grand Hotel,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Tristram puckered his plump visage. &ldquo;That won&rsquo;t do! You must
+change.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Change?&rdquo; demanded Newman. &ldquo;Why, it&rsquo;s the finest hotel
+I ever was in.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t want a &lsquo;fine&rsquo; hotel; you want something
+small and quiet and elegant, where your bell is answered and you&mdash;your
+person is recognized.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They keep running to see if I have rung before I have touched the
+bell,&rdquo; said Newman &ldquo;and as for my person they are always bowing and
+scraping to it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose you are always tipping them. That&rsquo;s very bad
+style.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Always? By no means. A man brought me something yesterday, and then
+stood loafing in a beggarly manner. I offered him a chair and asked him if he
+wouldn&rsquo;t sit down. Was that bad style?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But he bolted, instantly. At any rate, the place amuses me. Hang your
+elegance, if it bores me. I sat in the court of the Grand Hotel last night
+until two o&rsquo;clock in the morning, watching the coming and going, and the
+people knocking about.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re easily pleased. But you can do as you choose&mdash;a man in
+your shoes. You have made a pile of money, eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have made enough.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Happy the man who can say that? Enough for what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Enough to rest awhile, to forget the confounded thing, to look about me,
+to see the world, to have a good time, to improve my mind, and, if the fancy
+takes me, to marry a wife.&rdquo; Newman spoke slowly, with a certain dryness
+of accent and with frequent pauses. This was his habitual mode of utterance,
+but it was especially marked in the words I have just quoted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jupiter! There&rsquo;s a programme!&rdquo; cried Mr. Tristram.
+&ldquo;Certainly, all that takes money, especially the wife; unless indeed she
+gives it, as mine did. And what&rsquo;s the story? How have you done it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman had pushed his hat back from his forehead, folded his arms, and
+stretched his legs. He listened to the music, he looked about him at the
+bustling crowd, at the plashing fountains, at the nurses and the babies.
+&ldquo;I have worked!&rdquo; he answered at last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tristram looked at him for some moments, and allowed his placid eyes to measure
+his friend&rsquo;s generous longitude and rest upon his comfortably
+contemplative face. &ldquo;What have you worked at?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, at several things.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose you&rsquo;re a smart fellow, eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman continued to look at the nurses and babies; they imparted to the scene a
+kind of primordial, pastoral simplicity. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said at last,
+&ldquo;I suppose I am.&rdquo; And then, in answer to his companion&rsquo;s
+inquiries, he related briefly his history since their last meeting. It was an
+intensely Western story, and it dealt with enterprises which it will be
+needless to introduce to the reader in detail. Newman had come out of the war
+with a brevet of brigadier-general, an honor which in this case&mdash;without
+invidious comparisons&mdash;had lighted upon shoulders amply competent to bear
+it. But though he could manage a fight, when need was, Newman heartily disliked
+the business; his four years in the army had left him with an angry, bitter
+sense of the waste of precious things&mdash;life and time and money and
+&ldquo;smartness&rdquo; and the early freshness of purpose; and he had
+addressed himself to the pursuits of peace with passionate zest and energy. He
+was of course as penniless when he plucked off his shoulder-straps as when he
+put them on, and the only capital at his disposal was his dogged resolution and
+his lively perception of ends and means. Exertion and action were as natural to
+him as respiration; a more completely healthy mortal had never trod the elastic
+soil of the West. His experience, moreover, was as wide as his capacity; when
+he was fourteen years old, necessity had taken him by his slim young shoulders
+and pushed him into the street, to earn that night&rsquo;s supper. He had not
+earned it but he had earned the next night&rsquo;s, and afterwards, whenever he
+had had none, it was because he had gone without it to use the money for
+something else, a keener pleasure or a finer profit. He had turned his hand,
+with his brain in it, to many things; he had been enterprising, in an eminent
+sense of the term; he had been adventurous and even reckless, and he had known
+bitter failure as well as brilliant success; but he was a born experimentalist,
+and he had always found something to enjoy in the pressure of necessity, even
+when it was as irritating as the haircloth shirt of the mediæval monk. At one
+time failure seemed inexorably his portion; ill-luck became his bed-fellow, and
+whatever he touched he turned, not to gold, but to ashes. His most vivid
+conception of a supernatural element in the world&rsquo;s affairs had come to
+him once when this pertinacity of misfortune was at its climax; there seemed to
+him something stronger in life than his own will. But the mysterious something
+could only be the devil, and he was accordingly seized with an intense personal
+enmity to this impertinent force. He had known what it was to have utterly
+exhausted his credit, to be unable to raise a dollar, and to find himself at
+nightfall in a strange city, without a penny to mitigate its strangeness. It
+was under these circumstances that he made his entrance into San Francisco, the
+scene, subsequently, of his happiest strokes of fortune. If he did not, like
+Dr. Franklin in Philadelphia, march along the street munching a penny-loaf, it
+was only because he had not the penny-loaf necessary to the performance. In his
+darkest days he had had but one simple, practical impulse&mdash;the desire, as
+he would have phrased it, to see the thing through. He did so at last, buffeted
+his way into smooth waters, and made money largely. It must be admitted, rather
+nakedly, that Christopher Newman&rsquo;s sole aim in life had been to make
+money; what he had been placed in the world for was, to his own perception,
+simply to wrest a fortune, the bigger the better, from defiant opportunity.
+This idea completely filled his horizon and satisfied his imagination. Upon the
+uses of money, upon what one might do with a life into which one had succeeded
+in injecting the golden stream, he had up to his thirty-fifth year very
+scantily reflected. Life had been for him an open game, and he had played for
+high stakes. He had won at last and carried off his winnings; and now what was
+he to do with them? He was a man to whom, sooner or later, the question was
+sure to present itself, and the answer to it belongs to our story. A vague
+sense that more answers were possible than his philosophy had hitherto dreamt
+of had already taken possession of him, and it seemed softly and agreeably to
+deepen as he lounged in this brilliant corner of Paris with his friend.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must confess,&rdquo; he presently went on, &ldquo;that here I
+don&rsquo;t feel at all smart. My remarkable talents seem of no use. I feel as
+simple as a little child, and a little child might take me by the hand and lead
+me about.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;ll be your little child,&rdquo; said Tristram, jovially;
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll take you by the hand. Trust yourself to me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am a good worker,&rdquo; Newman continued, &ldquo;but I rather think I
+am a poor loafer. I have come abroad to amuse myself, but I doubt whether I
+know how.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, that&rsquo;s easily learned.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I may perhaps learn it, but I am afraid I shall never do it by
+rote. I have the best will in the world about it, but my genius doesn&rsquo;t
+lie in that direction. As a loafer I shall never be original, as I take it that
+you are.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Tristram, &ldquo;I suppose I am original; like all
+those immoral pictures in the Louvre.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Besides,&rdquo; Newman continued, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to work at
+pleasure, any more than I played at work. I want to take it easily. I feel
+deliciously lazy, and I should like to spend six months as I am now, sitting
+under a tree and listening to a band. There&rsquo;s only one thing; I want to
+hear some good music.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Music and pictures! Lord, what refined tastes! You are what my wife
+calls intellectual. I ain&rsquo;t, a bit. But we can find something better for
+you to do than to sit under a tree. To begin with, you must come to the
+club.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What club?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Occidental. You will see all the Americans there; all the best of
+them, at least. Of course you play poker?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I say,&rdquo; cried Newman, with energy, &ldquo;you are not going to
+lock me up in a club and stick me down at a card-table! I haven&rsquo;t come
+all this way for that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What the deuce <i>have</i> you come for! You were glad enough to play
+poker in St. Louis, I recollect, when you cleaned me out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have come to see Europe, to get the best out of it I can. I want to
+see all the great things, and do what the clever people do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The clever people? Much obliged. You set me down as a blockhead,
+then?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman was sitting sidewise in his chair, with his elbow on the back and his
+head leaning on his hand. Without moving he looked a while at his companion
+with his dry, guarded, half-inscrutable, and yet altogether good-natured smile.
+&ldquo;Introduce me to your wife!&rdquo; he said at last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tristram bounced about in his chair. &ldquo;Upon my word, I won&rsquo;t. She
+doesn&rsquo;t want any help to turn up her nose at me, nor do you,
+either!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t turn up my nose at you, my dear fellow; nor at anyone, or
+anything. I&rsquo;m not proud, I assure you I&rsquo;m not proud. That&rsquo;s
+why I am willing to take example by the clever people.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, if I&rsquo;m not the rose, as they say here, I have lived near it.
+I can show you some clever people, too. Do you know General Packard? Do you
+know C. P. Hatch? Do you know Miss Kitty Upjohn?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall be happy to make their acquaintance; I want to cultivate
+society.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tristram seemed restless and suspicious; he eyed his friend askance, and then,
+&ldquo;What are you up to, anyway?&rdquo; he demanded. &ldquo;Are you going to
+write a book?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Christopher Newman twisted one end of his moustache a while, in silence, and at
+last he made answer. &ldquo;One day, a couple of months ago, something very
+curious happened to me. I had come on to New York on some important business;
+it was rather a long story&mdash;a question of getting ahead of another party,
+in a certain particular way, in the stock-market. This other party had once
+played me a very mean trick. I owed him a grudge, I felt awfully savage at the
+time, and I vowed that, when I got a chance, I would, figuratively speaking,
+put his nose out of joint. There was a matter of some sixty thousand dollars at
+stake. If I put it out of his way, it was a blow the fellow would feel, and he
+really deserved no quarter. I jumped into a hack and went about my business,
+and it was in this hack&mdash;this immortal, historical hack&mdash;that the
+curious thing I speak of occurred. It was a hack like any other, only a trifle
+dirtier, with a greasy line along the top of the drab cushions, as if it had
+been used for a great many Irish funerals. It is possible I took a nap; I had
+been traveling all night, and though I was excited with my errand, I felt the
+want of sleep. At all events I woke up suddenly, from a sleep or from a kind of
+a reverie, with the most extraordinary feeling in the world&mdash;a mortal
+disgust for the thing I was going to do. It came upon me like
+<i>that!</i>&rdquo; and he snapped his fingers&mdash;&ldquo;as abruptly as an
+old wound that begins to ache. I couldn&rsquo;t tell the meaning of it; I only
+felt that I loathed the whole business and wanted to wash my hands of it. The
+idea of losing that sixty thousand dollars, of letting it utterly slide and
+scuttle and never hearing of it again, seemed the sweetest thing in the world.
+And all this took place quite independently of my will, and I sat watching it
+as if it were a play at the theatre. I could feel it going on inside of me. You
+may depend upon it that there are things going on inside of us that we
+understand mighty little about.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jupiter! you make my flesh creep!&rdquo; cried Tristram. &ldquo;And
+while you sat in your hack, watching the play, as you call it, the other man
+marched in and bagged your sixty thousand dollars?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have not the least idea. I hope so, poor devil! but I never found out.
+We pulled up in front of the place I was going to in Wall Street, but I sat
+still in the carriage, and at last the driver scrambled down off his seat to
+see whether his carriage had not turned into a hearse. I couldn&rsquo;t have
+got out, any more than if I had been a corpse. What was the matter with me?
+Momentary idiocy, you&rsquo;ll say. What I wanted to get out of was Wall
+Street. I told the man to drive down to the Brooklyn ferry and to cross over.
+When we were over, I told him to drive me out into the country. As I had told
+him originally to drive for dear life down town, I suppose he thought me
+insane. Perhaps I was, but in that case I am insane still. I spent the morning
+looking at the first green leaves on Long Island. I was sick of business; I
+wanted to throw it all up and break off short; I had money enough, or if I
+hadn&rsquo;t I ought to have. I seemed to feel a new man inside my old skin,
+and I longed for a new world. When you want a thing so very badly you had
+better treat yourself to it. I didn&rsquo;t understand the matter, not in the
+least; but I gave the old horse the bridle and let him find his way. As soon as
+I could get out of the game I sailed for Europe. That is how I come to be
+sitting here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You ought to have bought up that hack,&rdquo; said Tristram; &ldquo;it
+isn&rsquo;t a safe vehicle to have about. And you have really sold out, then;
+you have retired from business?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have made over my hand to a friend; when I feel disposed, I can take
+up the cards again. I dare say that a twelvemonth hence the operation will be
+reversed. The pendulum will swing back again. I shall be sitting in a gondola
+or on a dromedary, and all of a sudden I shall want to clear out. But for the
+present I am perfectly free. I have even bargained that I am to receive no
+business letters.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, it&rsquo;s a real <i>caprice de prince</i>,&rdquo; said Tristram.
+&ldquo;I back out; a poor devil like me can&rsquo;t help you to spend such very
+magnificent leisure as that. You should get introduced to the crowned
+heads.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman looked at him a moment, and then, with his easy smile, &ldquo;How does
+one do it?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come, I like that!&rdquo; cried Tristram. &ldquo;It shows you are in
+earnest.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course I am in earnest. Didn&rsquo;t I say I wanted the best? I know
+the best can&rsquo;t be had for mere money, but I rather think money will do a
+good deal. In addition, I am willing to take a good deal of trouble.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are not bashful, eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t the least idea. I want the biggest kind of entertainment
+a man can get. People, places, art, nature, everything! I want to see the
+tallest mountains, and the bluest lakes, and the finest pictures and the
+handsomest churches, and the most celebrated men, and the most beautiful
+women.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Settle down in Paris, then. There are no mountains that I know of, and
+the only lake is in the Bois du Boulogne, and not particularly blue. But there
+is everything else: plenty of pictures and churches, no end of celebrated men,
+and several beautiful women.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I can&rsquo;t settle down in Paris at this season, just as summer is
+coming on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, for the summer go up to Trouville.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is Trouville?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The French Newport. Half the Americans go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it anywhere near the Alps?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;About as near as Newport is to the Rocky Mountains.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I want to see Mont Blanc,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;and Amsterdam,
+and the Rhine, and a lot of places. Venice in particular. I have great ideas
+about Venice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Mr. Tristram, rising, &ldquo;I see I shall have to
+introduce you to my wife!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap03"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<p>
+He performed this ceremony on the following day, when, by appointment,
+Christopher Newman went to dine with him. Mr. and Mrs. Tristram lived behind
+one of those chalk-colored façades which decorate with their pompous sameness
+the broad avenues manufactured by Baron Haussmann in the neighborhood of the
+Arc de Triomphe. Their apartment was rich in the modern conveniences, and
+Tristram lost no time in calling his visitor&rsquo;s attention to their
+principal household treasures, the gas-lamps and the furnace-holes.
+&ldquo;Whenever you feel homesick,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you must come up
+here. We&rsquo;ll stick you down before a register, under a good big burner,
+and&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you will soon get over your homesickness,&rdquo; said Mrs. Tristram.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her husband stared; his wife often had a tone which he found inscrutable he
+could not tell for his life whether she was in jest or in earnest. The truth is
+that circumstances had done much to cultivate in Mrs. Tristram a marked
+tendency to irony. Her taste on many points differed from that of her husband,
+and though she made frequent concessions it must be confessed that her
+concessions were not always graceful. They were founded upon a vague project
+she had of some day doing something very positive, something a trifle
+passionate. What she meant to do she could by no means have told you; but
+meanwhile, nevertheless, she was buying a good conscience, by instalments.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It should be added, without delay, to anticipate misconception, that her little
+scheme of independence did not definitely involve the assistance of another
+person, of the opposite sex; she was not saving up virtue to cover the expenses
+of a flirtation. For this there were various reasons. To begin with, she had a
+very plain face and she was entirely without illusions as to her appearance.
+She had taken its measure to a hair&rsquo;s breadth, she knew the worst and the
+best, she had accepted herself. It had not been, indeed, without a struggle. As
+a young girl she had spent hours with her back to her mirror, crying her eyes
+out; and later she had from desperation and bravado adopted the habit of
+proclaiming herself the most ill-favored of women, in order that she
+might&mdash;as in common politeness was inevitable&mdash;be contradicted and
+reassured. It was since she had come to live in Europe that she had begun to
+take the matter philosophically. Her observation, acutely exercised here, had
+suggested to her that a woman&rsquo;s first duty is not to be beautiful, but to
+be pleasing, and she encountered so many women who pleased without beauty that
+she began to feel that she had discovered her mission. She had once heard an
+enthusiastic musician, out of patience with a gifted bungler, declare that a
+fine voice is really an obstacle to singing properly; and it occurred to her
+that it might perhaps be equally true that a beautiful face is an obstacle to
+the acquisition of charming manners. Mrs. Tristram, then, undertook to be
+exquisitely agreeable, and she brought to the task a really touching devotion.
+How well she would have succeeded I am unable to say; unfortunately she broke
+off in the middle. Her own excuse was the want of encouragement in her
+immediate circle. But I am inclined to think that she had not a real genius for
+the matter, or she would have pursued the charming art for itself. The poor
+lady was very incomplete. She fell back upon the harmonies of the toilet, which
+she thoroughly understood, and contented herself with dressing in perfection.
+She lived in Paris, which she pretended to detest, because it was only in Paris
+that one could find things to exactly suit one&rsquo;s complexion. Besides out
+of Paris it was always more or less of a trouble to get ten-button gloves. When
+she railed at this serviceable city and you asked her where she would prefer to
+reside, she returned some very unexpected answer. She would say in Copenhagen,
+or in Barcelona; having, while making the tour of Europe, spent a couple of
+days at each of these places. On the whole, with her poetic furbelows and her
+misshapen, intelligent little face, she was, when you knew her, a decidedly
+interesting woman. She was naturally shy, and if she had been born a beauty,
+she would (having no vanity) probably have remained shy. Now, she was both
+diffident and importunate; extremely reserved sometimes with her friends, and
+strangely expansive with strangers. She despised her husband; despised him too
+much, for she had been perfectly at liberty not to marry him. She had been in
+love with a clever man who had slighted her, and she had married a fool in the
+hope that this thankless wit, reflecting on it, would conclude that she had no
+appreciation of merit, and that he had flattered himself in supposing that she
+cared for his own. Restless, discontented, visionary, without personal
+ambitions, but with a certain avidity of imagination, she was, as I have said
+before, eminently incomplete. She was full&mdash;both for good and for
+ill&mdash;of beginnings that came to nothing; but she had nevertheless,
+morally, a spark of the sacred fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman was fond, under all circumstances, of the society of women, and now that
+he was out of his native element and deprived of his habitual interests, he
+turned to it for compensation. He took a great fancy to Mrs. Tristram; she
+frankly repaid it, and after their first meeting he passed a great many hours
+in her drawing-room. After two or three talks they were fast friends.
+Newman&rsquo;s manner with women was peculiar, and it required some ingenuity
+on a lady&rsquo;s part to discover that he admired her. He had no gallantry, in
+the usual sense of the term; no compliments, no graces, no speeches. Very fond
+of what is called chaffing, in his dealings with men, he never found himself on
+a sofa beside a member of the softer sex without feeling extremely serious. He
+was not shy, and so far as awkwardness proceeds from a struggle with shyness,
+he was not awkward; grave, attentive, submissive, often silent, he was simply
+swimming in a sort of rapture of respect. This emotion was not at all
+theoretic, it was not even in a high degree sentimental; he had thought very
+little about the &ldquo;position&rdquo; of women, and he was not familiar
+either sympathetically or otherwise, with the image of a President in
+petticoats. His attitude was simply the flower of his general good-nature, and
+a part of his instinctive and genuinely democratic assumption of
+everyone&rsquo;s right to lead an easy life. If a shaggy pauper had a right to
+bed and board and wages and a vote, women, of course, who were weaker than
+paupers, and whose physical tissue was in itself an appeal, should be
+maintained, sentimentally, at the public expense. Newman was willing to be
+taxed for this purpose, largely, in proportion to his means. Moreover, many of
+the common traditions with regard to women were with him fresh personal
+impressions; he had never read a novel! He had been struck with their
+acuteness, their subtlety, their tact, their felicity of judgment. They seemed
+to him exquisitely organized. If it is true that one must always have in
+one&rsquo;s work here below a religion, or at least an ideal, of some sort,
+Newman found his metaphysical inspiration in a vague acceptance of final
+responsibility to some illumined feminine brow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He spent a great deal of time in listening to advice from Mrs. Tristram;
+advice, it must be added, for which he had never asked. He would have been
+incapable of asking for it, for he had no perception of difficulties, and
+consequently no curiosity about remedies. The complex Parisian world about him
+seemed a very simple affair; it was an immense, amazing spectacle, but it
+neither inflamed his imagination nor irritated his curiosity. He kept his hands
+in his pockets, looked on good-humoredly, desired to miss nothing important,
+observed a great many things narrowly, and never reverted to himself. Mrs.
+Tristram&rsquo;s &ldquo;advice&rdquo; was a part of the show, and a more
+entertaining element, in her abundant gossip, than the others. He enjoyed her
+talking about himself; it seemed a part of her beautiful ingenuity; but he
+never made an application of anything she said, or remembered it when he was
+away from her. For herself, she appropriated him; he was the most interesting
+thing she had had to think about in many a month. She wished to do something
+with him&mdash;she hardly knew what. There was so much of him; he was so rich
+and robust, so easy, friendly, well-disposed, that he kept her fancy constantly
+on the alert. For the present, the only thing she could do was to like him. She
+told him that he was &ldquo;horribly Western,&rdquo; but in this compliment the
+adverb was tinged with insincerity. She led him about with her, introduced him
+to fifty people, and took extreme satisfaction in her conquest. Newman accepted
+every proposal, shook hands universally and promiscuously, and seemed equally
+unfamiliar with trepidation or with elation. Tom Tristram complained of his
+wife&rsquo;s avidity, and declared that he could never have a clear five
+minutes with his friend. If he had known how things were going to turn out, he
+never would have brought him to the Avenue d&rsquo;Iéna. The two men, formerly,
+had not been intimate, but Newman remembered his earlier impression of his
+host, and did Mrs. Tristram, who had by no means taken him into her confidence,
+but whose secret he presently discovered, the justice to admit that her husband
+was a rather degenerate mortal. At twenty-five he had been a good fellow, and
+in this respect he was unchanged; but of a man of his age one expected
+something more. People said he was sociable, but this was as much a matter of
+course as for a dipped sponge to expand; and it was not a high order of
+sociability. He was a great gossip and tattler, and to produce a laugh would
+hardly have spared the reputation of his aged mother. Newman had a kindness for
+old memories, but he found it impossible not to perceive that Tristram was
+nowadays a very light weight. His only aspirations were to hold out at poker,
+at his club, to know the names of all the <i>cocottes</i>, to shake hands all
+round, to ply his rosy gullet with truffles and champagne, and to create
+uncomfortable eddies and obstructions among the constituent atoms of the
+American colony. He was shamefully idle, spiritless, sensual, snobbish. He
+irritated our friend by the tone of his allusions to their native country, and
+Newman was at a loss to understand why the United States were not good enough
+for Mr. Tristram. He had never been a very conscious patriot, but it vexed him
+to see them treated as little better than a vulgar smell in his friend&rsquo;s
+nostrils, and he finally broke out and swore that they were the greatest
+country in the world, that they could put all Europe into their breeches&rsquo;
+pockets, and that an American who spoke ill of them ought to be carried home in
+irons and compelled to live in Boston. (This, for Newman was putting it very
+vindictively.) Tristram was a comfortable man to snub, he bore no malice, and
+he continued to insist on Newman&rsquo;s finishing his evening at the
+Occidental Club.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Christopher Newman dined several times in the Avenue d&rsquo;Iéna, and his host
+always proposed an early adjournment to this institution. Mrs. Tristram
+protested, and declared that her husband exhausted his ingenuity in trying to
+displease her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no, I never try, my love,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;I know you
+loathe me quite enough when I take my chance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman hated to see a husband and wife on these terms, and he was sure one or
+other of them must be very unhappy. He knew it was not Tristram. Mrs. Tristram
+had a balcony before her windows, upon which, during the June evenings, she was
+fond of sitting, and Newman used frankly to say that he preferred the balcony
+to the club. It had a fringe of perfumed plants in tubs, and enabled you to
+look up the broad street and see the Arch of Triumph vaguely massing its heroic
+sculptures in the summer starlight. Sometimes Newman kept his promise of
+following Mr. Tristram, in half an hour, to the Occidental, and sometimes he
+forgot it. His hostess asked him a great many questions about himself, but on
+this subject he was an indifferent talker. He was not what is called
+subjective, though when he felt that her interest was sincere, he made an
+almost heroic attempt to be. He told her a great many things he had done, and
+regaled her with anecdotes of Western life; she was from Philadelphia, and with
+her eight years in Paris, talked of herself as a languid Oriental. But some
+other person was always the hero of the tale, by no means always to his
+advantage; and Newman&rsquo;s own emotions were but scantily chronicled. She
+had an especial wish to know whether he had ever been in love&mdash;seriously,
+passionately&mdash;and, failing to gather any satisfaction from his allusions,
+she at last directly inquired. He hesitated a while, and at last he said,
+&ldquo;No!&rdquo; She declared that she was delighted to hear it, as it
+confirmed her private conviction that he was a man of no feeling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Really?&rdquo; he asked, very gravely. &ldquo;Do you think so? How do
+you recognize a man of feeling?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t make out,&rdquo; said Mrs. Tristram, &ldquo;whether you
+are very simple or very deep.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m very deep. That&rsquo;s a fact.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I believe that if I were to tell you with a certain air that you have no
+feeling, you would implicitly believe me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A certain air?&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;Try it and see.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You would believe me, but you would not care,&rdquo; said Mrs. Tristram.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have got it all wrong. I should care immensely, but I
+shouldn&rsquo;t believe you. The fact is I have never had time to feel things.
+I have had to <i>do</i> them, to make myself felt.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can imagine that you may have done that tremendously,
+sometimes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, there&rsquo;s no mistake about that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When you are in a fury it can&rsquo;t be pleasant.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am never in a fury.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Angry, then, or displeased.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am never angry, and it is so long since I have been displeased that I
+have quite forgotten it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe,&rdquo; said Mrs. Tristram, &ldquo;that you are
+never angry. A man ought to be angry sometimes, and you are neither good enough
+nor bad enough always to keep your temper.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I lose it perhaps once in five years.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The time is coming round, then,&rdquo; said his hostess. &ldquo;Before I
+have known you six months I shall see you in a fine fury.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean to put me into one?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should not be sorry. You take things too coolly. It exasperates me.
+And then you are too happy. You have what must be the most agreeable thing in
+the world, the consciousness of having bought your pleasure beforehand and paid
+for it. You have not a day of reckoning staring you in the face. Your
+reckonings are over.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I suppose I am happy,&rdquo; said Newman, meditatively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have been odiously successful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Successful in copper,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;only so-so in
+railroads, and a hopeless fizzle in oil.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is very disagreeable to know how Americans have made their money. Now
+you have the world before you. You have only to enjoy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I suppose I am very well off,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;Only I am
+tired of having it thrown up at me. Besides, there are several drawbacks. I am
+not intellectual.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One doesn&rsquo;t expect it of you,&rdquo; Mrs. Tristram answered. Then
+in a moment, &ldquo;Besides, you are!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I mean to have a good time, whether or no,&rdquo; said Newman.
+&ldquo;I am not cultivated, I am not even educated; I know nothing about
+history, or art, or foreign tongues, or any other learned matters. But I am not
+a fool, either, and I shall undertake to know something about Europe by the
+time I have done with it. I feel something under my ribs here,&rdquo; he added
+in a moment, &ldquo;that I can&rsquo;t explain&mdash;a sort of a mighty
+hankering, a desire to stretch out and haul in.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bravo!&rdquo; said Mrs. Tristram, &ldquo;that is very fine. You are the
+great Western Barbarian, stepping forth in his innocence and might, gazing a
+while at this poor effete Old World and then swooping down on it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, come,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;I am not a barbarian, by a good
+deal. I am very much the reverse. I have seen barbarians; I know what they
+are.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mean that you are a Comanche chief, or that you wear a
+blanket and feathers. There are different shades.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am a highly civilized man,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;I stick to that.
+If you don&rsquo;t believe it, I should like to prove it to you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Tristram was silent a while. &ldquo;I should like to make you prove
+it,&rdquo; she said, at last. &ldquo;I should like to put you in a difficult
+place.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pray do,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That has a little conceited sound!&rdquo; his companion rejoined.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;I have a very good opinion of
+myself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish I could put it to the test. Give me time and I will.&rdquo; And
+Mrs. Tristram remained silent for some time afterwards, as if she was trying to
+keep her pledge. It did not appear that evening that she succeeded; but as he
+was rising to take his leave she passed suddenly, as she was very apt to do,
+from the tone of unsparing persiflage to that of almost tremulous sympathy.
+&ldquo;Speaking seriously,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I believe in you, Mr.
+Newman. You flatter my patriotism.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your patriotism?&rdquo; Christopher demanded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Even so. It would take too long to explain, and you probably would not
+understand. Besides, you might take it&mdash;really, you might take it for a
+declaration. But it has nothing to do with you personally; it&rsquo;s what you
+represent. Fortunately you don&rsquo;t know all that, or your conceit would
+increase insufferably.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman stood staring and wondering what under the sun he
+&ldquo;represented.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Forgive all my meddlesome chatter and forget my advice. It is very silly
+in me to undertake to tell you what to do. When you are embarrassed, do as you
+think best, and you will do very well. When you are in a difficulty, judge for
+yourself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall remember everything you have told me,&rdquo; said Newman.
+&ldquo;There are so many forms and ceremonies over here&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Forms and ceremonies are what I mean, of course.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, but I want to observe them,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t
+I as good a right as another? They don&rsquo;t scare me, and you needn&rsquo;t
+give me leave to violate them. I won&rsquo;t take it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is not what I mean. I mean, observe them in your own way. Settle
+nice questions for yourself. Cut the knot or untie it, as you choose.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I am sure I shall never fumble over it!&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next time that he dined in the Avenue d&rsquo;Iéna was a Sunday, a day on
+which Mr. Tristram left the cards unshuffled, so that there was a trio in the
+evening on the balcony. The talk was of many things, and at last Mrs. Tristram
+suddenly observed to Christopher Newman that it was high time he should take a
+wife.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Listen to her; she has the audacity!&rdquo; said Tristram, who on Sunday
+evenings was always rather acrimonious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t suppose you have made up your mind not to marry?&rdquo;
+Mrs. Tristram continued.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Heaven forbid!&rdquo; cried Newman. &ldquo;I am sternly resolved on
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s very easy,&rdquo; said Tristram; &ldquo;fatally easy!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, then, I suppose you do not mean to wait till you are fifty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;On the contrary, I am in a great hurry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One would never suppose it. Do you expect a lady to come and propose to
+you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No; I am willing to propose. I think a great deal about it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell me some of your thoughts.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Newman, slowly, &ldquo;I want to marry very
+well.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Marry a woman of sixty, then,&rdquo; said Tristram.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Well&rsquo; in what sense?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In every sense. I shall be hard to please.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You must remember that, as the French proverb says, the most beautiful
+girl in the world can give but what she has.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Since you ask me,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;I will say frankly that I
+want extremely to marry. It is time, to begin with: before I know it I shall be
+forty. And then I&rsquo;m lonely and helpless and dull. But if I marry now, so
+long as I didn&rsquo;t do it in hot haste when I was twenty, I must do it with
+my eyes open. I want to do the thing in handsome style. I do not only want to
+make no mistakes, but I want to make a great hit. I want to take my pick. My
+wife must be a magnificent woman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Voilà ce qui s&rsquo;appelle parler!</i>&rdquo; cried Mrs. Tristram.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I have thought an immense deal about it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps you think too much. The best thing is simply to fall in
+love.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When I find the woman who pleases me, I shall love her enough. My wife
+shall be very comfortable.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are superb! There&rsquo;s a chance for the magnificent women.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are not fair.&rdquo; Newman rejoined. &ldquo;You draw a fellow out
+and put him off guard, and then you laugh at him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I assure you,&rdquo; said Mrs. Tristram, &ldquo;that I am very serious.
+To prove it, I will make you a proposal. Should you like me, as they say here,
+to marry you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To hunt up a wife for me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is already found. I will bring you together.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, come,&rdquo; said Tristram, &ldquo;we don&rsquo;t keep a matrimonial
+bureau. He will think you want your commission.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Present me to a woman who comes up to my notions,&rdquo; said Newman,
+&ldquo;and I will marry her tomorrow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have a strange tone about it, and I don&rsquo;t quite understand
+you. I didn&rsquo;t suppose you would be so coldblooded and calculating.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman was silent a while. &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he said, at last, &ldquo;I want
+a great woman. I stick to that. That&rsquo;s one thing I <i>can</i> treat
+myself to, and if it is to be had I mean to have it. What else have I toiled
+and struggled for, all these years? I have succeeded, and now what am I to do
+with my success? To make it perfect, as I see it, there must be a beautiful
+woman perched on the pile, like a statue on a monument. She must be as good as
+she is beautiful, and as clever as she is good. I can give my wife a good deal,
+so I am not afraid to ask a good deal myself. She shall have everything a woman
+can desire; I shall not even object to her being too good for me; she may be
+cleverer and wiser than I can understand, and I shall only be the better
+pleased. I want to possess, in a word, the best article in the market.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why didn&rsquo;t you tell a fellow all this at the outset?&rdquo;
+Tristram demanded. &ldquo;I have been trying so to make you fond of
+<i>me!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is very interesting,&rdquo; said Mrs. Tristram. &ldquo;I like to
+see a man know his own mind.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have known mine for a long time,&rdquo; Newman went on. &ldquo;I made
+up my mind tolerably early in life that a beautiful wife was the thing best
+worth having, here below. It is the greatest victory over circumstances. When I
+say beautiful, I mean beautiful in mind and in manners, as well as in person.
+It is a thing every man has an equal right to; he may get it if he can. He
+doesn&rsquo;t have to be born with certain faculties, on purpose; he needs only
+to be a man. Then he needs only to use his will, and such wits as he has, and
+to try.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It strikes me that your marriage is to be rather a matter of
+vanity.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, it is certain,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;that if people notice my
+wife and admire her, I shall be mightily tickled.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;After this,&rdquo; cried Mrs. Tristram, &ldquo;call any man
+modest!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But none of them will admire her so much as I.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see you have a taste for splendor.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman hesitated a little; and then, &ldquo;I honestly believe I have!&rdquo;
+he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I suppose you have already looked about you a good deal.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A good deal, according to opportunity.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you have seen nothing that satisfied you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Newman, half reluctantly, &ldquo;I am bound to say in
+honesty that I have seen nothing that really satisfied me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You remind me of the heroes of the French romantic poets, Rolla and
+Fortunio and all those other insatiable gentlemen for whom nothing in this
+world was handsome enough. But I see you are in earnest, and I should like to
+help you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who the deuce is it, darling, that you are going to put upon him?&rdquo;
+Tristram cried. &ldquo;We know a good many pretty girls, thank Heaven, but
+magnificent women are not so common.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have you any objections to a foreigner?&rdquo; his wife continued,
+addressing Newman, who had tilted back his chair and, with his feet on a bar of
+the balcony railing and his hands in his pockets, was looking at the stars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No Irish need apply,&rdquo; said Tristram.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman meditated a while. &ldquo;As a foreigner, no,&rdquo; he said at last;
+&ldquo;I have no prejudices.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear fellow, you have no suspicions!&rdquo; cried Tristram.
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know what terrible customers these foreign women are;
+especially the &lsquo;magnificent&rsquo; ones. How should you like a fair
+Circassian, with a dagger in her belt?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman administered a vigorous slap to his knee. &ldquo;I would marry a
+Japanese, if she pleased me,&rdquo; he affirmed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We had better confine ourselves to Europe,&rdquo; said Mrs. Tristram.
+&ldquo;The only thing is, then, that the person be in herself to your
+taste?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is going to offer you an unappreciated governess!&rdquo; Tristram
+groaned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Assuredly. I won&rsquo;t deny that, other things being equal, I should
+prefer one of my own countrywomen. We should speak the same language, and that
+would be a comfort. But I am not afraid of a foreigner. Besides, I rather like
+the idea of taking in Europe, too. It enlarges the field of selection. When you
+choose from a greater number, you can bring your choice to a finer
+point!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You talk like Sardanapalus!&rdquo; exclaimed Tristram.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You say all this to the right person,&rdquo; said Newman&rsquo;s
+hostess. &ldquo;I happen to number among my friends the loveliest woman in the
+world. Neither more nor less. I don&rsquo;t say a very charming person or a
+very estimable woman or a very great beauty; I say simply the loveliest woman
+in the world.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The deuce!&rdquo; cried Tristram, &ldquo;you have kept very quiet about
+her. Were you afraid of me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have seen her,&rdquo; said his wife, &ldquo;but you have no
+perception of such merit as Claire&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, her name is Claire? I give it up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Does your friend wish to marry?&rdquo; asked Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not in the least. It is for you to make her change her mind. It will not
+be easy; she has had one husband, and he gave her a low opinion of the
+species.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, she is a widow, then?&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you already afraid? She was married at eighteen, by her parents, in
+the French fashion, to a disagreeable old man. But he had the good taste to die
+a couple of years afterward, and she is now twenty-five.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So she is French?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;French by her father, English by her mother. She is really more English
+than French, and she speaks English as well as you or I&mdash;or rather much
+better. She belongs to the very top of the basket, as they say here. Her
+family, on each side, is of fabulous antiquity; her mother is the daughter of
+an English Catholic earl. Her father is dead, and since her widowhood she has
+lived with her mother and a married brother. There is another brother, younger,
+who I believe is wild. They have an old hotel in the Rue de l&rsquo;Université,
+but their fortune is small, and they make a common household, for
+economy&rsquo;s sake. When I was a girl I was put into a convent here for my
+education, while my father made the tour of Europe. It was a silly thing to do
+with me, but it had the advantage that it made me acquainted with Claire de
+Bellegarde. She was younger than I but we became fast friends. I took a
+tremendous fancy to her, and she returned my passion as far as she could. They
+kept such a tight rein on her that she could do very little, and when I left
+the convent she had to give me up. I was not of her <i>monde</i>; I am not now,
+either, but we sometimes meet. They are terrible people&mdash;her <i>monde</i>;
+all mounted upon stilts a mile high, and with pedigrees long in proportion. It
+is the skim of the milk of the old <i>noblesse</i>. Do you know what a
+Legitimist is, or an Ultramontane? Go into Madame de Cintré&rsquo;s
+drawing-room some afternoon, at five o&rsquo;clock, and you will see the best
+preserved specimens. I say go, but no one is admitted who can&rsquo;t show his
+fifty quarterings.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And this is the lady you propose to me to marry?&rdquo; asked Newman.
+&ldquo;A lady I can&rsquo;t even approach?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you said just now that you recognized no obstacles.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman looked at Mrs. Tristram a while, stroking his moustache. &ldquo;Is she a
+beauty?&rdquo; he demanded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, then it&rsquo;s no use&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is not a beauty, but she is beautiful, two very different things. A
+beauty has no faults in her face, the face of a beautiful woman may have faults
+that only deepen its charm.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I remember Madame de Cintré, now,&rdquo; said Tristram. &ldquo;She is as
+plain as a pike-staff. A man wouldn&rsquo;t look at her twice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In saying that <i>he</i> would not look at her twice, my husband
+sufficiently describes her,&rdquo; Mrs. Tristram rejoined.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is she good; is she clever?&rdquo; Newman asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is perfect! I won&rsquo;t say more than that. When you are praising
+a person to another who is to know her, it is bad policy to go into details. I
+won&rsquo;t exaggerate. I simply recommend her. Among all women I have known
+she stands alone; she is of a different clay.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should like to see her,&rdquo; said Newman, simply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will try to manage it. The only way will be to invite her to dinner. I
+have never invited her before, and I don&rsquo;t know that she will come. Her
+old feudal countess of a mother rules the family with an iron hand, and allows
+her to have no friends but of her own choosing, and to visit only in a certain
+sacred circle. But I can at least ask her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this moment Mrs. Tristram was interrupted; a servant stepped out upon the
+balcony and announced that there were visitors in the drawing-room. When
+Newman&rsquo;s hostess had gone in to receive her friends, Tom Tristram
+approached his guest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t put your foot into <i>this</i>, my boy,&rdquo; he said,
+puffing the last whiffs of his cigar. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing in
+it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman looked askance at him, inquisitive. &ldquo;You tell another story,
+eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I say simply that Madame de Cintré is a great white doll of a woman, who
+cultivates quiet haughtiness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, she&rsquo;s haughty, eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She looks at you as if you were so much thin air, and cares for you
+about as much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is very proud, eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Proud? As proud as I&rsquo;m humble.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And not good-looking?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tristram shrugged his shoulders: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a kind of beauty you must be
+<i>intellectual</i> to understand. But I must go in and amuse the
+company.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some time elapsed before Newman followed his friends into the drawing-room.
+When he at last made his appearance there he remained but a short time, and
+during this period sat perfectly silent, listening to a lady to whom Mrs.
+Tristram had straightway introduced him and who chattered, without a pause,
+with the full force of an extraordinarily high-pitched voice. Newman gazed and
+attended. Presently he came to bid good-night to Mrs. Tristram.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who is that lady?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Miss Dora Finch. How do you like her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s too noisy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is thought so bright! Certainly, you are fastidious,&rdquo; said
+Mrs. Tristram.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman stood a moment, hesitating. Then at last, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t forget
+about your friend,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;Madame What&rsquo;s-her-name? the
+proud beauty. Ask her to dinner, and give me a good notice.&rdquo; And with
+this he departed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some days later he came back; it was in the afternoon. He found Mrs. Tristram
+in her drawing-room; with her was a visitor, a woman young and pretty, dressed
+in white. The two ladies had risen and the visitor was apparently taking her
+leave. As Newman approached, he received from Mrs. Tristram a glance of the
+most vivid significance, which he was not immediately able to interpret.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is a good friend of ours,&rdquo; she said, turning to her
+companion, &ldquo;Mr. Christopher Newman. I have spoken of you to him and he
+has an extreme desire to make your acquaintance. If you had consented to come
+and dine, I should have offered him an opportunity.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The stranger turned her face toward Newman, with a smile. He was not
+embarrassed, for his unconscious <i>sang-froid</i> was boundless; but as he
+became aware that this was the proud and beautiful Madame de Cintré, the
+loveliest woman in the world, the promised perfection, the proposed ideal, he
+made an instinctive movement to gather his wits together. Through the slight
+preoccupation that it produced he had a sense of a long, fair face, and of two
+eyes that were both brilliant and mild.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should have been most happy,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré.
+&ldquo;Unfortunately, as I have been telling Mrs. Tristram, I go on Monday to
+the country.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman had made a solemn bow. &ldquo;I am very sorry,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Paris is getting too warm,&rdquo; Madame de Cintré added, taking her
+friend&rsquo;s hand again in farewell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Tristram seemed to have formed a sudden and somewhat venturesome
+resolution, and she smiled more intensely, as women do when they take such
+resolution. &ldquo;I want Mr. Newman to know you,&rdquo; she said, dropping her
+head on one side and looking at Madame de Cintré&rsquo;s bonnet ribbons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Christopher Newman stood gravely silent, while his native penetration
+admonished him. Mrs. Tristram was determined to force her friend to address him
+a word of encouragement which should be more than one of the common formulas of
+politeness; and if she was prompted by charity, it was by the charity that
+begins at home. Madame de Cintré was her dearest Claire, and her especial
+admiration but Madame de Cintré had found it impossible to dine with her and
+Madame de Cintré should for once be forced gently to render tribute to Mrs.
+Tristram.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It would give me great pleasure,&rdquo; she said, looking at Mrs.
+Tristram.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s a great deal,&rdquo; cried the latter, &ldquo;for Madame de
+Cintré to say!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am very much obliged to you,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;Mrs. Tristram
+can speak better for me than I can speak for myself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Cintré looked at him again, with the same soft brightness. &ldquo;Are
+you to be long in Paris?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We shall keep him,&rdquo; said Mrs. Tristram.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you are keeping <i>me!</i>&rdquo; and Madame de Cintré shook her
+friend&rsquo;s hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A moment longer,&rdquo; said Mrs. Tristram.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Cintré looked at Newman again; this time without her smile. Her eyes
+lingered a moment. &ldquo;Will you come and see me?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Tristram kissed her. Newman expressed his thanks, and she took her leave.
+Her hostess went with her to the door, and left Newman alone a moment.
+Presently she returned, rubbing her hands. &ldquo;It was a fortunate
+chance,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;She had come to decline my invitation. You
+triumphed on the spot, making her ask you, at the end of three minutes, to her
+house.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was you who triumphed,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;You must not be too
+hard upon her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Tristram stared. &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She did not strike me as so proud. I should say she was shy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are very discriminating. And what do you think of her face?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s handsome!&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should think it was! Of course you will go and see her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To-morrow!&rdquo; cried Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, not to-morrow; the next day. That will be Sunday; she leaves Paris
+on Monday. If you don&rsquo;t see her; it will at least be a beginning.&rdquo;
+And she gave him Madame de Cintré&rsquo;s address.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He walked across the Seine, late in the summer afternoon, and made his way
+through those gray and silent streets of the Faubourg St. Germain whose houses
+present to the outer world a face as impassive and as suggestive of the
+concentration of privacy within as the blank walls of Eastern seraglios. Newman
+thought it a queer way for rich people to live; his ideal of grandeur was a
+splendid façade diffusing its brilliancy outward too, irradiating hospitality.
+The house to which he had been directed had a dark, dusty, painted portal,
+which swung open in answer to his ring. It admitted him into a wide, gravelled
+court, surrounded on three sides with closed windows, and with a doorway facing
+the street, approached by three steps and surmounted by a tin canopy. The place
+was all in the shade; it answered to Newman&rsquo;s conception of a convent.
+The portress could not tell him whether Madame de Cintré was visible; he would
+please to apply at the farther door. He crossed the court; a gentleman was
+sitting, bareheaded, on the steps of the portico, playing with a beautiful
+pointer. He rose as Newman approached, and, as he laid his hand upon the bell,
+said with a smile, in English, that he was afraid Newman would be kept waiting;
+the servants were scattered, he himself had been ringing, he didn&rsquo;t know
+what the deuce was in them. He was a young man, his English was excellent, and
+his smile very frank. Newman pronounced the name of Madame de Cintré.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think,&rdquo; said the young man, &ldquo;that my sister is visible.
+Come in, and if you will give me your card I will carry it to her
+myself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman had been accompanied on his present errand by a slight sentiment, I will
+not say of defiance&mdash;a readiness for aggression or defence, as they might
+prove needful&mdash;but of reflection, good-humored suspicion. He took from his
+pocket, while he stood on the portico, a card upon which, under his name, he
+had written the words &ldquo;San Francisco,&rdquo; and while he presented it he
+looked warily at his interlocutor. His glance was singularly reassuring; he
+liked the young man&rsquo;s face; it strongly resembled that of Madame de
+Cintré. He was evidently her brother. The young man, on his side, had made a
+rapid inspection of Newman&rsquo;s person. He had taken the card and was about
+to enter the house with it when another figure appeared on the
+threshold&mdash;an older man, of a fine presence, wearing evening dress. He
+looked hard at Newman, and Newman looked at him. &ldquo;Madame de
+Cintré,&rdquo; the younger man repeated, as an introduction of the visitor. The
+other took the card from his hand, read it in a rapid glance, looked again at
+Newman from head to foot, hesitated a moment, and then said, gravely but
+urbanely, &ldquo;Madame de Cintré is not at home.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The younger man made a gesture, and then, turning to Newman, &ldquo;I am very
+sorry, sir,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman gave him a friendly nod, to show that he bore him no malice, and
+retraced his steps. At the porter&rsquo;s lodge he stopped; the two men were
+still standing on the portico.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who is the gentleman with the dog?&rdquo; he asked of the old woman who
+reappeared. He had begun to learn French.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is Monsieur le Comte.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And the other?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is Monsieur le Marquis.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A marquis?&rdquo; said Christopher in English, which the old woman
+fortunately did not understand. &ldquo;Oh, then he&rsquo;s not the
+butler!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap04"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<p>
+Early one morning, before Christopher Newman was dressed, a little old man was
+ushered into his apartment, followed by a youth in a blouse, bearing a picture
+in a brilliant frame. Newman, among the distractions of Paris, had forgotten M.
+Nioche and his accomplished daughter; but this was an effective reminder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am afraid you had given me up, sir,&rdquo; said the old man, after
+many apologies and salutations. &ldquo;We have made you wait so many days. You
+accused us, perhaps, of inconstancy, of bad faith. But behold me at last! And
+behold also the pretty Madonna. Place it on a chair, my friend, in a good
+light, so that monsieur may admire it.&rdquo; And M. Nioche, addressing his
+companion, helped him to dispose the work of art.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It had been endued with a layer of varnish an inch thick and its frame, of an
+elaborate pattern, was at least a foot wide. It glittered and twinkled in the
+morning light, and looked, to Newman&rsquo;s eyes, wonderfully splendid and
+precious. It seemed to him a very happy purchase, and he felt rich in the
+possession of it. He stood looking at it complacently, while he proceeded with
+his toilet, and M. Nioche, who had dismissed his own attendant, hovered near,
+smiling and rubbing his hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It has wonderful <i>finesse</i>,&rdquo; he murmured, caressingly.
+&ldquo;And here and there are marvelous touches, you probably perceive them,
+sir. It attracted great attention on the Boulevard, as we came along. And then
+a gradation of tones! That&rsquo;s what it is to know how to paint. I
+don&rsquo;t say it because I am her father, sir; but as one man of taste
+addressing another I cannot help observing that you have there an exquisite
+work. It is hard to produce such things and to have to part with them. If our
+means only allowed us the luxury of keeping it! I really may say,
+sir&mdash;&rdquo; and M. Nioche gave a little feebly insinuating
+laugh&mdash;&ldquo;I really may say that I envy you! You see,&rdquo; he added
+in a moment, &ldquo;we have taken the liberty of offering you a frame. It
+increases by a trifle the value of the work, and it will save you the
+annoyance&mdash;so great for a person of your delicacy&mdash;of going about to
+bargain at the shops.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The language spoken by M. Nioche was a singular compound, which I shrink from
+the attempt to reproduce in its integrity. He had apparently once possessed a
+certain knowledge of English, and his accent was oddly tinged with the
+cockneyism of the British metropolis. But his learning had grown rusty with
+disuse, and his vocabulary was defective and capricious. He had repaired it
+with large patches of French, with words anglicized by a process of his own,
+and with native idioms literally translated. The result, in the form in which
+he in all humility presented it, would be scarcely comprehensible to the
+reader, so that I have ventured to trim and sift it. Newman only half
+understood it, but it amused him, and the old man&rsquo;s decent forlornness
+appealed to his democratic instincts. The assumption of a fatality in misery
+always irritated his strong good nature&mdash;it was almost the only thing that
+did so; and he felt the impulse to wipe it out, as it were, with the sponge of
+his own prosperity. The papa of Mademoiselle Noémie, however, had apparently on
+this occasion been vigorously indoctrinated, and he showed a certain tremulous
+eagerness to cultivate unexpected opportunities.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How much do I owe you, then, with the frame?&rdquo; asked Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It will make in all three thousand francs,&rdquo; said the old man,
+smiling agreeably, but folding his hands in instinctive suppliance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can you give me a receipt?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have brought one,&rdquo; said M. Nioche. &ldquo;I took the liberty of
+drawing it up, in case monsieur should happen to desire to discharge his
+debt.&rdquo; And he drew a paper from his pocket-book and presented it to his
+patron. The document was written in a minute, fantastic hand, and couched in
+the choicest language.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman laid down the money, and M. Nioche dropped the napoleons one by one,
+solemnly and lovingly, into an old leathern purse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And how is your young lady?&rdquo; asked Newman. &ldquo;She made a great
+impression on me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;An impression? Monsieur is very good. Monsieur admires her
+appearance?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is very pretty, certainly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alas, yes, she is very pretty!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what is the harm in her being pretty?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. Nioche fixed his eyes upon a spot on the carpet and shook his head. Then
+looking up at Newman with a gaze that seemed to brighten and expand,
+&ldquo;Monsieur knows what Paris is. She is dangerous to beauty, when beauty
+hasn&rsquo;t the sou.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, but that is not the case with your daughter. She is rich,
+now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very true; we are rich for six months. But if my daughter were a plain
+girl I should sleep better all the same.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are afraid of the young men?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The young and the old!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She ought to get a husband.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, monsieur, one doesn&rsquo;t get a husband for nothing. Her husband
+must take her as she is; I can&rsquo;t give her a sou. But the young men
+don&rsquo;t see with that eye.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;her talent is in itself a dowry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, sir, it needs first to be converted into specie!&rdquo; and M.
+Nioche slapped his purse tenderly before he stowed it away. &ldquo;The
+operation doesn&rsquo;t take place every day.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, your young men are very shabby,&rdquo; said Newman;
+&ldquo;that&rsquo;s all I can say. They ought to pay for your daughter, and not
+ask money themselves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Those are very noble ideas, monsieur; but what will you have? They are
+not the ideas of this country. We want to know what we are about when we
+marry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How big a portion does your daughter want?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. Nioche stared, as if he wondered what was coming next; but he promptly
+recovered himself, at a venture, and replied that he knew a very nice young
+man, employed by an insurance company, who would content himself with fifteen
+thousand francs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let your daughter paint half a dozen pictures for me, and she shall have
+her dowry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Half a dozen pictures&mdash;her dowry! Monsieur is not speaking
+inconsiderately?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If she will make me six or eight copies in the Louvre as pretty as that
+Madonna, I will pay her the same price,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor M. Nioche was speechless a moment, with amazement and gratitude, and then
+he seized Newman&rsquo;s hand, pressed it between his own ten fingers, and
+gazed at him with watery eyes. &ldquo;As pretty as that? They shall be a
+thousand times prettier&mdash;they shall be magnificent, sublime. Ah, if I only
+knew how to paint, myself, sir, so that I might lend a hand! What can I do to
+thank you? <i>Voyons!</i>&rdquo; And he pressed his forehead while he tried to
+think of something.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, you have thanked me enough,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, here it is, sir!&rdquo; cried M. Nioche. &ldquo;To express my
+gratitude, I will charge you nothing for the lessons in French
+conversation.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The lessons? I had quite forgotten them. Listening to your
+English,&rdquo; added Newman, laughing, &ldquo;is almost a lesson in
+French.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, I don&rsquo;t profess to teach English, certainly,&rdquo; said M.
+Nioche. &ldquo;But for my own admirable tongue I am still at your
+service.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Since you are here, then,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;we will begin. This
+is a very good hour. I am going to have my coffee; come every morning at
+half-past nine and have yours with me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Monsieur offers me my coffee, also?&rdquo; cried M. Nioche.
+&ldquo;Truly, my <i>beaux jours</i> are coming back.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;let us begin. The coffee is almighty
+hot. How do you say that in French?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every day, then, for the following three weeks, the minutely respectable figure
+of M. Nioche made its appearance, with a series of little inquiring and
+apologetic obeisances, among the aromatic fumes of Newman&rsquo;s morning
+beverage. I don&rsquo;t know how much French our friend learned, but, as he
+himself said, if the attempt did him no good, it could at any rate do him no
+harm. And it amused him; it gratified that irregularly sociable side of his
+nature which had always expressed itself in a relish for ungrammatical
+conversation, and which often, even in his busy and preoccupied days, had made
+him sit on rail fences in young Western towns, in the twilight, in gossip
+hardly less than fraternal with humorous loafers and obscure fortune-seekers.
+He had notions, wherever he went, about talking with the natives; he had been
+assured, and his judgment approved the advice, that in traveling abroad it was
+an excellent thing to look into the life of the country. M. Nioche was very
+much of a native and, though his life might not be particularly worth looking
+into, he was a palpable and smoothly-rounded unit in that picturesque Parisian
+civilization which offered our hero so much easy entertainment and propounded
+so many curious problems to his inquiring and practical mind. Newman was fond
+of statistics; he liked to know how things were done; it gratified him to learn
+what taxes were paid, what profits were gathered, what commercial habits
+prevailed, how the battle of life was fought. M. Nioche, as a reduced
+capitalist, was familiar with these considerations, and he formulated his
+information, which he was proud to be able to impart, in the neatest possible
+terms and with a pinch of snuff between finger and thumb. As a
+Frenchman&mdash;quite apart from Newman&rsquo;s napoleons&mdash;M. Nioche loved
+conversation, and even in his decay his urbanity had not grown rusty. As a
+Frenchman, too, he could give a clear account of things, and&mdash;still as a
+Frenchman&mdash;when his knowledge was at fault he could supply its lapses with
+the most convenient and ingenious hypotheses. The little shrunken financier was
+intensely delighted to have questions asked him, and he scraped together
+information, by frugal processes, and took notes, in his little greasy
+pocket-book, of incidents which might interest his munificent friend. He read
+old almanacs at the book-stalls on the quays, and he began to frequent another
+<i>café</i>, where more newspapers were taken and his postprandial
+<i>demitasse</i> cost him a penny extra, and where he used to con the tattered
+sheets for curious anecdotes, freaks of nature, and strange coincidences. He
+would relate with solemnity the next morning that a child of five years of age
+had lately died at Bordeaux, whose brain had been found to weigh sixty
+ounces&mdash;the brain of a Napoleon or a Washington! or that Madame P&mdash;,
+<i>charcutière</i> in the Rue de Clichy, had found in the wadding of an old
+petticoat the sum of three hundred and sixty francs, which she had lost five
+years before. He pronounced his words with great distinctness and sonority, and
+Newman assured him that his way of dealing with the French tongue was very
+superior to the bewildering chatter that he heard in other mouths. Upon this M.
+Nioche&rsquo;s accent became more finely trenchant than ever, he offered to
+read extracts from Lamartine, and he protested that, although he did endeavor
+according to his feeble lights to cultivate refinement of diction, monsieur, if
+he wanted the real thing, should go to the Théâtre Français.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman took an interest in French thriftiness and conceived a lively admiration
+for Parisian economies. His own economic genius was so entirely for operations
+on a larger scale, and, to move at his ease, he needed so imperatively the
+sense of great risks and great prizes, that he found an ungrudging
+entertainment in the spectacle of fortunes made by the aggregation of copper
+coins, and in the minute subdivision of labor and profit. He questioned M.
+Nioche about his own manner of life, and felt a friendly mixture of compassion
+and respect over the recital of his delicate frugalities. The worthy man told
+him how, at one period, he and his daughter had supported existence comfortably
+upon the sum of fifteen sous <i>per diem</i>; recently, having succeeded in
+hauling ashore the last floating fragments of the wreck of his fortune, his
+budget had been a trifle more ample. But they still had to count their sous
+very narrowly, and M. Nioche intimated with a sigh that Mademoiselle Noémie did
+not bring to this task that zealous cooperation which might have been desired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But what will you have?&rdquo;&rsquo; he asked, philosophically.
+&ldquo;One is young, one is pretty, one needs new dresses and fresh gloves; one
+can&rsquo;t wear shabby gowns among the splendors of the Louvre.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But your daughter earns enough to pay for her own clothes,&rdquo; said
+Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. Nioche looked at him with weak, uncertain eyes. He would have liked to be
+able to say that his daughter&rsquo;s talents were appreciated, and that her
+crooked little daubs commanded a market; but it seemed a scandal to abuse the
+credulity of this free-handed stranger, who, without a suspicion or a question,
+had admitted him to equal social rights. He compromised, and declared that
+while it was obvious that Mademoiselle Noémie&rsquo;s reproductions of the old
+masters had only to be seen to be coveted, the prices which, in consideration
+of their altogether peculiar degree of finish, she felt obliged to ask for them
+had kept purchasers at a respectful distance. &ldquo;Poor little one!&rdquo;
+said M. Nioche, with a sigh; &ldquo;it is almost a pity that her work is so
+perfect! It would be in her interest to paint less well.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But if Mademoiselle Noémie has this devotion to her art,&rdquo; Newman
+once observed, &ldquo;why should you have those fears for her that you spoke of
+the other day?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. Nioche meditated: there was an inconsistency in his position; it made him
+chronically uncomfortable. Though he had no desire to destroy the goose with
+the golden eggs&mdash;Newman&rsquo;s benevolent confidence&mdash;he felt a
+tremulous impulse to speak out all his trouble. &ldquo;Ah, she is an artist, my
+dear sir, most assuredly,&rdquo; he declared. &ldquo;But, to tell you the
+truth, she is also a <i>franche coquette</i>. I am sorry to say,&rdquo; he
+added in a moment, shaking his head with a world of harmless bitterness,
+&ldquo;that she comes honestly by it. Her mother was one before her!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You were not happy with your wife?&rdquo; Newman asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. Nioche gave half a dozen little backward jerks of his head. &ldquo;She was
+my purgatory, monsieur!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She deceived you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Under my nose, year after year. I was too stupid, and the temptation was
+too great. But I found her out at last. I have only been once in my life a man
+to be afraid of; I know it very well; it was in that hour! Nevertheless I
+don&rsquo;t like to think of it. I loved her&mdash;I can&rsquo;t tell you how
+much. She was a bad woman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is not living?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She has gone to her account.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Her influence on your daughter, then,&rdquo; said Newman encouragingly,
+&ldquo;is not to be feared.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She cared no more for her daughter than for the sole of her shoe! But
+Noémie has no need of influence. She is sufficient to herself. She is stronger
+than I.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She doesn&rsquo;t obey you, eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She can&rsquo;t obey, monsieur, since I don&rsquo;t command. What would
+be the use? It would only irritate her and drive her to some <i>coup de
+tête</i>. She is very clever, like her mother; she would waste no time about
+it. As a child&mdash;when I was happy, or supposed I was&mdash;she studied
+drawing and painting with first-class professors, and they assured me she had a
+talent. I was delighted to believe it, and when I went into society I used to
+carry her pictures with me in a portfolio and hand them round to the company. I
+remember, once, a lady thought I was offering them for sale, and I took it very
+ill. We don&rsquo;t know what we may come to! Then came my dark days, and my
+explosion with Madame Nioche. Noémie had no more twenty-franc lessons; but in
+the course of time, when she grew older, and it became highly expedient that
+she should do something that would help to keep us alive, she bethought herself
+of her palette and brushes. Some of our friends in the <i>quartier</i>
+pronounced the idea fantastic: they recommended her to try bonnet making, to
+get a situation in a shop, or&mdash;if she was more ambitious&mdash;to
+advertise for a place of <i>dame de compagnie</i>. She did advertise, and an
+old lady wrote her a letter and bade her come and see her. The old lady liked
+her, and offered her her living and six hundred francs a year; but Noémie
+discovered that she passed her life in her armchair and had only two visitors,
+her confessor and her nephew: the confessor very strict, and the nephew a man
+of fifty, with a broken nose and a government clerkship of two thousand francs.
+She threw her old lady over, bought a paint-box, a canvas, and a new dress, and
+went and set up her easel in the Louvre. There in one place and another, she
+has passed the last two years; I can&rsquo;t say it has made us millionaires.
+But Noémie tells me that Rome was not built in a day, that she is making great
+progress, that I must leave her to her own devices. The fact is, without
+prejudice to her genius, that she has no idea of burying herself alive. She
+likes to see the world, and to be seen. She says, herself, that she can&rsquo;t
+work in the dark. With her appearance it is very natural. Only, I can&rsquo;t
+help worrying and trembling and wondering what may happen to her there all
+alone, day after day, amid all that coming and going of strangers. I
+can&rsquo;t be always at her side. I go with her in the morning, and I come to
+fetch her away, but she won&rsquo;t have me near her in the interval; she says
+I make her nervous. As if it didn&rsquo;t make me nervous to wander about all
+day without her! Ah, if anything were to happen to her!&rdquo; cried M. Nioche,
+clenching his two fists and jerking back his head again, portentously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I guess nothing will happen,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I believe I should shoot her!&rdquo; said the old man, solemnly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, we&rsquo;ll marry her,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;since that&rsquo;s
+how you manage it; and I will go and see her tomorrow at the Louvre and pick
+out the pictures she is to copy for me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. Nioche had brought Newman a message from his daughter, in acceptance of his
+magnificent commission, the young lady declaring herself his most devoted
+servant, promising her most zealous endeavor, and regretting that the
+proprieties forbade her coming to thank him in person. The morning after the
+conversation just narrated, Newman reverted to his intention of meeting
+Mademoiselle Noémie at the Louvre. M. Nioche appeared preoccupied, and left his
+budget of anecdotes unopened; he took a great deal of snuff, and sent certain
+oblique, appealing glances toward his stalwart pupil. At last, when he was
+taking his leave, he stood a moment, after he had polished his hat with his
+calico pocket-handkerchief, with his small, pale eyes fixed strangely upon
+Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter?&rdquo; our hero demanded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Excuse the solicitude of a father&rsquo;s heart!&rdquo; said M. Nioche.
+&ldquo;You inspire me with boundless confidence, but I can&rsquo;t help giving
+you a warning. After all, you are a man, you are young and at liberty. Let me
+beseech you, then, to respect the innocence of Mademoiselle Nioche!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman had wondered what was coming, and at this he broke into a laugh. He was
+on the point of declaring that his own innocence struck him as the more
+exposed, but he contented himself with promising to treat the young girl with
+nothing less than veneration. He found her waiting for him, seated upon the
+great divan in the Salon Carré. She was not in her working-day costume, but
+wore her bonnet and gloves and carried her parasol, in honor of the occasion.
+These articles had been selected with unerring taste, and a fresher, prettier
+image of youthful alertness and blooming discretion was not to be conceived.
+She made Newman a most respectful curtsey and expressed her gratitude for his
+liberality in a wonderfully graceful little speech. It annoyed him to have a
+charming young girl stand there thanking him, and it made him feel
+uncomfortable to think that this perfect young lady, with her excellent manners
+and her finished intonation, was literally in his pay. He assured her, in such
+French as he could muster, that the thing was not worth mentioning, and that he
+considered her services a great favor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Whenever you please, then,&rdquo; said Mademoiselle Noémie, &ldquo;we
+will pass the review.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They walked slowly round the room, then passed into the others and strolled
+about for half an hour. Mademoiselle Noémie evidently relished her situation,
+and had no desire to bring her public interview with her striking-looking
+patron to a close. Newman perceived that prosperity agreed with her. The little
+thin-lipped, peremptory air with which she had addressed her father on the
+occasion of their former meeting had given place to the most lingering and
+caressing tones.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What sort of pictures do you desire?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;Sacred, or
+profane?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, a few of each,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;But I want something
+bright and gay.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Something gay? There is nothing very gay in this solemn old Louvre. But
+we will see what we can find. You speak French to-day like a charm. My father
+has done wonders.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I am a bad subject,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;I am too old to learn
+a language.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Too old? <i>Quelle folie!</i>&rdquo; cried Mademoiselle Noémie, with a
+clear, shrill laugh. &ldquo;You are a very young man. And how do you like my
+father?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is a very nice old gentleman. He never laughs at my blunders.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is very <i>comme il faut</i>, my papa,&rdquo; said Mademoiselle
+Noémie, &ldquo;and as honest as the day. Oh, an exceptional probity! You could
+trust him with millions.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you always obey him?&rdquo; asked Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Obey him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you do what he bids you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young girl stopped and looked at him; she had a spot of color in either
+cheek, and in her expressive French eye, which projected too much for perfect
+beauty, there was a slight gleam of audacity. &ldquo;Why do you ask me
+that?&rdquo; she demanded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because I want to know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You think me a bad girl?&rdquo; And she gave a strange smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman looked at her a moment; he saw that she was pretty, but he was not in
+the least dazzled. He remembered poor M. Nioche&rsquo;s solicitude for her
+&ldquo;innocence,&rdquo; and he laughed as his eyes met hers. Her face was the
+oddest mixture of youth and maturity, and beneath her candid brow her searching
+little smile seemed to contain a world of ambiguous intentions. She was pretty
+enough, certainly to make her father nervous; but, as regards her innocence,
+Newman felt ready on the spot to affirm that she had never parted with it. She
+had simply never had any; she had been looking at the world since she was ten
+years old, and he would have been a wise man who could tell her any secrets. In
+her long mornings at the Louvre she had not only studied Madonnas and St.
+Johns; she had kept an eye upon all the variously embodied human nature around
+her, and she had formed her conclusions. In a certain sense, it seemed to
+Newman, M. Nioche might be at rest; his daughter might do something very
+audacious, but she would never do anything foolish. Newman, with his
+long-drawn, leisurely smile, and his even, unhurried utterance, was always,
+mentally, taking his time; and he asked himself, now, what she was looking at
+him in that way for. He had an idea that she would like him to confess that he
+did think her a bad girl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, no,&rdquo; he said at last; &ldquo;it would be very bad manners in
+me to judge you that way. I don&rsquo;t know you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But my father has complained to you,&rdquo; said Mademoiselle Noémie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He says you are a coquette.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He shouldn&rsquo;t go about saying such things to gentlemen! But you
+don&rsquo;t believe it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Newman gravely, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at him again, gave a shrug and a smile, and then pointed to a small
+Italian picture, a Marriage of St. Catherine. &ldquo;How should you like
+that?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t please me,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;The young lady in
+the yellow dress is not pretty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, you are a great connoisseur,&rdquo; murmured Mademoiselle Noémie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In pictures? Oh, no; I know very little about them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In pretty women, then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In that I am hardly better.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you say to that, then?&rdquo; the young girl asked, indicating a
+superb Italian portrait of a lady. &ldquo;I will do it for you on a smaller
+scale.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;On a smaller scale? Why not as large as the original?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mademoiselle Noémie glanced at the glowing splendor of the Venetian masterpiece
+and gave a little toss of her head. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like that woman. She
+looks stupid.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do like her,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;Decidedly, I must have her, as
+large as life. And just as stupid as she is there.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young girl fixed her eyes on him again, and with her mocking smile,
+&ldquo;It certainly ought to be easy for me to make her look stupid!&rdquo; she
+said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; asked Newman, puzzled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gave another little shrug. &ldquo;Seriously, then, you want that
+portrait&mdash;the golden hair, the purple satin, the pearl necklace, the two
+magnificent arms?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Everything&mdash;just as it is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Would nothing else do, instead?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I want some other things, but I want that too.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mademoiselle Noémie turned away a moment, walked to the other side of the hall,
+and stood there, looking vaguely about her. At last she came back. &ldquo;It
+must be charming to be able to order pictures at such a rate. Venetian
+portraits, as large as life! You go at it <i>en prince</i>. And you are going
+to travel about Europe that way?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I intend to travel,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ordering, buying, spending money?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course I shall spend some money.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are very happy to have it. And you are perfectly free?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How do you mean, free?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have nothing to bother you&mdash;no family, no wife, no
+<i>fiancée?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I am tolerably free.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are very happy,&rdquo; said Mademoiselle Noémie, gravely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Je le veux bien!</i>&rdquo; said Newman, proving that he had learned
+more French than he admitted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And how long shall you stay in Paris?&rdquo; the young girl went on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Only a few days more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why do you go away?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is getting hot, and I must go to Switzerland.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To Switzerland? That&rsquo;s a fine country. I would give my new parasol
+to see it! Lakes and mountains, romantic valleys and icy peaks! Oh, I
+congratulate you. Meanwhile, I shall sit here through all the hot summer,
+daubing at your pictures.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, take your time about it,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;Do them at your
+convenience.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They walked farther and looked at a dozen other things. Newman pointed out what
+pleased him, and Mademoiselle Noémie generally criticised it, and proposed
+something else. Then suddenly she diverged and began to talk about some
+personal matter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What made you speak to me the other day in the Salon Carré?&rdquo; she
+abruptly asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I admired your picture.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you hesitated a long time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I do nothing rashly,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I saw you watching me. But I never supposed you were going to speak
+to me. I never dreamed I should be walking about here with you to-day.
+It&rsquo;s very curious.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is very natural,&rdquo; observed Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I beg your pardon; not to me. Coquette as you think me, I have never
+walked about in public with a gentleman before. What was my father thinking of,
+when he consented to our interview?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He was repenting of his unjust accusations,&rdquo; replied Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mademoiselle Noémie remained silent; at last she dropped into a seat.
+&ldquo;Well then, for those five it is fixed,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Five
+copies as brilliant and beautiful as I can make them. We have one more to
+choose. Shouldn&rsquo;t you like one of those great Rubenses&mdash;the marriage
+of Marie de Médicis? Just look at it and see how handsome it is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, yes; I should like that,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;Finish off with
+that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Finish off with that&mdash;good!&rdquo; And she laughed. She sat a
+moment, looking at him, and then she suddenly rose and stood before him, with
+her hands hanging and clasped in front of her. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand
+you,&rdquo; she said with a smile. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand how a man
+can be so ignorant.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I am ignorant, certainly,&rdquo; said Newman, putting his hands into
+his pockets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s ridiculous! I don&rsquo;t know how to paint.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know how?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I paint like a cat; I can&rsquo;t draw a straight line. I never sold a
+picture until you bought that thing the other day.&rdquo; And as she offered
+this surprising information she continued to smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman burst into a laugh. &ldquo;Why do you tell me this?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because it irritates me to see a clever man blunder so. My pictures are
+grotesque.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And the one I possess&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That one is rather worse than usual.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;I like it all the same!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at him askance. &ldquo;That is a very pretty thing to say,&rdquo;
+she answered; &ldquo;but it is my duty to warn you before you go farther. This
+order of yours is impossible, you know. What do you take me for? It is work for
+ten men. You pick out the six most difficult pictures in the Louvre, and you
+expect me to go to work as if I were sitting down to hem a dozen pocket
+handkerchiefs. I wanted to see how far you would go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman looked at the young girl in some perplexity. In spite of the ridiculous
+blunder of which he stood convicted, he was very far from being a simpleton,
+and he had a lively suspicion that Mademoiselle Noémie&rsquo;s sudden frankness
+was not essentially more honest than her leaving him in error would have been.
+She was playing a game; she was not simply taking pity on his æsthetic
+verdancy. What was it she expected to win? The stakes were high and the risk
+was great; the prize therefore must have been commensurate. But even granting
+that the prize might be great, Newman could not resist a movement of admiration
+for his companion&rsquo;s intrepidity. She was throwing away with one hand,
+whatever she might intend to do with the other, a very handsome sum of money.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you joking,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;or are you serious?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, serious!&rdquo; cried Mademoiselle Noémie, but with her
+extraordinary smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know very little about pictures or how they are painted. If you
+can&rsquo;t do all that, of course you can&rsquo;t. Do what you can,
+then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It will be very bad,&rdquo; said Mademoiselle Noémie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Newman, laughing, &ldquo;if you are determined it shall
+be bad, of course it will. But why do you go on painting badly?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can do nothing else; I have no real talent.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are deceiving your father, then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young girl hesitated a moment. &ldquo;He knows very well!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; Newman declared; &ldquo;I am sure he believes in you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is afraid of me. I go on painting badly, as you say, because I want
+to learn. I like it, at any rate. And I like being here; it is a place to come
+to, every day; it is better than sitting in a little dark, damp room, on a
+court, or selling buttons and whalebones over a counter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course it is much more amusing,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;But for a
+poor girl isn&rsquo;t it rather an expensive amusement?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I am very wrong, there is no doubt about that,&rdquo; said
+Mademoiselle Noémie. &ldquo;But rather than earn my living as some girls
+do&mdash;toiling with a needle, in little black holes, out of the world&mdash;I
+would throw myself into the Seine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is no need of that,&rdquo; Newman answered; &ldquo;your father
+told you my offer?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your offer?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He wants you to marry, and I told him I would give you a chance to earn
+your <i>dot</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He told me all about it, and you see the account I make of it! Why
+should you take such an interest in my marriage?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My interest was in your father. I hold to my offer; do what you can, and
+I will buy what you paint.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stood for some time, meditating, with her eyes on the ground. At last,
+looking up, &ldquo;What sort of a husband can you get for twelve thousand
+francs?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your father tells me he knows some very good young men.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Grocers and butchers and little <i>maîtres de cafés!</i> I will not
+marry at all if I can&rsquo;t marry well.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would advise you not to be too fastidious,&rdquo; said Newman.
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s all the advice I can give you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am very much vexed at what I have said!&rdquo; cried the young girl.
+&ldquo;It has done me no good. But I couldn&rsquo;t help it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What good did you expect it to do you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t help it, simply.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman looked at her a moment. &ldquo;Well, your pictures may be bad,&rdquo; he
+said, &ldquo;but you are too clever for me, nevertheless. I don&rsquo;t
+understand you. Good-bye!&rdquo; And he put out his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She made no response, and offered him no farewell. She turned away and seated
+herself sidewise on a bench, leaning her head on the back of her hand, which
+clasped the rail in front of the pictures. Newman stood a moment and then
+turned on his heel and retreated. He had understood her better than he
+confessed; this singular scene was a practical commentary upon her
+father&rsquo;s statement that she was a frank coquette.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap05"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<p>
+When Newman related to Mrs. Tristram his fruitless visit to Madame de Cintré,
+she urged him not to be discouraged, but to carry out his plan of &ldquo;seeing
+Europe&rdquo; during the summer, and return to Paris in the autumn and settle
+down comfortably for the winter. &ldquo;Madame de Cintré will keep,&rdquo; she
+said; &ldquo;she is not a woman who will marry from one day to another.&rdquo;
+Newman made no distinct affirmation that he would come back to Paris; he even
+talked about Rome and the Nile, and abstained from professing any especial
+interest in Madame de Cintré&rsquo;s continued widowhood. This circumstance was
+at variance with his habitual frankness, and may perhaps be regarded as
+characteristic of the incipient stage of that passion which is more
+particularly known as the mysterious one. The truth is that the expression of a
+pair of eyes that were at once brilliant and mild had become very familiar to
+his memory, and he would not easily have resigned himself to the prospect of
+never looking into them again. He communicated to Mrs. Tristram a number of
+other facts, of greater or less importance, as you choose; but on this
+particular point he kept his own counsel. He took a kindly leave of M. Nioche,
+having assured him that, so far as he was concerned, the blue-cloaked Madonna
+herself might have been present at his interview with Mademoiselle Noémie; and
+left the old man nursing his breast-pocket, in an ecstasy which the acutest
+misfortune might have been defied to dissipate. Newman then started on his
+travels, with all his usual appearance of slow-strolling leisure, and all his
+essential directness and intensity of aim. No man seemed less in a hurry, and
+yet no man achieved more in brief periods. He had certain practical instincts
+which served him excellently in his trade of tourist. He found his way in
+foreign cities by divination, his memory was excellent when once his attention
+had been at all cordially given, and he emerged from dialogues in foreign
+tongues, of which he had, formally, not understood a word, in full possession
+of the particular fact he had desired to ascertain. His appetite for facts was
+capacious, and although many of those which he noted would have seemed woefully
+dry and colorless to the ordinary sentimental traveler, a careful inspection of
+the list would have shown that he had a soft spot in his imagination. In the
+charming city of Brussels&mdash;his first stopping-place after leaving
+Paris&mdash;he asked a great many questions about the street-cars, and took
+extreme satisfaction in the reappearance of this familiar symbol of American
+civilization; but he was also greatly struck with the beautiful Gothic tower of
+the Hôtel de Ville, and wondered whether it would not be possible to &ldquo;get
+up&rdquo; something like it in San Francisco. He stood for half an hour in the
+crowded square before this edifice, in imminent danger from carriage-wheels,
+listening to a toothless old cicerone mumble in broken English the touching
+history of Counts Egmont and Horn; and he wrote the names of these
+gentlemen&mdash;for reasons best known to himself&mdash;on the back of an old
+letter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the outset, on his leaving Paris, his curiosity had not been intense;
+passive entertainment, in the Champs Élysées and at the theatres, seemed about
+as much as he need expect of himself, and although, as he had said to Tristram,
+he wanted to see the mysterious, satisfying <i>best</i>, he had not the Grand
+Tour in the least on his conscience, and was not given to cross-questioning the
+amusement of the hour. He believed that Europe was made for him, and not he for
+Europe. He had said that he wanted to improve his mind, but he would have felt
+a certain embarrassment, a certain shame, even&mdash;a false shame,
+possibly&mdash;if he had caught himself looking intellectually into the mirror.
+Neither in this nor in any other respect had Newman a high sense of
+responsibility; it was his prime conviction that a man&rsquo;s life should be
+easy, and that he should be able to resolve privilege into a matter of course.
+The world, to his sense, was a great bazaar, where one might stroll about and
+purchase handsome things; but he was no more conscious, individually, of social
+pressure than he admitted the existence of such a thing as an obligatory
+purchase. He had not only a dislike, but a sort of moral mistrust, of
+uncomfortable thoughts, and it was both uncomfortable and slightly contemptible
+to feel obliged to square one&rsquo;s self with a standard. One&rsquo;s
+standard was the ideal of one&rsquo;s own good-humored prosperity, the
+prosperity which enabled one to give as well as take. To expand, without
+bothering about it&mdash;without shiftless timidity on one side, or loquacious
+eagerness on the other&mdash;to the full compass of what he would have called a
+&ldquo;pleasant&rdquo; experience, was Newman&rsquo;s most definite programme
+of life. He had always hated to hurry to catch railroad trains, and yet he had
+always caught them; and just so an undue solicitude for &ldquo;culture&rdquo;
+seemed a sort of silly dawdling at the station, a proceeding properly confined
+to women, foreigners, and other unpractical persons. All this admitted, Newman
+enjoyed his journey, when once he had fairly entered the current, as profoundly
+as the most zealous <i>dilettante</i>. One&rsquo;s theories, after all, matter
+little; it is one&rsquo;s humor that is the great thing. Our friend was
+intelligent, and he could not help that. He lounged through Belgium and Holland
+and the Rhineland, through Switzerland and Northern Italy, planning about
+nothing, but seeing everything. The guides and <i>valets de place</i> found him
+an excellent subject. He was always approachable, for he was much addicted to
+standing about in the vestibules and porticos of inns, and he availed himself
+little of the opportunities for impressive seclusion which are so liberally
+offered in Europe to gentlemen who travel with long purses. When an excursion,
+a church, a gallery, a ruin, was proposed to him, the first thing Newman
+usually did, after surveying his postulant in silence, from head to foot, was
+to sit down at a little table and order something to drink. The cicerone,
+during this process, usually retreated to a respectful distance; otherwise I am
+not sure that Newman would not have bidden him sit down and have a glass also,
+and tell him as an honest fellow whether his church or his gallery was really
+worth a man&rsquo;s trouble. At last he rose and stretched his long legs,
+beckoned to the man of monuments, looked at his watch, and fixed his eye on his
+adversary. &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;How far?&rdquo; And
+whatever the answer was, although he sometimes seemed to hesitate, he never
+declined. He stepped into an open cab, made his conductor sit beside him to
+answer questions, bade the driver go fast (he had a particular aversion to slow
+driving) and rolled, in all probability through a dusty suburb, to the goal of
+his pilgrimage. If the goal was a disappointment, if the church was meagre, or
+the ruin a heap of rubbish, Newman never protested or berated his cicerone; he
+looked with an impartial eye upon great monuments and small, made the guide
+recite his lesson, listened to it religiously, asked if there was nothing else
+to be seen in the neighborhood, and drove back again at a rattling pace. It is
+to be feared that his perception of the difference between good architecture
+and bad was not acute, and that he might sometimes have been seen gazing with
+culpable serenity at inferior productions. Ugly churches were a part of his
+pastime in Europe, as well as beautiful ones, and his tour was altogether a
+pastime. But there is sometimes nothing like the imagination of these people
+who have none, and Newman, now and then, in an unguided stroll in a foreign
+city, before some lonely, sad-towered church, or some angular image of one who
+had rendered civic service in an unknown past, had felt a singular inward
+tremor. It was not an excitement or a perplexity; it was a placid, fathomless
+sense of diversion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He encountered by chance in Holland a young American, with whom, for a time, he
+formed a sort of traveler&rsquo;s partnership. They were men of a very
+different cast, but each, in his way, was so good a fellow that, for a few
+weeks at least, it seemed something of a pleasure to share the chances of the
+road. Newman&rsquo;s comrade, whose name was Babcock, was a young Unitarian
+minister, a small, spare, neatly-attired man, with a strikingly candid
+physiognomy. He was a native of Dorchester, Massachusetts, and had spiritual
+charge of a small congregation in another suburb of the New England metropolis.
+His digestion was weak and he lived chiefly on Graham bread and hominy&mdash;a
+regimen to which he was so much attached that his tour seemed to him destined
+to be blighted when, on landing on the Continent, he found that these
+delicacies did not flourish under the <i>table d&rsquo;hôte</i> system. In
+Paris he had purchased a bag of hominy at an establishment which called itself
+an American Agency, and at which the New York illustrated papers were also to
+be procured, and he had carried it about with him, and shown extreme serenity
+and fortitude in the somewhat delicate position of having his hominy prepared
+for him and served at anomalous hours, at the hotels he successively visited.
+Newman had once spent a morning, in the course of business, at Mr.
+Babcock&rsquo;s birthplace, and, for reasons too recondite to unfold, his visit
+there always assumed in his mind a jocular cast. To carry out his joke, which
+certainly seems poor so long as it is not explained, he used often to address
+his companion as &ldquo;Dorchester.&rdquo; Fellow-travelers very soon grow
+intimate but it is highly improbable that at home these extremely dissimilar
+characters would have found any very convenient points of contact. They were,
+indeed, as different as possible. Newman, who never reflected on such matters,
+accepted the situation with great equanimity, but Babcock used to meditate over
+it privately; used often, indeed, to retire to his room early in the evening
+for the express purpose of considering it conscientiously and impartially. He
+was not sure that it was a good thing for him to associate with our hero, whose
+way of taking life was so little his own. Newman was an excellent, generous
+fellow; Mr. Babcock sometimes said to himself that he was a <i>noble</i>
+fellow, and, certainly, it was impossible not to like him. But would it not be
+desirable to try to exert an influence upon him, to try to quicken his moral
+life and sharpen his sense of duty? He liked everything, he accepted
+everything, he found amusement in everything; he was not discriminating, he had
+not a high tone. The young man from Dorchester accused Newman of a fault which
+he considered very grave, and which he did his best to avoid: what he would
+have called a want of &ldquo;moral reaction.&rdquo; Poor Mr. Babcock was
+extremely fond of pictures and churches, and carried Mrs. Jameson&rsquo;s works
+about in his trunk; he delighted in æsthetic analysis, and received peculiar
+impressions from everything he saw. But nevertheless in his secret soul he
+detested Europe, and he felt an irritating need to protest against
+Newman&rsquo;s gross intellectual hospitality. Mr. Babcock&rsquo;s moral
+<i>malaise</i>, I am afraid, lay deeper than where any definition of mine can
+reach it. He mistrusted the European temperament, he suffered from the European
+climate, he hated the European dinner-hour; European life seemed to him
+unscrupulous and impure. And yet he had an exquisite sense of beauty; and as
+beauty was often inextricably associated with the above displeasing conditions,
+as he wished, above all, to be just and dispassionate, and as he was,
+furthermore, extremely devoted to &ldquo;culture,&rdquo; he could not bring
+himself to decide that Europe was utterly bad. But he thought it was very bad
+indeed, and his quarrel with Newman was that this unregulated epicure had a
+sadly insufficient perception of the bad. Babcock himself really knew as little
+about the bad, in any quarter of the world, as a nursing infant, his most vivid
+realization of evil had been the discovery that one of his college classmates,
+who was studying architecture in Paris had a love affair with a young woman who
+did not expect him to marry her. Babcock had related this incident to Newman,
+and our hero had applied an epithet of an unflattering sort to the young girl.
+The next day his companion asked him whether he was very sure he had used
+exactly the right word to characterize the young architect&rsquo;s mistress.
+Newman stared and laughed. &ldquo;There are a great many words to express that
+idea,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;you can take your choice!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I mean,&rdquo; said Babcock, &ldquo;was she possibly not to be
+considered in a different light? Don&rsquo;t you think she <i>really</i>
+expected him to marry her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am sure I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;Very likely she
+did; I have no doubt she is a grand woman.&rdquo; And he began to laugh again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t mean that either,&rdquo; said Babcock, &ldquo;I was only
+afraid that I might have seemed yesterday not to remember&mdash;not to
+consider; well, I think I will write to Percival about it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he had written to Percival (who answered him in a really impudent fashion),
+and he had reflected that it was somehow, raw and reckless in Newman to assume
+in that off-hand manner that the young woman in Paris might be
+&ldquo;grand.&rdquo; The brevity of Newman&rsquo;s judgments very often shocked
+and discomposed him. He had a way of damning people without farther appeal, or
+of pronouncing them capital company in the face of uncomfortable symptoms,
+which seemed unworthy of a man whose conscience had been properly cultivated.
+And yet poor Babcock liked him, and remembered that even if he was sometimes
+perplexing and painful, this was not a reason for giving him up. Goethe
+recommended seeing human nature in the most various forms, and Mr. Babcock
+thought Goethe perfectly splendid. He often tried, in odd half-hours of
+conversation to infuse into Newman a little of his own spiritual starch, but
+Newman&rsquo;s personal texture was too loose to admit of stiffening. His mind
+could no more hold principles than a sieve can hold water. He admired
+principles extremely, and thought Babcock a mighty fine little fellow for
+having so many. He accepted all that his high-strung companion offered him, and
+put them away in what he supposed to be a very safe place; but poor Babcock
+never afterwards recognized his gifts among the articles that Newman had in
+daily use.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They traveled together through Germany and into Switzerland, where for three or
+four weeks they trudged over passes and lounged upon blue lakes. At last they
+crossed the Simplon and made their way to Venice. Mr. Babcock had become gloomy
+and even a trifle irritable; he seemed moody, absent, preoccupied; he got his
+plans into a tangle, and talked one moment of doing one thing and the next of
+doing another. Newman led his usual life, made acquaintances, took his ease in
+the galleries and churches, spent an unconscionable amount of time in strolling
+in the Piazza San Marco, bought a great many bad pictures, and for a fortnight
+enjoyed Venice grossly. One evening, coming back to his inn, he found Babcock
+waiting for him in the little garden beside it. The young man walked up to him,
+looking very dismal, thrust out his hand, and said with solemnity that he was
+afraid they must part. Newman expressed his surprise and regret, and asked why
+a parting had become necessary. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be afraid I&rsquo;m tired of
+you,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are not tired of me?&rdquo; demanded Babcock, fixing him with his
+clear gray eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why the deuce should I be? You are a very plucky fellow. Besides, I
+don&rsquo;t grow tired of things.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We don&rsquo;t understand each other,&rdquo; said the young minister.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t I understand you?&rdquo; cried Newman. &ldquo;Why, I hoped I
+did. But what if I don&rsquo;t; where&rsquo;s the harm?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand <i>you</i>,&rdquo; said Babcock. And he sat
+down and rested his head on his hand, and looked up mournfully at his
+immeasurable friend.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh Lord, I don&rsquo;t mind that!&rdquo; cried Newman, with a laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But it&rsquo;s very distressing to me. It keeps me in a state of unrest.
+It irritates me; I can&rsquo;t settle anything. I don&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s
+good for me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You worry too much; that&rsquo;s what&rsquo;s the matter with
+you,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course it must seem so to you. You think I take things too hard, and
+I think you take things too easily. We can never agree.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But we have agreed very well all along.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I haven&rsquo;t agreed,&rdquo; said Babcock, shaking his head.
+&ldquo;I am very uncomfortable. I ought to have separated from you a month
+ago.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, horrors! I&rsquo;ll agree to anything!&rdquo; cried Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Babcock buried his head in both hands. At last looking up, &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t think you appreciate my position,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I try to
+arrive at the truth about everything. And then you go too fast. For me, you are
+too passionate, too extravagant. I feel as if I ought to go over all this
+ground we have traversed again, by myself, alone. I am afraid I have made a
+great many mistakes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, you needn&rsquo;t give so many reasons,&rdquo; said Newman.
+&ldquo;You are simply tired of my company. You have a good right to be.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no, I am not tired!&rdquo; cried the pestered young divine.
+&ldquo;It is very wrong to be tired.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I give it up!&rdquo; laughed Newman. &ldquo;But of course it will never
+do to go on making mistakes. Go your way, by all means. I shall miss you; but
+you have seen I make friends very easily. You will be lonely yourself; but drop
+me a line, when you feel like it, and I will wait for you anywhere.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think I will go back to Milan. I am afraid I didn&rsquo;t do justice
+to Luini.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Poor Luini!&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I mean that I am afraid I overestimated him. I don&rsquo;t think that he
+is a painter of the first rank.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Luini?&rdquo; Newman exclaimed; &ldquo;why, he&rsquo;s
+enchanting&mdash;he&rsquo;s magnificent! There is something in his genius that
+is like a beautiful woman. It gives one the same feeling.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Babcock frowned and winced. And it must be added that this was, for Newman,
+an unusually metaphysical flight; but in passing through Milan he had taken a
+great fancy to the painter. &ldquo;There you are again!&rdquo; said Mr.
+Babcock. &ldquo;Yes, we had better separate.&rdquo; And on the morrow he
+retraced his steps and proceeded to tone down his impressions of the great
+Lombard artist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A few days afterwards Newman received a note from his late companion which ran
+as follows:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My Dear Mr. Newman,&mdash;I am afraid that my conduct at Venice, a week ago,
+seemed to you strange and ungrateful, and I wish to explain my position, which,
+as I said at the time, I do not think you appreciate. I had long had it on my
+mind to propose that we should part company, and this step was not really so
+abrupt as it seemed. In the first place, you know, I am traveling in Europe on
+funds supplied by my congregation, who kindly offered me a vacation and an
+opportunity to enrich my mind with the treasures of nature and art in the Old
+World. I feel, therefore, as if I ought to use my time to the very best
+advantage. I have a high sense of responsibility. You appear to care only for
+the pleasure of the hour, and you give yourself up to it with a violence which
+I confess I am not able to emulate. I feel as if I must arrive at some
+conclusion and fix my belief on certain points. Art and life seem to me
+intensely serious things, and in our travels in Europe we should especially
+remember the immense seriousness of Art. You seem to hold that if a thing
+amuses you for the moment, that is all you need ask for it, and your relish for
+mere amusement is also much higher than mine. You put, however, a kind of
+reckless confidence into your pleasure which at times, I confess, has seemed to
+me&mdash;shall I say it?&mdash;almost cynical. Your way at any rate is not my
+way, and it is unwise that we should attempt any longer to pull together. And
+yet, let me add that I know there is a great deal to be said for your way; I
+have felt its attraction, in your society, very strongly. But for this I should
+have left you long ago. But I was so perplexed. I hope I have not done wrong. I
+feel as if I had a great deal of lost time to make up. I beg you take all this
+as I mean it, which, Heaven knows, is not invidiously. I have a great personal
+esteem for you and hope that some day, when I have recovered my balance, we
+shall meet again. I hope you will continue to enjoy your travels, only
+<i>do</i> remember that Life and Art <i>are</i> extremely serious. Believe me
+your sincere friend and well-wisher,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+BENJAMIN BABCOCK
+</p>
+
+<p>
+P. S. I am greatly perplexed by Luini.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This letter produced in Newman&rsquo;s mind a singular mixture of exhilaration
+and awe. At first, Mr. Babcock&rsquo;s tender conscience seemed to him a
+capital farce, and his traveling back to Milan only to get into a deeper muddle
+appeared, as the reward of his pedantry, exquisitely and ludicrously just. Then
+Newman reflected that these are mighty mysteries, that possibly he himself was
+indeed that baleful and barely mentionable thing, a cynic, and that his manner
+of considering the treasures of art and the privileges of life was probably
+very base and immoral. Newman had a great contempt for immorality, and that
+evening, for a good half hour, as he sat watching the star-sheen on the warm
+Adriatic, he felt rebuked and depressed. He was at a loss how to answer
+Babcock&rsquo;s letter. His good nature checked his resenting the young
+minister&rsquo;s lofty admonitions, and his tough, inelastic sense of humor
+forbade his taking them seriously. He wrote no answer at all but a day or two
+afterward he found in a curiosity shop a grotesque little statuette in ivory,
+of the sixteenth century, which he sent off to Babcock without a commentary. It
+represented a gaunt, ascetic-looking monk, in a tattered gown and cowl,
+kneeling with clasped hands and pulling a portentously long face. It was a
+wonderfully delicate piece of carving, and in a moment, through one of the
+rents of his gown, you espied a fat capon hung round the monk&rsquo;s waist. In
+Newman&rsquo;s intention what did the figure symbolize? Did it mean that he was
+going to try to be as &ldquo;high-toned&rdquo; as the monk looked at first, but
+that he feared he should succeed no better than the friar, on a closer
+inspection, proved to have done? It is not supposable that he intended a satire
+upon Babcock&rsquo;s own asceticism, for this would have been a truly cynical
+stroke. He made his late companion, at any rate, a very valuable little
+present.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman, on leaving Venice, went through the Tyrol to Vienna, and then returned
+westward, through Southern Germany. The autumn found him at Baden-Baden, where
+he spent several weeks. The place was charming, and he was in no hurry to
+depart; besides, he was looking about him and deciding what to do for the
+winter. His summer had been very full, and he sat under the great trees beside
+the miniature river that trickles past the Baden flower-beds, he slowly
+rummaged it over. He had seen and done a great deal, enjoyed and observed a
+great deal; he felt older, and yet he felt younger too. He remembered Mr.
+Babcock and his desire to form conclusions, and he remembered also that he had
+profited very little by his friend&rsquo;s exhortation to cultivate the same
+respectable habit. Could he not scrape together a few conclusions? Baden-Baden
+was the prettiest place he had seen yet, and orchestral music in the evening,
+under the stars, was decidedly a great institution. This was one of his
+conclusions! But he went on to reflect that he had done very wisely to pull up
+stakes and come abroad; this seeing of the world was a very interesting thing.
+He had learned a great deal; he couldn&rsquo;t say just what, but he had it
+there under his hat-band. He had done what he wanted; he had seen the great
+things, and he had given his mind a chance to &ldquo;improve,&rdquo; if it
+would. He cheerfully believed that it had improved. Yes, this seeing of the
+world was very pleasant, and he would willingly do a little more of it.
+Thirty-six years old as he was, he had a handsome stretch of life before him
+yet, and he need not begin to count his weeks. Where should he take the world
+next? I have said he remembered the eyes of the lady whom he had found standing
+in Mrs. Tristram&rsquo;s drawing-room; four months had elapsed, and he had not
+forgotten them yet. He had looked&mdash;he had made a point of
+looking&mdash;into a great many other eyes in the interval, but the only ones
+he thought of now were Madame de Cintré&rsquo;s. If he wanted to see more of
+the world, should he find it in Madame de Cintré&rsquo;s eyes? He would
+certainly find something there, call it this world or the next. Throughout
+these rather formless meditations he sometimes thought of his past life and the
+long array of years (they had begun so early) during which he had had nothing
+in his head but &ldquo;enterprise.&rdquo; They seemed far away now, for his
+present attitude was more than a holiday, it was almost a rupture. He had told
+Tristram that the pendulum was swinging back and it appeared that the backward
+swing had not yet ended. Still &ldquo;enterprise,&rdquo; which was over in the
+other quarter wore to his mind a different aspect at different hours. In its
+train a thousand forgotten episodes came trooping back into his memory. Some of
+them he looked complacently enough in the face; from some he averted his head.
+They were old efforts, old exploits, antiquated examples of
+&ldquo;smartness&rdquo; and sharpness. Some of them, as he looked at them, he
+felt decidedly proud of; he admired himself as if he had been looking at
+another man. And, in fact, many of the qualities that make a great deed were
+there: the decision, the resolution, the courage, the celerity, the clear eye,
+and the strong hand. Of certain other achievements it would be going too far to
+say that he was ashamed of them for Newman had never had a stomach for dirty
+work. He was blessed with a natural impulse to disfigure with a direct,
+unreasoning blow the comely visage of temptation. And certainly, in no man
+could a want of integrity have been less excusable. Newman knew the crooked
+from the straight at a glance, and the former had cost him, first and last, a
+great many moments of lively disgust. But none the less some of his memories
+seemed to wear at present a rather graceless and sordid mien, and it struck him
+that if he had never done anything very ugly, he had never, on the other hand,
+done anything particularly beautiful. He had spent his years in the unremitting
+effort to add thousands to thousands, and, now that he stood well outside of
+it, the business of money-getting appeared tolerably dry and sterile. It is
+very well to sneer at money-getting after you have filled your pockets, and
+Newman, it may be said, should have begun somewhat earlier to moralize thus
+delicately. To this it may be answered that he might have made another fortune,
+if he chose; and we ought to add that he was not exactly moralizing. It had
+come back to him simply that what he had been looking at all summer was a very
+rich and beautiful world, and that it had not all been made by sharp railroad
+men and stock-brokers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During his stay at Baden-Baden he received a letter from Mrs. Tristram,
+scolding him for the scanty tidings he had sent to his friends of the Avenue
+d&rsquo;Iéna, and begging to be definitely informed that he had not concocted
+any horrid scheme for wintering in outlying regions, but was coming back sanely
+and promptly to the most comfortable city in the world. Newman&rsquo;s answer
+ran as follows:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I supposed you knew I was a miserable letter-writer, and didn&rsquo;t
+expect anything of me. I don&rsquo;t think I have written twenty letters of
+pure friendship in my whole life; in America I conducted my correspondence
+altogether by telegrams. This is a letter of pure friendship; you have got hold
+of a curiosity, and I hope you will value it. You want to know everything that
+has happened to me these three months. The best way to tell you, I think, would
+be to send you my half dozen guide-books, with my pencil-marks in the margin.
+Wherever you find a scratch or a cross, or a &lsquo;Beautiful!&rsquo; or a
+&lsquo;So true!&rsquo; or a &lsquo;Too thin!&rsquo; you may know that I have
+had a sensation of some sort or other. That has been about my history, ever
+since I left you. Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Germany, Italy&mdash;I have
+been through the whole list, and I don&rsquo;t think I am any the worse for it.
+I know more about Madonnas and church-steeples than I supposed any man could. I
+have seen some very pretty things, and shall perhaps talk them over this
+winter, by your fireside. You see, my face is not altogether set against Paris.
+I have had all kinds of plans and visions, but your letter has blown most of
+them away. &lsquo;<i>L&rsquo;appétit vient en mangeant</i>,&rsquo; says the
+French proverb, and I find that the more I see of the world the more I want to
+see. Now that I am in the shafts, why shouldn&rsquo;t I trot to the end of the
+course? Sometimes I think of the far East, and keep rolling the names of
+Eastern cities under my tongue: Damascus and Bagdad, Medina and Mecca. I spent
+a week last month in the company of a returned missionary, who told me I ought
+to be ashamed to be loafing about Europe when there are such big things to be
+seen out there. I do want to explore, but I think I would rather explore over
+in the Rue de l&rsquo;Université. Do you ever hear from that pretty lady? If
+you can get her to promise she will be at home the next time I call, I will go
+back to Paris straight. I am more than ever in the state of mind I told you
+about that evening; I want a first-class wife. I have kept an eye on all the
+pretty girls I have come across this summer, but none of them came up to my
+notion, or anywhere near it. I should have enjoyed all this a thousand times
+more if I had had the lady just mentioned by my side. The nearest approach to
+her was a Unitarian minister from Boston, who very soon demanded a separation,
+for incompatibility of temper. He told me I was low-minded, immoral, a devotee
+of &lsquo;art for art&rsquo;&mdash;whatever that is: all of which greatly
+afflicted me, for he was really a sweet little fellow. But shortly afterwards I
+met an Englishman, with whom I struck up an acquaintance which at first seemed
+to promise well&mdash;a very bright man, who writes in the London papers and
+knows Paris nearly as well as Tristram. We knocked about for a week together,
+but he very soon gave me up in disgust. I was too virtuous by half; I was too
+stern a moralist. He told me, in a friendly way, that I was cursed with a
+conscience; that I judged things like a Methodist and talked about them like an
+old lady. This was rather bewildering. Which of my two critics was I to
+believe? I didn&rsquo;t worry about it and very soon made up my mind they were
+both idiots. But there is one thing in which no one will ever have the
+impudence to pretend I am wrong, that is, in being your faithful friend,
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap06"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<p>
+Newman gave up Damascus and Bagdad and returned to Paris before the autumn was
+over. He established himself in some rooms selected for him by Tom Tristram, in
+accordance with the latter&rsquo;s estimate of what he called his social
+position. When Newman learned that his social position was to be taken into
+account, he professed himself utterly incompetent, and begged Tristram to
+relieve him of the care. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know I had a social
+position,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and if I have, I haven&rsquo;t the smallest
+idea what it is. Isn&rsquo;t a social position knowing some two or three
+thousand people and inviting them to dinner? I know you and your wife and
+little old Mr. Nioche, who gave me French lessons last spring. Can I invite you
+to dinner to meet each other? If I can, you must come to-morrow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is not very grateful to me,&rdquo; said Mrs. Tristram, &ldquo;who
+introduced you last year to every creature I know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So you did; I had quite forgotten. But I thought you wanted me to
+forget,&rdquo; said Newman, with that tone of simple deliberateness which
+frequently marked his utterance, and which an observer would not have known
+whether to pronounce a somewhat mysteriously humorous affection of ignorance or
+a modest aspiration to knowledge; &ldquo;you told me you disliked them
+all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, the way you remember what I say is at least very flattering. But in
+future,&rdquo; added Mrs. Tristram, &ldquo;pray forget all the wicked things
+and remember only the good ones. It will be easily done, and it will not
+fatigue your memory. But I forewarn you that if you trust my husband to pick
+out your rooms, you are in for something hideous.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hideous, darling?&rdquo; cried Tristram.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To-day I must say nothing wicked; otherwise I should use stronger
+language.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you think she would say, Newman?&rdquo; asked Tristram.
+&ldquo;If she really tried, now? She can express displeasure, volubly, in two
+or three languages; that&rsquo;s what it is to be intellectual. It gives her
+the start of me completely, for I can&rsquo;t swear, for the life of me, except
+in English. When I get mad I have to fall back on our dear old mother tongue.
+There&rsquo;s nothing like it, after all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman declared that he knew nothing about tables and chairs, and that he would
+accept, in the way of a lodging, with his eyes shut, anything that Tristram
+should offer him. This was partly veracity on our hero&rsquo;s part, but it was
+also partly charity. He knew that to pry about and look at rooms, and make
+people open windows, and poke into sofas with his cane, and gossip with
+landladies, and ask who lived above and who below&mdash;he knew that this was
+of all pastimes the dearest to Tristram&rsquo;s heart, and he felt the more
+disposed to put it in his way as he was conscious that, as regards his obliging
+friend, he had suffered the warmth of ancient good-fellowship somewhat to
+abate. Besides, he had no taste for upholstery; he had even no very exquisite
+sense of comfort or convenience. He had a relish for luxury and splendor, but
+it was satisfied by rather gross contrivances. He scarcely knew a hard chair
+from a soft one, and he possessed a talent for stretching his legs which quite
+dispensed with adventitious facilities. His idea of comfort was to inhabit very
+large rooms, have a great many of them, and be conscious of their possessing a
+number of patented mechanical devices&mdash;half of which he should never have
+occasion to use. The apartments should be light and brilliant and lofty; he had
+once said that he liked rooms in which you wanted to keep your hat on. For the
+rest, he was satisfied with the assurance of any respectable person that
+everything was &ldquo;handsome.&rdquo; Tristram accordingly secured for him an
+apartment to which this epithet might be lavishly applied. It was situated on
+the Boulevard Haussmann, on the first floor, and consisted of a series of
+rooms, gilded from floor to ceiling a foot thick, draped in various light
+shades of satin, and chiefly furnished with mirrors and clocks. Newman thought
+them magnificent, thanked Tristram heartily, immediately took possession, and
+had one of his trunks standing for three months in his drawing-room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One day Mrs. Tristram told him that her beautiful friend, Madame de Cintré, had
+returned from the country; that she had met her three days before, coming out
+of the Church of St. Sulpice; she herself having journeyed to that distant
+quarter in quest of an obscure lace-mender, of whose skill she had heard high
+praise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And how were those eyes?&rdquo; Newman asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Those eyes were red with weeping, if you please!&rdquo; said Mrs.
+Tristram. &ldquo;She had been to confession.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t tally with your account of her,&rdquo; said Newman,
+&ldquo;that she should have sins to confess.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They were not sins; they were sufferings.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How do you know that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She asked me to come and see her; I went this morning.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what does she suffer from?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t ask her. With her, somehow, one is very discreet. But I
+guessed, easily enough. She suffers from her wicked old mother and her Grand
+Turk of a brother. They persecute her. But I can almost forgive them, because,
+as I told you, she is a saint, and a persecution is all that she needs to bring
+out her saintliness and make her perfect.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s a comfortable theory for her. I hope you will never impart
+it to the old folks. Why does she let them bully her? Is she not her own
+mistress?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Legally, yes, I suppose; but morally, no. In France you must never say
+nay to your mother, whatever she requires of you. She may be the most
+abominable old woman in the world, and make your life a purgatory; but, after
+all, she is <i>ma mère</i>, and you have no right to judge her. You have simply
+to obey. The thing has a fine side to it. Madame de Cintré bows her head and
+folds her wings.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t she at least make her brother leave off?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Her brother is the <i>chef de la famille</i>, as they say; he is the
+head of the clan. With those people the family is everything; you must act, not
+for your own pleasure, but for the advantage of the family.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wonder what <i>my</i> family would like me to do!&rdquo; exclaimed
+Tristram.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish you had one!&rdquo; said his wife.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But what do they want to get out of that poor lady?&rdquo; Newman asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Another marriage. They are not rich, and they want to bring more money
+into the family.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s your chance, my boy!&rdquo; said Tristram.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And Madame de Cintré objects,&rdquo; Newman continued.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She has been sold once; she naturally objects to being sold again. It
+appears that the first time they made rather a poor bargain; M. de Cintré left
+a scanty property.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And to whom do they want to marry her now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought it best not to ask; but you may be sure it is to some horrid
+old nabob, or to some dissipated little duke.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s Mrs. Tristram, as large as life!&rdquo; cried her husband.
+&ldquo;Observe the richness of her imagination. She has not a single
+question&mdash;it&rsquo;s vulgar to ask questions&mdash;and yet she knows
+everything. She has the history of Madame de Cintré&rsquo;s marriage at her
+fingers&rsquo; ends. She has seen the lovely Claire on her knees, with loosened
+tresses and streaming eyes, and the rest of them standing over her with spikes
+and goads and red-hot irons, ready to come down on her if she refuses the tipsy
+duke. The simple truth is that they made a fuss about her milliner&rsquo;s bill
+or refused her an opera-box.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman looked from Tristram to his wife with a certain mistrust in each
+direction. &ldquo;Do you really mean,&rdquo; he asked of Mrs. Tristram,
+&ldquo;that your friend is being forced into an unhappy marriage?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think it extremely probable. Those people are very capable of that
+sort of thing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is like something in a play,&rdquo; said Newman; &ldquo;that dark old
+house over there looks as if wicked things had been done in it, and might be
+done again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They have a still darker old house in the country Madame de Cintré tells
+me, and there, during the summer this scheme must have been hatched.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Must</i> have been; mind that!&rdquo; said Tristram.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;After all,&rdquo; suggested Newman, after a silence, &ldquo;she may be
+in trouble about something else.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If it is something else, then it is something worse,&rdquo; said Mrs.
+Tristram, with rich decision.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman was silent a while, and seemed lost in meditation. &ldquo;Is it
+possible,&rdquo; he asked at last, &ldquo;that they do that sort of thing over
+here? that helpless women are bullied into marrying men they hate?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Helpless women, all over the world, have a hard time of it,&rdquo; said
+Mrs. Tristram. &ldquo;There is plenty of bullying everywhere.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A great deal of that kind of thing goes on in New York,&rdquo; said
+Tristram. &ldquo;Girls are bullied or coaxed or bribed, or all three together,
+into marrying nasty fellows. There is no end of that always going on in the
+Fifth Avenue, and other bad things besides. The Mysteries of the Fifth Avenue!
+Someone ought to show them up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe it!&rdquo; said Newman, very gravely. &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t believe that, in America, girls are ever subjected to compulsion. I
+don&rsquo;t believe there have been a dozen cases of it since the country
+began.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Listen to the voice of the spread eagle!&rdquo; cried Tristram.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The spread eagle ought to use his wings,&rdquo; said Mrs. Tristram.
+&ldquo;Fly to the rescue of Madame de Cintré!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To her rescue?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pounce down, seize her in your talons, and carry her off. Marry her
+yourself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman, for some moments, answered nothing; but presently, &ldquo;I should
+suppose she had heard enough of marrying,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The kindest
+way to treat her would be to admire her, and yet never to speak of it. But that
+sort of thing is infamous,&rdquo; he added; &ldquo;it makes me feel savage to
+hear of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He heard of it, however, more than once afterward. Mrs. Tristram again saw
+Madame de Cintré, and again found her looking very sad. But on these occasions
+there had been no tears; her beautiful eyes were clear and still. &ldquo;She is
+cold, calm, and hopeless,&rdquo; Mrs. Tristram declared, and she added that on
+her mentioning that her friend Mr. Newman was again in Paris and was faithful
+in his desire to make Madame de Cintré&rsquo;s acquaintance, this lovely woman
+had found a smile in her despair, and declared that she was sorry to have
+missed his visit in the spring and that she hoped he had not lost courage.
+&ldquo;I told her something about you,&rdquo; said Mrs. Tristram.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s a comfort,&rdquo; said Newman, placidly. &ldquo;I like
+people to know about me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A few days after this, one dusky autumn afternoon, he went again to the Rue de
+l&rsquo;Université. The early evening had closed in as he applied for
+admittance at the stoutly guarded <i>Hôtel de Bellegarde</i>. He was told that
+Madame de Cintré was at home; he crossed the court, entered the farther door,
+and was conducted through a vestibule, vast, dim, and cold, up a broad stone
+staircase with an ancient iron balustrade, to an apartment on the second floor.
+Announced and ushered in, he found himself in a sort of paneled boudoir, at one
+end of which a lady and gentleman were seated before the fire. The gentleman
+was smoking a cigarette; there was no light in the room save that of a couple
+of candles and the glow from the hearth. Both persons rose to welcome Newman,
+who, in the firelight, recognized Madame de Cintré. She gave him her hand with
+a smile which seemed in itself an illumination, and, pointing to her companion,
+said softly, &ldquo;My brother.&rdquo; The gentleman offered Newman a frank,
+friendly greeting, and our hero then perceived him to be the young man who had
+spoken to him in the court of the hotel on his former visit and who had struck
+him as a good fellow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mrs. Tristram has spoken to me a great deal of you,&rdquo; said Madame
+de Cintré gently, as she resumed her former place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman, after he had seated himself, began to consider what, in truth, was his
+errand. He had an unusual, unexpected sense of having wandered into a strange
+corner of the world. He was not given, as a general thing, to anticipating
+danger, or forecasting disaster, and he had had no social tremors on this
+particular occasion. He was not timid and he was not impudent. He felt too
+kindly toward himself to be the one, and too good-naturedly toward the rest of
+the world to be the other. But his native shrewdness sometimes placed his ease
+of temper at its mercy; with every disposition to take things simply, it was
+obliged to perceive that some things were not so simple as others. He felt as
+one does in missing a step, in an ascent, where one expected to find it. This
+strange, pretty woman, sitting in fire-side talk with her brother, in the gray
+depths of her inhospitable-looking house&mdash;what had he to say to her? She
+seemed enveloped in a sort of fantastic privacy; on what grounds had he pulled
+away the curtain? For a moment he felt as if he had plunged into some medium as
+deep as the ocean, and as if he must exert himself to keep from sinking.
+Meanwhile he was looking at Madame de Cintré, and she was settling herself in
+her chair and drawing in her long dress and turning her face towards him. Their
+eyes met; a moment afterwards she looked away and motioned to her brother to
+put a log on the fire. But the moment, and the glance which traversed it, had
+been sufficient to relieve Newman of the first and the last fit of personal
+embarrassment he was ever to know. He performed the movement which was so
+frequent with him, and which was always a sort of symbol of his taking mental
+possession of a scene&mdash;he extended his legs. The impression Madame de
+Cintré had made upon him on their first meeting came back in an instant; it had
+been deeper than he knew. She was pleasing, she was interesting; he had opened
+a book and the first lines held his attention.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She asked him several questions: how lately he had seen Mrs. Tristram, how long
+he had been in Paris, how long he expected to remain there, how he liked it.
+She spoke English without an accent, or rather with that distinctively British
+accent which, on his arrival in Europe, had struck Newman as an altogether
+foreign tongue, but which, in women, he had come to like extremely. Here and
+there Madame de Cintré&rsquo;s utterance had a faint shade of strangeness but
+at the end of ten minutes Newman found himself waiting for these soft
+roughnesses. He enjoyed them, and he marveled to see that gross thing, error,
+brought down to so fine a point.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have a beautiful country,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré, presently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, magnificent!&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;You ought to see it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall never see it,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré with a smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; asked Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t travel; especially so far.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you go away sometimes; you are not always here?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I go away in summer, a little way, to the country.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman wanted to ask her something more, something personal, he hardly knew
+what. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you find it rather&mdash;rather quiet here?&rdquo; he
+said; &ldquo;so far from the street?&rdquo; Rather &ldquo;gloomy,&rdquo; he was
+going to say, but he reflected that that would be impolite.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, it is very quiet,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré; &ldquo;but we like
+that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, you like that,&rdquo; repeated Newman, slowly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Besides, I have lived here all my life.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lived here all your life,&rdquo; said Newman, in the same way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was born here, and my father was born here before me, and my
+grandfather, and my great-grandfathers. Were they not, Valentin?&rdquo; and she
+appealed to her brother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, it&rsquo;s a family habit to be born here!&rdquo; the young man
+said with a laugh, and rose and threw the remnant of his cigarette into the
+fire, and then remained leaning against the chimney-piece. An observer would
+have perceived that he wished to take a better look at Newman, whom he covertly
+examined, while he stood stroking his moustache.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your house is tremendously old, then,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How old is it, brother?&rdquo; asked Madame de Cintré.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man took the two candles from the mantel-shelf, lifted one high in
+each hand, and looked up toward the cornice of the room, above the
+chimney-piece. This latter feature of the apartment was of white marble, and in
+the familiar rococo style of the last century; but above it was a paneling of
+an earlier date, quaintly carved, painted white, and gilded here and there. The
+white had turned to yellow, and the gilding was tarnished. On the top, the
+figures ranged themselves into a sort of shield, on which an armorial device
+was cut. Above it, in relief, was a date&mdash;1627. &ldquo;There you have
+it,&rdquo; said the young man. &ldquo;That is old or new, according to your
+point of view.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, over here,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;one&rsquo;s point of view
+gets shifted round considerably.&rdquo; And he threw back his head and looked
+about the room. &ldquo;Your house is of a very curious style of
+architecture,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you interested in architecture?&rdquo; asked the young man at the
+chimney-piece.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I took the trouble, this summer,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;to
+examine&mdash;as well as I can calculate&mdash;some four hundred and seventy
+churches. Do you call that interested?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps you are interested in theology,&rdquo; said the young man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not particularly. Are you a Roman Catholic, madam?&rdquo; And he turned
+to Madame de Cintré.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; she answered, gravely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman was struck with the gravity of her tone; he threw back his head and
+began to look round the room again. &ldquo;Had you never noticed that number up
+there?&rdquo; he presently asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She hesitated a moment, and then, &ldquo;In former years,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her brother had been watching Newman&rsquo;s movement. &ldquo;Perhaps you would
+like to examine the house,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman slowly brought down his eyes and looked at him; he had a vague
+impression that the young man at the chimney-piece was inclined to irony. He
+was a handsome fellow, his face wore a smile, his moustaches were curled up at
+the ends, and there was a little dancing gleam in his eye. &ldquo;Damn his
+French impudence!&rdquo; Newman was on the point of saying to himself.
+&ldquo;What the deuce is he grinning at?&rdquo; He glanced at Madame de Cintré;
+she was sitting with her eyes fixed on the floor. She raised them, they met
+his, and she looked at her brother. Newman turned again to this young man and
+observed that he strikingly resembled his sister. This was in his favor, and
+our hero&rsquo;s first impression of the Count Valentin, moreover, had been
+agreeable. His mistrust expired, and he said he would be very glad to see the
+house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man gave a frank laugh, and laid his hand on one of the candlesticks.
+&ldquo;Good, good!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;Come, then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Madame de Cintré rose quickly and grasped his arm, &ldquo;Ah,
+Valentin!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;What do you mean to do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To show Mr. Newman the house. It will be very amusing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She kept her hand on his arm, and turned to Newman with a smile.
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t let him take you,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;you will not find
+it amusing. It is a musty old house, like any other.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is full of curious things,&rdquo; said the count, resisting.
+&ldquo;Besides, I want to do it; it is a rare chance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are very wicked, brother,&rdquo; Madame de Cintré answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing venture, nothing have!&rdquo; cried the young man. &ldquo;Will
+you come?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Cintré stepped toward Newman, gently clasping her hands and smiling
+softly. &ldquo;Would you not prefer my society, here, by my fire, to stumbling
+about dark passages after my brother?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A hundred times!&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;We will see the house some
+other day.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man put down his candlestick with mock solemnity, and, shaking his
+head, &ldquo;Ah, you have defeated a great scheme, sir!&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A scheme? I don&rsquo;t understand,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You would have played your part in it all the better. Perhaps some day I
+shall have a chance to explain it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Be quiet, and ring for the tea,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man obeyed, and presently a servant brought in the tea, placed the
+tray on a small table, and departed. Madame de Cintré, from her place, busied
+herself with making it. She had but just begun when the door was thrown open
+and a lady rushed in, making a loud rustling sound. She stared at Newman, gave
+a little nod and a &ldquo;Monsieur!&rdquo; and then quickly approached Madame
+de Cintré and presented her forehead to be kissed. Madame de Cintré saluted
+her, and continued to make tea. The new-comer was young and pretty, it seemed
+to Newman; she wore her bonnet and cloak, and a train of royal proportions. She
+began to talk rapidly in French. &ldquo;Oh, give me some tea, my beautiful one,
+for the love of God! I&rsquo;m exhausted, mangled, massacred.&rdquo; Newman
+found himself quite unable to follow her; she spoke much less distinctly than
+M. Nioche.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is my sister-in-law,&rdquo; said the Count Valentin, leaning
+towards him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is very pretty,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Exquisite,&rdquo; answered the young man, and this time, again, Newman
+suspected him of irony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His sister-in-law came round to the other side of the fire with her cup of tea
+in her hand, holding it out at arm&rsquo;s-length, so that she might not spill
+it on her dress, and uttering little cries of alarm. She placed the cup on the
+mantel-shelf and begun to unpin her veil and pull off her gloves, looking
+meanwhile at Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is there anything I can do for you, my dear lady?&rdquo; the Count
+Valentin asked, in a sort of mock-caressing tone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Present monsieur,&rdquo; said his sister-in-law.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man answered, &ldquo;Mr. Newman!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t courtesy to you, monsieur, or I shall spill my tea,&rdquo;
+said the lady. &ldquo;So Claire receives strangers, like that?&rdquo; she
+added, in a low voice, in French, to her brother-in-law.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Apparently!&rdquo; he answered with a smile. Newman stood a moment, and
+then he approached Madame de Cintré. She looked up at him as if she were
+thinking of something to say. But she seemed to think of nothing; so she simply
+smiled. He sat down near her and she handed him a cup of tea. For a few moments
+they talked about that, and meanwhile he looked at her. He remembered what Mrs.
+Tristram had told him of her &ldquo;perfection&rdquo; and of her having, in
+combination, all the brilliant things that he dreamed of finding. This made him
+observe her not only without mistrust, but without uneasy conjectures; the
+presumption, from the first moment he looked at her, had been in her favor. And
+yet, if she was beautiful, it was not a dazzling beauty. She was tall and
+moulded in long lines; she had thick fair hair, a wide forehead, and features
+with a sort of harmonious irregularity. Her clear gray eyes were strikingly
+expressive; they were both gentle and intelligent, and Newman liked them
+immensely; but they had not those depths of splendor&mdash;those many-colored
+rays&mdash;which illumine the brows of famous beauties. Madame de Cintré was
+rather thin, and she looked younger than probably she was. In her whole person
+there was something both youthful and subdued, slender and yet ample, tranquil
+yet shy; a mixture of immaturity and repose, of innocence and dignity. What had
+Tristram meant, Newman wondered, by calling her proud? She was certainly not
+proud now, to him; or if she was, it was of no use, it was lost upon him; she
+must pile it up higher if she expected him to mind it. She was a beautiful
+woman, and it was very easy to get on with her. Was she a countess, a
+<i>marquise</i>, a kind of historical formation? Newman, who had rarely heard
+these words used, had never been at pains to attach any particular image to
+them; but they occurred to him now and seemed charged with a sort of melodious
+meaning. They signified something fair and softly bright, that had easy motions
+and spoke very agreeably.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have you many friends in Paris; do you go out?&rdquo; asked Madame de
+Cintré, who had at last thought of something to say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean do I dance, and all that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you go <i>dans le monde</i>, as we say?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have seen a good many people. Mrs. Tristram has taken me about. I do
+whatever she tells me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By yourself, you are not fond of amusements?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes, of some sorts. I am not fond of dancing, and that sort of thing;
+I am too old and sober. But I want to be amused; I came to Europe for
+that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you can be amused in America, too.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t; I was always at work. But after all, that was my
+amusement.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this moment Madame de Bellegarde came back for another cup of tea,
+accompanied by the Count Valentin. Madame de Cintré, when she had served her,
+began to talk again with Newman, and recalling what he had last said, &ldquo;In
+your own country you were very much occupied?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was in business. I have been in business since I was fifteen years
+old.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what was your business?&rdquo; asked Madame de Bellegarde, who was
+decidedly not so pretty as Madame de Cintré.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have been in everything,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;At one time I sold
+leather; at one time I manufactured wash-tubs.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Bellegarde made a little grimace. &ldquo;Leather? I don&rsquo;t like
+that. Wash-tubs are better. I prefer the smell of soap. I hope at least they
+made your fortune.&rdquo; She rattled this off with the air of a woman who had
+the reputation of saying everything that came into her head, and with a strong
+French accent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman had spoken with cheerful seriousness, but Madame de Bellegarde&rsquo;s
+tone made him go on, after a meditative pause, with a certain light grimness of
+jocularity. &ldquo;No, I lost money on wash-tubs, but I came out pretty square
+on leather.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have made up my mind, after all,&rdquo; said Madame de Bellegarde,
+&ldquo;that the great point is&mdash;how do you call it?&mdash;to come out
+square. I am on my knees to money; I don&rsquo;t deny it. If you have it, I ask
+no questions. For that I am a real democrat&mdash;like you, monsieur. Madame de
+Cintré is very proud; but I find that one gets much more pleasure in this sad
+life if one doesn&rsquo;t look too close.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Just Heaven, dear madam, how you go at it,&rdquo; said the Count
+Valentin, lowering his voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s a man one can speak to, I suppose, since my sister receives
+him,&rdquo; the lady answered. &ldquo;Besides, it&rsquo;s very true; those are
+my ideas.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, you call them ideas,&rdquo; murmured the young man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But Mrs. Tristram told me you had been in the army&mdash;in your
+war,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, but that is not business!&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very true!&rdquo; said M. de Bellegarde. &ldquo;Otherwise perhaps I
+should not be penniless.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it true,&rdquo; asked Newman in a moment, &ldquo;that you are so
+proud? I had already heard it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Cintré smiled. &ldquo;Do you find me so?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;I am no judge. If you are proud with me,
+you will have to tell me. Otherwise I shall not know it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Cintré began to laugh. &ldquo;That would be pride in a sad
+position!&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It would be partly,&rdquo; Newman went on, &ldquo;because I
+shouldn&rsquo;t want to know it. I want you to treat me well.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Cintré, whose laugh had ceased, looked at him with her head half
+averted, as if she feared what he was going to say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mrs. Tristram told you the literal truth,&rdquo; he went on; &ldquo;I
+want very much to know you. I didn&rsquo;t come here simply to call to-day; I
+came in the hope that you might ask me to come again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, pray come often,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But will you be at home?&rdquo; Newman insisted. Even to himself he
+seemed a trifle &ldquo;pushing,&rdquo; but he was, in truth, a trifle excited.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hope so!&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman got up. &ldquo;Well, we shall see,&rdquo; he said smoothing his hat with
+his coat-cuff.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Brother,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré, &ldquo;invite Mr. Newman to come
+again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Count Valentin looked at our hero from head to foot with his peculiar
+smile, in which impudence and urbanity seemed perplexingly commingled.
+&ldquo;Are you a brave man?&rdquo; he asked, eying him askance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I hope so,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I rather suspect so. In that case, come again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, what an invitation!&rdquo; murmured Madame de Cintré, with something
+painful in her smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I want Mr. Newman to come&mdash;particularly,&rdquo; said the young
+man. &ldquo;It will give me great pleasure. I shall be desolate if I miss one
+of his visits. But I maintain he must be brave. A stout heart, sir!&rdquo; And
+he offered Newman his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall not come to see you; I shall come to see Madame de
+Cintré,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will need all the more courage.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, Valentin!&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré, appealingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Decidedly,&rdquo; cried Madame de Bellegarde, &ldquo;I am the only
+person here capable of saying something polite! Come to see me; you will need
+no courage,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman gave a laugh which was not altogether an assent, and took his leave.
+Madame de Cintré did not take up her sister&rsquo;s challenge to be gracious,
+but she looked with a certain troubled air at the retreating guest.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap07"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<p>
+One evening very late, about a week after his visit to Madame de Cintré,
+Newman&rsquo;s servant brought him a card. It was that of young M. de
+Bellegarde. When, a few moments later, he went to receive his visitor, he found
+him standing in the middle of his great gilded parlor and eying it from cornice
+to carpet. M. de Bellegarde&rsquo;s face, it seemed to Newman, expressed a
+sense of lively entertainment. &ldquo;What the devil is he laughing at
+now?&rdquo; our hero asked himself. But he put the question without acrimony,
+for he felt that Madame de Cintré&rsquo;s brother was a good fellow, and he had
+a presentiment that on this basis of good fellowship they were destined to
+understand each other. Only, if there was anything to laugh at, he wished to
+have a glimpse of it too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To begin with,&rdquo; said the young man, as he extended his hand,
+&ldquo;have I come too late?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Too late for what?&rdquo; asked Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To smoke a cigar with you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You would have to come early to do that,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t smoke.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, you are a strong man!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I keep cigars,&rdquo; Newman added. &ldquo;Sit down.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Surely, I may not smoke here,&rdquo; said M. de Bellegarde.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is the matter? Is the room too small?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is too large. It is like smoking in a ball-room, or a church.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is what you were laughing at just now?&rdquo; Newman asked;
+&ldquo;the size of my room?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is not size only,&rdquo; replied M. de Bellegarde, &ldquo;but
+splendor, and harmony, and beauty of detail. It was the smile of
+admiration.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman looked at him a moment, and then, &ldquo;So it <i>is</i> very
+ugly?&rdquo; he inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ugly, my dear sir? It is magnificent.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is the same thing, I suppose,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;Make
+yourself comfortable. Your coming to see me, I take it, is an act of
+friendship. You were not obliged to. Therefore, if anything around here amuses
+you, it will be all in a pleasant way. Laugh as loud as you please; I like to
+see my visitors cheerful. Only, I must make this request: that you explain the
+joke to me as soon as you can speak. I don&rsquo;t want to lose anything,
+myself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. de Bellegarde stared, with a look of unresentful perplexity. He laid his
+hand on Newman&rsquo;s sleeve and seemed on the point of saying something, but
+he suddenly checked himself, leaned back in his chair, and puffed at his cigar.
+At last, however, breaking silence,&mdash;&ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; he said,
+&ldquo;my coming to see you is an act of friendship. Nevertheless I was in a
+measure obliged to do so. My sister asked me to come, and a request from my
+sister is, for me, a law. I was near you, and I observed lights in what I
+supposed were your rooms. It was not a ceremonious hour for making a call, but
+I was not sorry to do something that would show I was not performing a mere
+ceremony.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, here I am as large as life,&rdquo; said Newman, extending his
+legs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what you mean,&rdquo; the young man went on &ldquo;by
+giving me unlimited leave to laugh. Certainly I am a great laugher, and it is
+better to laugh too much than too little. But it is not in order that we may
+laugh together&mdash;or separately&mdash;that I have, I may say, sought your
+acquaintance. To speak with almost impudent frankness, you interest me!&rdquo;
+All this was uttered by M. de Bellegarde with the modulated smoothness of the
+man of the world, and in spite of his excellent English, of the Frenchman; but
+Newman, at the same time that he sat noting its harmonious flow, perceived that
+it was not mere mechanical urbanity. Decidedly, there was something in his
+visitor that he liked. M. de Bellegarde was a foreigner to his finger-tips, and
+if Newman had met him on a Western prairie he would have felt it proper to
+address him with a &ldquo;How-d&rsquo;ye-do, Mosseer?&rdquo; But there was
+something in his physiognomy which seemed to cast a sort of aerial bridge over
+the impassable gulf produced by difference of race. He was below the middle
+height, and robust and agile in figure. Valentin de Bellegarde, Newman
+afterwards learned, had a mortal dread of the robustness overtaking the
+agility; he was afraid of growing stout; he was too short, as he said, to
+afford a belly. He rode and fenced and practiced gymnastics with unremitting
+zeal, and if you greeted him with a &ldquo;How well you are looking&rdquo; he
+started and turned pale. In your <i>well</i> he read a grosser monosyllable. He
+had a round head, high above the ears, a crop of hair at once dense and silky,
+a broad, low forehead, a short nose, of the ironical and inquiring rather than
+of the dogmatic or sensitive cast, and a moustache as delicate as that of a
+page in a romance. He resembled his sister not in feature, but in the
+expression of his clear, bright eye, completely void of introspection, and in
+the way he smiled. The great point in his face was that it was intensely
+alive&mdash;frankly, ardently, gallantly alive. The look of it was like a bell,
+of which the handle might have been in the young man&rsquo;s soul: at a touch
+of the handle it rang with a loud, silver sound. There was something in his
+quick, light brown eye which assured you that he was not economizing his
+consciousness. He was not living in a corner of it to spare the furniture of
+the rest. He was squarely encamped in the centre and he was keeping open house.
+When he smiled, it was like the movement of a person who in emptying a cup
+turns it upside down: he gave you the last drop of his jollity. He inspired
+Newman with something of the same kindness that our hero used to feel in his
+earlier years for those of his companions who could perform strange and clever
+tricks&mdash;make their joints crack in queer places or whistle at the back of
+their mouths.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My sister told me,&rdquo; M. de Bellegarde continued, &ldquo;that I
+ought to come and remove the impression that I had taken such great pains to
+produce upon you; the impression that I am a lunatic. Did it strike you that I
+behaved very oddly the other day?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rather so,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So my sister tells me.&rdquo; And M. de Bellegarde watched his host for
+a moment through his smoke-wreaths. &ldquo;If that is the case, I think we had
+better let it stand. I didn&rsquo;t try to make you think I was a lunatic, at
+all; on the contrary, I wanted to produce a favorable impression. But if, after
+all, I made a fool of myself, it was the intention of Providence. I should
+injure myself by protesting too much, for I should seem to set up a claim for
+wisdom which, in the sequel of our acquaintance, I could by no means justify.
+Set me down as a lunatic with intervals of sanity.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I guess you know what you are about,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When I am sane, I am very sane; that I admit,&rdquo; M. de Bellegarde
+answered. &ldquo;But I didn&rsquo;t come here to talk about myself. I should
+like to ask you a few questions. You allow me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Give me a specimen,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You live here all alone?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Absolutely. With whom should I live?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For the moment,&rdquo; said M. de Bellegarde with a smile &ldquo;I am
+asking questions, not answering them. You have come to Paris for your
+pleasure?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman was silent a while. Then, at last, &ldquo;Everyone asks me that!&rdquo;
+he said with his mild slowness. &ldquo;It sounds so awfully foolish.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But at any rate you had a reason.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I came for my pleasure!&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;Though it is
+foolish, it is true.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you are enjoying it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Like any other good American, Newman thought it as well not to truckle to the
+foreigner. &ldquo;Oh, so-so,&rdquo; he answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. de Bellegarde puffed his cigar again in silence. &ldquo;For myself,&rdquo;
+he said at last, &ldquo;I am entirely at your service. Anything I can do for
+you I shall be very happy to do. Call upon me at your convenience. Is there
+anyone you desire to know&mdash;anything you wish to see? It is a pity you
+should not enjoy Paris.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I do enjoy it!&rdquo; said Newman, good-naturedly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+much obliged to you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Honestly speaking,&rdquo; M. de Bellegarde went on, &ldquo;there is
+something absurd to me in hearing myself make you these offers. They represent
+a great deal of goodwill, but they represent little else. You are a successful
+man and I am a failure, and it&rsquo;s a turning of the tables to talk as if I
+could lend you a hand.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In what way are you a failure?&rdquo; asked Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m not a tragical failure!&rdquo; cried the young man with a
+laugh. &ldquo;I have fallen from a height, and my fiasco has made no noise.
+You, evidently, are a success. You have made a fortune, you have built up an
+edifice, you are a financial, commercial power, you can travel about the world
+until you have found a soft spot, and lie down in it with the consciousness of
+having earned your rest. Is not that true? Well, imagine the exact reverse of
+all that, and you have me. I have done nothing&mdash;I can do nothing!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a long story. Some day I will tell you. Meanwhile, I&rsquo;m
+right, eh? You are a success? You have made a fortune? It&rsquo;s none of my
+business, but, in short, you are rich?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s another thing that it sounds foolish to say,&rdquo; said
+Newman. &ldquo;Hang it, no man is rich!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have heard philosophers affirm,&rdquo; laughed M. de Bellegarde,
+&ldquo;that no man was poor; but your formula strikes me as an improvement. As
+a general thing, I confess, I don&rsquo;t like successful people, and I find
+clever men who have made great fortunes very offensive. They tread on my toes;
+they make me uncomfortable. But as soon as I saw you, I said to myself.
+&lsquo;Ah, there is a man with whom I shall get on. He has the good-nature of
+success and none of the <i>morgue</i>; he has not our confoundedly irritable
+French vanity.&rsquo; In short, I took a fancy to you. We are very different,
+I&rsquo;m sure; I don&rsquo;t believe there is a subject on which we think or
+feel alike. But I rather think we shall get on, for there is such a thing, you
+know, as being too different to quarrel.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I never quarrel,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never! Sometimes it&rsquo;s a duty&mdash;or at least it&rsquo;s a
+pleasure. Oh, I have had two or three delicious quarrels in my day!&rdquo; and
+M. de Bellegarde&rsquo;s handsome smile assumed, at the memory of these
+incidents, an almost voluptuous intensity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With the preamble embodied in his share of the foregoing fragment of dialogue,
+he paid our hero a long visit; as the two men sat with their heels on
+Newman&rsquo;s glowing hearth, they heard the small hours of the morning
+striking larger from a far-off belfry. Valentin de Bellegarde was, by his own
+confession, at all times a great chatterer, and on this occasion he was
+evidently in a particularly loquacious mood. It was a tradition of his race
+that people of its blood always conferred a favor by their smiles, and as his
+enthusiasms were as rare as his civility was constant, he had a double reason
+for not suspecting that his friendship could ever be importunate. Moreover, the
+flower of an ancient stem as he was, tradition (since I have used the word) had
+in his temperament nothing of disagreeable rigidity. It was muffled in
+sociability and urbanity, as an old dowager in her laces and strings of pearls.
+Valentin was what is called in France a <i>gentilhomme</i>, of the purest
+source, and his rule of life, so far as it was definite, was to play the part
+of a <i>gentilhomme</i>. This, it seemed to him, was enough to occupy
+comfortably a young man of ordinary good parts. But all that he was he was by
+instinct and not by theory, and the amiability of his character was so great
+that certain of the aristocratic virtues, which in some aspects seem rather
+brittle and trenchant, acquired in his application of them an extreme
+geniality. In his younger years he had been suspected of low tastes, and his
+mother had greatly feared he would make a slip in the mud of the highway and
+bespatter the family shield. He had been treated, therefore, to more than his
+share of schooling and drilling, but his instructors had not succeeded in
+mounting him upon stilts. They could not spoil his safe spontaneity, and he
+remained the least cautious and the most lucky of young nobles. He had been
+tied with so short a rope in his youth that he had now a mortal grudge against
+family discipline. He had been known to say, within the limits of the family,
+that, light-headed as he was, the honor of the name was safer in his hands than
+in those of some of its other members, and that if a day ever came to try it,
+they should see. His talk was an odd mixture of almost boyish garrulity and of
+the reserve and discretion of the man of the world, and he seemed to Newman, as
+afterwards young members of the Latin races often seemed to him, now amusingly
+juvenile and now appallingly mature. In America, Newman reflected, lads of
+twenty-five and thirty have old heads and young hearts, or at least young
+morals; here they have young heads and very aged hearts, morals the most
+grizzled and wrinkled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What I envy you is your liberty,&rdquo; observed M. de Bellegarde,
+&ldquo;your wide range, your freedom to come and go, your not having a lot of
+people, who take themselves awfully seriously, expecting something of you. I
+live,&rdquo; he added with a sigh, &ldquo;beneath the eyes of my admirable
+mother.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is your own fault; what is to hinder your ranging?&rdquo; said
+Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is a delightful simplicity in that remark! Everything is to hinder
+me. To begin with, I have not a penny.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I had not a penny when I began to range.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, but your poverty was your capital. Being an American, it was
+impossible you should remain what you were born, and being born poor&mdash;do I
+understand it?&mdash;it was therefore inevitable that you should become rich.
+You were in a position that makes one&rsquo;s mouth water; you looked round you
+and saw a world full of things you had only to step up to and take hold of.
+When I was twenty, I looked around me and saw a world with everything ticketed
+&lsquo;Hands off!&rsquo; and the deuce of it was that the ticket seemed meant
+only for me. I couldn&rsquo;t go into business, I couldn&rsquo;t make money,
+because I was a Bellegarde. I couldn&rsquo;t go into politics, because I was a
+Bellegarde&mdash;the Bellegardes don&rsquo;t recognize the Bonapartes. I
+couldn&rsquo;t go into literature, because I was a dunce. I couldn&rsquo;t
+marry a rich girl, because no Bellegarde had ever married a <i>roturière</i>,
+and it was not proper that I should begin. We shall have to come to it, yet.
+Marriageable heiresses, <i>de notre bord</i>, are not to be had for nothing; it
+must be name for name, and fortune for fortune. The only thing I could do was
+to go and fight for the Pope. That I did, punctiliously, and received an
+apostolic flesh-wound at Castlefidardo. It did neither the Holy Father nor me
+any good, that I could see. Rome was doubtless a very amusing place in the days
+of Caligula, but it has sadly fallen off since. I passed three years in the
+Castle of St. Angelo, and then came back to secular life.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So you have no profession&mdash;you do nothing,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do nothing! I am supposed to amuse myself, and, to tell the truth, I
+have amused myself. One can, if one knows how. But you can&rsquo;t keep it up
+forever. I am good for another five years, perhaps, but I foresee that after
+that I shall lose my appetite. Then what shall I do? I think I shall turn monk.
+Seriously, I think I shall tie a rope round my waist and go into a monastery.
+It was an old custom, and the old customs were very good. People understood
+life quite as well as we do. They kept the pot boiling till it cracked, and
+then they put it on the shelf altogether.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you very religious?&rdquo; asked Newman, in a tone which gave the
+inquiry a grotesque effect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. de Bellegarde evidently appreciated the comical element in the question, but
+he looked at Newman a moment with extreme soberness. &ldquo;I am a very good
+Catholic. I respect the Church. I adore the blessed Virgin. I fear the
+Devil.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, then,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;you are very well fixed. You have
+got pleasure in the present and religion in the future; what do you complain
+of?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a part of one&rsquo;s pleasure to complain. There is
+something in your own circumstances that irritates me. You are the first man I
+have ever envied. It&rsquo;s singular, but so it is. I have known many men who,
+besides any factitious advantages that I may possess, had money and brains into
+the bargain; but somehow they have never disturbed my good-humor. But you have
+got something that I should have liked to have. It is not money, it is not even
+brains&mdash;though no doubt yours are excellent. It is not your six feet of
+height, though I should have rather liked to be a couple of inches taller.
+It&rsquo;s a sort of air you have of being thoroughly at home in the world.
+When I was a boy, my father told me that it was by such an air as that that
+people recognized a Bellegarde. He called my attention to it. He didn&rsquo;t
+advise me to cultivate it; he said that as we grew up it always came of itself.
+I supposed it had come to me, because I think I have always had the feeling. My
+place in life was made for me, and it seemed easy to occupy it. But you who, as
+I understand it, have made your own place, you who, as you told us the other
+day, have manufactured wash-tubs&mdash;you strike me, somehow, as a man who
+stands at his ease, who looks at things from a height. I fancy you going about
+the world like a man traveling on a railroad in which he owns a large amount of
+stock. You make me feel as if I had missed something. What is it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is the proud consciousness of honest toil&mdash;of having
+manufactured a few wash-tubs,&rdquo; said Newman, at once jocose and serious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no; I have seen men who had done even more, men who had made not only
+wash-tubs, but soap&mdash;strong-smelling yellow soap, in great bars; and they
+never made me the least uncomfortable.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then it&rsquo;s the privilege of being an American citizen,&rdquo; said
+Newman. &ldquo;That sets a man up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Possibly,&rdquo; rejoined M. de Bellegarde. &ldquo;But I am forced to
+say that I have seen a great many American citizens who didn&rsquo;t seem at
+all set up or in the least like large stock-holders. I never envied them. I
+rather think the thing is an accomplishment of your own.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, come,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;you will make me proud!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I shall not. You have nothing to do with pride, or with
+humility&mdash;that is a part of this easy manner of yours. People are proud
+only when they have something to lose, and humble when they have something to
+gain.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what I have to lose,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;but I
+certainly have something to gain.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; asked his visitor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman hesitated a while. &ldquo;I will tell you when I know you better.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hope that will be soon! Then, if I can help you to gain it, I shall be
+happy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps you may,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t forget, then, that I am your servant,&rdquo; M. de
+Bellegarde answered; and shortly afterwards he took his departure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the next three weeks Newman saw Bellegarde several times, and without
+formally swearing an eternal friendship the two men established a sort of
+comradeship. To Newman, Bellegarde was the ideal Frenchman, the Frenchman of
+tradition and romance, so far as our hero was concerned with these mystical
+influences. Gallant, expansive, amusing, more pleased himself with the effect
+he produced than those (even when they were well pleased) for whom he produced
+it; a master of all the distinctively social virtues and a votary of all
+agreeable sensations; a devotee of something mysterious and sacred to which he
+occasionally alluded in terms more ecstatic even than those in which he spoke
+of the last pretty woman, and which was simply the beautiful though somewhat
+superannuated image of <i>honor</i>; he was irresistibly entertaining and
+enlivening, and he formed a character to which Newman was as capable of doing
+justice when he had once been placed in contact with it, as he was unlikely, in
+musing upon the possible mixtures of our human ingredients, mentally to have
+foreshadowed it. Bellegarde did not in the least cause him to modify his
+needful premise that all Frenchmen are of a frothy and imponderable substance;
+he simply reminded him that light materials may be beaten up into a most
+agreeable compound. No two companions could be more different, but their
+differences made a capital basis for a friendship of which the distinctive
+characteristic was that it was extremely amusing to each.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin de Bellegarde lived in the basement of an old house in the Rue
+d&rsquo;Anjou St. Honoré, and his small apartments lay between the court of the
+house and an old garden which spread itself behind it&mdash;one of those large,
+sunless humid gardens into which you look unexpectingly in Paris from back
+windows, wondering how among the grudging habitations they find their space.
+When Newman returned Bellegarde&rsquo;s visit, he hinted that <i>his</i>
+lodging was at least as much a laughing matter as his own. But its oddities
+were of a different cast from those of our hero&rsquo;s gilded saloons on the
+Boulevard Haussmann: the place was low, dusky, contracted, and crowded with
+curious bric-à-brac. Bellegarde, penniless patrician as he was, was an
+insatiable collector, and his walls were covered with rusty arms and ancient
+panels and platters, his doorways draped in faded tapestries, his floors
+muffled in the skins of beasts. Here and there was one of those uncomfortable
+tributes to elegance in which the upholsterer&rsquo;s art, in France, is so
+prolific; a curtain recess with a sheet of looking-glass in which, among the
+shadows, you could see nothing; a divan on which, for its festoons and
+furbelows, you could not sit; a fireplace draped, flounced, and frilled to the
+complete exclusion of fire. The young man&rsquo;s possessions were in
+picturesque disorder, and his apartment was pervaded by the odor of cigars,
+mingled with perfumes more inscrutable. Newman thought it a damp, gloomy place
+to live in, and was puzzled by the obstructive and fragmentary character of the
+furniture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bellegarde, according to the custom of his country talked very generously about
+himself, and unveiled the mysteries of his private history with an unsparing
+hand. Inevitably, he had a vast deal to say about women, and he used frequently
+to indulge in sentimental and ironical apostrophes to these authors of his joys
+and woes. &ldquo;Oh, the women, the women, and the things they have made me
+do!&rdquo; he would exclaim with a lustrous eye. &ldquo;<i>C&rsquo;est
+égal</i>, of all the follies and stupidities I have committed for them I would
+not have missed one!&rdquo; On this subject Newman maintained an habitual
+reserve; to expatiate largely upon it had always seemed to him a proceeding
+vaguely analogous to the cooing of pigeons and the chattering of monkeys, and
+even inconsistent with a fully developed human character. But
+Bellegarde&rsquo;s confidences greatly amused him, and rarely displeased him,
+for the generous young Frenchman was not a cynic. &ldquo;I really think,&rdquo;
+he had once said, &ldquo;that I am not more depraved than most of my
+contemporaries. They are tolerably depraved, my contemporaries!&rdquo; He said
+wonderfully pretty things about his female friends, and, numerous and various
+as they had been, declared that on the whole there was more good in them than
+harm. &ldquo;But you are not to take that as advice,&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;As
+an authority I am very untrustworthy. I&rsquo;m prejudiced in their favor;
+I&rsquo;m an <i>idealist!</i>&rdquo; Newman listened to him with his impartial
+smile, and was glad, for his own sake, that he had fine feelings; but he
+mentally repudiated the idea of a Frenchman having discovered any merit in the
+amiable sex which he himself did not suspect. M. de Bellegarde, however, did
+not confine his conversation to the autobiographical channel; he questioned our
+hero largely as to the events of his own life, and Newman told him some better
+stories than any that Bellegarde carried in his budget. He narrated his career,
+in fact, from the beginning, through all its variations, and whenever his
+companion&rsquo;s credulity, or his habits of gentility, appeared to protest,
+it amused him to heighten the color of the episode. Newman had sat with Western
+humorists in knots, round cast-iron stoves, and seen &ldquo;tall&rdquo; stories
+grow taller without toppling over, and his own imagination had learned the
+trick of piling up consistent wonders. Bellegarde&rsquo;s regular attitude at
+last became that of laughing self-defense; to maintain his reputation as an
+all-knowing Frenchman, he doubted of everything, wholesale. The result of this
+was that Newman found it impossible to convince him of certain time-honored
+verities.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But the details don&rsquo;t matter,&rdquo; said M. de Bellegarde.
+&ldquo;You have evidently had some surprising adventures; you have seen some
+strange sides of life, you have revolved to and fro over a whole continent as I
+walked up and down the Boulevard. You are a man of the world with a vengeance!
+You have spent some deadly dull hours, and you have done some extremely
+disagreeable things: you have shoveled sand, as a boy, for supper, and you have
+eaten roast dog in a gold-diggers&rsquo; camp. You have stood casting up
+figures for ten hours at a time, and you have sat through Methodist sermons for
+the sake of looking at a pretty girl in another pew. All that is rather stiff,
+as we say. But at any rate you have done something and you are something; you
+have used your will and you have made your fortune. You have not stupified
+yourself with debauchery and you have not mortgaged your fortune to social
+conveniences. You take things easily, and you have fewer prejudices even than
+I, who pretend to have none, but who in reality have three or four. Happy man,
+you are strong and you are free. But what the deuce,&rdquo; demanded the young
+man in conclusion, &ldquo;do you propose to do with such advantages? Really to
+use them you need a better world than this. There is nothing worth your while
+here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I think there is something,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; murmured Newman, &ldquo;I will tell you some other
+time!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In this way our hero delayed from day to day broaching a subject which he had
+very much at heart. Meanwhile, however, he was growing practically familiar
+with it; in other words, he had called again, three times, on Madame de Cintré.
+On only two of these occasions had he found her at home, and on each of them
+she had other visitors. Her visitors were numerous and extremely loquacious,
+and they exacted much of their hostess&rsquo;s attention. She found time,
+however, to bestow a little of it on Newman, in an occasional vague smile, the
+very vagueness of which pleased him, allowing him as it did to fill it out
+mentally, both at the time and afterwards, with such meanings as most pleased
+him. He sat by without speaking, looking at the entrances and exits, the
+greetings and chatterings, of Madame de Cintré&rsquo;s visitors. He felt as if
+he were at the play, and as if his own speaking would be an interruption;
+sometimes he wished he had a book, to follow the dialogue; he half expected to
+see a woman in a white cap and pink ribbons come and offer him one for two
+francs. Some of the ladies looked at him very hard&mdash;or very soft, as you
+please; others seemed profoundly unconscious of his presence. The men looked
+only at Madame de Cintré. This was inevitable; for whether one called her
+beautiful or not, she entirely occupied and filled one&rsquo;s vision, just as
+an agreeable sound fills one&rsquo;s ear. Newman had but twenty distinct words
+with her, but he carried away an impression to which solemn promises could not
+have given a higher value. She was part of the play that he was seeing acted,
+quite as much as her companions; but how she filled the stage and how much
+better she did it! Whether she rose or seated herself; whether she went with
+her departing friends to the door and lifted up the heavy curtain as they
+passed out, and stood an instant looking after them and giving them the last
+nod; or whether she leaned back in her chair with her arms crossed and her eyes
+resting, listening and smiling; she gave Newman the feeling that he should like
+to have her always before him, moving slowly to and fro along the whole scale
+of expressive hospitality. If it might be <i>to</i> him, it would be well; if
+it might be <i>for</i> him, it would be still better! She was so tall and yet
+so light, so active and yet so still, so elegant and yet so simple, so frank
+and yet so mysterious! It was the mystery&mdash;it was what she was off the
+stage, as it were&mdash;that interested Newman most of all. He could not have
+told you what warrant he had for talking about mysteries; if it had been his
+habit to express himself in poetic figures he might have said that in observing
+Madame de Cintré he seemed to see the vague circle which sometimes accompanies
+the partly-filled disk of the moon. It was not that she was reserved; on the
+contrary, she was as frank as flowing water. But he was sure she had qualities
+which she herself did not suspect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had abstained for several reasons from saying some of these things to
+Bellegarde. One reason was that before proceeding to any act he was always
+circumspect, conjectural, contemplative; he had little eagerness, as became a
+man who felt that whenever he really began to move he walked with long steps.
+And then, it simply pleased him not to speak&mdash;it occupied him, it excited
+him. But one day Bellegarde had been dining with him, at a restaurant, and they
+had sat long over their dinner. On rising from it, Bellegarde proposed that, to
+help them through the rest of the evening, they should go and see Madame
+Dandelard. Madame Dandelard was a little Italian lady who had married a
+Frenchman who proved to be a rake and a brute and the torment of her life. Her
+husband had spent all her money, and then, lacking the means of obtaining more
+expensive pleasures, had taken, in his duller hours, to beating her. She had a
+blue spot somewhere, which she showed to several persons, including Bellegarde.
+She had obtained a separation from her husband, collected the scraps of her
+fortune (they were very meagre) and come to live in Paris, where she was
+staying at a <i>hôtel garni</i>. She was always looking for an apartment, and
+visiting, inquiringly, those of other people. She was very pretty, very
+childlike, and she made very extraordinary remarks. Bellegarde had made her
+acquaintance, and the source of his interest in her was, according to his own
+declaration, a curiosity as to what would become of her. &ldquo;She is poor,
+she is pretty, and she is silly,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;it seems to me she can
+go only one way. It&rsquo;s a pity, but it can&rsquo;t be helped. I will give
+her six months. She has nothing to fear from me, but I am watching the process.
+I am curious to see just how things will go. Yes, I know what you are going to
+say: this horrible Paris hardens one&rsquo;s heart. But it quickens one&rsquo;s
+wits, and it ends by teaching one a refinement of observation! To see this
+little woman&rsquo;s little drama play itself out, now, is, for me, an
+intellectual pleasure.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If she is going to throw herself away,&rdquo; Newman had said,
+&ldquo;you ought to stop her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stop her? How stop her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Talk to her; give her some good advice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bellegarde laughed. &ldquo;Heaven deliver us both! Imagine the situation! Go
+and advise her yourself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was after this that Newman had gone with Bellegarde to see Madame Dandelard.
+When they came away, Bellegarde reproached his companion. &ldquo;Where was your
+famous advice?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t hear a word of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I give it up,&rdquo; said Newman, simply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you are as bad as I!&rdquo; said Bellegarde.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, because I don&rsquo;t take an &lsquo;intellectual pleasure&rsquo; in
+her prospective adventures. I don&rsquo;t in the least want to see her going
+down hill. I had rather look the other way. But why,&rdquo; he asked, in a
+moment, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t you get your sister to go and see her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bellegarde stared. &ldquo;Go and see Madame Dandelard&mdash;my sister?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She might talk to her to very good purpose.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bellegarde shook his head with sudden gravity. &ldquo;My sister can&rsquo;t see
+that sort of person. Madame Dandelard is nothing at all; they would never
+meet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should think,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;that your sister might see
+whom she pleased.&rdquo; And he privately resolved that after he knew her a
+little better he would ask Madame de Cintré to go and talk to the foolish
+little Italian lady.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After his dinner with Bellegarde, on the occasion I have mentioned, he demurred
+to his companion&rsquo;s proposal that they should go again and listen to
+Madame Dandelard describe her sorrows and her bruises.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have something better in mind,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;come home with
+me and finish the evening before my fire.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bellegarde always welcomed the prospect of a long stretch of conversation, and
+before long the two men sat watching the great blaze which scattered its
+scintillations over the high adornments of Newman&rsquo;s ball-room.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap08"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell me something about your sister,&rdquo; Newman began abruptly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bellegarde turned and gave him a quick look. &ldquo;Now that I think of it, you
+have never yet asked me a question about her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know that very well.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If it is because you don&rsquo;t trust me, you are very right,&rdquo;
+said Bellegarde. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t talk of her rationally. I admire her too
+much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Talk of her as you can,&rdquo; rejoined Newman. &ldquo;Let yourself
+go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, we are very good friends; we are such a brother and sister as have
+not been seen since Orestes and Electra. You have seen her; you know what she
+is: tall, thin, light, imposing, and gentle, half a <i>grande dame</i> and half
+an angel; a mixture of pride and humility, of the eagle and the dove. She looks
+like a statue which had failed as stone, resigned itself to its grave defects,
+and come to life as flesh and blood, to wear white capes and long trains. All I
+can say is that she really possesses every merit that her face, her glance, her
+smile, the tone of her voice, lead you to expect; it is saying a great deal. As
+a general thing, when a woman seems very charming, I should say
+&lsquo;Beware!&rsquo; But in proportion as Claire seems charming you may fold
+your arms and let yourself float with the current; you are safe. She is so
+good! I have never seen a woman half so perfect or so complete. She has
+everything; that is all I can say about her. There!&rdquo; Bellegarde
+concluded; &ldquo;I told you I should rhapsodize.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman was silent a while, as if he were turning over his companion&rsquo;s
+words. &ldquo;She is very good, eh?&rdquo; he repeated at last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Divinely good!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Kind, charitable, gentle, generous?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Generosity itself; kindness double-distilled!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is she clever?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is the most intelligent woman I know. Try her, some day, with
+something difficult, and you will see.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is she fond of admiration?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Parbleu!</i>&rdquo; cried Bellegarde; &ldquo;what woman is
+not?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, when they are too fond of admiration they commit all kinds of
+follies to get it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I did not say she was too fond!&rdquo; Bellegarde exclaimed.
+&ldquo;Heaven forbid I should say anything so idiotic. She is not <i>too</i>
+anything! If I were to say she was ugly, I should not mean she was too ugly.
+She is fond of pleasing, and if you are pleased she is grateful. If you are not
+pleased, she lets it pass and thinks the worst neither of you nor of herself. I
+imagine, though, she hopes the saints in heaven are, for I am sure she is
+incapable of trying to please by any means of which they would
+disapprove.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is she grave or gay?&rdquo; asked Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is both; not alternately, for she is always the same. There is
+gravity in her gaiety, and gaiety in her gravity. But there is no reason why
+she should be particularly gay.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is she unhappy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t say that, for unhappiness is according as one takes
+things, and Claire takes them according to some receipt communicated to her by
+the Blessed Virgin in a vision. To be unhappy is to be disagreeable, which, for
+her, is out of the question. So she has arranged her circumstances so as to be
+happy in them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is a philosopher,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, she is simply a very nice woman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Her circumstances, at any rate, have been disagreeable?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bellegarde hesitated a moment&mdash;a thing he very rarely did. &ldquo;Oh, my
+dear fellow, if I go into the history of my family I shall give you more than
+you bargain for.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, on the contrary, I bargain for that,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We shall have to appoint a special séance, then, beginning early.
+Suffice it for the present that Claire has not slept on roses. She made at
+eighteen a marriage that was expected to be brilliant, but that turned out like
+a lamp that goes out; all smoke and bad smell. M. de Cintré was sixty years
+old, and an odious old gentleman. He lived, however, but a short time, and
+after his death his family pounced upon his money, brought a lawsuit against
+his widow, and pushed things very hard. Their case was a good one, for M. de
+Cintré, who had been trustee for some of his relatives, appeared to have been
+guilty of some very irregular practices. In the course of the suit some
+revelations were made as to his private history which my sister found so
+displeasing that she ceased to defend herself and washed her hands of the
+property. This required some pluck, for she was between two fires, her
+husband&rsquo;s family opposing her and her own family forcing her. My mother
+and my brother wished her to cleave to what they regarded as her rights. But
+she resisted firmly, and at last bought her freedom&mdash;obtained my
+mother&rsquo;s assent to dropping the suit at the price of a promise.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What was the promise?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To do anything else, for the next ten years, that was asked of
+her&mdash;anything, that is, but marry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She had disliked her husband very much?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No one knows how much!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The marriage had been made in your horrible French way,&rdquo; Newman
+continued, &ldquo;made by the two families, without her having any
+voice?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was a chapter for a novel. She saw M. de Cintré for the first time a
+month before the wedding, after everything, to the minutest detail, had been
+arranged. She turned white when she looked at him, and white she remained till
+her wedding-day. The evening before the ceremony she swooned away, and she
+spent the whole night in sobs. My mother sat holding her two hands, and my
+brother walked up and down the room. I declared it was revolting and told my
+sister publicly that if she would refuse, downright, I would stand by her. I
+was told to go about my business, and she became Comtesse de Cintré.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your brother,&rdquo; said Newman, reflectively, &ldquo;must be a very
+nice young man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is very nice, though he is not young. He is upward of fifty, fifteen
+years my senior. He has been a father to my sister and me. He is a very
+remarkable man; he has the best manners in France. He is extremely clever;
+indeed he is very learned. He is writing a history of The Princesses of France
+Who Never Married.&rdquo; This was said by Bellegarde with extreme gravity,
+looking straight at Newman, and with an eye that betokened no mental
+reservation; or that, at least, almost betokened none.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman perhaps discovered there what little there was, for he presently said,
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t love your brother.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; said Bellegarde, ceremoniously;
+&ldquo;well-bred people always love their brothers.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t love him, then!&rdquo; Newman answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wait till you know him!&rdquo; rejoined Bellegarde, and this time he
+smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is your mother also very remarkable?&rdquo; Newman asked, after a pause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For my mother,&rdquo; said Bellegarde, now with intense gravity,
+&ldquo;I have the highest admiration. She is a very extraordinary woman. You
+cannot approach her without perceiving it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is the daughter, I believe, of an English nobleman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of the Earl of St. Dunstan&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is the Earl of St. Dunstan&rsquo;s a very old family?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So-so; the sixteenth century. It is on my father&rsquo;s side that we go
+back&mdash;back, back, back. The family antiquaries themselves lose breath. At
+last they stop, panting and fanning themselves, somewhere in the ninth century,
+under Charlemagne. That is where we begin.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is no mistake about it?&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure I hope not. We have been mistaken at least for several
+centuries.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you have always married into old families?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As a rule; though in so long a stretch of time there have been some
+exceptions. Three or four Bellegardes, in the seventeenth and eighteenth
+centuries, took wives out of the <i>bourgeoisie</i>&mdash;married
+lawyers&rsquo; daughters.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A lawyer&rsquo;s daughter; that&rsquo;s very bad, is it?&rdquo; asked
+Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Horrible! one of us, in the Middle Ages, did better: he married a
+beggar-maid, like King Cophetua. That was really better; it was like marrying a
+bird or a monkey; one didn&rsquo;t have to think about her family at all. Our
+women have always done well; they have never even gone into the <i>petite
+noblesse</i>. There is, I believe, not a case on record of a misalliance among
+the women.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman turned this over for a while, and, then at last he said, &ldquo;You
+offered, the first time you came to see me to render me any service you could.
+I told you that some time I would mention something you might do. Do you
+remember?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Remember? I have been counting the hours.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very well; here&rsquo;s your chance. Do what you can to make your sister
+think well of me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bellegarde stared, with a smile. &ldquo;Why, I&rsquo;m sure she thinks as well
+of you as possible, already.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;An opinion founded on seeing me three or four times? That is putting me
+off with very little. I want something more. I have been thinking of it a good
+deal, and at last I have decided to tell you. I should like very much to marry
+Madame de Cintré.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bellegarde had been looking at him with quickened expectancy, and with the
+smile with which he had greeted Newman&rsquo;s allusion to his promised
+request. At this last announcement he continued to gaze; but his smile went
+through two or three curious phases. It felt, apparently, a momentary impulse
+to broaden; but this it immediately checked. Then it remained for some instants
+taking counsel with itself, at the end of which it decreed a retreat. It slowly
+effaced itself and left a look of seriousness modified by the desire not to be
+rude. Extreme surprise had come into the Count Valentin&rsquo;s face; but he
+had reflected that it would be uncivil to leave it there. And yet, what the
+deuce was he to do with it? He got up, in his agitation, and stood before the
+chimney-piece, still looking at Newman. He was a longer time thinking what to
+say than one would have expected.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you can&rsquo;t render me the service I ask,&rdquo; said Newman,
+&ldquo;say it out!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let me hear it again, distinctly,&rdquo; said Bellegarde.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s very important, you know. I shall plead your cause with my
+sister, because you want&mdash;you want to marry her? That&rsquo;s it,
+eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t say plead my cause, exactly; I shall try and do that
+myself. But say a good word for me, now and then&mdash;let her know that you
+think well of me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this, Bellegarde gave a little light laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What I want chiefly, after all,&rdquo; Newman went on, &ldquo;is just to
+let you know what I have in mind. I suppose that is what you expect,
+isn&rsquo;t it? I want to do what is customary over here. If there is anything
+particular to be done, let me know and I will do it. I wouldn&rsquo;t for the
+world approach Madame de Cintré without all the proper forms. If I ought to go
+and tell your mother, why I will go and tell her. I will go and tell your
+brother, even. I will go and tell anyone you please. As I don&rsquo;t know
+anyone else, I begin by telling you. But that, if it is a social obligation, is
+a pleasure as well.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I see&mdash;I see,&rdquo; said Bellegarde, lightly stroking his
+chin. &ldquo;You have a very right feeling about it, but I&rsquo;m glad you
+have begun with me.&rdquo; He paused, hesitated, and then turned away and
+walked slowly the length of the room. Newman got up and stood leaning against
+the mantel-shelf, with his hands in his pockets, watching Bellegarde&rsquo;s
+promenade. The young Frenchman came back and stopped in front of him. &ldquo;I
+give it up,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I will not pretend I am not surprised. I
+am&mdash;hugely! <i>Ouf!</i> It&rsquo;s a relief.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That sort of news is always a surprise,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;No
+matter what you have done, people are never prepared. But if you are so
+surprised, I hope at least you are pleased.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come!&rdquo; said Bellegarde. &ldquo;I am going to be tremendously
+frank. I don&rsquo;t know whether I am pleased or horrified.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you are pleased, I shall be glad,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;and I
+shall be&mdash;encouraged. If you are horrified, I shall be sorry, but I shall
+not be discouraged. You must make the best of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is quite right&mdash;that is your only possible attitude. You are
+perfectly serious?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Am I a Frenchman, that I should not be?&rdquo; asked Newman. &ldquo;But
+why is it, by the bye, that you should be horrified?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bellegarde raised his hand to the back of his head and rubbed his hair quickly
+up and down, thrusting out the tip of his tongue as he did so. &ldquo;Why, you
+are not noble, for instance,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The devil I am not!&rdquo; exclaimed Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Bellegarde a little more seriously, &ldquo;I did not
+know you had a title.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A title? What do you mean by a title?&rdquo; asked Newman. &ldquo;A
+count, a duke, a marquis? I don&rsquo;t know anything about that, I don&rsquo;t
+know who is and who is not. But I say I am noble. I don&rsquo;t exactly know
+what you mean by it, but it&rsquo;s a fine word and a fine idea; I put in a
+claim to it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But what have you to show, my dear fellow, what proofs?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Anything you please! But you don&rsquo;t suppose I am going to undertake
+to prove that I am noble. It is for you to prove the contrary.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s easily done. You have manufactured wash-tubs.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman stared a moment. &ldquo;Therefore I am not noble? I don&rsquo;t see it.
+Tell me something I have <i>not</i> done&mdash;something I cannot do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You cannot marry a woman like Madame de Cintré for the asking.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I believe you mean,&rdquo; said Newman slowly, &ldquo;that I am not good
+enough.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Brutally speaking&mdash;yes!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bellegarde had hesitated a moment, and while he hesitated Newman&rsquo;s
+attentive glance had grown somewhat eager. In answer to these last words he for
+a moment said nothing. He simply blushed a little. Then he raised his eyes to
+the ceiling and stood looking at one of the rosy cherubs that was painted upon
+it. &ldquo;Of course I don&rsquo;t expect to marry any woman for the
+asking,&rdquo; he said at last; &ldquo;I expect first to make myself acceptable
+to her. She must like me, to begin with. But that I am not good enough to make
+a trial is rather a surprise.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bellegarde wore a look of mingled perplexity, sympathy, and amusement.
+&ldquo;You should not hesitate, then, to go up to-morrow and ask a duchess to
+marry you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not if I thought she would suit me. But I am very fastidious; she might
+not at all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bellegarde&rsquo;s amusement began to prevail. &ldquo;And you should be
+surprised if she refused you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman hesitated a moment. &ldquo;It sounds conceited to say yes, but
+nevertheless I think I should. For I should make a very handsome offer.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What would it be?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Everything she wishes. If I get hold of a woman that comes up to my
+standard, I shall think nothing too good for her. I have been a long time
+looking, and I find such women are rare. To combine the qualities I require
+seems to be difficult, but when the difficulty is vanquished it deserves a
+reward. My wife shall have a good position, and I&rsquo;m not afraid to say
+that I shall be a good husband.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And these qualities that you require&mdash;what are they?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Goodness, beauty, intelligence, a fine education, personal
+elegance&mdash;everything, in a word, that makes a splendid woman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And noble birth, evidently,&rdquo; said Bellegarde.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, throw that in, by all means, if it&rsquo;s there. The more the
+better!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And my sister seems to you to have all these things?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is exactly what I have been looking for. She is my dream
+realized.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you would make her a very good husband?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is what I wanted you to tell her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bellegarde laid his hand on his companion&rsquo;s arm a moment, looked at him
+with his head on one side, from head to foot, and then, with a loud laugh, and
+shaking the other hand in the air, turned away. He walked again the length of
+the room, and again he came back and stationed himself in front of Newman.
+&ldquo;All this is very interesting&mdash;it is very curious. In what I said
+just now I was speaking, not for myself, but for my tradition, my
+superstitions. For myself, really, your proposal tickles me. It startled me at
+first, but the more I think of it the more I see in it. It&rsquo;s no use
+attempting to explain anything; you won&rsquo;t understand me. After all, I
+don&rsquo;t see why you need; it&rsquo;s no great loss.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, if there is anything more to explain, try it! I want to proceed with
+my eyes open. I will do my best to understand.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Bellegarde, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s disagreeable to me; I give
+it up. I liked you the first time I saw you, and I will abide by that. It would
+be quite odious for me to come talking to you as if I could patronize you. I
+have told you before that I envy you; <i>vous m&rsquo;imposez</i>, as we say. I
+didn&rsquo;t know you much until within five minutes. So we will let things go,
+and I will say nothing to you that, if our positions were reversed, you would
+not say to me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I do not know whether in renouncing the mysterious opportunity to which he
+alluded, Bellegarde felt that he was doing something very generous. If so, he
+was not rewarded; his generosity was not appreciated. Newman quite failed to
+recognize the young Frenchman&rsquo;s power to wound his feelings, and he had
+now no sense of escaping or coming off easily. He did not thank his companion
+even with a glance. &ldquo;My eyes are open, though,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;so
+far as that you have practically told me that your family and your friends will
+turn up their noses at me. I have never thought much about the reasons that
+make it proper for people to turn up their noses, and so I can only decide the
+question off-hand. Looking at it in that way I can&rsquo;t see anything in it.
+I simply think, if you want to know, that I&rsquo;m as good as the best. Who
+the best are, I don&rsquo;t pretend to say. I have never thought much about
+that either. To tell the truth, I have always had rather a good opinion of
+myself; a man who is successful can&rsquo;t help it. But I will admit that I
+was conceited. What I don&rsquo;t say yes to is that I don&rsquo;t stand
+high&mdash;as high as anyone else. This is a line of speculation I should not
+have chosen, but you must remember you began it yourself. I should never have
+dreamed that I was on the defensive, or that I had to justify myself; but if
+your people will have it so, I will do my best.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you offered, a while ago, to make your court as we say, to my mother
+and my brother.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Damn it!&rdquo; cried Newman, &ldquo;I want to be polite.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good!&rdquo; rejoined Bellegarde; &ldquo;this will go far, it will be
+very entertaining. Excuse my speaking of it in that cold-blooded fashion, but
+the matter must, of necessity, be for me something of a spectacle. It&rsquo;s
+positively exciting. But apart from that I sympathize with you, and I shall be
+actor, so far as I can, as well as spectator. You are a capital fellow; I
+believe in you and I back you. The simple fact that you appreciate my sister
+will serve as the proof I was asking for. All men are equal&mdash;especially
+men of taste!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you think,&rdquo; asked Newman presently, &ldquo;that Madame de
+Cintré is determined not to marry?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is my impression. But that is not against you; it&rsquo;s for you
+to make her change her mind.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am afraid it will be hard,&rdquo; said Newman, gravely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think it will be easy. In a general way I don&rsquo;t see
+why a widow should ever marry again. She has gained the benefits of
+matrimony&mdash;freedom and consideration&mdash;and she has got rid of the
+drawbacks. Why should she put her head into the noose again? Her usual motive
+is ambition: if a man can offer her a great position, make her a princess or an
+ambassadress she may think the compensation sufficient.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And&mdash;in that way&mdash;is Madame de Cintré ambitious?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who knows?&rdquo; said Bellegarde, with a profound shrug. &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t pretend to say all that she is or all that she is not. I think she
+might be touched by the prospect of becoming the wife of a great man. But in a
+certain way, I believe, whatever she does will be the <i>improbable</i>.
+Don&rsquo;t be too confident, but don&rsquo;t absolutely doubt. Your best
+chance for success will be precisely in being, to her mind, unusual,
+unexpected, original. Don&rsquo;t try to be anyone else; be simply yourself,
+out and out. Something or other can&rsquo;t fail to come of it; I am very
+curious to see what.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am much obliged to you for your advice,&rdquo; said Newman.
+&ldquo;And,&rdquo; he added with a smile, &ldquo;I am glad, for your sake, I am
+going to be so amusing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It will be more than amusing,&rdquo; said Bellegarde; &ldquo;it will be
+inspiring. I look at it from my point of view, and you from yours. After all,
+anything for a change! And only yesterday I was yawning so as to dislocate my
+jaw, and declaring that there was nothing new under the sun! If it isn&rsquo;t
+new to see you come into the family as a suitor, I am very much mistaken. Let
+me say that, my dear fellow; I won&rsquo;t call it anything else, bad or good;
+I will simply call it <i>new</i>.&rdquo; And overcome with a sense of the
+novelty thus foreshadowed, Valentin de Bellegarde threw himself into a deep
+armchair before the fire, and, with a fixed, intense smile, seemed to read a
+vision of it in the flame of the logs. After a while he looked up. &ldquo;Go
+ahead, my boy; you have my good wishes,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But it is really
+a pity you don&rsquo;t understand me, that you don&rsquo;t know just what I am
+doing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Newman, laughing, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t do anything wrong.
+Leave me to myself, rather, or defy me, out and out. I wouldn&rsquo;t lay any
+load on your conscience.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bellegarde sprang up again; he was evidently excited; there was a warmer spark
+even than usual in his eye. &ldquo;You never will understand&mdash;you never
+will know,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;and if you succeed, and I turn out to have
+helped you, you will never be grateful, not as I shall deserve you should be.
+You will be an excellent fellow always, but you will not be grateful. But it
+doesn&rsquo;t matter, for I shall get my own fun out of it.&rdquo; And he broke
+into an extravagant laugh. &ldquo;You look puzzled,&rdquo; he added; &ldquo;you
+look almost frightened.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It <i>is</i> a pity,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;that I don&rsquo;t
+understand you. I shall lose some very good jokes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I told you, you remember, that we were very strange people,&rdquo;
+Bellegarde went on. &ldquo;I give you warning again. We are! My mother is
+strange, my brother is strange, and I verily believe that I am stranger than
+either. You will even find my sister a little strange. Old trees have crooked
+branches, old houses have queer cracks, old races have odd secrets. Remember
+that we are eight hundred years old!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good,&rdquo; said Newman; &ldquo;that&rsquo;s the sort of thing I
+came to Europe for. You come into my programme.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Touchez-là</i>, then,&rdquo; said Bellegarde, putting out his hand.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a bargain: I accept you; I espouse your cause. It&rsquo;s
+because I like you, in a great measure; but that is not the only reason!&rdquo;
+And he stood holding Newman&rsquo;s hand and looking at him askance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is the other one?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am in the Opposition. I dislike someone else.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your brother?&rdquo; asked Newman, in his unmodulated voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bellegarde laid his fingers upon his lips with a whispered <i>hush!</i>
+&ldquo;Old races have strange secrets!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Put yourself into
+motion, come and see my sister, and be assured of my sympathy!&rdquo; And on
+this he took his leave.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman dropped into a chair before his fire, and sat a long time staring into
+the blaze.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap09"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<p>
+He went to see Madame de Cintré the next day, and was informed by the servant
+that she was at home. He passed as usual up the large, cold staircase and
+through a spacious vestibule above, where the walls seemed all composed of
+small door panels, touched with long-faded gilding; whence he was ushered into
+the sitting-room in which he had already been received. It was empty, and the
+servant told him that Madame la Comtesse would presently appear. He had time,
+while he waited, to wonder whether Bellegarde had seen his sister since the
+evening before, and whether in this case he had spoken to her of their talk. In
+this case Madame de Cintré&rsquo;s receiving him was an encouragement. He felt
+a certain trepidation as he reflected that she might come in with the knowledge
+of his supreme admiration and of the project he had built upon it in her eyes;
+but the feeling was not disagreeable. Her face could wear no look that would
+make it less beautiful, and he was sure beforehand that however she might take
+the proposal he had in reserve, she would not take it in scorn or in irony. He
+had a feeling that if she could only read the bottom of his heart and measure
+the extent of his good will toward her, she would be entirely kind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She came in at last, after so long an interval that he wondered whether she had
+been hesitating. She smiled with her usual frankness, and held out her hand;
+she looked at him straight with her soft and luminous eyes, and said, without a
+tremor in her voice, that she was glad to see him and that she hoped he was
+well. He found in her what he had found before&mdash;that faint perfume of a
+personal shyness worn away by contact with the world, but the more perceptible
+the more closely you approached her. This lingering diffidence seemed to give a
+peculiar value to what was definite and assured in her manner; it made it seem
+like an accomplishment, a beautiful talent, something that one might compare to
+an exquisite touch in a pianist. It was, in fact, Madame de Cintré&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;authority,&rdquo; as they say of artists, that especially impressed and
+fascinated Newman; he always came back to the feeling that when he should
+complete himself by taking a wife, that was the way he should like his wife to
+interpret him to the world. The only trouble, indeed, was that when the
+instrument was so perfect it seemed to interpose too much between you and the
+genius that used it. Madame de Cintré gave Newman the sense of an elaborate
+education, of her having passed through mysterious ceremonies and processes of
+culture in her youth, of her having been fashioned and made flexible to certain
+exalted social needs. All this, as I have affirmed, made her seem rare and
+precious&mdash;a very expensive article, as he would have said, and one which a
+man with an ambition to have everything about him of the best would find it
+highly agreeable to possess. But looking at the matter with an eye to private
+felicity, Newman wondered where, in so exquisite a compound, nature and art
+showed their dividing line. Where did the special intention separate from the
+habit of good manners? Where did urbanity end and sincerity begin? Newman asked
+himself these questions even while he stood ready to accept the admired object
+in all its complexity; he felt that he could do so in profound security, and
+examine its mechanism afterwards, at leisure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am very glad to find you alone,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You know I have
+never had such good luck before.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you have seemed before very well contented with your luck,&rdquo;
+said Madame de Cintré. &ldquo;You have sat and watched my visitors with an air
+of quiet amusement. What have you thought of them?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I have thought the ladies were very elegant and very graceful, and
+wonderfully quick at repartee. But what I have chiefly thought has been that
+they only helped me to admire you.&rdquo; This was not gallantry on
+Newman&rsquo;s part&mdash;an art in which he was quite unversed. It was simply
+the instinct of the practical man, who had made up his mind what he wanted, and
+was now beginning to take active steps to obtain it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Cintré started slightly, and raised her eyebrows; she had evidently
+not expected so fervid a compliment. &ldquo;Oh, in that case,&rdquo; she said
+with a laugh, &ldquo;your finding me alone is not good luck for me. I hope
+someone will come in quickly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hope not,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;I have something particular to
+say to you. Have you seen your brother?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I saw him an hour ago.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did he tell you that he had seen me last night?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He said so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And did he tell you what we had talked about?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Cintré hesitated a moment. As Newman asked these questions she had
+grown a little pale, as if she regarded what was coming as necessary, but not
+as agreeable. &ldquo;Did you give him a message to me?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was not exactly a message&mdash;I asked him to render me a
+service.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The service was to sing your praises, was it not?&rdquo; And she
+accompanied this question with a little smile, as if to make it easier to
+herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, that is what it really amounts to,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;Did
+he sing my praises?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He spoke very well of you. But when I know that it was by your special
+request, of course I must take his eulogy with a grain of salt.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, that makes no difference,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;Your brother
+would not have spoken well of me unless he believed what he was saying. He is
+too honest for that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you very deep?&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré. &ldquo;Are you trying
+to please me by praising my brother? I confess it is a good way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For me, any way that succeeds will be good. I will praise your brother
+all day, if that will help me. He is a noble little fellow. He has made me
+feel, in promising to do what he can to help me, that I can depend upon
+him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t make too much of that,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré.
+&ldquo;He can help you very little.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course I must work my way myself. I know that very well; I only want
+a chance to. In consenting to see me, after what he told you, you almost seem
+to be giving me a chance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am seeing you,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré, slowly and gravely,
+&ldquo;because I promised my brother I would.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Blessings on your brother&rsquo;s head!&rdquo; cried Newman. &ldquo;What
+I told him last evening was this: that I admired you more than any woman I had
+ever seen, and that I should like immensely to make you my wife.&rdquo; He
+uttered these words with great directness and firmness, and without any sense
+of confusion. He was full of his idea, he had completely mastered it, and he
+seemed to look down on Madame de Cintré, with all her gathered elegance, from
+the height of his bracing good conscience. It is probable that this particular
+tone and manner were the very best he could have hit upon. Yet the light, just
+visibly forced smile with which his companion had listened to him died away,
+and she sat looking at him with her lips parted and her face as solemn as a
+tragic mask. There was evidently something very painful to her in the scene to
+which he was subjecting her, and yet her impatience of it found no angry voice.
+Newman wondered whether he was hurting her; he could not imagine why the
+liberal devotion he meant to express should be disagreeable. He got up and
+stood before her, leaning one hand on the chimney-piece. &ldquo;I know I have
+seen you very little to say this,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;so little that it may
+make what I say seem disrespectful. That is my misfortune! I could have said it
+the first time I saw you. Really, I had seen you before; I had seen you in
+imagination; you seemed almost an old friend. So what I say is not mere
+gallantry and compliments and nonsense&mdash;I can&rsquo;t talk that way, I
+don&rsquo;t know how, and I wouldn&rsquo;t, to you, if I could. It&rsquo;s as
+serious as such words can be. I feel as if I knew you and knew what a
+beautiful, admirable woman you are. I shall know better, perhaps, some day, but
+I have a general notion now. You are just the woman I have been looking for,
+except that you are far more perfect. I won&rsquo;t make any protestations and
+vows, but you can trust me. It is very soon, I know, to say all this; it is
+almost offensive. But why not gain time if one can? And if you want time to
+reflect&mdash;of course you do&mdash;the sooner you begin, the better for me. I
+don&rsquo;t know what you think of me; but there is no great mystery about me;
+you see what I am. Your brother told me that my antecedents and occupations
+were against me; that your family stands, somehow, on a higher level than I do.
+That is an idea which of course I don&rsquo;t understand and don&rsquo;t
+accept. But you don&rsquo;t care anything about that. I can assure you that I
+am a very solid fellow, and that if I give my mind to it I can arrange things
+so that in a very few years I shall not need to waste time in explaining who I
+am and what I am. You will decide for yourself whether you like me or not. What
+there is you see before you. I honestly believe I have no hidden vices or nasty
+tricks. I am kind, kind, kind! Everything that a man can give a woman I will
+give you. I have a large fortune, a very large fortune; some day, if you will
+allow me, I will go into details. If you want brilliancy, everything in the way
+of brilliancy that money can give you, you shall have. And as regards anything
+you may give up, don&rsquo;t take for granted too much that its place cannot be
+filled. Leave that to me; I&rsquo;ll take care of you; I shall know what you
+need. Energy and ingenuity can arrange everything. I&rsquo;m a strong man!
+There, I have said what I had on my heart! It was better to get it off. I am
+very sorry if it&rsquo;s disagreeable to you; but think how much better it is
+that things should be clear. Don&rsquo;t answer me now, if you don&rsquo;t wish
+it. Think about it, think about it as slowly as you please. Of course I
+haven&rsquo;t said, I can&rsquo;t say, half I mean, especially about my
+admiration for you. But take a favorable view of me; it will only be
+just.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During this speech, the longest that Newman had ever made, Madame de Cintré
+kept her gaze fixed upon him, and it expanded at the last into a sort of
+fascinated stare. When he ceased speaking she lowered her eyes and sat for some
+moments looking down and straight before her. Then she slowly rose to her feet,
+and a pair of exceptionally keen eyes would have perceived that she was
+trembling a little in the movement. She still looked extremely serious.
+&ldquo;I am very much obliged to you for your offer,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It
+seems very strange, but I am glad you spoke without waiting any longer. It is
+better the subject should be dismissed. I appreciate all you say; you do me
+great honor. But I have decided not to marry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t say that!&rdquo; cried Newman, in a tone absolutely
+<i>naïf</i> from its pleading and caressing cadence. She had turned away, and
+it made her stop a moment with her back to him. &ldquo;Think better of that.
+You are too young, too beautiful, too much made to be happy and to make others
+happy. If you are afraid of losing your freedom, I can assure you that this
+freedom here, this life you now lead, is a dreary bondage to what I will offer
+you. You shall do things that I don&rsquo;t think you have ever thought of. I
+will take you anywhere in the wide world that you propose. Are you unhappy? You
+give me a feeling that you <i>are</i> unhappy. You have no right to be, or to
+be made so. Let me come in and put an end to it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Cintré stood there a moment longer, looking away from him. If she was
+touched by the way he spoke, the thing was conceivable. His voice, always very
+mild and interrogative, gradually became as soft and as tenderly argumentative
+as if he had been talking to a much-loved child. He stood watching her, and she
+presently turned round again, but this time she did not look at him, and she
+spoke in a quietness in which there was a visible trace of effort.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There are a great many reasons why I should not marry,&rdquo; she said,
+&ldquo;more than I can explain to you. As for my happiness, I am very happy.
+Your offer seems strange to me, for more reasons also than I can say. Of course
+you have a perfect right to make it. But I cannot accept it&mdash;it is
+impossible. Please never speak of this matter again. If you cannot promise me
+this, I must ask you not to come back.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why is it impossible?&rdquo; Newman demanded. &ldquo;You may think it
+is, at first, without its really being so. I didn&rsquo;t expect you to be
+pleased at first, but I do believe that if you will think of it a good while,
+you may be satisfied.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know you,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré. &ldquo;Think how
+little I know you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very little, of course, and therefore I don&rsquo;t ask for your
+ultimatum on the spot. I only ask you not to say no, and to let me hope. I will
+wait as long as you desire. Meanwhile you can see more of me and know me
+better, look at me as a possible husband&mdash;as a candidate&mdash;and make up
+your mind.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Something was going on, rapidly, in Madame de Cintré&rsquo;s thoughts; she was
+weighing a question there, beneath Newman&rsquo;s eyes, weighing it and
+deciding it. &ldquo;From the moment I don&rsquo;t very respectfully beg you to
+leave the house and never return,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I listen to you, I
+seem to give you hope. I <i>have</i> listened to you&mdash;against my judgment.
+It is because you are eloquent. If I had been told this morning that I should
+consent to consider you as a possible husband, I should have thought my
+informant a little crazy. I <i>am</i> listening to you, you see!&rdquo; And she
+threw her hands out for a moment and let them drop with a gesture in which
+there was just the slightest expression of appealing weakness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, as far as saying goes, I have said everything,&rdquo; said Newman.
+&ldquo;I believe in you, without restriction, and I think all the good of you
+that it is possible to think of a human creature. I firmly believe that in
+marrying me you will be <i>safe</i>. As I said just now,&rdquo; he went on with
+a smile, &ldquo;I have no bad ways. I can <i>do</i> so much for you. And if you
+are afraid that I am not what you have been accustomed to, not refined and
+delicate and punctilious, you may easily carry that too far. I <i>am</i>
+delicate! You shall see!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Cintré walked some distance away, and paused before a great plant, an
+azalea, which was flourishing in a porcelain tub before her window. She plucked
+off one of the flowers and, twisting it in her fingers, retraced her steps.
+Then she sat down in silence, and her attitude seemed to be a consent that
+Newman should say more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why should you say it is impossible you should marry?&rdquo; he
+continued. &ldquo;The only thing that could make it really impossible would be
+your being already married. Is it because you have been unhappy in marriage?
+That is all the more reason! Is it because your family exert a pressure upon
+you, interfere with you, annoy you? That is still another reason; you ought to
+be perfectly free, and marriage will make you so. I don&rsquo;t say anything
+against your family&mdash;understand that!&rdquo; added Newman, with an
+eagerness which might have made a perspicacious observer smile. &ldquo;Whatever
+way you feel toward them is the right way, and anything that you should wish me
+to do to make myself agreeable to them I will do as well as I know how. Depend
+upon that!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Cintré rose again and came toward the fireplace, near which Newman
+was standing. The expression of pain and embarrassment had passed out of her
+face, and it was illuminated with something which, this time at least, Newman
+need not have been perplexed whether to attribute to habit or to intention, to
+art or to nature. She had the air of a woman who has stepped across the
+frontier of friendship and, looking around her, finds the region vast. A
+certain checked and controlled exaltation seemed mingled with the usual level
+radiance of her glance. &ldquo;I will not refuse to see you again,&rdquo; she
+said, &ldquo;because much of what you have said has given me pleasure. But I
+will see you only on this condition: that you say nothing more in the same way
+for a long time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For how long?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For six months. It must be a solemn promise.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very well, I promise.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good-bye, then,&rdquo; she said, and extended her hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He held it a moment, as if he were going to say something more. But he only
+looked at her; then he took his departure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That evening, on the Boulevard, he met Valentin de Bellegarde. After they had
+exchanged greetings, Newman told him that he had seen Madame de Cintré a few
+hours before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know it,&rdquo; said Bellegarde. &ldquo;I dined in the Rue de
+l&rsquo;Université.&rdquo; And then, for some moments, both men were silent.
+Newman wished to ask Bellegarde what visible impression his visit had made and
+the Count Valentin had a question of his own. Bellegarde spoke first.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s none of my business, but what the deuce did you say to my
+sister?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am willing to tell you,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;that I made her an
+offer of marriage.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Already!&rdquo; And the young man gave a whistle. &ldquo;&lsquo;Time is
+money!&rsquo; Is that what you say in America? And Madame de Cintré?&rdquo; he
+added, with an interrogative inflection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She did not accept my offer.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She couldn&rsquo;t, you know, in that way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I&rsquo;m to see her again,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, the strangeness of woman!&rdquo; exclaimed Bellegarde. Then he
+stopped, and held Newman off at arms&rsquo;-length. &ldquo;I look at you with
+respect!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;You have achieved what we call a personal
+success! Immediately, now, I must present you to my brother.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Whenever you please!&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap10"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<p>
+Newman continued to see his friends the Tristrams with a good deal of
+frequency, though if you had listened to Mrs. Tristram&rsquo;s account of the
+matter you would have supposed that they had been cynically repudiated for the
+sake of grander acquaintance. &ldquo;We were all very well so long as we had no
+rivals&mdash;we were better than nothing. But now that you have become the
+fashion, and have your pick every day of three invitations to dinner, we are
+tossed into the corner. I am sure it is very good of you to come and see us
+once a month; I wonder you don&rsquo;t send us your cards in an envelope. When
+you do, pray have them with black edges; it will be for the death of my last
+illusion.&rdquo; It was in this incisive strain that Mrs. Tristram moralized
+over Newman&rsquo;s so-called neglect, which was in reality a most exemplary
+constancy. Of course she was joking, but there was always something ironical in
+her jokes, as there was always something jocular in her gravity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know no better proof that I have treated you very well,&rdquo; Newman
+had said, &ldquo;than the fact that you make so free with my character.
+Familiarity breeds contempt; I have made myself too cheap. If I had a little
+proper pride I would stay away a while, and when you asked me to dinner say I
+was going to the Princess Borealska&rsquo;s. But I have not any pride where my
+pleasure is concerned, and to keep you in the humor to see me&mdash;if you must
+see me only to call me bad names&mdash;I will agree to anything you choose; I
+will admit that I am the biggest snob in Paris.&rdquo; Newman, in fact, had
+declined an invitation personally given by the Princess Borealska, an inquiring
+Polish lady to whom he had been presented, on the ground that on that
+particular day he always dined at Mrs. Tristram&rsquo;s; and it was only a
+tenderly perverse theory of his hostess of the Avenue d&rsquo;Iéna that he was
+faithless to his early friendships. She needed the theory to explain a certain
+moral irritation by which she was often visited; though, if this explanation
+was unsound, a deeper analyst than I must give the right one. Having launched
+our hero upon the current which was bearing him so rapidly along, she appeared
+but half-pleased at its swiftness. She had succeeded too well; she had played
+her game too cleverly and she wished to mix up the cards. Newman had told her,
+in due season, that her friend was &ldquo;satisfactory.&rdquo; The epithet was
+not romantic, but Mrs. Tristram had no difficulty in perceiving that, in
+essentials, the feeling which lay beneath it was. Indeed, the mild, expansive
+brevity with which it was uttered, and a certain look, at once appealing and
+inscrutable, that issued from Newman&rsquo;s half-closed eyes as he leaned his
+head against the back of his chair, seemed to her the most eloquent attestation
+of a mature sentiment that she had ever encountered. Newman was, according to
+the French phrase, only abounding in her own sense, but his temperate raptures
+exerted a singular effect upon the ardor which she herself had so freely
+manifested a few months before. She now seemed inclined to take a purely
+critical view of Madame de Cintré, and wished to have it understood that she
+did not in the least answer for her being a compendium of all the virtues.
+&ldquo;No woman was ever so good as that woman seems,&rdquo; she said.
+&ldquo;Remember what Shakespeare calls Desdemona; &lsquo;a supersubtle
+Venetian.&rsquo; Madame de Cintré is a supersubtle Parisian. She is a charming
+woman, and she has five hundred merits; but you had better keep that in
+mind.&rdquo; Was Mrs. Tristram simply finding out that she was jealous of her
+dear friend on the other side of the Seine, and that in undertaking to provide
+Newman with an ideal wife she had counted too much on her own
+disinterestedness? We may be permitted to doubt it. The inconsistent little
+lady of the Avenue d&rsquo;Iéna had an insuperable need of changing her place,
+intellectually. She had a lively imagination, and she was capable, at certain
+times, of imagining the direct reverse of her most cherished beliefs, with a
+vividness more intense than that of conviction. She got tired of thinking
+aright; but there was no serious harm in it, as she got equally tired of
+thinking wrong. In the midst of her mysterious perversities she had admirable
+flashes of justice. One of these occurred when Newman related to her that he
+had made a formal proposal to Madame de Cintré. He repeated in a few words what
+he had said, and in a great many what she had answered. Mrs. Tristram listened
+with extreme interest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But after all,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;there is nothing to
+congratulate me upon. It is not a triumph.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; said Mrs. Tristram; &ldquo;it is a great
+triumph. It is a great triumph that she did not silence you at the first word,
+and request you never to speak to her again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see that,&rdquo; observed Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course you don&rsquo;t; Heaven forbid you should! When I told you to
+go on your own way and do what came into your head, I had no idea you would go
+over the ground so fast. I never dreamed you would offer yourself after five or
+six morning-calls. As yet, what had you done to make her like you? You had
+simply sat&mdash;not very straight&mdash;and stared at her. But she does like
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That remains to be seen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, that is proved. What will come of it remains to be seen. That you
+should propose to marry her, without more ado, could never have come into her
+head. You can form very little idea of what passed through her mind as you
+spoke; if she ever really marries you, the affair will be characterized by the
+usual justice of all human beings towards women. You will think you take
+generous views of her; but you will never begin to know through what a strange
+sea of feeling she passed before she accepted you. As she stood there in front
+of you the other day, she plunged into it. She said &lsquo;Why not?&rsquo; to
+something which, a few hours earlier, had been inconceivable. She turned about
+on a thousand gathered prejudices and traditions as on a pivot, and looked
+where she had never looked hitherto. When I think of it&mdash;when I think of
+Claire de Cintré and all that she represents, there seems to me something very
+fine in it. When I recommended you to try your fortune with her I of course
+thought well of you, and in spite of your sins I think so still. But I confess
+I don&rsquo;t see quite what you are and what you have done, to make such a
+woman do this sort of thing for you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, there is something very fine in it!&rdquo; said Newman with a laugh,
+repeating her words. He took an extreme satisfaction in hearing that there was
+something fine in it. He had not the least doubt of it himself, but he had
+already begun to value the world&rsquo;s admiration of Madame de Cintré, as
+adding to the prospective glory of possession.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was immediately after this conversation that Valentin de Bellegarde came to
+conduct his friend to the Rue de l&rsquo;Université to present him to the other
+members of his family. &ldquo;You are already introduced,&rdquo; he said,
+&ldquo;and you have begun to be talked about. My sister has mentioned your
+successive visits to my mother, and it was an accident that my mother was
+present at none of them. I have spoken of you as an American of immense wealth,
+and the best fellow in the world, who is looking for something very superior in
+the way of a wife.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you suppose,&rdquo; asked Newman, &ldquo;that Madame de Cintré has
+related to your mother the last conversation I had with her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am very certain that she has not; she will keep her own counsel.
+Meanwhile you must make your way with the rest of the family. Thus much is
+known about you: you have made a great fortune in trade, you are a little
+eccentric, and you frankly admire our dear Claire. My sister-in-law, whom you
+remember seeing in Madame de Cintré&rsquo;s sitting-room, took, it appears, a
+fancy to you; she has described you as having <i>beaucoup de cachet</i>. My
+mother, therefore, is curious to see you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She expects to laugh at me, eh?&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She never laughs. If she does not like you, don&rsquo;t hope to purchase
+favor by being amusing. Take warning by me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This conversation took place in the evening, and half an hour later Valentin
+ushered his companion into an apartment of the house of the Rue de
+l&rsquo;Université into which he had not yet penetrated, the salon of the
+dowager Marquise de Bellegarde. It was a vast, high room, with elaborate and
+ponderous mouldings, painted a whitish gray, along the upper portion of the
+walls and the ceiling; with a great deal of faded and carefully repaired
+tapestry in the doorways and chair-backs; a Turkey carpet in light colors,
+still soft and deep, in spite of great antiquity, on the floor, and portraits
+of each of Madame de Bellegarde&rsquo;s children, at the age of ten, suspended
+against an old screen of red silk. The room was illumined, exactly enough for
+conversation, by half a dozen candles, placed in odd corners, at a great
+distance apart. In a deep armchair, near the fire, sat an old lady in black; at
+the other end of the room another person was seated at the piano, playing a
+very expressive waltz. In this latter person Newman recognized the young
+Marquise de Bellegarde.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin presented his friend, and Newman walked up to the old lady by the fire
+and shook hands with her. He received a rapid impression of a white, delicate,
+aged face, with a high forehead, a small mouth, and a pair of cold blue eyes
+which had kept much of the freshness of youth. Madame de Bellegarde looked hard
+at him, and returned his hand-shake with a sort of British positiveness which
+reminded him that she was the daughter of the Earl of St. Dunstan&rsquo;s. Her
+daughter-in-law stopped playing and gave him an agreeable smile. Newman sat
+down and looked about him, while Valentin went and kissed the hand of the young
+marquise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I ought to have seen you before,&rdquo; said Madame de Bellegarde.
+&ldquo;You have paid several visits to my daughter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; said Newman, smiling; &ldquo;Madame de Cintré and I are
+old friends by this time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have gone fast,&rdquo; said Madame de Bellegarde.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not so fast as I should like,&rdquo; said Newman, bravely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, you are very ambitious,&rdquo; answered the old lady.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I confess I am,&rdquo; said Newman, smiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Bellegarde looked at him with her cold fine eyes, and he returned her
+gaze, reflecting that she was a possible adversary and trying to take her
+measure. Their eyes remained in contact for some moments. Then Madame de
+Bellegarde looked away, and without smiling, &ldquo;I am very ambitious,
+too,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman felt that taking her measure was not easy; she was a formidable,
+inscrutable little woman. She resembled her daughter, and yet she was utterly
+unlike her. The coloring in Madame de Cintré was the same, and the high
+delicacy of her brow and nose was hereditary. But her face was a larger and
+freer copy, and her mouth in especial a happy divergence from that conservative
+orifice, a little pair of lips at once plump and pinched, that looked, when
+closed, as if they could not open wider than to swallow a gooseberry or to emit
+an &ldquo;Oh, dear, no!&rdquo; which probably had been thought to give the
+finishing touch to the aristocratic prettiness of the Lady Emmeline Atheling as
+represented, forty years before, in several Books of Beauty. Madame de
+Cintré&rsquo;s face had, to Newman&rsquo;s eye, a range of expression as
+delightfully vast as the wind-streaked, cloud-flecked distance on a Western
+prairie. But her mother&rsquo;s white, intense, respectable countenance, with
+its formal gaze, and its circumscribed smile, suggested a document signed and
+sealed; a thing of parchment, ink, and ruled lines. &ldquo;She is a woman of
+conventions and proprieties,&rdquo; he said to himself as he looked at her;
+&ldquo;her world is the world of things immutably decreed. But how she is at
+home in it, and what a paradise she finds it. She walks about in it as if it
+were a blooming park, a Garden of Eden; and when she sees &lsquo;This is
+genteel,&rsquo; or &lsquo;This is improper,&rsquo; written on a mile-stone she
+stops ecstatically, as if she were listening to a nightingale or smelling a
+rose.&rdquo; Madame de Bellegarde wore a little black velvet hood tied under
+her chin, and she was wrapped in an old black cashmere shawl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are an American?&rdquo; she said presently. &ldquo;I have seen
+several Americans.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There are several in Paris,&rdquo; said Newman jocosely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, really?&rdquo; said Madame de Bellegarde. &ldquo;It was in England I
+saw these, or somewhere else; not in Paris. I think it must have been in the
+Pyrenees, many years ago. I am told your ladies are very pretty. One of these
+ladies was very pretty! such a wonderful complexion! She presented me a note of
+introduction from someone&mdash;I forgot whom&mdash;and she sent with it a note
+of her own. I kept her letter a long time afterwards, it was so strangely
+expressed. I used to know some of the phrases by heart. But I have forgotten
+them now, it is so many years ago. Since then I have seen no more Americans. I
+think my daughter-in-law has; she is a great gad-about, she sees
+everyone.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this the younger lady came rustling forward, pinching in a very slender
+waist, and casting idly preoccupied glances over the front of her dress, which
+was apparently designed for a ball. She was, in a singular way, at once ugly
+and pretty; she had protuberant eyes, and lips strangely red. She reminded
+Newman of his friend, Mademoiselle Nioche; this was what that much-obstructed
+young lady would have liked to be. Valentin de Bellegarde walked behind her at
+a distance, hopping about to keep off the far-spreading train of her dress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You ought to show more of your shoulders behind,&rdquo; he said very
+gravely. &ldquo;You might as well wear a standing ruff as such a dress as
+that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young woman turned her back to the mirror over the chimney-piece, and
+glanced behind her, to verify Valentin&rsquo;s assertion. The mirror descended
+low, and yet it reflected nothing but a large unclad flesh surface. The young
+marquise put her hands behind her and gave a downward pull to the waist of her
+dress. &ldquo;Like that, you mean?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is a little better,&rdquo; said Bellegarde in the same tone,
+&ldquo;but it leaves a good deal to be desired.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I never go to extremes,&rdquo; said his sister-in-law. And then,
+turning to Madame de Bellegarde, &ldquo;What were you calling me just now,
+madame?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I called you a gad-about,&rdquo; said the old lady. &ldquo;But I might
+call you something else, too.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A gad-about? What an ugly word! What does it mean?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A very beautiful person,&rdquo; Newman ventured to say, seeing that it
+was in French.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is a pretty compliment but a bad translation,&rdquo; said the young
+marquise. And then, looking at him a moment, &ldquo;Do you dance?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not a step.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are very wrong,&rdquo; she said, simply. And with another look at
+her back in the mirror she turned away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you like Paris?&rdquo; asked the old lady, who was apparently
+wondering what was the proper way to talk to an American.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, rather,&rdquo; said Newman. And then he added with a friendly
+intonation, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t say I know it. I know my house&mdash;I know my
+friends&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know Paris.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, you lose a great deal,&rdquo; said Newman, sympathetically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Bellegarde stared; it was presumably the first time she had been
+condoled with on her losses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am content with what I have,&rdquo; she said with dignity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman&rsquo;s eyes, at this moment, were wandering round the room, which
+struck him as rather sad and shabby; passing from the high casements, with
+their small, thickly-framed panes, to the sallow tints of two or three
+portraits in pastel, of the last century, which hung between them. He ought,
+obviously, to have answered that the contentment of his hostess was quite
+natural&mdash;she had a great deal; but the idea did not occur to him during
+the pause of some moments which followed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, my dear mother,&rdquo; said Valentin, coming and leaning against
+the chimney-piece, &ldquo;what do you think of my dear friend Newman? Is he not
+the excellent fellow I told you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My acquaintance with Mr. Newman has not gone very far,&rdquo; said
+Madame de Bellegarde. &ldquo;I can as yet only appreciate his great
+politeness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My mother is a great judge of these matters,&rdquo; said Valentin to
+Newman. &ldquo;If you have satisfied her, it is a triumph.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hope I shall satisfy you, some day,&rdquo; said Newman, looking at the
+old lady. &ldquo;I have done nothing yet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You must not listen to my son; he will bring you into trouble. He is a
+sad scatterbrain.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I like him&mdash;I like him,&rdquo; said Newman, genially.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He amuses you, eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, perfectly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you hear that, Valentin?&rdquo; said Madame de Bellegarde. &ldquo;You
+amuse Mr. Newman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps we shall all come to that!&rdquo; Valentin exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You must see my other son,&rdquo; said Madame de Bellegarde. &ldquo;He
+is much better than this one. But he will not amuse you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know!&rdquo; murmured Valentin,
+reflectively. &ldquo;But we shall very soon see. Here comes <i>Monsieur mon
+frère</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The door had just opened to give ingress to a gentleman who stepped forward and
+whose face Newman remembered. He had been the author of our hero&rsquo;s
+discomfiture the first time he tried to present himself to Madame de Cintré.
+Valentin de Bellegarde went to meet his brother, looked at him a moment, and
+then, taking him by the arm, led him up to Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is my excellent friend Mr. Newman,&rdquo; he said very blandly.
+&ldquo;You must know him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am delighted to know Mr. Newman,&rdquo; said the marquis with a low
+bow, but without offering his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is the old woman at second-hand,&rdquo; Newman said to himself, as he
+returned M. de Bellegarde&rsquo;s greeting. And this was the starting-point of
+a speculative theory, in his mind, that the late marquis had been a very
+amiable foreigner, with an inclination to take life easily and a sense that it
+was difficult for the husband of the stilted little lady by the fire to do so.
+But if he had taken little comfort in his wife he had taken much in his two
+younger children, who were after his own heart, while Madame de Bellegarde had
+paired with her eldest-born.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My brother has spoken to me of you,&rdquo; said M. de Bellegarde;
+&ldquo;and as you are also acquainted with my sister, it was time we should
+meet.&rdquo; He turned to his mother and gallantly bent over her hand, touching
+it with his lips, and then he assumed an attitude before the chimney-piece.
+With his long, lean face, his high-bridged nose and his small, opaque eye he
+looked much like an Englishman. His whiskers were fair and glossy, and he had a
+large dimple, of unmistakably British origin, in the middle of his handsome
+chin. He was &ldquo;distinguished&rdquo; to the tips of his polished nails, and
+there was not a movement of his fine, perpendicular person that was not noble
+and majestic. Newman had never yet been confronted with such an incarnation of
+the art of taking one&rsquo;s self seriously; he felt a sort of impulse to step
+backward, as you do to get a view of a great façade.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Urbain,&rdquo; said young Madame de Bellegarde, who had apparently been
+waiting for her husband to take her to her ball, &ldquo;I call your attention
+to the fact that I am dressed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is a good idea,&rdquo; murmured Valentin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am at your orders, my dear friend,&rdquo; said M. de Bellegarde.
+&ldquo;Only, you must allow me first the pleasure of a little conversation with
+Mr. Newman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, if you are going to a party, don&rsquo;t let me keep you,&rdquo;
+objected Newman. &ldquo;I am very sure we shall meet again. Indeed, if you
+would like to converse with me I will gladly name an hour.&rdquo; He was eager
+to make it known that he would readily answer all questions and satisfy all
+exactions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. de Bellegarde stood in a well-balanced position before the fire, caressing
+one of his fair whiskers with one of his white hands, and looking at Newman,
+half askance, with eyes from which a particular ray of observation made its way
+through a general meaningless smile. &ldquo;It is very kind of you to make such
+an offer,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If I am not mistaken, your occupations are
+such as to make your time precious. You are in&mdash;a&mdash;as we say, <i>dans
+les affaires</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In business, you mean? Oh no, I have thrown business overboard for the
+present. I am &lsquo;loafing,&rsquo; as <i>we</i> say. My time is quite my
+own.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, you are taking a holiday,&rdquo; rejoined M. de Bellegarde.
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Loafing.&rsquo; Yes, I have heard that expression.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Newman is American,&rdquo; said Madame de Bellegarde.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My brother is a great ethnologist,&rdquo; said Valentin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;An ethnologist?&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;Ah, you collect
+negroes&rsquo; skulls, and that sort of thing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The marquis looked hard at his brother, and began to caress his other whisker.
+Then, turning to Newman, with sustained urbanity, &ldquo;You are traveling for
+your pleasure?&rdquo; he asked.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I am knocking about to pick up one thing and another. Of course I
+get a good deal of pleasure out of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What especially interests you?&rdquo; inquired the marquis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, everything interests me,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;I am not
+particular. Manufactures are what I care most about.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That has been your specialty?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t say I have any specialty. My specialty has been to make
+the largest possible fortune in the shortest possible time.&rdquo; Newman made
+this last remark very deliberately; he wished to open the way, if it were
+necessary, to an authoritative statement of his means.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. de Bellegarde laughed agreeably. &ldquo;I hope you have succeeded,&rdquo; he
+said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I have made a fortune in a reasonable time. I am not so old, you
+see.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Paris is a very good place to spend a fortune. I wish you great
+enjoyment of yours.&rdquo; And M. de Bellegarde drew forth his gloves and began
+to put them on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman for a few moments watched him sliding his white hands into the white
+kid, and as he did so his feelings took a singular turn. M. de
+Bellegarde&rsquo;s good wishes seemed to descend out of the white expanse of
+his sublime serenity with the soft, scattered movement of a shower of
+snow-flakes. Yet Newman was not irritated; he did not feel that he was being
+patronized; he was conscious of no especial impulse to introduce a discord into
+so noble a harmony. Only he felt himself suddenly in personal contact with the
+forces with which his friend Valentin had told him that he would have to
+contend, and he became sensible of their intensity. He wished to make some
+answering manifestation, to stretch himself out at his own length, to sound a
+note at the uttermost end of <i>his</i> scale. It must be added that if this
+impulse was not vicious or malicious, it was by no means void of humorous
+expectancy. Newman was quite as ready to give play to that loosely-adjusted
+smile of his, if his hosts should happen to be shocked, as he was far from
+deliberately planning to shock them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Paris is a very good place for idle people,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;or it
+is a very good place if your family has been settled here for a long time, and
+you have made acquaintances and got your relations round you; or if you have
+got a good big house like this, and a wife and children and mother and sister,
+and everything comfortable. I don&rsquo;t like that way of living all in rooms
+next door to each other. But I am not an idler. I try to be, but I can&rsquo;t
+manage it; it goes against the grain. My business habits are too deep-seated.
+Then, I haven&rsquo;t any house to call my own, or anything in the way of a
+family. My sisters are five thousand miles away, my mother died when I was a
+youngster, and I haven&rsquo;t any wife; I wish I had! So, you see, I
+don&rsquo;t exactly know what to do with myself. I am not fond of books, as you
+are, sir, and I get tired of dining out and going to the opera. I miss my
+business activity. You see, I began to earn my living when I was almost a baby,
+and until a few months ago I have never had my hand off the plow. Elegant
+leisure comes hard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This speech was followed by a profound silence of some moments, on the part of
+Newman&rsquo;s entertainers. Valentin stood looking at him fixedly, with his
+hands in his pockets, and then he slowly, with a half-sidling motion, went out
+of the door. The marquis continued to draw on his gloves and to smile
+benignantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You began to earn your living when you were a mere baby?&rdquo; said the
+marquise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hardly more&mdash;a small boy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You say you are not fond of books,&rdquo; said M. de Bellegarde;
+&ldquo;but you must do yourself the justice to remember that your studies were
+interrupted early.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is very true; on my tenth birthday I stopped going to school. I
+thought it was a grand way to keep it. But I picked up some information
+afterwards,&rdquo; said Newman, reassuringly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have some sisters?&rdquo; asked old Madame de Bellegarde.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, two sisters. Splendid women!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hope that for them the hardships of life commenced less early.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They married very early, if you call that a hardship, as girls do in our
+Western country. One of them is married to the owner of the largest
+india-rubber house in the West.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, you make houses also of india-rubber?&rdquo; inquired the marquise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You can stretch them as your family increases,&rdquo; said young Madame
+de Bellegarde, who was muffling herself in a long white shawl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman indulged in a burst of hilarity, and explained that the house in which
+his brother-in-law lived was a large wooden structure, but that he manufactured
+and sold india-rubber on a colossal scale.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My children have some little india-rubber shoes which they put on when
+they go to play in the Tuileries in damp weather,&rdquo; said the young
+marquise. &ldquo;I wonder whether your brother-in-law made them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very likely,&rdquo; said Newman; &ldquo;if he did, you may be very sure
+they are well made.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, you must not be discouraged,&rdquo; said M. de Bellegarde, with
+vague urbanity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t mean to be. I have a project which gives me plenty to
+think about, and that is an occupation.&rdquo; And then Newman was silent a
+moment, hesitating, yet thinking rapidly; he wished to make his point, and yet
+to do so forced him to speak out in a way that was disagreeable to him.
+Nevertheless he continued, addressing himself to old Madame de Bellegarde,
+&ldquo;I will tell you my project; perhaps you can help me. I want to take a
+wife.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is a very good project, but I am no matchmaker,&rdquo; said the old
+lady.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman looked at her an instant, and then, with perfect sincerity, &ldquo;I
+should have thought you were,&rdquo; he declared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Bellegarde appeared to think him too sincere. She murmured something
+sharply in French, and fixed her eyes on her son. At this moment the door of
+the room was thrown open, and with a rapid step Valentin reappeared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have a message for you,&rdquo; he said to his sister-in-law.
+&ldquo;Claire bids me to request you not to start for your ball. She will go
+with you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Claire will go with us!&rdquo; cried the young marquise. &ldquo;<i>En
+voilà, du nouveau!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She has changed her mind; she decided half an hour ago, and she is
+sticking the last diamond into her hair,&rdquo; said Valentin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What has taken possession of my daughter?&rdquo; demanded Madame de
+Bellegarde, sternly. &ldquo;She has not been into the world these three years.
+Does she take such a step at half an hour&rsquo;s notice, and without
+consulting me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She consulted me, dear mother, five minutes since,&rdquo; said Valentin,
+&ldquo;and I told her that such a beautiful woman&mdash;she is beautiful, you
+will see&mdash;had no right to bury herself alive.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You should have referred Claire to her mother, my brother,&rdquo; said
+M. de Bellegarde, in French. &ldquo;This is very strange.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I refer her to the whole company!&rdquo; said Valentin. &ldquo;Here she
+comes!&rdquo; And he went to the open door, met Madame de Cintré on the
+threshold, took her by the hand, and led her into the room. She was dressed in
+white; but a long blue cloak, which hung almost to her feet, was fastened
+across her shoulders by a silver clasp. She had tossed it back, however, and
+her long white arms were uncovered. In her dense, fair hair there glittered a
+dozen diamonds. She looked serious and, Newman thought, rather pale; but she
+glanced round her, and, when she saw him, smiled and put out her hand. He
+thought her tremendously handsome. He had a chance to look at her full in the
+face, for she stood a moment in the centre of the room, hesitating, apparently,
+what she should do, without meeting his eyes. Then she went up to her mother,
+who sat in her deep chair by the fire, looking at Madame de Cintré almost
+fiercely. With her back turned to the others, Madame de Cintré held her cloak
+apart to show her dress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you think of me?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think you are audacious,&rdquo; said the marquise. &ldquo;It was but
+three days ago, when I asked you, as a particular favor to myself, to go to the
+Duchess de Lusignan&rsquo;s, that you told me you were going nowhere and that
+one must be consistent. Is this your consistency? Why should you distinguish
+Madame Robineau? Who is it you wish to please to-night?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish to please myself, dear mother,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré. And
+she bent over and kissed the old lady.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like surprises, my sister,&rdquo; said Urbain de
+Bellegarde; &ldquo;especially when one is on the point of entering a
+drawing-room.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman at this juncture felt inspired to speak. &ldquo;Oh, if you are going
+into a room with Madame de Cintré, you needn&rsquo;t be afraid of being noticed
+yourself!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. de Bellegarde turned to his sister with a smile too intense to be easy.
+&ldquo;I hope you appreciate a compliment that is paid you at your
+brother&rsquo;s expense,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Come, come, madame.&rdquo; And
+offering Madame de Cintré his arm he led her rapidly out of the room. Valentin
+rendered the same service to young Madame de Bellegarde, who had apparently
+been reflecting on the fact that the ball-dress of her sister-in-law was much
+less brilliant than her own, and yet had failed to derive absolute comfort from
+the reflection. With a farewell smile she sought the complement of her
+consolation in the eyes of the American visitor, and perceiving in them a
+certain mysterious brilliancy, it is not improbable that she may have flattered
+herself she had found it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman, left alone with old Madame de Bellegarde, stood before her a few
+moments in silence. &ldquo;Your daughter is very beautiful,&rdquo; he said at
+last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is very strange,&rdquo; said Madame de Bellegarde.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am glad to hear it,&rdquo; Newman rejoined, smiling. &ldquo;It makes
+me hope.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hope what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That she will consent, some day, to marry me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old lady slowly rose to her feet. &ldquo;That really is your project,
+then?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes; will you favor it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Favor it?&rdquo; Madame de Bellegarde looked at him a moment and then
+shook her head. &ldquo;No!&rdquo; she said, softly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will you suffer it, then? Will you let it pass?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know what you ask. I am a very proud and meddlesome old
+woman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I am very rich,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Bellegarde fixed her eyes on the floor, and Newman thought it
+probable she was weighing the reasons in favor of resenting the brutality of
+this remark. But at last, looking up, she said simply, &ldquo;How rich?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman expressed his income in a round number which had the magnificent sound
+that large aggregations of dollars put on when they are translated into francs.
+He added a few remarks of a financial character, which completed a sufficiently
+striking presentment of his resources.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Bellegarde listened in silence. &ldquo;You are very frank,&rdquo; she
+said finally. &ldquo;I will be the same. I would rather favor you, on the
+whole, than suffer you. It will be easier.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am thankful for any terms,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;But, for the
+present, you have suffered me long enough. Good night!&rdquo; And he took his
+leave.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap11"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<p>
+Newman, on his return to Paris, had not resumed the study of French
+conversation with M. Nioche; he found that he had too many other uses for his
+time. M. Nioche, however, came to see him very promptly, having learned his
+whereabouts by a mysterious process to which his patron never obtained the key.
+The shrunken little capitalist repeated his visit more than once. He seemed
+oppressed by a humiliating sense of having been overpaid, and wished apparently
+to redeem his debt by the offer of grammatical and statistical information in
+small installments. He wore the same decently melancholy aspect as a few months
+before; a few months more or less of brushing could make little difference in
+the antique lustre of his coat and hat. But the poor old man&rsquo;s spirit was
+a trifle more threadbare; it seemed to have received some hard rubs during the
+summer. Newman inquired with interest about Mademoiselle Noémie; and M. Nioche,
+at first, for answer, simply looked at him in lachrymose silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t ask me, sir,&rdquo; he said at last. &ldquo;I sit and watch
+her, but I can do nothing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean that she misconducts herself?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know, I am sure. I can&rsquo;t follow her. I don&rsquo;t
+understand her. She has something in her head; I don&rsquo;t know what she is
+trying to do. She is too deep for me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Does she continue to go to the Louvre? Has she made any of those copies
+for me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She goes to the Louvre, but I see nothing of the copies. She has
+something on her easel; I suppose it is one of the pictures you ordered. Such a
+magnificent order ought to give her fairy-fingers. But she is not in earnest. I
+can&rsquo;t say anything to her; I am afraid of her. One evening, last summer,
+when I took her to walk in the Champs Élysées, she said some things to me that
+frightened me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What were they?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Excuse an unhappy father from telling you,&rdquo; said M. Nioche,
+unfolding his calico pocket-handkerchief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman promised himself to pay Mademoiselle Noémie another visit at the Louvre.
+He was curious about the progress of his copies, but it must be added that he
+was still more curious about the progress of the young lady herself. He went
+one afternoon to the great museum, and wandered through several of the rooms in
+fruitless quest of her. He was bending his steps to the long hall of the
+Italian masters, when suddenly he found himself face to face with Valentin de
+Bellegarde. The young Frenchman greeted him with ardor, and assured him that he
+was a godsend. He himself was in the worst of humors and he wanted someone to
+contradict.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In a bad humor among all these beautiful things?&rdquo; said Newman.
+&ldquo;I thought you were so fond of pictures, especially the old black ones.
+There are two or three here that ought to keep you in spirits.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, to-day,&rdquo; answered Valentin, &ldquo;I am not in a mood for
+pictures, and the more beautiful they are the less I like them. Their great
+staring eyes and fixed positions irritate me. I feel as if I were at some big,
+dull party, in a room full of people I shouldn&rsquo;t wish to speak to. What
+should I care for their beauty? It&rsquo;s a bore, and, worse still, it&rsquo;s
+a reproach. I have a great many <i>ennuis</i>; I feel vicious.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If the Louvre has so little comfort for you, why in the world did you
+come here?&rdquo; Newman asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is one of my <i>ennuis</i>. I came to meet my cousin&mdash;a
+dreadful English cousin, a member of my mother&rsquo;s family&mdash;who is in
+Paris for a week for her husband, and who wishes me to point out the
+&lsquo;principal beauties.&rsquo; Imagine a woman who wears a green crape
+bonnet in December and has straps sticking out of the ankles of her
+interminable boots! My mother begged I would do something to oblige them. I
+have undertaken to play <i>valet de place</i> this afternoon. They were to have
+met me here at two o&rsquo;clock, and I have been waiting for them twenty
+minutes. Why doesn&rsquo;t she arrive? She has at least a pair of feet to carry
+her. I don&rsquo;t know whether to be furious at their playing me false, or
+delighted to have escaped them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think in your place I would be furious,&rdquo; said Newman,
+&ldquo;because they may arrive yet, and then your fury will still be of use to
+you. Whereas if you were delighted and they were afterwards to turn up, you
+might not know what to do with your delight.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You give me excellent advice, and I already feel better. I will be
+furious; I will let them go to the deuce and I myself will go with
+you&mdash;unless by chance you too have a rendezvous.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is not exactly a rendezvous,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;But I have in
+fact come to see a person, not a picture.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A woman, presumably?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A young lady.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Valentin, &ldquo;I hope for you with all my heart that
+she is not clothed in green tulle and that her feet are not too much out of
+focus.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know much about her feet, but she has very pretty
+hands.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin gave a sigh. &ldquo;And on that assurance I must part with you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am not certain of finding my young lady,&rdquo; said Newman,
+&ldquo;and I am not quite prepared to lose your company on the chance. It does
+not strike me as particularly desirable to introduce you to her, and yet I
+should rather like to have your opinion of her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is she pretty?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I guess you will think so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bellegarde passed his arm into that of his companion. &ldquo;Conduct me to her
+on the instant! I should be ashamed to make a pretty woman wait for my
+verdict.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman suffered himself to be gently propelled in the direction in which he had
+been walking, but his step was not rapid. He was turning something over in his
+mind. The two men passed into the long gallery of the Italian masters, and
+Newman, after having scanned for a moment its brilliant vista, turned aside
+into the smaller apartment devoted to the same school, on the left. It
+contained very few persons, but at the farther end of it sat Mademoiselle
+Nioche, before her easel. She was not at work; her palette and brushes had been
+laid down beside her, her hands were folded in her lap, and she was leaning
+back in her chair and looking intently at two ladies on the other side of the
+hall, who, with their backs turned to her, had stopped before one of the
+pictures. These ladies were apparently persons of high fashion; they were
+dressed with great splendor, and their long silken trains and furbelows were
+spread over the polished floor. It was at their dresses Mademoiselle Noémie was
+looking, though what she was thinking of I am unable to say. I hazard the
+supposition that she was saying to herself that to be able to drag such a train
+over a polished floor was a felicity worth any price. Her reflections, at any
+rate, were disturbed by the advent of Newman and his companion. She glanced at
+them quickly, and then, coloring a little, rose and stood before her easel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I came here on purpose to see you,&rdquo; said Newman in his bad French,
+offering to shake hands. And then, like a good American, he introduced Valentin
+formally: &ldquo;Allow me to make you acquainted with the Comte Valentin de
+Bellegarde.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin made a bow which must have seemed to Mademoiselle Noémie quite in
+harmony with the impressiveness of his title, but the graceful brevity of her
+own response made no concession to underbred surprise. She turned to Newman,
+putting up her hands to her hair and smoothing its delicately-felt roughness.
+Then, rapidly, she turned the canvas that was on her easel over upon its face.
+&ldquo;You have not forgotten me?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall never forget you,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;You may be sure of
+that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said the young girl, &ldquo;there are a great many different
+ways of remembering a person.&rdquo; And she looked straight at Valentin de
+Bellegarde, who was looking at her as a gentleman may when a
+&ldquo;verdict&rdquo; is expected of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have you painted anything for me?&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;Have you
+been industrious?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I have done nothing.&rdquo; And taking up her palette, she began to
+mix her colors at hazard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But your father tells me you have come here constantly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have nowhere else to go! Here, all summer, it was cool, at
+least.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Being here, then,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;you might have tried
+something.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I told you before,&rdquo; she answered, softly, &ldquo;that I
+don&rsquo;t know how to paint.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you have something charming on your easel, now,&rdquo; said
+Valentin, &ldquo;if you would only let me see it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She spread out her two hands, with the fingers expanded, over the back of the
+canvas&mdash;those hands which Newman had called pretty, and which, in spite of
+several paint-stains, Valentin could now admire. &ldquo;My painting is not
+charming,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is the only thing about you that is not, then, mademoiselle,&rdquo;
+quoth Valentin, gallantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She took up her little canvas and silently passed it to him. He looked at it,
+and in a moment she said, &ldquo;I am sure you are a judge.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;I am.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know, then, that that is very bad.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Mon Dieu</i>,&rdquo; said Valentin, shrugging his shoulders
+&ldquo;let us distinguish.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know that I ought not to attempt to paint,&rdquo; the young girl
+continued.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Frankly, then, mademoiselle, I think you ought not.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She began to look at the dresses of the two splendid ladies again&mdash;a point
+on which, having risked one conjecture, I think I may risk another. While she
+was looking at the ladies she was seeing Valentin de Bellegarde. He, at all
+events, was seeing her. He put down the roughly-besmeared canvas and addressed
+a little click with his tongue, accompanied by an elevation of the eyebrows, to
+Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where have you been all these months?&rdquo; asked Mademoiselle Noémie
+of our hero. &ldquo;You took those great journeys, you amused yourself
+well?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;I amused myself well enough.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am very glad,&rdquo; said Mademoiselle Noémie with extreme gentleness,
+and she began to dabble in her colors again. She was singularly pretty, with
+the look of serious sympathy that she threw into her face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin took advantage of her downcast eyes to telegraph again to his
+companion. He renewed his mysterious physiognomical play, making at the same
+time a rapid tremulous movement in the air with his fingers. He was evidently
+finding Mademoiselle Noémie extremely interesting; the blue devils had
+departed, leaving the field clear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell me something about your travels,&rdquo; murmured the young girl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I went to Switzerland,&mdash;to Geneva and Zermatt and Zürich and
+all those places you know; and down to Venice, and all through Germany, and
+down the Rhine, and into Holland and Belgium&mdash;the regular round. How do
+you say that, in French&mdash;the regular round?&rdquo; Newman asked of
+Valentin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mademoiselle Nioche fixed her eyes an instant on Bellegarde, and then with a
+little smile, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand monsieur,&rdquo; she said,
+&ldquo;when he says so much at once. Would you be so good as to
+translate?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would rather talk to you out of my own head,&rdquo; Valentin declared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Newman, gravely, still in his bad French, &ldquo;you
+must not talk to Mademoiselle Nioche, because you say discouraging things. You
+ought to tell her to work, to persevere.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And we French, mademoiselle,&rdquo; said Valentin, &ldquo;are accused of
+being false flatterers!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want any flattery, I want only the truth. But I know the
+truth.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All I say is that I suspect there are some things that you can do better
+than paint,&rdquo; said Valentin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know the truth&mdash;I know the truth,&rdquo; Mademoiselle Noémie
+repeated. And, dipping a brush into a clot of red paint, she drew a great
+horizontal daub across her unfinished picture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is that?&rdquo; asked Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Without answering, she drew another long crimson daub, in a vertical direction,
+down the middle of her canvas, and so, in a moment, completed the rough
+indication of a cross. &ldquo;It is the sign of the truth,&rdquo; she said at
+last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two men looked at each other, and Valentin indulged in another flash of
+physiognomical eloquence. &ldquo;You have spoiled your picture,&rdquo; said
+Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know that very well. It was the only thing to do with it. I had sat
+looking at it all day without touching it. I had begun to hate it. It seemed to
+me something was going to happen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I like it better that way than as it was before,&rdquo; said Valentin.
+&ldquo;Now it is more interesting. It tells a story. Is it for sale?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Everything I have is for sale,&rdquo; said Mademoiselle Noémie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How much is this thing?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ten thousand francs,&rdquo; said the young girl, without a smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Everything that Mademoiselle Nioche may do at present is mine in
+advance,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;It makes part of an order I gave her some
+months ago. So you can&rsquo;t have this.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Monsieur will lose nothing by it,&rdquo; said the young girl, looking at
+Valentin. And she began to put up her utensils.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall have gained a charming memory,&rdquo; said Valentin. &ldquo;You
+are going away? your day is over?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My father is coming to fetch me,&rdquo; said Mademoiselle Noémie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had hardly spoken when, through the door behind her, which opens on one of
+the great white stone staircases of the Louvre, M. Nioche made his appearance.
+He came in with his usual even, patient shuffle, and he made a low salute to
+the two gentlemen who were standing before his daughter&rsquo;s easel. Newman
+shook his hands with muscular friendliness, and Valentin returned his greeting
+with extreme deference. While the old man stood waiting for Noémie to make a
+parcel of her implements, he let his mild, oblique gaze hover toward
+Bellegarde, who was watching Mademoiselle Noémie put on her bonnet and mantle.
+Valentin was at no pains to disguise his scrutiny. He looked at a pretty girl
+as he would have listened to a piece of music. Attention, in each case, was
+simple good manners. M. Nioche at last took his daughter&rsquo;s paint-box in
+one hand and the bedaubed canvas, after giving it a solemn, puzzled stare, in
+the other, and led the way to the door. Mademoiselle Noémie made the young men
+the salute of a duchess, and followed her father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;what do you think of her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is very remarkable. <i>Diable, diable, diable!</i>&rdquo; repeated
+M. de Bellegarde, reflectively; &ldquo;she is very remarkable.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am afraid she is a sad little adventuress,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not a little one&mdash;a great one. She has the material.&rdquo; And
+Valentin began to walk away slowly, looking vaguely at the pictures on the
+walls, with a thoughtful illumination in his eye. Nothing could have appealed
+to his imagination more than the possible adventures of a young lady endowed
+with the &ldquo;material&rdquo; of Mademoiselle Nioche. &ldquo;She is very
+interesting,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;She is a beautiful type.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A beautiful type? What the deuce do you mean?&rdquo; asked Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I mean from the artistic point of view. She is an artist,&mdash;outside
+of her painting, which obviously is execrable.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But she is not beautiful. I don&rsquo;t even think her very
+pretty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is quite pretty enough for her purposes, and it is a face and figure
+on which everything tells. If she were prettier she would be less intelligent,
+and her intelligence is half of her charm.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In what way,&rdquo; asked Newman, who was much amused at his
+companion&rsquo;s immediate philosophisation of Mademoiselle Nioche,
+&ldquo;does her intelligence strike you as so remarkable?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She has taken the measure of life, and she has determined to <i>be</i>
+something&mdash;to succeed at any cost. Her painting, of course, is a mere
+trick to gain time. She is waiting for her chance; she wishes to launch
+herself, and to do it well. She knows her Paris. She is one of fifty thousand,
+so far as the mere ambition goes; but I am very sure that in the way of
+resolution and capacity she is a rarity. And in one gift&mdash;perfect
+heartlessness&mdash;I will warrant she is unsurpassed. She has not as much
+heart as will go on the point of a needle. That is an immense virtue. Yes, she
+is one of the celebrities of the future.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Heaven help us!&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;how far the artistic point of
+view may take a man! But in this case I must request that you don&rsquo;t let
+it take you too far. You have learned a wonderful deal about Mademoiselle
+Noémie in a quarter of an hour. Let that suffice; don&rsquo;t follow up your
+researches.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear fellow,&rdquo; cried Bellegarde with warmth, &ldquo;I hope I
+have too good manners to intrude.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are not intruding. The girl is nothing to me. In fact, I rather
+dislike her. But I like her poor old father, and for his sake I beg you to
+abstain from any attempt to verify your theories.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For the sake of that seedy old gentleman who came to fetch her?&rdquo;
+demanded Valentin, stopping short. And on Newman&rsquo;s assenting, &ldquo;Ah
+no, ah no,&rdquo; he went on with a smile. &ldquo;You are quite wrong, my dear
+fellow; you needn&rsquo;t mind him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I verily believe that you are accusing the poor gentleman of being
+capable of rejoicing in his daughter&rsquo;s dishonor.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Voyons!</i>&rdquo; said Valentin; &ldquo;who is he? what is
+he?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is what he looks like: as poor as a rat, but very high-toned.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Exactly. I noticed him perfectly; be sure I do him justice. He has had
+losses, <i>des malheurs</i>, as we say. He is very low-spirited, and his
+daughter is too much for him. He is the pink of respectability, and he has
+sixty years of honesty on his back. All this I perfectly appreciate. But I know
+my fellow-men and my fellow-Parisians, and I will make a bargain with
+you.&rdquo; Newman gave ear to his bargain and he went on. &ldquo;He would
+rather his daughter were a good girl than a bad one, but if the worst comes to
+the worst, the old man will not do what Virginius did. Success justifies
+everything. If Mademoiselle Noémie makes a figure, her papa will
+feel&mdash;well, we will call it relieved. And she will make a figure. The old
+gentleman&rsquo;s future is assured.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what Virginius did, but M. Nioche will shoot Miss
+Noémie,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;After that, I suppose his future will be
+assured in some snug prison.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am not a cynic; I am simply an observer,&rdquo; Valentin rejoined.
+&ldquo;Mademoiselle Noémie interests me; she is extremely remarkable. If there
+is a good reason, in honor or decency, for dismissing her from my thoughts
+forever, I am perfectly willing to do it. Your estimate of the papa&rsquo;s
+sensibilities is a good reason until it is invalidated. I promise you not to
+look at the young girl again until you tell me that you have changed your mind
+about the papa. When he has given distinct proof of being a philosopher, you
+will raise your interdict. Do you agree to that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean to bribe him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, you admit, then, that he is bribable? No, he would ask too much, and
+it would not be exactly fair. I mean simply to wait. You will continue, I
+suppose, to see this interesting couple, and you will give me the news
+yourself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;if the old man turns out a humbug, you
+may do what you please. I wash my hands of the matter. For the girl herself,
+you may be at rest. I don&rsquo;t know what harm she may do to me, but I
+certainly can&rsquo;t hurt her. It seems to me,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;that
+you are very well matched. You are both hard cases, and M. Nioche and I, I
+believe, are the only virtuous men to be found in Paris.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soon after this M. de Bellegarde, in punishment for his levity, received a
+stern poke in the back from a pointed instrument. Turning quickly round he
+found the weapon to be a parasol wielded by a lady in green gauze bonnet.
+Valentin&rsquo;s English cousins had been drifting about unpiloted, and
+evidently deemed that they had a grievance. Newman left him to their mercies,
+but with a boundless faith in his power to plead his cause.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap12"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<p>
+Three days after his introduction to the family of Madame de Cintré, Newman,
+coming in toward evening, found upon his table the card of the Marquis de
+Bellegarde. On the following day he received a note informing him that the
+Marquise de Bellegarde would be grateful for the honor of his company at
+dinner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went, of course, though he had to break another engagement to do it. He was
+ushered into the room in which Madame de Bellegarde had received him before,
+and here he found his venerable hostess, surrounded by her entire family. The
+room was lighted only by the crackling fire, which illuminated the very small
+pink slippers of a lady who, seated in a low chair, was stretching out her toes
+before it. This lady was the younger Madame de Bellegarde. Madame de Cintré was
+seated at the other end of the room, holding a little girl against her knee,
+the child of her brother Urbain, to whom she was apparently relating a
+wonderful story. Valentin was sitting on a puff, close to his sister-in-law,
+into whose ear he was certainly distilling the finest nonsense. The marquis was
+stationed before the fire, with his head erect and his hands behind him, in an
+attitude of formal expectancy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Old Madame de Bellegarde stood up to give Newman her greeting, and there was
+that in the way she did so which seemed to measure narrowly the extent of her
+condescension. &ldquo;We are all alone, you see, we have asked no one
+else,&rdquo; she said austerely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am very glad you didn&rsquo;t; this is much more sociable,&rdquo; said
+Newman. &ldquo;Good evening, sir,&rdquo; and he offered his hand to the
+marquis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. de Bellegarde was affable, but in spite of his dignity he was restless. He
+began to pace up and down the room, he looked out of the long windows, he took
+up books and laid them down again. Young Madame de Bellegarde gave Newman her
+hand without moving and without looking at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You may think that is coldness,&rdquo; exclaimed Valentin; &ldquo;but it
+is not, it is warmth. It shows she is treating you as an intimate. Now she
+detests me, and yet she is always looking at me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No wonder I detest you if I am always looking at you!&rdquo; cried the
+lady. &ldquo;If Mr. Newman does not like my way of shaking hands, I will do it
+again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this charming privilege was lost upon our hero, who was already making his
+way across the room to Madame de Cintré. She looked at him as she shook hands,
+but she went on with the story she was telling her little niece. She had only
+two or three phrases to add, but they were apparently of great moment. She
+deepened her voice, smiling as she did so, and the little girl gazed at her
+with round eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But in the end the young prince married the beautiful Florabella,&rdquo;
+said Madame de Cintré, &ldquo;and carried her off to live with him in the Land
+of the Pink Sky. There she was so happy that she forgot all her troubles, and
+went out to drive every day of her life in an ivory coach drawn by five hundred
+white mice. Poor Florabella,&rdquo; she exclaimed to Newman, &ldquo;had
+suffered terribly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She had had nothing to eat for six months,&rdquo; said little Blanche.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, but when the six months were over, she had a plum-cake as big as
+that ottoman,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré. &ldquo;That quite set her up
+again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What a checkered career!&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;Are you very fond of
+children?&rdquo; He was certain that she was, but he wished to make her say it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I like to talk with them,&rdquo; she answered; &ldquo;we can talk with
+them so much more seriously than with grown persons. That is great nonsense
+that I have been telling Blanche, but it is a great deal more serious than most
+of what we say in society.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish you would talk to me, then, as if I were Blanche&rsquo;s
+age,&rdquo; said Newman, laughing. &ldquo;Were you happy at your ball the other
+night?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ecstatically!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now you are talking the nonsense that we talk in society,&rdquo; said
+Newman. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was my own fault if I was not happy. The ball was very pretty, and
+everyone very amiable.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was on your conscience,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;that you had
+annoyed your mother and your brother.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Cintré looked at him a moment without answering. &ldquo;That is
+true,&rdquo; she replied at last. &ldquo;I had undertaken more than I could
+carry out. I have very little courage; I am not a heroine.&rdquo; She said this
+with a certain soft emphasis; but then, changing her tone, &ldquo;I could never
+have gone through the sufferings of the beautiful Florabella,&rdquo; she added,
+not even for her prospective rewards.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dinner was announced, and Newman betook himself to the side of the old Madame
+de Bellegarde. The dining-room, at the end of a cold corridor, was vast and
+sombre; the dinner was simple and delicately excellent. Newman wondered whether
+Madame de Cintré had had something to do with ordering the repast and greatly
+hoped she had. Once seated at table, with the various members of the ancient
+house of Bellegarde around him, he asked himself the meaning of his position.
+Was the old lady responding to his advances? Did the fact that he was a
+solitary guest augment his credit or diminish it? Were they ashamed to show him
+to other people, or did they wish to give him a sign of sudden adoption into
+their last reserve of favor? Newman was on his guard; he was watchful and
+conjectural; and yet at the same time he was vaguely indifferent. Whether they
+gave him a long rope or a short one he was there now, and Madame de Cintré was
+opposite to him. She had a tall candlestick on each side of her; she would sit
+there for the next hour, and that was enough. The dinner was extremely solemn
+and measured; he wondered whether this was always the state of things in
+&ldquo;old families.&rdquo; Madame de Bellegarde held her head very high, and
+fixed her eyes, which looked peculiarly sharp in her little, finely-wrinkled
+white face, very intently upon the table-service. The marquis appeared to have
+decided that the fine arts offered a safe subject of conversation, as not
+leading to startling personal revelations. Every now and then, having learned
+from Newman that he had been through the museums of Europe, he uttered some
+polished aphorism upon the flesh-tints of Rubens and the good taste of
+Sansovino. His manners seemed to indicate a fine, nervous dread that something
+disagreeable might happen if the atmosphere were not purified by allusions of a
+thoroughly superior cast. &ldquo;What under the sun is the man afraid
+of?&rdquo; Newman asked himself. &ldquo;Does he think I am going to offer to
+swap jack-knives with him?&rdquo; It was useless to shut his eyes to the fact
+that the marquis was profoundly disagreeable to him. He had never been a man of
+strong personal aversions; his nerves had not been at the mercy of the mystical
+qualities of his neighbors. But here was a man towards whom he was irresistibly
+in opposition; a man of forms and phrases and postures; a man full of possible
+impertinences and treacheries. M. de Bellegarde made him feel as if he were
+standing bare-footed on a marble floor; and yet, to gain his desire, Newman
+felt perfectly able to stand. He wondered what Madame de Cintré thought of his
+being accepted, if accepted it was. There was no judging from her face, which
+expressed simply the desire to be gracious in a manner which should require as
+little explicit recognition as possible. Young Madame de Bellegarde had always
+the same manners; she was always preoccupied, distracted, listening to
+everything and hearing nothing, looking at her dress, her rings, her
+finger-nails, seeming rather bored, and yet puzzling you to decide what was her
+ideal of social diversion. Newman was enlightened on this point later. Even
+Valentin did not quite seem master of his wits; his vivacity was fitful and
+forced, yet Newman observed that in the lapses of his talk he appeared excited.
+His eyes had an intenser spark than usual. The effect of all this was that
+Newman, for the first time in his life, was not himself; that he measured his
+movements, and counted his words, and resolved that if the occasion demanded
+that he should appear to have swallowed a ramrod, he would meet the emergency.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After dinner M. de Bellegarde proposed to his guest that they should go into
+the smoking-room, and he led the way toward a small, somewhat musty apartment,
+the walls of which were ornamented with old hangings of stamped leather and
+trophies of rusty arms. Newman refused a cigar, but he established himself upon
+one of the divans, while the marquis puffed his own weed before the fire-place,
+and Valentin sat looking through the light fumes of a cigarette from one to the
+other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t keep quiet any longer,&rdquo; said Valentin, at last.
+&ldquo;I must tell you the news and congratulate you. My brother seems unable
+to come to the point; he revolves around his announcement like the priest
+around the altar. You are accepted as a candidate for the hand of our
+sister.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Valentin, be a little proper!&rdquo; murmured the marquis, with a look
+of the most delicate irritation contracting the bridge of his high nose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There has been a family council,&rdquo; the young man continued;
+&ldquo;my mother and Urbain have put their heads together, and even my
+testimony has not been altogether excluded. My mother and the marquis sat at a
+table covered with green cloth; my sister-in-law and I were on a bench against
+the wall. It was like a committee at the Corps Législatif. We were called up,
+one after the other, to testify. We spoke of you very handsomely. Madame de
+Bellegarde said that if she had not been told who you were, she would have
+taken you for a duke&mdash;an American duke, the Duke of California. I said
+that I could warrant you grateful for the smallest favors&mdash;modest, humble,
+unassuming. I was sure that you would know your own place, always, and never
+give us occasion to remind you of certain differences. After all, you
+couldn&rsquo;t help it if you were not a duke. There were none in your country;
+but if there had been, it was certain that, smart and active as you are, you
+would have got the pick of the titles. At this point I was ordered to sit down,
+but I think I made an impression in your favor.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. de Bellegarde looked at his brother with dangerous coldness, and gave a
+smile as thin as the edge of a knife. Then he removed a spark of cigar-ash from
+the sleeve of his coat; he fixed his eyes for a while on the cornice of the
+room, and at last he inserted one of his white hands into the breast of his
+waistcoat. &ldquo;I must apologize to you for the deplorable levity of my
+brother,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and I must notify you that this is probably not
+the last time that his want of tact will cause you serious
+embarrassment.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I confess I have no tact,&rdquo; said Valentin. &ldquo;Is your
+embarrassment really painful, Newman? The marquis will put you right again; his
+own touch is deliciously delicate.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Valentin, I am sorry to say,&rdquo; the marquis continued, &ldquo;has
+never possessed the tone, the manner, that belongs to a young man in his
+position. It has been a great affliction to his mother, who is very fond of the
+old traditions. But you must remember that he speaks for no one but
+himself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t mind him, sir,&rdquo; said Newman, good-humoredly.
+&ldquo;I know what he amounts to.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In the good old times,&rdquo; said Valentin, &ldquo;marquises and counts
+used to have their appointed fools and jesters, to crack jokes for them.
+Nowadays we see a great strapping democrat keeping a count about him to play
+the fool. It&rsquo;s a good situation, but I certainly am very
+degenerate.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. de Bellegarde fixed his eyes for some time on the floor. &ldquo;My mother
+informed me,&rdquo; he said presently, &ldquo;of the announcement that you made
+to her the other evening.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That I desired to marry your sister?&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That you wished to arrange a marriage,&rdquo; said the marquis, slowly,
+&ldquo;with my sister, the Comtesse de Cintré. The proposal was serious, and
+required, on my mother&rsquo;s part, a great deal of reflection. She naturally
+took me into her counsels, and I gave my most zealous attention to the subject.
+There was a great deal to be considered; more than you appear to imagine. We
+have viewed the question on all its faces, we have weighed one thing against
+another. Our conclusion has been that we favor your suit. My mother has desired
+me to inform you of our decision. She will have the honor of saying a few words
+to you on the subject herself. Meanwhile, by us, the heads of the family, you
+are accepted.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman got up and came nearer to the marquis. &ldquo;You will do nothing to
+hinder me, and all you can to help me, eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will recommend my sister to accept you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman passed his hand over his face, and pressed it for a moment upon his
+eyes. This promise had a great sound, and yet the pleasure he took in it was
+embittered by his having to stand there so and receive his passport from M. de
+Bellegarde. The idea of having this gentleman mixed up with his wooing and
+wedding was more and more disagreeable to him. But Newman had resolved to go
+through the mill, as he imagined it, and he would not cry out at the first turn
+of the wheel. He was silent a while, and then he said, with a certain dryness
+which Valentin told him afterwards had a very grand air, &ldquo;I am much
+obliged to you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I take note of the promise,&rdquo; said Valentin, &ldquo;I register the
+vow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. de Bellegarde began to gaze at the cornice again; he apparently had
+something more to say. &ldquo;I must do my mother the justice,&rdquo; he
+resumed, &ldquo;I must do myself the justice, to say that our decision was not
+easy. Such an arrangement was not what we had expected. The idea that my sister
+should marry a gentleman&mdash;ah&mdash;in business was something of a
+novelty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So I told you, you know,&rdquo; said Valentin raising his finger at
+Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The novelty has not quite worn away, I confess,&rdquo; the marquis went
+on; &ldquo;perhaps it never will, entirely. But possibly that is not altogether
+to be regretted,&rdquo; and he gave his thin smile again. &ldquo;It may be that
+the time has come when we should make some concession to novelty. There had
+been no novelties in our house for a great many years. I made the observation
+to my mother, and she did me the honor to admit that it was worthy of
+attention.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear brother,&rdquo; interrupted Valentin, &ldquo;is not your memory
+just here leading you the least bit astray? Our mother is, I may say,
+distinguished for her small respect of abstract reasoning. Are you very sure
+that she replied to your striking proposition in the gracious manner you
+describe? You know how terribly incisive she is sometimes. Didn&rsquo;t she,
+rather, do you the honor to say, &lsquo;A fiddlestick for your phrases! There
+are better reasons than that?&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Other reasons were discussed,&rdquo; said the marquis, without looking
+at Valentin, but with an audible tremor in his voice; &ldquo;some of them
+possibly were better. We are conservative, Mr. Newman, but we are not also
+bigots. We judged the matter liberally. We have no doubt that everything will
+be comfortable.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman had stood listening to these remarks with his arms folded and his eyes
+fastened upon M. de Bellegarde, &ldquo;Comfortable?&rdquo; he said, with a sort
+of grim flatness of intonation. &ldquo;Why shouldn&rsquo;t we be comfortable?
+If you are not, it will be your own fault; I have everything to make <i>me</i>
+so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My brother means that with the lapse of time you may get used to the
+change&rdquo;&mdash;and Valentin paused, to light another cigarette.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What change?&rdquo; asked Newman in the same tone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Urbain,&rdquo; said Valentin, very gravely, &ldquo;I am afraid that Mr.
+Newman does not quite realize the change. We ought to insist upon that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My brother goes too far,&rdquo; said M. de Bellegarde. &ldquo;It is his
+fatal want of tact again. It is my mother&rsquo;s wish, and mine, that no such
+allusions should be made. Pray never make them yourself. We prefer to assume
+that the person accepted as the possible husband of my sister is one of
+ourselves, and that he should have no explanations to make. With a little
+discretion on both sides, everything, I think, will be easy. That is exactly
+what I wished to say&mdash;that we quite understand what we have undertaken,
+and that you may depend upon our adhering to our resolution.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin shook his hands in the air and then buried his face in them. &ldquo;I
+have less tact than I might have, no doubt; but oh, my brother, if you knew
+what you yourself were saying!&rdquo; And he went off into a long laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. de Bellegarde&rsquo;s face flushed a little, but he held his head higher, as
+if to repudiate this concession to vulgar perturbability. &ldquo;I am sure you
+understand me,&rdquo; he said to Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no, I don&rsquo;t understand you at all,&rdquo; said Newman.
+&ldquo;But you needn&rsquo;t mind that. I don&rsquo;t care. In fact, I think I
+had better not understand you. I might not like it. That wouldn&rsquo;t suit me
+at all, you know. I want to marry your sister, that&rsquo;s all; to do it as
+quickly as possible, and to find fault with nothing. I don&rsquo;t care how I
+do it. I am not marrying you, you know, sir. I have got my leave, and that is
+all I want.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You had better receive the last word from my mother,&rdquo; said the
+marquis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good; I will go and get it,&rdquo; said Newman; and he prepared to
+return to the drawing-room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. de Bellegarde made a motion for him to pass first, and when Newman had gone
+out he shut himself into the room with Valentin. Newman had been a trifle
+bewildered by the audacious irony of the younger brother, and he had not needed
+its aid to point the moral of M. de Bellegarde&rsquo;s transcendent patronage.
+He had wit enough to appreciate the force of that civility which consists in
+calling your attention to the impertinences it spares you. But he had felt
+warmly the delicate sympathy with himself that underlay Valentin&rsquo;s
+fraternal irreverence, and he was most unwilling that his friend should pay a
+tax upon it. He paused a moment in the corridor, after he had gone a few steps,
+expecting to hear the resonance of M. de Bellegarde&rsquo;s displeasure; but he
+detected only a perfect stillness. The stillness itself seemed a trifle
+portentous; he reflected however that he had no right to stand listening, and
+he made his way back to the salon. In his absence several persons had come in.
+They were scattered about the room in groups, two or three of them having
+passed into a small boudoir, next to the drawing-room, which had now been
+lighted and opened. Old Madame de Bellegarde was in her place by the fire,
+talking to a very old gentleman in a wig and a profuse white neck cloth of the
+fashion of 1820. Madame de Cintré was bending a listening head to the historic
+confidences of an old lady who was presumably the wife of the old gentleman in
+the neckcloth, an old lady in a red satin dress and an ermine cape, who wore
+across her forehead a band with a topaz set in it. Young Madame de Bellegarde,
+when Newman came in, left some people among whom she was sitting, and took the
+place that she had occupied before dinner. Then she gave a little push to the
+puff that stood near her, and by a glance at Newman seemed to indicate that she
+had placed it in position for him. He went and took possession of it; the
+marquis&rsquo;s wife amused and puzzled him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know your secret,&rdquo; she said, in her bad but charming English;
+&ldquo;you need make no mystery of it. You wish to marry my sister-in-law.
+<i>C&rsquo;est un beau choix</i>. A man like you ought to marry a tall, thin
+woman. You must know that I have spoken in your favor; you owe me a famous
+taper!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have spoken to Madame de Cintré?&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no, not that. You may think it strange, but my sister-in-law and I
+are not so intimate as that. No; I spoke to my husband and my mother-in-law; I
+said I was sure we could do what we chose with you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am much obliged to you,&rdquo; said Newman, laughing; &ldquo;but you
+can&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know that very well; I didn&rsquo;t believe a word of it. But I wanted
+you to come into the house; I thought we should be friends.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am very sure of it,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be too sure. If you like Madame de Cintré so much, perhaps
+you will not like me. We are as different as blue and pink. But you and I have
+something in common. I have come into this family by marriage; you want to come
+into it in the same way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no, I don&rsquo;t!&rdquo; interrupted Newman. &ldquo;I only want to
+take Madame de Cintré out of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, to cast your nets you have to go into the water. Our positions are
+alike; we shall be able to compare notes. What do you think of my husband?
+It&rsquo;s a strange question, isn&rsquo;t it? But I shall ask you some
+stranger ones yet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps a stranger one will be easier to answer,&rdquo; said Newman.
+&ldquo;You might try me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, you get off very well; the old Comte de la Rochefidèle, yonder,
+couldn&rsquo;t do it better. I told them that if we only gave you a chance you
+would be a perfect <i>talon rouge</i>. I know something about men. Besides, you
+and I belong to the same camp. I am a ferocious democrat. By birth I am
+<i>vieille roche</i>; a good little bit of the history of France is the history
+of my family. Oh, you never heard of us, of course! <i>Ce que c&rsquo;est que
+la gloire!</i> We are much better than the Bellegardes, at any rate. But I
+don&rsquo;t care a pin for my pedigree; I want to belong to my time. I&rsquo;m
+a revolutionist, a radical, a child of the age! I am sure I go beyond you. I
+like clever people, wherever they come from, and I take my amusement wherever I
+find it. I don&rsquo;t pout at the Empire; here all the world pouts at the
+Empire. Of course I have to mind what I say; but I expect to take my revenge
+with you.&rdquo; Madame de Bellegarde discoursed for some time longer in this
+sympathetic strain, with an eager abundance which seemed to indicate that her
+opportunities for revealing her esoteric philosophy were indeed rare. She hoped
+that Newman would never be afraid of her, however he might be with the others,
+for, really, she went very far indeed. &ldquo;Strong people&rdquo;&mdash;<i>le
+gens forts</i>&mdash;were in her opinion equal, all the world over. Newman
+listened to her with an attention at once beguiled and irritated. He wondered
+what the deuce she, too, was driving at, with her hope that he would not be
+afraid of her and her protestations of equality. In so far as he could
+understand her, she was wrong; a silly, rattling woman was certainly not the
+equal of a sensible man, preoccupied with an ambitious passion. Madame de
+Bellegarde stopped suddenly, and looked at him sharply, shaking her fan.
+&ldquo;I see you don&rsquo;t believe me,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you are too
+much on your guard. You will not form an alliance, offensive or defensive? You
+are very wrong; I could help you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman answered that he was very grateful and that he would certainly ask for
+help; she should see. &ldquo;But first of all,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I must
+help myself.&rdquo; And he went to join Madame de Cintré.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have been telling Madame de la Rochefidèle that you are an
+American,&rdquo; she said, as he came up. &ldquo;It interests her greatly. Her
+father went over with the French troops to help you in your battles in the last
+century, and she has always, in consequence, wanted greatly to see an American.
+But she has never succeeded till to-night. You are the first&mdash;to her
+knowledge&mdash;that she has ever looked at.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de la Rochefidèle had an aged, cadaverous face, with a falling of the
+lower jaw which prevented her from bringing her lips together, and reduced her
+conversations to a series of impressive but inarticulate gutturals. She raised
+an antique eyeglass, elaborately mounted in chased silver, and looked at Newman
+from head to foot. Then she said something to which he listened deferentially,
+but which he completely failed to understand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Madame de la Rochefidèle says that she is convinced that she must have
+seen Americans without knowing it,&rdquo; Madame de Cintré explained. Newman
+thought it probable she had seen a great many things without knowing it; and
+the old lady, again addressing herself to utterance, declared&mdash;as
+interpreted by Madame de Cintré&mdash;that she wished she had known it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this moment the old gentleman who had been talking to the elder Madame de
+Bellegarde drew near, leading the marquise on his arm. His wife pointed out
+Newman to him, apparently explaining his remarkable origin. M. de la
+Rochefidèle, whose old age was rosy and rotund, spoke very neatly and clearly,
+almost as prettily, Newman thought, as M. Nioche. When he had been enlightened,
+he turned to Newman with an inimitable elderly grace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Monsieur is by no means the first American that I have seen,&rdquo; he
+said. &ldquo;Almost the first person I ever saw&mdash;to notice him&mdash;was
+an American.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah?&rdquo; said Newman, sympathetically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The great Dr. Franklin,&rdquo; said M. de la Rochefidèle. &ldquo;Of
+course I was very young. He was received very well in our <i>monde.</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not better than Mr. Newman,&rdquo; said Madame de Bellegarde. &ldquo;I
+beg he will offer his arm into the other room. I could have offered no higher
+privilege to Dr. Franklin.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman, complying with Madame de Bellegarde&rsquo;s request, perceived that her
+two sons had returned to the drawing-room. He scanned their faces an instant
+for traces of the scene that had followed his separation from them, but the
+marquis seemed neither more nor less frigidly grand than usual, and Valentin
+was kissing ladies&rsquo; hands with at least his habitual air of
+self-abandonment to the act. Madame de Bellegarde gave a glance at her eldest
+son, and by the time she had crossed the threshold of her boudoir he was at her
+side. The room was now empty and offered a sufficient degree of privacy. The
+old lady disengaged herself from Newman&rsquo;s arm and rested her hand on the
+arm of the marquis; and in this position she stood a moment, holding her head
+high and biting her small under-lip. I am afraid the picture was lost upon
+Newman, but Madame de Bellegarde was, in fact, at this moment a striking image
+of the dignity which&mdash;even in the case of a little time-shrunken old
+lady&mdash;may reside in the habit of unquestioned authority and the
+absoluteness of a social theory favorable to yourself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My son has spoken to you as I desired,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and you
+understand that we shall not interfere. The rest will lie with yourself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;M. de Bellegarde told me several things I didn&rsquo;t
+understand,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;but I made out that. You will leave me
+open field. I am much obliged.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish to add a word that my son probably did not feel at liberty to
+say,&rdquo; the marquise rejoined. &ldquo;I must say it for my own peace of
+mind. We are stretching a point; we are doing you a great favor.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, your son said it very well; didn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not so well as my mother,&rdquo; declared the marquis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can only repeat&mdash;I am much obliged.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is proper I should tell you,&rdquo; Madame de Bellegarde went on,
+&ldquo;that I am very proud, and that I hold my head very high. I may be wrong,
+but I am too old to change. At least I know it, and I don&rsquo;t pretend to
+anything else. Don&rsquo;t flatter yourself that my daughter is not proud. She
+is proud in her own way&mdash;a somewhat different way from mine. You will have
+to make your terms with that. Even Valentin is proud, if you touch the right
+spot&mdash;or the wrong one. Urbain is proud; that you see for yourself.
+Sometimes I think he is a little too proud; but I wouldn&rsquo;t change him. He
+is the best of my children; he cleaves to his old mother. But I have said
+enough to show you that we are all proud together. It is well that you should
+know the sort of people you have come among.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;I can only say, in return, that I am
+<i>not</i> proud; I shan&rsquo;t mind you! But you speak as if you intended to
+be very disagreeable.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall not enjoy having my daughter marry you, and I shall not pretend
+to enjoy it. If you don&rsquo;t mind that, so much the better.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you stick to your own side of the contract we shall not quarrel; that
+is all I ask of you,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;Keep your hands off, and give
+me an open field. I am very much in earnest, and there is not the slightest
+danger of my getting discouraged or backing out. You will have me constantly
+before your eyes; if you don&rsquo;t like it, I am sorry for you. I will do for
+your daughter, if she will accept me, everything that a man can do for a woman.
+I am happy to tell you that, as a promise&mdash;a pledge. I consider that on
+your side you make me an equal pledge. You will not back out, eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what you mean by &lsquo;backing out,&rsquo;&rdquo;
+said the marquise. &ldquo;It suggests a movement of which I think no Bellegarde
+has ever been guilty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Our word is our word,&rdquo; said Urbain. &ldquo;We have given
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, now,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;I am very glad you are so proud.
+It makes me believe that you will keep it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The marquise was silent a moment, and then, suddenly, &ldquo;I shall always be
+polite to you, Mr. Newman,&rdquo; she declared, &ldquo;but, decidedly, I shall
+never like you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be too sure,&rdquo; said Newman, laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am so sure that I will ask you to take me back to my armchair without
+the least fear of having my sentiments modified by the service you render
+me.&rdquo; And Madame de Bellegarde took his arm, and returned to the salon and
+to her customary place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. de la Rochefidèle and his wife were preparing to take their leave, and
+Madame de Cintré&rsquo;s interview with the mumbling old lady was at an end.
+She stood looking about her, asking herself, apparently to whom she should next
+speak, when Newman came up to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your mother has given me leave&mdash;very solemnly&mdash;to come here
+often,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I mean to come often.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall be glad to see you,&rdquo; she answered simply. And then, in a
+moment: &ldquo;You probably think it very strange that there should be such a
+solemnity&mdash;as you say&mdash;about your coming.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, yes; I do, rather.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you remember what my brother Valentin said, the first time you came
+to see me&mdash;that we were a strange, strange family?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was not the first time I came, but the second,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very true. Valentin annoyed me at the time, but now I know you better, I
+may tell you he was right. If you come often, you will see!&rdquo; and Madame
+de Cintré turned away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman watched her a while, talking with other people, and then he took his
+leave. He shook hands last with Valentin de Bellegarde, who came out with him
+to the top of the staircase. &ldquo;Well, you have got your permit,&rdquo; said
+Valentin. &ldquo;I hope you liked the process.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I like your sister, more than ever. But don&rsquo;t worry your brother
+any more for my sake,&rdquo; Newman added. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mind him. I am
+afraid he came down on you in the smoking-room, after I went out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When my brother comes down on me,&rdquo; said Valentin, &ldquo;he falls
+hard. I have a peculiar way of receiving him. I must say,&rdquo; he continued,
+&ldquo;that they came up to the mark much sooner than I expected. I don&rsquo;t
+understand it, they must have had to turn the screw pretty tight. It&rsquo;s a
+tribute to your millions.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s the most precious one they have ever received,&rdquo;
+said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was turning away when Valentin stopped him, looking at him with a brilliant,
+softly-cynical glance. &ldquo;I should like to know whether, within a few days,
+you have seen your venerable friend M. Nioche.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He was yesterday at my rooms,&rdquo; Newman answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What did he tell you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing particular.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t see the muzzle of a pistol sticking out of his
+pocket?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What are you driving at?&rdquo; Newman demanded. &ldquo;I thought he
+seemed rather cheerful for him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin broke into a laugh. &ldquo;I am delighted to hear it! I win my bet.
+Mademoiselle Noémie has thrown her cap over the mill, as we say. She has left
+the paternal domicile. She is launched! And M. Nioche is rather
+cheerful&mdash;<i>for him!</i> Don&rsquo;t brandish your tomahawk at that rate;
+I have not seen her nor communicated with her since that day at the Louvre.
+Andromeda has found another Perseus than I. My information is exact; on such
+matters it always is. I suppose that now you will raise your protest.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My protest be hanged!&rdquo; murmured Newman, disgustedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But his tone found no echo in that in which Valentin, with his hand on the
+door, to return to his mother&rsquo;s apartment, exclaimed, &ldquo;But I shall
+see her now! She is very remarkable&mdash;she is very remarkable!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap13"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<p>
+Newman kept his promise, or his menace, of going often to the Rue de
+l&rsquo;Université, and during the next six weeks he saw Madame de Cintré more
+times than he could have numbered. He flattered himself that he was not in
+love, but his biographer may be supposed to know better. He claimed, at least,
+none of the exemptions and emoluments of the romantic passion. Love, he
+believed, made a fool of a man, and his present emotion was not folly but
+wisdom; wisdom sound, serene, well-directed. What he felt was an intense,
+all-consuming tenderness, which had for its object an extraordinarily graceful
+and delicate, and at the same time impressive, woman who lived in a large gray
+house on the left bank of the Seine. This tenderness turned very often into a
+positive heartache; a sign in which, certainly, Newman ought to have read the
+appellation which science has conferred upon his sentiment. When the heart has
+a heavy weight upon it, it hardly matters whether the weight be of gold or of
+lead; when, at any rate, happiness passes into that place in which it becomes
+identical with pain, a man may admit that the reign of wisdom is temporarily
+suspended. Newman wished Madame de Cintré so well that nothing he could think
+of doing for her in the future rose to the high standard which his present mood
+had set itself. She seemed to him so felicitous a product of nature and
+circumstance that his invention, musing on future combinations, was constantly
+catching its breath with the fear of stumbling into some brutal compression or
+mutilation of her beautiful personal harmony. This is what I mean by
+Newman&rsquo;s tenderness: Madame de Cintré pleased him so, exactly as she was,
+that his desire to interpose between her and the troubles of life had the
+quality of a young mother&rsquo;s eagerness to protect the sleep of her
+first-born child. Newman was simply charmed, and he handled his charm as if it
+were a music-box which would stop if one shook it. There can be no better proof
+of the hankering epicure that is hidden in every man&rsquo;s temperament,
+waiting for a signal from some divine confederate that he may safely peep out.
+Newman at last was enjoying, purely, freely, deeply. Certain of Madame de
+Cintré&rsquo;s personal qualities&mdash;the luminous sweetness of her eyes, the
+delicate mobility of her face, the deep liquidity of her voice&mdash;filled all
+his consciousness. A rose-crowned Greek of old, gazing at a marble goddess with
+his whole bright intellect resting satisfied in the act, could not have been a
+more complete embodiment of the wisdom that loses itself in the enjoyment of
+quiet harmonies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He made no violent love to her&mdash;no sentimental speeches. He never
+trespassed on what she had made him understand was for the present forbidden
+ground. But he had, nevertheless, a comfortable sense that she knew better from
+day to day how much he admired her. Though in general he was no great talker,
+he talked much, and he succeeded perfectly in making her say many things. He
+was not afraid of boring her, either by his discourse or by his silence; and
+whether or no he did occasionally bore her, it is probable that on the whole
+she liked him only the better for his absence of embarrassed scruples. Her
+visitors, coming in often while Newman sat there, found a tall, lean, silent
+man in a half-lounging attitude, who laughed out sometimes when no one had
+meant to be droll, and remained grave in the presence of calculated witticisms,
+for appreciation of which he had apparently not the proper culture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It must be confessed that the number of subjects upon which Newman had no ideas
+was extremely large, and it must be added that as regards those subjects upon
+which he was without ideas he was also perfectly without words. He had little
+of the small change of conversation, and his stock of ready-made formulas and
+phrases was the scantiest. On the other hand he had plenty of attention to
+bestow, and his estimate of the importance of a topic did not depend upon the
+number of clever things he could say about it. He himself was almost never
+bored, and there was no man with whom it would have been a greater mistake to
+suppose that silence meant displeasure. What it was that entertained him during
+some of his speechless sessions I must, however, confess myself unable to
+determine. We know in a general way that a great many things which were old
+stories to a great many people had the charm of novelty to him, but a complete
+list of his new impressions would probably contain a number of surprises for
+us. He told Madame de Cintré a hundred long stories; he explained to her, in
+talking of the United States, the working of various local institutions and
+mercantile customs. Judging by the sequel she was interested, but one would not
+have been sure of it beforehand. As regards her own talk, Newman was very sure
+himself that she herself enjoyed it: this was as a sort of amendment to the
+portrait that Mrs. Tristram had drawn of her. He discovered that she had
+naturally an abundance of gaiety. He had been right at first in saying she was
+shy; her shyness, in a woman whose circumstances and tranquil beauty afforded
+every facility for well-mannered hardihood, was only a charm the more. For
+Newman it had lasted some time, and even when it went it left something behind
+it which for a while performed the same office. Was this the tearful secret of
+which Mrs. Tristram had had a glimpse, and of which, as of her friend&rsquo;s
+reserve, her high-breeding, and her profundity, she had given a sketch of which
+the outlines were, perhaps, rather too heavy? Newman supposed so, but he found
+himself wondering less every day what Madame de Cintré&rsquo;s secrets might
+be, and more convinced that secrets were, in themselves, hateful things to her.
+She was a woman for the light, not for the shade; and her natural line was not
+picturesque reserve and mysterious melancholy, but frank, joyous, brilliant
+action, with just so much meditation as was necessary, and not a grain more. To
+this, apparently, he had succeeded in bringing her back. He felt, himself, that
+he was an antidote to oppressive secrets; what he offered her was, in fact,
+above all things a vast, sunny immunity from the need of having any.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He often passed his evenings, when Madame de Cintré had so appointed it, at the
+chilly fireside of Madame de Bellegarde, contenting himself with looking across
+the room, through narrowed eyelids, at his mistress, who always made a point,
+before her family, of talking to someone else. Madame de Bellegarde sat by the
+fire conversing neatly and coldly with whomsoever approached her, and glancing
+round the room with her slowly-restless eye, the effect of which, when it
+lighted upon him, was to Newman&rsquo;s sense identical with that of a sudden
+spurt of damp air. When he shook hands with her he always asked her with a
+laugh whether she could &ldquo;stand him&rdquo; another evening, and she
+replied, without a laugh, that thank God she had always been able to do her
+duty. Newman, talking once of the marquise to Mrs. Tristram, said that after
+all it was very easy to get on with her; it always was easy to get on with
+out-and-out rascals.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And is it by that elegant term,&rdquo; said Mrs. Tristram, &ldquo;that
+you designate the Marquise de Bellegarde?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;she is wicked, she is an old
+sinner.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is her crime?&rdquo; asked Mrs. Tristram.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t wonder if she had murdered someone&mdash;all from a
+sense of duty, of course.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How can you be so dreadful?&rdquo; sighed Mrs. Tristram.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am not dreadful. I am speaking of her favorably.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pray what will you say when you want to be severe?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall keep my severity for someone else&mdash;for the marquis.
+There&rsquo;s a man I can&rsquo;t swallow, mix the drink as I will.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what has <i>he</i> done?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t quite make out; it is something dreadfully bad, something
+mean and underhand, and not redeemed by audacity, as his mother&rsquo;s
+misdemeanors may have been. If he has never committed murder, he has at least
+turned his back and looked the other way while someone else was committing
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In spite of this invidious hypothesis, which must be taken for nothing more
+than an example of the capricious play of &ldquo;American humor,&rdquo; Newman
+did his best to maintain an easy and friendly style of communication with M. de
+Bellegarde. So long as he was in personal contact with people he disliked
+extremely to have anything to forgive them, and he was capable of a good deal
+of unsuspected imaginative effort (for the sake of his own personal comfort) to
+assume for the time that they were good fellows. He did his best to treat the
+marquis as one; he believed honestly, moreover, that he could not, in reason,
+be such a confounded fool as he seemed. Newman&rsquo;s familiarity was never
+importunate; his sense of human equality was not an aggressive taste or an
+æsthetic theory, but something as natural and organic as a physical appetite
+which had never been put on a scanty allowance and consequently was innocent of
+ungraceful eagerness. His tranquil unsuspectingness of the relativity of his
+own place in the social scale was probably irritating to M. de Bellegarde, who
+saw himself reflected in the mind of his potential brother-in-law in a crude
+and colorless form, unpleasantly dissimilar to the impressive image projected
+upon his own intellectual mirror. He never forgot himself for an instant, and
+replied to what he must have considered Newman&rsquo;s &ldquo;advances&rdquo;
+with mechanical politeness. Newman, who was constantly forgetting himself, and
+indulging in an unlimited amount of irresponsible inquiry and conjecture, now
+and then found himself confronted by the conscious, ironical smile of his host.
+What the deuce M. de Bellegarde was smiling at he was at a loss to divine. M.
+de Bellegarde&rsquo;s smile may be supposed to have been, for himself, a
+compromise between a great many emotions. So long as he smiled he was polite,
+and it was proper he should be polite. A smile, moreover, committed him to
+nothing more than politeness, and left the degree of politeness agreeably
+vague. A smile, too, was neither dissent&mdash;which was too serious&mdash;nor
+agreement, which might have brought on terrible complications. And then a smile
+covered his own personal dignity, which in this critical situation he was
+resolved to keep immaculate; it was quite enough that the glory of his house
+should pass into eclipse. Between him and Newman, his whole manner seemed to
+declare there could be no interchange of opinion; he was holding his breath so
+as not to inhale the odor of democracy. Newman was far from being versed in
+European politics, but he liked to have a general idea of what was going on
+about him, and he accordingly asked M. de Bellegarde several times what he
+thought of public affairs. M. de Bellegarde answered with suave concision that
+he thought as ill of them as possible, that they were going from bad to worse,
+and that the age was rotten to its core. This gave Newman, for the moment, an
+almost kindly feeling for the marquis; he pitied a man for whom the world was
+so cheerless a place, and the next time he saw M. de Bellegarde he attempted to
+call his attention to some of the brilliant features of the time. The marquis
+presently replied that he had but a single political conviction, which was
+enough for him: he believed in the divine right of Henry of Bourbon, Fifth of
+his name, to the throne of France. Newman stared, and after this he ceased to
+talk politics with M. de Bellegarde. He was not horrified nor scandalized, he
+was not even amused; he felt as he should have felt if he had discovered in M.
+de Bellegarde a taste for certain oddities of diet; an appetite, for instance,
+for fishbones or nutshells. Under these circumstances, of course, he would
+never have broached dietary questions with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One afternoon, on his calling on Madame de Cintré, Newman was requested by the
+servant to wait a few moments, as his hostess was not at liberty. He walked
+about the room a while, taking up her books, smelling her flowers, and looking
+at her prints and photographs (which he thought prodigiously pretty), and at
+last he heard the opening of a door to which his back was turned. On the
+threshold stood an old woman whom he remembered to have met several times in
+entering and leaving the house. She was tall and straight and dressed in black,
+and she wore a cap which, if Newman had been initiated into such mysteries,
+would have been a sufficient assurance that she was not a Frenchwoman; a cap of
+pure British composition. She had a pale, decent, depressed-looking face, and a
+clear, dull, English eye. She looked at Newman a moment, both intently and
+timidly, and then she dropped a short, straight English curtsey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Madame de Cintré begs you will kindly wait,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;She
+has just come in; she will soon have finished dressing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I will wait as long as she wants,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;Pray
+tell her not to hurry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, sir,&rdquo; said the woman, softly; and then, instead of
+retiring with her message, she advanced into the room. She looked about her for
+a moment, and presently went to a table and began to arrange certain books and
+knick-knacks. Newman was struck with the high respectability of her appearance;
+he was afraid to address her as a servant. She busied herself for some moments
+with putting the table in order and pulling the curtains straight, while Newman
+walked slowly to and fro. He perceived at last from her reflection in the
+mirror, as he was passing that her hands were idle and that she was looking at
+him intently. She evidently wished to say something, and Newman, perceiving it,
+helped her to begin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are English?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir, please,&rdquo; she answered, quickly and softly; &ldquo;I was
+born in Wiltshire.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what do you think of Paris?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t think of Paris, sir,&rdquo; she said in the same tone.
+&ldquo;It is so long since I have been here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, you have been here very long?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is more than forty years, sir. I came over with Lady Emmeline.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean with old Madame de Bellegarde?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir. I came with her when she was married. I was my lady&rsquo;s
+own woman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you have been with her ever since?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have been in the house ever since. My lady has taken a younger person.
+You see I am very old. I do nothing regular now. But I keep about.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You look very strong and well,&rdquo; said Newman, observing the
+erectness of her figure, and a certain venerable rosiness in her cheek.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank God I am not ill, sir; I hope I know my duty too well to go
+panting and coughing about the house. But I am an old woman, sir, and it is as
+an old woman that I venture to speak to you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, speak out,&rdquo; said Newman, curiously. &ldquo;You needn&rsquo;t
+be afraid of me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir. I think you are kind. I have seen you before.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;On the stairs, you mean?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir. When you have been coming to see the countess. I have taken
+the liberty of noticing that you come often.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes; I come very often,&rdquo; said Newman, laughing. &ldquo;You need
+not have been wide-awake to notice that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have noticed it with pleasure, sir,&rdquo; said the ancient tirewoman,
+gravely. And she stood looking at Newman with a strange expression of face. The
+old instinct of deference and humility was there; the habit of decent
+self-effacement and knowledge of her &ldquo;own place.&rdquo; But there mingled
+with it a certain mild audacity, born of the occasion and of a sense, probably,
+of Newman&rsquo;s unprecedented approachableness, and, beyond this, a vague
+indifference to the old proprieties; as if my lady&rsquo;s own woman had at
+last begun to reflect that, since my lady had taken another person, she had a
+slight reversionary property in herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You take a great interest in the family?&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A deep interest, sir. Especially in the countess.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am glad of that,&rdquo; said Newman. And in a moment he added,
+smiling, &ldquo;So do I!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So I suppose, sir. We can&rsquo;t help noticing these things and having
+our ideas; can we, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean as a servant?&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, there it is, sir. I am afraid that when I let my thoughts meddle
+with such matters I am no longer a servant. But I am so devoted to the
+countess; if she were my own child I couldn&rsquo;t love her more. That is how
+I come to be so bold, sir. They say you want to marry her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman eyed his interlocutress and satisfied himself that she was not a gossip,
+but a zealot; she looked anxious, appealing, discreet. &ldquo;It is quite
+true,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I want to marry Madame de Cintré.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And to take her away to America?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will take her wherever she wants to go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The farther away the better, sir!&rdquo; exclaimed the old woman, with
+sudden intensity. But she checked herself, and, taking up a paper-weight in
+mosaic, began to polish it with her black apron. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mean
+anything against the house or the family, sir. But I think a great change would
+do the poor countess good. It is very sad here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, it&rsquo;s not very lively,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;But Madame
+de Cintré is gay herself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is everything that is good. You will not be vexed to hear that she
+has been gayer for a couple of months past than she had been in many a day
+before.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman was delighted to gather this testimony to the prosperity of his suit,
+but he repressed all violent marks of elation. &ldquo;Has Madame de Cintré been
+in bad spirits before this?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Poor lady, she had good reason. M. de Cintré was no husband for a sweet
+young lady like that. And then, as I say, it has been a sad house. It is
+better, in my humble opinion, that she were out of it. So, if you will excuse
+me for saying so, I hope she will marry you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hope she will!&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you must not lose courage, sir, if she doesn&rsquo;t make up her
+mind at once. That is what I wanted to beg of you, sir. Don&rsquo;t give it up,
+sir. You will not take it ill if I say it&rsquo;s a great risk for any lady at
+any time; all the more when she has got rid of one bad bargain. But if she can
+marry a good, kind, respectable gentleman, I think she had better make up her
+mind to it. They speak very well of you, sir, in the house, and, if you will
+allow me to say so, I like your face. You have a very different appearance from
+the late count, he wasn&rsquo;t five feet high. And they say your fortune is
+beyond everything. There&rsquo;s no harm in that. So I beseech you to be
+patient, sir, and bide your time. If I don&rsquo;t say this to you, sir,
+perhaps no one will. Of course it is not for me to make any promises. I can
+answer for nothing. But I think your chance is not so bad, sir. I am nothing
+but a weary old woman in my quiet corner, but one woman understands another,
+and I think I make out the countess. I received her in my arms when she came
+into the world and her first wedding day was the saddest of my life. She owes
+it to me to show me another and a brighter one. If you will hold firm,
+sir&mdash;and you look as if you would&mdash;I think we may see it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am much obliged to you for your encouragement,&rdquo; said Newman,
+heartily. &ldquo;One can&rsquo;t have too much. I mean to hold firm. And if
+Madame de Cintré marries me you must come and live with her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old woman looked at him strangely, with her soft, lifeless eyes. &ldquo;It
+may seem a heartless thing to say, sir, when one has been forty years in a
+house, but I may tell you that I should like to leave this place.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, it&rsquo;s just the time to say it,&rdquo; said Newman, fervently.
+&ldquo;After forty years one wants a change.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are very kind, sir;&rdquo; and this faithful servant dropped another
+curtsey and seemed disposed to retire. But she lingered a moment and gave a
+timid, joyless smile. Newman was disappointed, and his fingers stole half shyly
+half irritably into his waistcoat-pocket. His informant noticed the movement.
+&ldquo;Thank God I am not a Frenchwoman,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;If I were, I
+would tell you with a brazen simper, old as I am, that if you please, monsieur,
+my information is worth something. Let me tell you so in my own decent English
+way. It <i>is</i> worth something.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How much, please?&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Simply this: a promise not to hint to the countess that I have said
+these things.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If that is all, you have it,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is all, sir. Thank you, sir. Good day, sir.&rdquo; And having once
+more slid down telescope-wise into her scanty petticoats, the old woman
+departed. At the same moment Madame de Cintré came in by an opposite door. She
+noticed the movement of the other <i>portière</i> and asked Newman who had been
+entertaining him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The British female!&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;An old lady in a black
+dress and a cap, who curtsies up and down, and expresses herself ever so
+well.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;An old lady who curtsies and expresses herself?... Ah, you mean poor
+Mrs. Bread. I happen to know that you have made a conquest of her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mrs. Cake, she ought to be called,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;She is
+very sweet. She is a delicious old woman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Cintré looked at him a moment. &ldquo;What can she have said to you?
+She is an excellent creature, but we think her rather dismal.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; Newman answered presently, &ldquo;that I like her
+because she has lived near you so long. Since your birth, she told me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré, simply; &ldquo;she is very faithful;
+I can trust her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman had never made any reflections to this lady upon her mother and her
+brother Urbain; had given no hint of the impression they made upon him. But, as
+if she had guessed his thoughts, she seemed careful to avoid all occasion for
+making him speak of them. She never alluded to her mother&rsquo;s domestic
+decrees; she never quoted the opinions of the marquis. They had talked,
+however, of Valentin, and she had made no secret of her extreme affection for
+her younger brother. Newman listened sometimes with a certain harmless
+jealousy; he would have liked to divert some of her tender allusions to his own
+credit. Once Madame de Cintré told him with a little air of triumph about
+something that Valentin had done which she thought very much to his honor. It
+was a service he had rendered to an old friend of the family; something more
+&ldquo;serious&rdquo; than Valentin was usually supposed capable of being.
+Newman said he was glad to hear of it, and then began to talk about something
+which lay upon his own heart. Madame de Cintré listened, but after a while she
+said, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like the way you speak of my brother
+Valentin.&rdquo; Hereupon Newman, surprised, said that he had never spoken of
+him but kindly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is too kindly,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré. &ldquo;It is a kindness
+that costs nothing; it is the kindness you show to a child. It is as if you
+didn&rsquo;t respect him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Respect him? Why I think I do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You think? If you are not sure, it is no respect.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you respect him?&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;If you do, I do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If one loves a person, that is a question one is not bound to
+answer,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You should not have asked it of me, then. I am very fond of your
+brother.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He amuses you. But you would not like to resemble him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t like to resemble anyone. It is hard enough work
+resembling one&rsquo;s self.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you mean,&rdquo; asked Madame de Cintré, &ldquo;by resembling
+one&rsquo;s self?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, doing what is expected of one. Doing one&rsquo;s duty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But that is only when one is very good.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, a great many people are good,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;Valentin
+is quite good enough for me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Cintré was silent for a short time. &ldquo;He is not good enough for
+me,&rdquo; she said at last. &ldquo;I wish he would do something.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What can he do?&rdquo; asked Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing. Yet he is very clever.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is a proof of cleverness,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;to be happy
+without doing anything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think Valentin is happy, in reality. He is clever,
+generous, brave; but what is there to show for it? To me there is something sad
+in his life, and sometimes I have a sort of foreboding about him. I don&rsquo;t
+know why, but I fancy he will have some great trouble&mdash;perhaps an unhappy
+end.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, leave him to me,&rdquo; said Newman, jovially. &ldquo;I will watch
+over him and keep harm away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One evening, in Madame de Bellegarde&rsquo;s salon, the conversation had
+flagged most sensibly. The marquis walked up and down in silence, like a
+sentinel at the door of some smooth-fronted citadel of the proprieties; his
+mother sat staring at the fire; young Madame de Bellegarde worked at an
+enormous band of tapestry. Usually there were three or four visitors, but on
+this occasion a violent storm sufficiently accounted for the absence of even
+the most devoted habitués. In the long silences the howling of the wind and the
+beating of the rain were distinctly audible. Newman sat perfectly still,
+watching the clock, determined to stay till the stroke of eleven, but not a
+moment longer. Madame de Cintré had turned her back to the circle, and had been
+standing for some time within the uplifted curtain of a window, with her
+forehead against the pane, gazing out into the deluged darkness. Suddenly she
+turned round toward her sister-in-law.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For Heaven&rsquo;s sake,&rdquo; she said, with peculiar eagerness,
+&ldquo;go to the piano and play something.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Bellegarde held up her tapestry and pointed to a little white flower.
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t ask me to leave this. I am in the midst of a masterpiece. My
+flower is going to smell very sweet; I am putting in the smell with this
+gold-colored silk. I am holding my breath; I can&rsquo;t leave off. Play
+something yourself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is absurd for me to play when you are present,&rdquo; said Madame de
+Cintré. But the next moment she went to the piano and began to strike the keys
+with vehemence. She played for some time, rapidly and brilliantly; when she
+stopped, Newman went to the piano and asked her to begin again. She shook her
+head, and, on his insisting, she said, &ldquo;I have not been playing for you;
+I have been playing for myself.&rdquo; She went back to the window again and
+looked out, and shortly afterwards left the room. When Newman took leave,
+Urbain de Bellegarde accompanied him, as he always did, just three steps down
+the staircase. At the bottom stood a servant with his overcoat. He had just put
+it on when he saw Madame de Cintré coming towards him across the vestibule.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Shall you be at home on Friday?&rdquo; Newman asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at him a moment before answering his question. &ldquo;You
+don&rsquo;t like my mother and my brother,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He hesitated a moment, and then he said softly, &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laid her hand on the balustrade and prepared to ascend the stairs, fixing
+her eyes on the first step.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I shall be at home on Friday,&rdquo; and she passed up the wide
+dusky staircase.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the Friday, as soon as he came in, she asked him to please to tell her why
+he disliked her family.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dislike your family?&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;That has a horrid
+sound. I didn&rsquo;t say so, did I? I didn&rsquo;t mean it, if I did.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish you would tell me what you think of them,&rdquo; said Madame de
+Cintré.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think of any of them but you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is because you dislike them. Speak the truth; you can&rsquo;t
+offend me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t exactly love your brother,&rdquo; said Newman.
+&ldquo;I remember now. But what is the use of my saying so? I had forgotten
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are too good-natured,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré gravely. Then, as
+if to avoid the appearance of inviting him to speak ill of the marquis, she
+turned away, motioning him to sit down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he remained standing before her and said presently, &ldquo;What is of much
+more importance is that they don&rsquo;t like me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;they don&rsquo;t,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And don&rsquo;t you think they are wrong?&rdquo; Newman asked. &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t believe I am a man to dislike.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose that a man who may be liked may also be disliked. And my
+brother&mdash;my mother,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;have not made you
+angry?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sometimes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have never shown it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So much the better.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, so much the better. They think they have treated you very
+well.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have no doubt they might have handled me much more roughly,&rdquo;
+said Newman. &ldquo;I am much obliged to them. Honestly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are generous,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a
+disagreeable position.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For them, you mean. Not for me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For me,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not when their sins are forgiven!&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;They
+don&rsquo;t think I am as good as they are. I do. But we shan&rsquo;t quarrel
+about it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t even agree with you without saying something that has a
+disagreeable sound. The presumption was against you. That you probably
+don&rsquo;t understand.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman sat down and looked at her for some time. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I
+really understand it. But when you say it, I believe it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s a poor reason,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré, smiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, it&rsquo;s a very good one. You have a high spirit, a high standard;
+but with you it&rsquo;s all natural and unaffected; you don&rsquo;t seem to
+have stuck your head into a vise, as if you were sitting for the photograph of
+propriety. You think of me as a fellow who has had no idea in life but to make
+money and drive sharp bargains. That&rsquo;s a fair description of me, but it
+is not the whole story. A man ought to care for something else, though I
+don&rsquo;t know exactly what. I cared for money-making, but I never cared
+particularly for the money. There was nothing else to do, and it was impossible
+to be idle. I have been very easy to others, and to myself. I have done most of
+the things that people asked me&mdash;I don&rsquo;t mean rascals. As regards
+your mother and your brother,&rdquo; Newman added, &ldquo;there is only one
+point upon which I feel that I might quarrel with them. I don&rsquo;t ask them
+to sing my praises to you, but I ask them to let you alone. If I thought they
+talked ill of me to you, I should come down upon them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They have let me alone, as you say. They have not talked ill of
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In that case,&rdquo; cried Newman, &ldquo;I declare they are only too
+good for this world!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Cintré appeared to find something startling in his exclamation. She
+would, perhaps, have replied, but at this moment the door was thrown open and
+Urbain de Bellegarde stepped across the threshold. He appeared surprised at
+finding Newman, but his surprise was but a momentary shadow across the surface
+of an unwonted joviality. Newman had never seen the marquis so exhilarated; his
+pale, unlighted countenance had a sort of thin transfiguration. He held open
+the door for someone else to enter, and presently appeared old Madame de
+Bellegarde, leaning on the arm of a gentleman whom Newman had not seen before.
+He had already risen, and Madame de Cintré rose, as she always did before her
+mother. The marquis, who had greeted Newman almost genially, stood apart,
+slowly rubbing his hands. His mother came forward with her companion. She gave
+a majestic little nod at Newman, and then she released the strange gentleman,
+that he might make his bow to her daughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My daughter,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I have brought you an unknown
+relative, Lord Deepmere. Lord Deepmere is our cousin, but he has done only
+to-day what he ought to have done long ago&mdash;come to make our
+acquaintance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Cintré smiled, and offered Lord Deepmere her hand. &ldquo;It is very
+extraordinary,&rdquo; said this noble laggard, &ldquo;but this is the first
+time that I have ever been in Paris for more than three or four weeks.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And how long have you been here now?&rdquo; asked Madame de Cintré.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, for the last two months,&rdquo; said Lord Deepmere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These two remarks might have constituted an impertinence; but a glance at Lord
+Deepmere&rsquo;s face would have satisfied you, as it apparently satisfied
+Madame de Cintré, that they constituted only a <i>naïveté</i>. When his
+companions were seated, Newman, who was out of the conversation, occupied
+himself with observing the newcomer. Observation, however, as regards Lord
+Deepmere&rsquo;s person; had no great range. He was a small, meagre man, of
+some three and thirty years of age, with a bald head, a short nose and no front
+teeth in the upper jaw; he had round, candid blue eyes, and several pimples on
+his chin. He was evidently very shy, and he laughed a great deal, catching his
+breath with an odd, startling sound, as the most convenient imitation of
+repose. His physiognomy denoted great simplicity, a certain amount of
+brutality, and probable failure in the past to profit by rare educational
+advantages. He remarked that Paris was awfully jolly, but that for real,
+thorough-paced entertainment it was nothing to Dublin. He even preferred Dublin
+to London. Had Madame de Cintré ever been to Dublin? They must all come over
+there some day, and he would show them some Irish sport. He always went to
+Ireland for the fishing, and he came to Paris for the new Offenbach things.
+They always brought them out in Dublin, but he couldn&rsquo;t wait. He had been
+nine times to hear La Pomme de Paris. Madame de Cintré, leaning back, with her
+arms folded, looked at Lord Deepmere with a more visibly puzzled face than she
+usually showed to society. Madame de Bellegarde, on the other hand, wore a
+fixed smile. The marquis said that among light operas his favorite was the
+Gazza Ladra. The marquise then began a series of inquiries about the duke and
+the cardinal, the old countess and Lady Barbara, after listening to which, and
+to Lord Deepmere&rsquo;s somewhat irreverent responses, for a quarter of an
+hour, Newman rose to take his leave. The marquis went with him three steps into
+the hall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is he Irish?&rdquo; asked Newman, nodding in the direction of the
+visitor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;His mother was the daughter of Lord Finucane,&rdquo; said the marquis;
+&ldquo;he has great Irish estates. Lady Bridget, in the complete absence of
+male heirs, either direct or collateral&mdash;a most extraordinary
+circumstance&mdash;came in for everything. But Lord Deepmere&rsquo;s title is
+English and his English property is immense. He is a charming young man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman answered nothing, but he detained the marquis as the latter was
+beginning gracefully to recede. &ldquo;It is a good time for me to thank
+you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;for sticking so punctiliously to our bargain, for
+doing so much to help me on with your sister.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The marquis stared. &ldquo;Really, I have done nothing that I can boast
+of,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh don&rsquo;t be modest,&rdquo; Newman answered, laughing. &ldquo;I
+can&rsquo;t flatter myself that I am doing so well simply by my own merit. And
+thank your mother for me, too!&rdquo; And he turned away, leaving M. de
+Bellegarde looking after him.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap14"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<p>
+The next time Newman came to the Rue de l&rsquo;Université he had the good
+fortune to find Madame de Cintré alone. He had come with a definite intention,
+and he lost no time in executing it. She wore, moreover, a look which he
+eagerly interpreted as expectancy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have been coming to see you for six months, now,&rdquo; he said,
+&ldquo;and I have never spoken to you a second time of marriage. That was what
+you asked me; I obeyed. Could any man have done better?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have acted with great delicacy,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m going to change now,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t mean that I am going to be indelicate; but I&rsquo;m going to go
+back to where I began. I <i>am</i> back there. I have been all round the
+circle. Or rather, I have never been away from here. I have never ceased to
+want what I wanted then. Only now I am more sure of it, if possible; I am more
+sure of myself, and more sure of you. I know you better, though I don&rsquo;t
+know anything I didn&rsquo;t believe three months ago. You are
+everything&mdash;you are beyond everything&mdash;I can imagine or desire. You
+know me now; you <i>must</i> know me. I won&rsquo;t say that you have seen the
+best&mdash;but you have seen the worst. I hope you have been thinking all this
+while. You must have seen that I was only waiting; you can&rsquo;t suppose that
+I was changing. What will you say to me, now? Say that everything is clear and
+reasonable, and that I have been very patient and considerate, and deserve my
+reward. And then give me your hand. Madame de Cintré do that. Do it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I knew you were only waiting,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;and I was very
+sure this day would come. I have thought about it a great deal. At first I was
+half afraid of it. But I am not afraid of it now.&rdquo; She paused a moment,
+and then she added, &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a relief.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was sitting on a low chair, and Newman was on an ottoman, near her. He
+leaned a little and took her hand, which for an instant she let him keep.
+&ldquo;That means that I have not waited for nothing,&rdquo; he said. She
+looked at him for a moment, and he saw her eyes fill with tears. &ldquo;With
+me,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;you will be as safe&mdash;as
+safe&rdquo;&mdash;and even in his ardor he hesitated a moment for a
+comparison&mdash;&ldquo;as safe,&rdquo; he said, with a kind of simple
+solemnity, &ldquo;as in your father&rsquo;s arms.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still she looked at him and her tears increased. Then, abruptly, she buried her
+face on the cushioned arm of the sofa beside her chair, and broke into
+noiseless sobs. &ldquo;I am weak&mdash;I am weak,&rdquo; he heard her say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All the more reason why you should give yourself up to me,&rdquo; he
+answered. &ldquo;Why are you troubled? There is nothing but happiness. Is that
+so hard to believe?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To you everything seems so simple,&rdquo; she said, raising her head.
+&ldquo;But things are not so. I like you extremely. I liked you six months ago,
+and now I am sure of it, as you say you are sure. But it is not easy, simply
+for that, to decide to marry you. There are a great many things to think
+about.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There ought to be only one thing to think about&mdash;that we love each
+other,&rdquo; said Newman. And as she remained silent he quickly added,
+&ldquo;Very good, if you can&rsquo;t accept that, don&rsquo;t tell me
+so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should be very glad to think of nothing,&rdquo; she said at last;
+&ldquo;not to think at all; only to shut both my eyes and give myself up. But I
+can&rsquo;t. I&rsquo;m cold, I&rsquo;m old, I&rsquo;m a coward; I never
+supposed I should marry again, and it seems to me very strange I should ever
+have listened to you. When I used to think, as a girl, of what I should do if I
+were to marry freely, by my own choice, I thought of a very different man from
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s nothing against me,&rdquo; said Newman with an immense
+smile; &ldquo;your taste was not formed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His smile made Madame de Cintré smile. &ldquo;Have you formed it?&rdquo; she
+asked. And then she said, in a different tone, &ldquo;Where do you wish to
+live?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Anywhere in the wide world you like. We can easily settle that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know why I ask you,&rdquo; she presently continued.
+&ldquo;I care very little. I think if I were to marry you I could live almost
+anywhere. You have some false ideas about me; you think that I need a great
+many things&mdash;that I must have a brilliant, worldly life. I am sure you are
+prepared to take a great deal of trouble to give me such things. But that is
+very arbitrary; I have done nothing to prove that.&rdquo; She paused again,
+looking at him, and her mingled sound and silence were so sweet to him that he
+had no wish to hurry her, any more than he would have had a wish to hurry a
+golden sunrise. &ldquo;Your being so different, which at first seemed a
+difficulty, a trouble, began one day to seem to me a pleasure, a great
+pleasure. I was glad you were different. And yet if I had said so, no one would
+have understood me; I don&rsquo;t mean simply to my family.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They would have said I was a queer monster, eh?&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They would have said I could never be happy with you&mdash;you were too
+different; and I would have said it was just <i>because</i> you were so
+different that I might be happy. But they would have given better reasons than
+I. My only reason&rdquo;&mdash;and she paused again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this time, in the midst of his golden sunrise, Newman felt the impulse to
+grasp at a rosy cloud. &ldquo;Your only reason is that you love me!&rdquo; he
+murmured with an eloquent gesture, and for want of a better reason Madame de
+Cintré reconciled herself to this one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman came back the next day, and in the vestibule, as he entered the house,
+he encountered his friend Mrs. Bread. She was wandering about in honorable
+idleness, and when his eyes fell upon her she delivered him one of her
+curtsies. Then turning to the servant who had admitted him, she said, with the
+combined majesty of her native superiority and of a rugged English accent,
+&ldquo;You may retire; I will have the honor of conducting monsieur.&rdquo; In
+spite of this combination, however, it appeared to Newman that her voice had a
+slight quaver, as if the tone of command were not habitual to it. The man gave
+her an impertinent stare, but he walked slowly away, and she led Newman
+upstairs. At half its course the staircase gave a bend, forming a little
+platform. In the angle of the wall stood an indifferent statue of an
+eighteenth-century nymph, simpering, sallow, and cracked. Here Mrs. Bread
+stopped and looked with shy kindness at her companion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know the good news, sir,&rdquo; she murmured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have a good right to be first to know it,&rdquo; said Newman.
+&ldquo;You have taken such a friendly interest.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Bread turned away and began to blow the dust off the statue, as if this
+might be mockery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose you want to congratulate me,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;I am
+greatly obliged.&rdquo; And then he added, &ldquo;You gave me much pleasure the
+other day.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned around, apparently reassured. &ldquo;You are not to think that I
+have been told anything,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;I have only guessed. But when
+I looked at you, as you came in, I was sure I had guessed aright.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are very sharp,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;I am sure that in your
+quiet way you see everything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am not a fool, sir, thank God. I have guessed something else
+beside,&rdquo; said Mrs. Bread.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I needn&rsquo;t tell you that, sir; I don&rsquo;t think you would
+believe it. At any rate it wouldn&rsquo;t please you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, tell me nothing but what will please me,&rdquo; laughed Newman.
+&ldquo;That is the way you began.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, sir, I suppose you won&rsquo;t be vexed to hear that the sooner
+everything is over the better.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The sooner we are married, you mean? The better for me,
+certainly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The better for everyone.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The better for you, perhaps. You know you are coming to live with
+us,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m extremely obliged to you, sir, but it is not of myself I was
+thinking. I only wanted, if I might take the liberty, to recommend you to lose
+no time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Whom are you afraid of?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Bread looked up the staircase and then down and then she looked at the
+undusted nymph, as if she possibly had sentient ears. &ldquo;I am afraid of
+everyone,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What an uncomfortable state of mind!&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;Does
+&lsquo;everyone&rsquo; wish to prevent my marriage?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am afraid of already having said too much,&rdquo; Mrs. Bread replied.
+&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t take it back, but I won&rsquo;t say any more.&rdquo; And
+she took her way up the staircase again and led him into Madame de
+Cintré&rsquo;s salon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman indulged in a brief and silent imprecation when he found that Madame de
+Cintré was not alone. With her sat her mother, and in the middle of the room
+stood young Madame de Bellegarde, in her bonnet and mantle. The old marquise,
+who was leaning back in her chair with a hand clasping the knob of each arm,
+looked at him fixedly without moving. She seemed barely conscious of his
+greeting; she appeared to be musing intently. Newman said to himself that her
+daughter had been announcing her engagement and that the old lady found the
+morsel hard to swallow. But Madame de Cintré, as she gave him her hand gave him
+also a look by which she appeared to mean that he should understand something.
+Was it a warning or a request? Did she wish to enjoin speech or silence? He was
+puzzled, and young Madame de Bellegarde&rsquo;s pretty grin gave him no
+information.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have not told my mother,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré abruptly,
+looking at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Told me what?&rdquo; demanded the marquise. &ldquo;You tell me too
+little; you should tell me everything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is what I do,&rdquo; said Madame Urbain, with a little laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let <i>me</i> tell your mother,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old lady stared at him again, and then turned to her daughter. &ldquo;You
+are going to marry him?&rdquo; she cried, softly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Oui, ma mère</i>,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your daughter has consented, to my great happiness,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And when was this arrangement made?&rdquo; asked Madame de Bellegarde.
+&ldquo;I seem to be picking up the news by chance!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My suspense came to an end yesterday,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And how long was mine to have lasted?&rdquo; said the marquise to her
+daughter. She spoke without irritation; with a sort of cold, noble displeasure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Cintré stood silent, with her eyes on the ground. &ldquo;It is over
+now,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where is my son&mdash;where is Urbain?&rdquo; asked the marquise.
+&ldquo;Send for your brother and inform him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Young Madame de Bellegarde laid her hand on the bell-rope. &ldquo;He was to
+make some visits with me, and I was to go and knock&mdash;very softly, very
+softly&mdash;at the door of his study. But he can come to me!&rdquo; She pulled
+the bell, and in a few moments Mrs. Bread appeared, with a face of calm
+inquiry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Send for your brother,&rdquo; said the old lady.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Newman felt an irresistible impulse to speak, and to speak in a certain
+way. &ldquo;Tell the marquis we want him,&rdquo; he said to Mrs. Bread, who
+quietly retired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Young Madame de Bellegarde went to her sister-in-law and embraced her. Then she
+turned to Newman, with an intense smile. &ldquo;She is charming. I congratulate
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I congratulate you, sir,&rdquo; said Madame de Bellegarde, with extreme
+solemnity. &ldquo;My daughter is an extraordinarily good woman. She may have
+faults, but I don&rsquo;t know them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My mother does not often make jokes,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré;
+&ldquo;but when she does they are terrible.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is ravishing,&rdquo; the Marquise Urbain resumed, looking at her
+sister-in-law, with her head on one side. &ldquo;Yes, I congratulate
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Cintré turned away, and, taking up a piece of tapestry, began to ply
+the needle. Some minutes of silence elapsed, which were interrupted by the
+arrival of M. de Bellegarde. He came in with his hat in his hand, gloved, and
+was followed by his brother Valentin, who appeared to have just entered the
+house. M. de Bellegarde looked around the circle and greeted Newman with his
+usual finely-measured courtesy. Valentin saluted his mother and his sisters,
+and, as he shook hands with Newman, gave him a glance of acute interrogation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Arrivez donc, messieurs!</i>&rdquo; cried young Madame de Bellegarde.
+&ldquo;We have great news for you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Speak to your brother, my daughter,&rdquo; said the old lady.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Cintré had been looking at her tapestry. She raised her eyes to her
+brother. &ldquo;I have accepted Mr. Newman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your sister has consented,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;You see after all,
+I knew what I was about.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am charmed!&rdquo; said M. de Bellegarde, with superior benignity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So am I,&rdquo; said Valentin to Newman. &ldquo;The marquis and I are
+charmed. I can&rsquo;t marry, myself, but I can understand it. I can&rsquo;t
+stand on my head, but I can applaud a clever acrobat. My dear sister, I bless
+your union.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The marquis stood looking for a while into the crown of his hat. &ldquo;We have
+been prepared,&rdquo; he said at last &ldquo;but it is inevitable that in face
+of the event one should experience a certain emotion.&rdquo; And he gave a most
+unhilarious smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I feel no emotion that I was not perfectly prepared for,&rdquo; said his
+mother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t say that for myself,&rdquo; said Newman, smiling but
+differently from the marquis. &ldquo;I am happier than I expected to be. I
+suppose it&rsquo;s the sight of your happiness!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t exaggerate that,&rdquo; said Madame de Bellegarde, getting
+up and laying her hand upon her daughter&rsquo;s arm. &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t
+expect an honest old woman to thank you for taking away her beautiful, only
+daughter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You forgot me, dear madame,&rdquo; said the young marquise demurely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, she is very beautiful,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And when is the wedding, pray?&rdquo; asked young Madame de Bellegarde;
+&ldquo;I must have a month to think over a dress.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That must be discussed,&rdquo; said the marquise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, we will discuss it, and let you know!&rdquo; Newman exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have no doubt we shall agree,&rdquo; said Urbain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you don&rsquo;t agree with Madame de Cintré, you will be very
+unreasonable.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come, come, Urbain,&rdquo; said young Madame de Bellegarde, &ldquo;I
+must go straight to my tailor&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old lady had been standing with her hand on her daughter&rsquo;s arm,
+looking at her fixedly. She gave a little sigh, and murmured, &ldquo;No, I did
+<i>not</i> expect it! You are a fortunate man,&rdquo; she added, turning to
+Newman, with an expressive nod.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I know that!&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;I feel tremendously proud. I
+feel like crying it on the housetops,&mdash;like stopping people in the street
+to tell them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Bellegarde narrowed her lips. &ldquo;Pray don&rsquo;t,&rdquo; she
+said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The more people that know it, the better,&rdquo; Newman declared.
+&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t yet announced it here, but I telegraphed it this morning
+to America.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Telegraphed it to America?&rdquo; the old lady murmured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To New York, to St. Louis, and to San Francisco; those are the principal
+cities, you know. To-morrow I shall tell my friends here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have you many?&rdquo; asked Madame de Bellegarde, in a tone of which I
+am afraid that Newman but partly measured the impertinence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Enough to bring me a great many hand-shakes and congratulations. To say
+nothing,&rdquo; he added, in a moment, &ldquo;of those I shall receive from
+your friends.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They will not use the telegraph,&rdquo; said the marquise, taking her
+departure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. de Bellegarde, whose wife, her imagination having apparently taken flight to
+the tailor&rsquo;s, was fluttering her silken wings in emulation, shook hands
+with Newman, and said with a more persuasive accent than the latter had ever
+heard him use, &ldquo;You may count upon me.&rdquo; Then his wife led him away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin stood looking from his sister to our hero. &ldquo;I hope you both
+reflected seriously,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Cintré smiled. &ldquo;We have neither your powers of reflection nor
+your depth of seriousness; but we have done our best.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I have a great regard for each of you,&rdquo; Valentin continued.
+&ldquo;You are charming young people. But I am not satisfied, on the whole,
+that you belong to that small and superior class&mdash;that exquisite group
+composed of persons who are worthy to remain unmarried. These are rare souls;
+they are the salt of the earth. But I don&rsquo;t mean to be invidious; the
+marrying people are often very nice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Valentin holds that women should marry, and that men should not,&rdquo;
+said Madame de Cintré. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know how he arranges it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I arrange it by adoring you, my sister,&rdquo; said Valentin ardently.
+&ldquo;Good-bye.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Adore someone whom you can marry,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;I will
+arrange that for you some day. I foresee that I am going to turn
+apostle.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin was on the threshold; he looked back a moment with a face that had
+turned grave. &ldquo;I adore someone I can&rsquo;t marry!&rdquo; he said. And
+he dropped the <i>portière</i> and departed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They don&rsquo;t like it,&rdquo; said Newman, standing alone before
+Madame de Cintré.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said, after a moment; &ldquo;they don&rsquo;t like
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, now, do you mind that?&rdquo; asked Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes!&rdquo; she said, after another interval.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s a mistake.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t help it. I should prefer that my mother were
+pleased.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why the deuce,&rdquo; demanded Newman, &ldquo;is she not pleased? She
+gave you leave to marry me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very true; I don&rsquo;t understand it. And yet I do &lsquo;mind
+it,&rsquo; as you say. You will call it superstitious.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That will depend upon how much you let it bother you. Then I shall call
+it an awful bore.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will keep it to myself,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré, &ldquo;It shall
+not bother you.&rdquo; And then they talked of their marriage-day, and Madame
+de Cintré assented unreservedly to Newman&rsquo;s desire to have it fixed for
+an early date.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman&rsquo;s telegrams were answered with interest. Having dispatched but
+three electric missives, he received no less than eight gratulatory bulletins
+in return. He put them into his pocket-book, and the next time he encountered
+old Madame de Bellegarde drew them forth and displayed them to her. This, it
+must be confessed, was a slightly malicious stroke; the reader must judge in
+what degree the offense was venial. Newman knew that the marquise disliked his
+telegrams, though he could see no sufficient reason for it. Madame de Cintré,
+on the other hand, liked them, and, most of them being of a humorous cast,
+laughed at them immoderately, and inquired into the character of their authors.
+Newman, now that his prize was gained, felt a peculiar desire that his triumph
+should be manifest. He more than suspected that the Bellegardes were keeping
+quiet about it, and allowing it, in their select circle, but a limited
+resonance; and it pleased him to think that if he were to take the trouble he
+might, as he phrased it, break all the windows. No man likes being repudiated,
+and yet Newman, if he was not flattered, was not exactly offended. He had not
+this good excuse for his somewhat aggressive impulse to promulgate his
+felicity; his sentiment was of another quality. He wanted for once to make the
+heads of the house of Bellegarde <i>feel</i> him; he knew not when he should
+have another chance. He had had for the past six months a sense of the old lady
+and her son looking straight over his head, and he was now resolved that they
+should toe a mark which he would give himself the satisfaction of drawing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is like seeing a bottle emptied when the wine is poured too
+slowly,&rdquo; he said to Mrs. Tristram. &ldquo;They make me want to joggle
+their elbows and force them to spill their wine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To this Mrs. Tristram answered that he had better leave them alone and let them
+do things in their own way. &ldquo;You must make allowances for them,&rdquo;
+she said. &ldquo;It is natural enough that they should hang fire a little. They
+thought they accepted you when you made your application; but they are not
+people of imagination, they could not project themselves into the future, and
+now they will have to begin again. But they <i>are</i> people of honor, and
+they will do whatever is necessary.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman spent a few moments in narrow-eyed meditation. &ldquo;I am not hard on
+them,&rdquo; he presently said, &ldquo;and to prove it I will invite them all
+to a festival.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To a festival?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have been laughing at my great gilded rooms all winter; I will show
+you that they are good for something. I will give a party. What is the grandest
+thing one can do here? I will hire all the great singers from the opera, and
+all the first people from the Théâtre Français, and I will give an
+entertainment.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And whom will you invite?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You, first of all. And then the old lady and her son. And then everyone
+among her friends whom I have met at her house or elsewhere, everyone who has
+shown me the minimum of politeness, every duke of them and his wife. And then
+all my friends, without exception: Miss Kitty Upjohn, Miss Dora Finch, General
+Packard, C. P Hatch, and all the rest. And everyone shall know what it is
+about, that is, to celebrate my engagement to the Countess de Cintré. What do
+you think of the idea?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think it is odious!&rdquo; said Mrs. Tristram. And then in a moment:
+&ldquo;I think it is delicious!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The very next evening Newman repaired to Madame de Bellegarde&rsquo;s salon,
+where he found her surrounded by her children, and invited her to honor his
+poor dwelling by her presence on a certain evening a fortnight distant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The marquise stared a moment. &ldquo;My dear sir,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;what
+do you want to do to me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To make you acquainted with a few people, and then to place you in a
+very easy chair and ask you to listen to Madame Frezzolini&rsquo;s
+singing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean to give a concert?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Something of that sort.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And to have a crowd of people?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All my friends, and I hope some of yours and your daughter&rsquo;s. I
+want to celebrate my engagement.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed to Newman that Madame de Bellegarde turned pale. She opened her fan,
+a fine old painted fan of the last century, and looked at the picture, which
+represented a <i>fête champêtre</i>&mdash;a lady with a guitar, singing, and a
+group of dancers round a garlanded Hermes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We go out so little,&rdquo; murmured the marquis, &ldquo;since my poor
+father&rsquo;s death.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But <i>my</i> dear father is still alive, my friend,&rdquo; said his
+wife. &ldquo;I am only waiting for my invitation to accept it,&rdquo; and she
+glanced with amiable confidence at Newman. &ldquo;It will be magnificent; I am
+very sure of that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I am sorry to say, to the discredit of Newman&rsquo;s gallantry, that this
+lady&rsquo;s invitation was not then and there bestowed; he was giving all his
+attention to the old marquise. She looked up at last, smiling. &ldquo;I
+can&rsquo;t think of letting you offer me a fête,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;until
+I have offered you one. We want to present you to our friends; we will invite
+them all. We have it very much at heart. We must do things in order. Come to me
+about the 25th; I will let you know the exact day immediately. We shall not
+have anyone so fine as Madame Frezzolini, but we shall have some very good
+people. After that you may talk of your own fête.&rdquo; The old lady spoke
+with a certain quick eagerness, smiling more agreeably as she went on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed to Newman a handsome proposal, and such proposals always touched the
+sources of his good-nature. He said to Madame de Bellegarde that he should be
+glad to come on the 25th or any other day, and that it mattered very little
+whether he met his friends at her house or at his own. I have said that Newman
+was observant, but it must be admitted that on this occasion he failed to
+notice a certain delicate glance which passed between Madame de Bellegarde and
+the marquis, and which we may presume to have been a commentary upon the
+innocence displayed in that latter clause of his speech.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin de Bellegarde walked away with Newman that evening, and when they had
+left the Rue de l&rsquo;Université some distance behind them he said
+reflectively, &ldquo;My mother is very strong&mdash;very strong.&rdquo; Then in
+answer to an interrogative movement of Newman&rsquo;s he continued, &ldquo;She
+was driven to the wall, but you would never have thought it. Her fête of the
+25th was an invention of the moment. She had no idea whatever of giving a fête,
+but finding it the only issue from your proposal, she looked straight at the
+dose&mdash;excuse the expression&mdash;and bolted it, as you saw, without
+winking. She is very strong.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dear me!&rdquo; said Newman, divided between relish and compassion.
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care a straw for her fête, I am willing to take the will
+for the deed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; said Valentin, with a little inconsequent touch of family
+pride. &ldquo;The thing will be done now, and done handsomely.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap15"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+<p>
+Valentin de Bellegarde&rsquo;s announcement of the secession of Mademoiselle
+Nioche from her father&rsquo;s domicile and his irreverent reflections upon the
+attitude of this anxious parent in so grave a catastrophe, received a practical
+commentary in the fact that M. Nioche was slow to seek another interview with
+his late pupil. It had cost Newman some disgust to be forced to assent to
+Valentin&rsquo;s somewhat cynical interpretation of the old man&rsquo;s
+philosophy, and, though circumstances seemed to indicate that he had not given
+himself up to a noble despair, Newman thought it very possible he might be
+suffering more keenly than was apparent. M. Nioche had been in the habit of
+paying him a respectful little visit every two or three weeks and his absence
+might be a proof quite as much of extreme depression as of a desire to conceal
+the success with which he had patched up his sorrow. Newman presently learned
+from Valentin several details touching this new phase of Mademoiselle
+Noémie&rsquo;s career.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I told you she was remarkable,&rdquo; this unshrinking observer
+declared, &ldquo;and the way she has managed this performance proves it. She
+has had other chances, but she was resolved to take none but the best. She did
+you the honor to think for a while that you might be such a chance. You were
+not; so she gathered up her patience and waited a while longer. At last her
+occasion came along, and she made her move with her eyes wide open. I am very
+sure she had no innocence to lose, but she had all her respectability. Dubious
+little damsel as you thought her, she had kept a firm hold of that; nothing
+could be proved against her, and she was determined not to let her reputation
+go till she had got her equivalent. About her equivalent she had high ideas.
+Apparently her ideal has been satisfied. It is fifty years old, bald-headed,
+and deaf, but it is very easy about money.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And where in the world,&rdquo; asked Newman, &ldquo;did you pick up this
+valuable information?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In conversation. Remember my frivolous habits. In conversation with a
+young woman engaged in the humble trade of glove-cleaner, who keeps a small
+shop in the Rue St. Roch. M. Nioche lives in the same house, up six pair of
+stairs, across the court, in and out of whose ill-swept doorway Miss Noémie has
+been flitting for the last five years. The little glove-cleaner was an old
+acquaintance; she used to be the friend of a friend of mine, who has married
+and dropped such friends. I often saw her in his society. As soon as I espied
+her behind her clear little window-pane, I recollected her. I had on a
+spotlessly fresh pair of gloves, but I went in and held up my hands, and said
+to her, &lsquo;Dear mademoiselle, what will you ask me for cleaning
+these?&rsquo; &lsquo;Dear count,&rsquo; she answered immediately, &lsquo;I will
+clean them for you for nothing.&rsquo; She had instantly recognized me, and I
+had to hear her history for the last six years. But after that, I put her upon
+that of her neighbors. She knows and admires Noémie, and she told me what I
+have just repeated.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A month elapsed without M. Nioche reappearing, and Newman, who every morning
+read two or three suicides in the <i>Figaro</i>, began to suspect that,
+mortification proving stubborn, he had sought a balm for his wounded pride in
+the waters of the Seine. He had a note of M. Nioche&rsquo;s address in his
+pocket-book, and finding himself one day in the <i>quartier</i>, he determined,
+in so far as he might, to clear up his doubts. He repaired to the house in the
+Rue St. Roch which bore the recorded number, and observed in a neighboring
+basement, behind a dangling row of neatly inflated gloves, the attentive
+physiognomy of Bellegarde&rsquo;s informant&mdash;a sallow person in a
+dressing-gown&mdash;peering into the street as if she were expecting that
+amiable nobleman to pass again. But it was not to her that Newman applied; he
+simply asked of the portress if M. Nioche were at home. The portress replied,
+as the portress invariably replies, that her lodger had gone out barely three
+minutes before; but then, through the little square hole of her lodge-window
+taking the measure of Newman&rsquo;s fortunes, and seeing them, by an
+unspecified process, refresh the dry places of servitude to occupants of fifth
+floors on courts, she added that M. Nioche would have had just time to reach
+the Café de la Patrie, round the second corner to the left, at which
+establishment he regularly spent his afternoons. Newman thanked her for the
+information, took the second turning to the left, and arrived at the Café de la
+Patrie. He felt a momentary hesitation to go in; was it not rather mean to
+&ldquo;follow up&rdquo; poor old Nioche at that rate? But there passed across
+his vision an image of a haggard little septuagenarian taking measured sips of
+a glass of sugar and water and finding them quite impotent to sweeten his
+desolation. He opened the door and entered, perceiving nothing at first but a
+dense cloud of tobacco smoke. Across this, however, in a corner, he presently
+descried the figure of M. Nioche, stirring the contents of a deep glass, with a
+lady seated in front of him. The lady&rsquo;s back was turned to Newman, but M.
+Nioche very soon perceived and recognized his visitor. Newman had gone toward
+him, and the old man rose slowly, gazing at him with a more blighted expression
+even than usual.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you are drinking hot punch,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;I suppose you
+are not dead. That&rsquo;s all right. Don&rsquo;t move.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. Nioche stood staring, with a fallen jaw, not daring to put out his hand. The
+lady, who sat facing him, turned round in her place and glanced upward with a
+spirited toss of her head, displaying the agreeable features of his daughter.
+She looked at Newman sharply, to see how he was looking at her, then&mdash;I
+don&rsquo;t know what she discovered&mdash;she said graciously, &ldquo;How
+d&rsquo; ye do, monsieur? won&rsquo;t you come into our little corner?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you come&mdash;did you come after <i>me?</i>&rdquo; asked M. Nioche
+very softly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I went to your house to see what had become of you. I thought you might
+be sick,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is very good of you, as always,&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;No, I
+am not well. Yes, I am <i>seek</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ask monsieur to sit down,&rdquo; said Mademoiselle Nioche.
+&ldquo;Garçon, bring a chair.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will you do us the honor to <i>seat?</i>&rdquo; said M. Nioche,
+timorously, and with a double foreignness of accent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman said to himself that he had better see the thing out and he took a chair
+at the end of the table, with Mademoiselle Nioche on his left and her father on
+the other side. &ldquo;You will take something, of course,&rdquo; said Miss
+Noémie, who was sipping a glass of madeira. Newman said that he believed not,
+and then she turned to her papa with a smile. &ldquo;What an honor, eh? he has
+come only for us.&rdquo; M. Nioche drained his pungent glass at a long draught,
+and looked out from eyes more lachrymose in consequence. &ldquo;But you
+didn&rsquo;t come for me, eh?&rdquo; Mademoiselle Noémie went on. &ldquo;You
+didn&rsquo;t expect to find me here?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman observed the change in her appearance. She was very elegant and prettier
+than before; she looked a year or two older, and it was noticeable that, to the
+eye, she had only gained in respectability. She looked &ldquo;lady-like.&rdquo;
+She was dressed in quiet colors, and wore her expensively unobtrusive toilet
+with a grace that might have come from years of practice. Her present
+self-possession and <i>aplomb</i> struck Newman as really infernal, and he
+inclined to agree with Valentin de Bellegarde that the young lady was very
+remarkable. &ldquo;No, to tell the truth, I didn&rsquo;t come for you,&rdquo;
+he said, &ldquo;and I didn&rsquo;t expect to find you. I was told,&rdquo; he
+added in a moment &ldquo;that you had left your father.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Quelle horreur!</i>&rdquo; cried Mademoiselle Nioche with a smile.
+&ldquo;Does one leave one&rsquo;s father? You have the proof of the
+contrary.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, convincing proof,&rdquo; said Newman glancing at M. Nioche. The old
+man caught his glance obliquely, with his faded, deprecating eye, and then,
+lifting his empty glass, pretended to drink again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who told you that?&rdquo; Noémie demanded. &ldquo;I know very well. It
+was M. de Bellegarde. Why don&rsquo;t you say yes? You are not polite.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am embarrassed,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I set you a better example. I know M. de Bellegarde told you. He knows a
+great deal about me&mdash;or he thinks he does. He has taken a great deal of
+trouble to find out, but half of it isn&rsquo;t true. In the first place, I
+haven&rsquo;t left my father; I am much too fond of him. Isn&rsquo;t it so,
+little father? M. de Bellegarde is a charming young man; it is impossible to be
+cleverer. I know a good deal about him too; you can tell him that when you next
+see him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Newman, with a sturdy grin; &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t carry
+any messages for you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Just as you please,&rdquo; said Mademoiselle Nioche, &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t depend upon you, nor does M. de Bellegarde either. He is very much
+interested in me; he can be left to his own devices. He is a contrast to
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, he is a great contrast to me, I have no doubt&rdquo; said Newman.
+&ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t exactly know how you mean it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I mean it in this way. First of all, he never offered to help me to a
+<i>dot</i> and a husband.&rdquo; And Mademoiselle Nioche paused, smiling.
+&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t say that is in his favor, for I do you justice. What led
+you, by the way, to make me such a queer offer? You didn&rsquo;t care for
+me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes, I did,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How so?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It would have given me real pleasure to see you married to a respectable
+young fellow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;With six thousand francs of income!&rdquo; cried Mademoiselle Nioche.
+&ldquo;Do you call that caring for me? I&rsquo;m afraid you know little about
+women. You were not <i>galant</i>; you were not what you might have
+been.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman flushed a trifle fiercely. &ldquo;Come!&rdquo; he exclaimed
+&ldquo;that&rsquo;s rather strong. I had no idea I had been so shabby.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mademoiselle Nioche smiled as she took up her muff. &ldquo;It is something, at
+any rate, to have made you angry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her father had leaned both his elbows on the table, and his head, bent forward,
+was supported in his hands, the thin white fingers of which were pressed over
+his ears. In his position he was staring fixedly at the bottom of his empty
+glass, and Newman supposed he was not hearing. Mademoiselle Noémie buttoned her
+furred jacket and pushed back her chair, casting a glance charged with the
+consciousness of an expensive appearance first down over her flounces and then
+up at Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You had better have remained an honest girl,&rdquo; Newman said quietly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. Nioche continued to stare at the bottom of his glass, and his daughter got
+up, still bravely smiling. &ldquo;You mean that I look so much like one?
+That&rsquo;s more than most women do nowadays. Don&rsquo;t judge me yet
+awhile,&rdquo; she added. &ldquo;I mean to succeed; that&rsquo;s what I mean to
+do. I leave you; I don&rsquo;t mean to be seen in cafés, for one thing. I
+can&rsquo;t think what you want of my poor father; he&rsquo;s very comfortable
+now. It isn&rsquo;t his fault, either. <i>Au revoir</i>, little father.&rdquo;
+And she tapped the old man on the head with her muff. Then she stopped a
+minute, looking at Newman. &ldquo;Tell M. de Bellegarde, when he wants news of
+me, to come and get it from <i>me!</i>&rdquo; And she turned and departed, the
+white-aproned waiter, with a bow, holding the door wide open for her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. Nioche sat motionless, and Newman hardly knew what to say to him. The old
+man looked dismally foolish. &ldquo;So you determined not to shoot her, after
+all,&rdquo; Newman said presently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. Nioche, without moving, raised his eyes and gave him a long, peculiar look.
+It seemed to confess everything, and yet not to ask for pity, nor to pretend,
+on the other hand, to a rugged ability to do without it. It might have
+expressed the state of mind of an innocuous insect, flat in shape and conscious
+of the impending pressure of a boot-sole, and reflecting that he was perhaps
+too flat to be crushed. M. Nioche&rsquo;s gaze was a profession of moral
+flatness. &ldquo;You despise me terribly,&rdquo; he said, in the weakest
+possible voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;it is none of my business. It&rsquo;s
+a good plan to take things easily.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I made you too many fine speeches,&rdquo; M. Nioche added. &ldquo;I
+meant them at the time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am sure I am very glad you didn&rsquo;t shoot her,&rdquo; said Newman.
+&ldquo;I was afraid you might have shot yourself. That is why I came to look
+you up.&rdquo; And he began to button his coat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Neither,&rdquo; said M. Nioche. &ldquo;You despise me, and I can&rsquo;t
+explain to you. I hoped I shouldn&rsquo;t see you again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, that&rsquo;s rather shabby,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;You
+shouldn&rsquo;t drop your friends that way. Besides, the last time you came to
+see me I thought you particularly jolly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I remember,&rdquo; said M. Nioche musingly; &ldquo;I was in a
+fever. I didn&rsquo;t know what I said, what I did. It was delirium.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, well, you are quieter now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. Nioche was silent a moment. &ldquo;As quiet as the grave,&rdquo; he
+whispered softly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you very unhappy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. Nioche rubbed his forehead slowly, and even pushed back his wig a little,
+looking askance at his empty glass. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;yes. But that&rsquo;s an
+old story. I have always been unhappy. My daughter does what she will with me.
+I take what she gives me, good or bad. I have no spirit, and when you have no
+spirit you must keep quiet. I shan&rsquo;t trouble you any more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Newman, rather disgusted at the smooth operation of
+the old man&rsquo;s philosophy, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s as you please.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. Nioche seemed to have been prepared to be despised but nevertheless he made
+a feeble movement of appeal from Newman&rsquo;s faint praise. &ldquo;After
+all,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;she is my daughter, and I can still look after her.
+If she will do wrong, why she will. But there are many different paths, there
+are degrees. I can give her the benefit&mdash;give her the
+benefit&rdquo;&mdash;and M. Nioche paused, staring vaguely at Newman, who began
+to suspect that his brain had softened&mdash;&ldquo;the benefit of my
+experience,&rdquo; M. Nioche added.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your experience?&rdquo; inquired Newman, both amused and amazed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My experience of business,&rdquo; said M. Nioche, gravely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, yes,&rdquo; said Newman, laughing, &ldquo;that will be a great
+advantage to her!&rdquo; And then he said good-bye, and offered the poor,
+foolish old man his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. Nioche took it and leaned back against the wall, holding it a moment and
+looking up at him. &ldquo;I suppose you think my wits are going,&rdquo; he
+said. &ldquo;Very likely; I have always a pain in my head. That&rsquo;s why I
+can&rsquo;t explain, I can&rsquo;t tell you. And she&rsquo;s so strong, she
+makes me walk as she will, anywhere! But there&rsquo;s this&mdash;there&rsquo;s
+this.&rdquo; And he stopped, still staring up at Newman. His little white eyes
+expanded and glittered for a moment like those of a cat in the dark.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not as it seems. I haven&rsquo;t forgiven her. Oh, no!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s right; don&rsquo;t,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s
+a bad case.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s horrible, it&rsquo;s horrible,&rdquo; said M. Nioche;
+&ldquo;but do you want to know the truth? I hate her! I take what she gives me,
+and I hate her more. To-day she brought me three hundred francs; they are here
+in my waistcoat pocket. Now I hate her almost cruelly. No, I haven&rsquo;t
+forgiven her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why did you accept the money?&rdquo; Newman asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I hadn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; said M. Nioche, &ldquo;I should have hated her
+still more. That&rsquo;s what misery is. No, I haven&rsquo;t forgiven
+her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Take care you don&rsquo;t hurt her!&rdquo; said Newman, laughing again.
+And with this he took his leave. As he passed along the glazed side of the
+café, on reaching the street, he saw the old man motioning the waiter, with a
+melancholy gesture, to replenish his glass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One day, a week after his visit to the Café de la Patrie, he called upon
+Valentin de Bellegarde, and by good fortune found him at home. Newman spoke of
+his interview with M. Nioche and his daughter, and said he was afraid Valentin
+had judged the old man correctly. He had found the couple hobnobbing together
+in all amity; the old gentleman&rsquo;s rigor was purely theoretic. Newman
+confessed that he was disappointed; he should have expected to see M. Nioche
+take high ground.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;High ground, my dear fellow,&rdquo; said Valentin, laughing;
+&ldquo;there is no high ground for him to take. The only perceptible eminence
+in M. Nioche&rsquo;s horizon is Montmartre, which is not an edifying quarter.
+You can&rsquo;t go mountaineering in a flat country.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He remarked, indeed,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;that he has not forgiven
+her. But she&rsquo;ll never find it out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We must do him the justice to suppose he doesn&rsquo;t like the
+thing,&rdquo; Valentin rejoined. &ldquo;Mademoiselle Nioche is like the great
+artists whose biographies we read, who at the beginning of their career have
+suffered opposition in the domestic circle. Their vocation has not been
+recognized by their families, but the world has done it justice. Mademoiselle
+Nioche has a vocation.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, come,&rdquo; said Newman, impatiently, &ldquo;you take the little
+baggage too seriously.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know I do; but when one has nothing to think about, one must think of
+little baggages. I suppose it is better to be serious about light things than
+not to be serious at all. This little baggage entertains me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, she has discovered that. She knows you have been hunting her up and
+asking questions about her. She is very much tickled by it. That&rsquo;s rather
+annoying.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Annoying, my dear fellow,&rdquo; laughed Valentin; &ldquo;not the
+least!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hanged if I should want to have a greedy little adventuress like that
+know I was giving myself such pains about her!&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A pretty woman is always worth one&rsquo;s pains,&rdquo; objected
+Valentin. &ldquo;Mademoiselle Nioche is welcome to be tickled by my curiosity,
+and to know that I am tickled that she is tickled. She is not so much tickled,
+by the way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You had better go and tell her,&rdquo; Newman rejoined. &ldquo;She gave
+me a message for you of some such drift.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bless your quiet imagination,&rdquo; said Valentin, &ldquo;I have been
+to see her&mdash;three times in five days. She is a charming hostess; we talk
+of Shakespeare and the musical glasses. She is extremely clever and a very
+curious type; not at all coarse or wanting to be coarse; determined not to be.
+She means to take very good care of herself. She is extremely perfect; she is
+as hard and clear-cut as some little figure of a sea-nymph in an antique
+intaglio, and I will warrant that she has not a grain more of sentiment or
+heart than if she was scooped out of a big amethyst. You can&rsquo;t scratch
+her even with a diamond. Extremely pretty,&mdash;really, when you know her, she
+is wonderfully pretty,&mdash;intelligent, determined, ambitious, unscrupulous,
+capable of looking at a man strangled without changing color, she is upon my
+honor, extremely entertaining.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a fine list of attractions,&rdquo; said Newman; &ldquo;they
+would serve as a police-detective&rsquo;s description of a favorite criminal. I
+should sum them up by another word than &lsquo;entertaining.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, that is just the word to use. I don&rsquo;t say she is laudable or
+lovable. I don&rsquo;t want her as my wife or my sister. But she is a very
+curious and ingenious piece of machinery; I like to see it in operation.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I have seen some very curious machines too,&rdquo; said Newman;
+&ldquo;and once, in a needle factory, I saw a gentleman from the city, who had
+stopped too near one of them, picked up as neatly as if he had been prodded by
+a fork, swallowed down straight, and ground into small pieces.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Re-entering his domicile, late in the evening, three days after Madame de
+Bellegarde had made her bargain with him&mdash;the expression is sufficiently
+correct&mdash;touching the entertainment at which she was to present him to the
+world, he found on his table a card of goodly dimensions bearing an
+announcement that this lady would be at home on the 27th of the month, at ten
+o&rsquo;clock in the evening. He stuck it into the frame of his mirror and eyed
+it with some complacency; it seemed an agreeable emblem of triumph, documentary
+evidence that his prize was gained. Stretched out in a chair, he was looking at
+it lovingly, when Valentin de Bellegarde was shown into the room.
+Valentin&rsquo;s glance presently followed the direction of Newman&rsquo;s, and
+he perceived his mother&rsquo;s invitation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what have they put into the corner?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Not the
+customary &lsquo;music,&rsquo; &lsquo;dancing,&rsquo; or <i>&lsquo;tableaux
+vivants&rsquo;?</i> They ought at least to put &lsquo;An
+American.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, there are to be several of us,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;Mrs.
+Tristram told me to-day that she had received a card and sent an
+acceptance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, then, with Mrs. Tristram and her husband you will have support. My
+mother might have put on her card &lsquo;Three Americans.&rsquo; But I suspect
+you will not lack amusement. You will see a great many of the best people in
+France. I mean the long pedigrees and the high noses, and all that. Some of
+them are awful idiots; I advise you to take them up cautiously.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I guess I shall like them,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;I am prepared
+to like every one and everything in these days; I am in high good-humor.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin looked at him a moment in silence and then dropped himself into a
+chair with an unwonted air of weariness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Happy man!&rdquo; he said with a sigh. &ldquo;Take care you don&rsquo;t
+become offensive.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If anyone chooses to take offense, he may. I have a good
+conscience,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So you are really in love with my sister.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir!&rdquo; said Newman, after a pause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And she also?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I guess she likes me,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is the witchcraft you have used?&rdquo; Valentin asked. &ldquo;How
+do <i>you</i> make love?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I haven&rsquo;t any general rules,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;In any
+way that seems acceptable.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suspect that, if one knew it,&rdquo; said Valentin, laughing,
+&ldquo;you are a terrible customer. You walk in seven-league boots.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is something the matter with you to-night,&rdquo; Newman said in
+response to this. &ldquo;You are vicious. Spare me all discordant sounds until
+after my marriage. Then, when I have settled down for life, I shall be better
+able to take things as they come.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And when does your marriage take place?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;About six weeks hence.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin was silent a while, and then he said, &ldquo;And you feel very
+confident about the future?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Confident. I knew what I wanted, exactly, and I know what I have
+got.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are sure you are going to be happy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sure?&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;So foolish a question deserves a
+foolish answer. Yes!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are not afraid of anything?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What should I be afraid of? You can&rsquo;t hurt me unless you kill me
+by some violent means. That I should indeed consider a tremendous sell. I want
+to live and I mean to live. I can&rsquo;t die of illness, I am too ridiculously
+tough; and the time for dying of old age won&rsquo;t come round yet a while. I
+can&rsquo;t lose my wife, I shall take too good care of her. I may lose my
+money, or a large part of it; but that won&rsquo;t matter, for I shall make
+twice as much again. So what have I to be afraid of?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are not afraid it may be rather a mistake for an American man of
+business to marry a French countess?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For the countess, possibly; but not for the man of business, if you mean
+me! But my countess shall not be disappointed; I answer for her
+happiness!&rdquo; And as if he felt the impulse to celebrate his happy
+certitude by a bonfire, he got up to throw a couple of logs upon the already
+blazing hearth. Valentin watched for a few moments the quickened flame, and
+then, with his head leaning on his hand, gave a melancholy sigh. &ldquo;Got a
+headache?&rdquo; Newman asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Je suis triste</i>,&rdquo; said Valentin, with Gallic simplicity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are sad, eh? It is about the lady you said the other night that you
+adored and that you couldn&rsquo;t marry?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did I really say that? It seemed to me afterwards that the words had
+escaped me. Before Claire it was bad taste. But I felt gloomy as I spoke, and I
+feel gloomy still. Why did you ever introduce me to that girl?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, it&rsquo;s Noémie, is it? Lord deliver us! You don&rsquo;t mean to
+say you are lovesick about her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lovesick, no; it&rsquo;s not a grand passion. But the cold-blooded
+little demon sticks in my thoughts; she has bitten me with those even little
+teeth of hers; I feel as if I might turn rabid and do something crazy in
+consequence. It&rsquo;s very low, it&rsquo;s disgustingly low. She&rsquo;s the
+most mercenary little jade in Europe. Yet she really affects my peace of mind;
+she is always running in my head. It&rsquo;s a striking contrast to your noble
+and virtuous attachment&mdash;a vile contrast! It is rather pitiful that it
+should be the best I am able to do for myself at my present respectable age. I
+am a nice young man, eh, <i>en somme?</i> You can&rsquo;t warrant my future, as
+you do your own.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Drop that girl, short,&rdquo; said Newman; &ldquo;don&rsquo;t go near
+her again, and your future will do. Come over to America and I will get you a
+place in a bank.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is easy to say drop her,&rdquo; said Valentin, with a light laugh.
+&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t drop a pretty woman like that. One must be polite, even
+with Noémie. Besides, I&rsquo;ll not have her suppose I am afraid of
+her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So, between politeness and vanity, you will get deeper into the mud?
+Keep them both for something better. Remember, too, that I didn&rsquo;t want to
+introduce you to her; you insisted. I had a sort of uneasy feeling about
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t reproach you,&rdquo; said Valentin. &ldquo;Heaven
+forbid! I wouldn&rsquo;t for the world have missed knowing her. She is really
+extraordinary. The way she has already spread her wings is amazing. I
+don&rsquo;t know when a woman has amused me more. But excuse me,&rdquo; he
+added in an instant; &ldquo;she doesn&rsquo;t amuse you, at second hand, and
+the subject is an impure one. Let us talk of something else.&rdquo; Valentin
+introduced another topic, but within five minutes Newman observed that, by a
+bold transition, he had reverted to Mademoiselle Nioche, and was giving
+pictures of her manners and quoting specimens of her <i>mots</i>. These were
+very witty, and, for a young woman who six months before had been painting the
+most artless madonnas, startlingly cynical. But at last, abruptly, he stopped,
+became thoughtful, and for some time afterwards said nothing. When he rose to
+go it was evident that his thoughts were still running upon Mademoiselle
+Nioche. &ldquo;Yes, she&rsquo;s a frightful little monster!&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap16"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+<p>
+The next ten days were the happiest that Newman had ever known. He saw Madame
+de Cintré every day, and never saw either old Madame de Bellegarde or the elder
+of his prospective brothers-in-law. Madame de Cintré at last seemed to think it
+becoming to apologize for their never being present. &ldquo;They are much taken
+up,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;with doing the honors of Paris to Lord
+Deepmere.&rdquo; There was a smile in her gravity as she made this declaration,
+and it deepened as she added, &ldquo;He is our seventh cousin, you know, and
+blood is thicker than water. And then, he is so interesting!&rdquo; And with
+this she laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman met young Madame de Bellegarde two or three times, always roaming about
+with graceful vagueness, as if in search of an unattainable ideal of amusement.
+She always reminded him of a painted perfume-bottle with a crack in it; but he
+had grown to have a kindly feeling for her, based on the fact of her owing
+conjugal allegiance to Urbain de Bellegarde. He pitied M. de Bellegarde&rsquo;s
+wife, especially since she was a silly, thirstily-smiling little brunette, with
+a suggestion of an unregulated heart. The small marquise sometimes looked at
+him with an intensity too marked not to be innocent, for coquetry is more
+finely shaded. She apparently wanted to ask him something or tell him
+something; he wondered what it was. But he was shy of giving her an
+opportunity, because, if her communication bore upon the aridity of her
+matrimonial lot, he was at a loss to see how he could help her. He had a fancy,
+however, of her coming up to him some day and saying (after looking around
+behind her) with a little passionate hiss, &ldquo;I know you detest my husband;
+let me have the pleasure of assuring you for once that you are right. Pity a
+poor woman who is married to a clock-image in <i>papier-mâché!</i>&rdquo;
+Possessing, however, in default of a competent knowledge of the principles of
+etiquette, a very downright sense of the &ldquo;meanness&rdquo; of certain
+actions, it seemed to him to belong to his position to keep on his guard; he
+was not going to put it into the power of these people to say that in their
+house he had done anything unpleasant. As it was, Madame de Bellegarde used to
+give him news of the dress she meant to wear at his wedding, and which had not
+yet, in her creative imagination, in spite of many interviews with the tailor,
+resolved itself into its composite totality. &ldquo;I told you pale blue bows
+on the sleeves, at the elbows,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;But to-day I don&rsquo;t
+see my blue bows at all. I don&rsquo;t know what has become of them. To-day I
+see pink&mdash;a tender pink. And then I pass through strange, dull phases in
+which neither blue nor pink says anything to me. And yet I must have the
+bows.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have them green or yellow,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Malheureux!</i>&rdquo; the little marquise would cry. &ldquo;Green
+bows would break your marriage&mdash;your children would be
+illegitimate!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Cintré was calmly happy before the world, and Newman had the felicity
+of fancying that before him, when the world was absent, she was almost
+agitatedly happy. She said very tender things. &ldquo;I take no pleasure in
+you. You never give me a chance to scold you, to correct you. I bargained for
+that, I expected to enjoy it. But you won&rsquo;t do anything dreadful; you are
+dismally inoffensive. It is very stupid; there is no excitement for me; I might
+as well be marrying someone else.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am afraid it&rsquo;s the worst I can do,&rdquo; Newman would say in
+answer to this. &ldquo;Kindly overlook the deficiency.&rdquo; He assured her
+that he, at least, would never scold her; she was perfectly satisfactory.
+&ldquo;If you only knew,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;how exactly you are what I
+coveted! And I am beginning to understand why I coveted it; the having it makes
+all the difference that I expected. Never was a man so pleased with his good
+fortune. You have been holding your head for a week past just as I wanted my
+wife to hold hers. You say just the things I want her to say. You walk about
+the room just as I want her to walk. You have just the taste in dress that I
+want her to have. In short, you come up to the mark, and, I can tell you, my
+mark was high.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These observations seemed to make Madame de Cintré rather grave. At last she
+said, &ldquo;Depend upon it, I don&rsquo;t come up to the mark; your mark is
+too high. I am not all that you suppose; I am a much smaller affair. She is a
+magnificent woman, your ideal. Pray, how did she come to such
+perfection?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She was never anything else,&rdquo; Newman said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I really believe,&rdquo; Madame de Cintré went on, &ldquo;that she is
+better than my own ideal. Do you know that is a very handsome compliment? Well,
+sir, I will make her my own!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Tristram came to see her dear Claire after Newman had announced his
+engagement, and she told our hero the next day that his good fortune was simply
+absurd. &ldquo;For the ridiculous part of it is,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that
+you are evidently going to be as happy as if you were marrying Miss Smith or
+Miss Thompson. I call it a brilliant match for you, but you get brilliancy
+without paying any tax upon it. Those things are usually a compromise, but here
+you have everything, and nothing crowds anything else out. You will be
+brilliantly happy as well.&rdquo; Newman thanked her for her pleasant,
+encouraging way of saying things; no woman could encourage or discourage
+better. Tristram&rsquo;s way of saying things was different; he had been taken
+by his wife to call upon Madame de Cintré, and he gave an account of the
+expedition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t catch me giving an opinion on your countess this
+time,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I put my foot in it once. That&rsquo;s a d&mdash;d
+underhand thing to do, by the way&mdash;coming round to sound a fellow upon the
+woman you are going to marry. You deserve anything you get. Then of course you
+rush and tell her, and she takes care to make it pleasant for the poor spiteful
+wretch the first time he calls. I will do you the justice to say, however, that
+you don&rsquo;t seem to have told Madame de Cintré; or if you have, she&rsquo;s
+uncommonly magnanimous. She was very nice; she was tremendously polite. She and
+Lizzie sat on the sofa, pressing each other&rsquo;s hands and calling each
+other <i>chère belle</i>, and Madame de Cintré sent me with every third word a
+magnificent smile, as if to give me to understand that I too was a handsome
+dear. She quite made up for past neglect, I assure you; she was very pleasant
+and sociable. Only in an evil hour it came into her head to say that she must
+present us to her mother&mdash;her mother wished to know your friends. I
+didn&rsquo;t want to know her mother, and I was on the point of telling Lizzie
+to go in alone and let me wait for her outside. But Lizzie, with her usual
+infernal ingenuity, guessed my purpose and reduced me by a glance of her eye.
+So they marched off arm in arm, and I followed as I could. We found the old
+lady in her armchair, twiddling her aristocratic thumbs. She looked at Lizzie
+from head to foot; but at that game Lizzie, to do her justice, was a match for
+her. My wife told her we were great friends of Mr. Newman. The marquise started
+a moment, and then said, &lsquo;Oh, Mr. Newman! My daughter has made up her
+mind to marry a Mr. Newman.&rsquo; Then Madame de Cintré began to fondle Lizzie
+again, and said it was this dear lady that had planned the match and brought
+them together. &lsquo;Oh, &lsquo;tis you I have to thank for my American
+son-in-law,&rsquo; the old lady said to Mrs. Tristram. &lsquo;It was a very
+clever thought of yours. Be sure of my gratitude.&rsquo; And then she began to
+look at me and presently said, &lsquo;Pray, are you engaged in some species of
+manufacture?&rsquo; I wanted to say that I manufactured broom-sticks for old
+witches to ride on, but Lizzie got in ahead of me. &lsquo;My husband, Madame la
+Marquise,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;belongs to that unfortunate class of persons
+who have no profession and no business, and do very little good in the
+world.&rsquo; To get her poke at the old woman she didn&rsquo;t care where she
+shoved me. &lsquo;Dear me,&rsquo; said the marquise, &lsquo;we all have our
+duties.&rsquo; &lsquo;I am sorry mine compel me to take leave of you,&rsquo;
+said Lizzie. And we bundled out again. But you have a mother-in-law, in all the
+force of the term.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;my mother-in-law desires nothing better
+than to let me alone.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betimes, on the evening of the 27th, he went to Madame de Bellegarde&rsquo;s
+ball. The old house in the Rue de l&rsquo;Université looked strangely
+brilliant. In the circle of light projected from the outer gate a detachment of
+the populace stood watching the carriages roll in; the court was illumined with
+flaring torches and the portico carpeted with crimson. When Newman arrived
+there were but a few people present. The marquise and her two daughters were at
+the top of the staircase, where the sallow old nymph in the angle peeped out
+from a bower of plants. Madame de Bellegarde, in purple and fine laces, looked
+like an old lady painted by Vandyke; Madame de Cintré was dressed in white. The
+old lady greeted Newman with majestic formality, and looking round her, called
+several of the persons who were standing near. They were elderly gentlemen, of
+what Valentin de Bellegarde had designated as the high-nosed category; two or
+three of them wore cordons and stars. They approached with measured alertness,
+and the marquise said that she wished to present them to Mr. Newman, who was
+going to marry her daughter. Then she introduced successively three dukes,
+three counts, and a baron. These gentlemen bowed and smiled most agreeably, and
+Newman indulged in a series of impartial hand-shakes, accompanied by a
+&ldquo;Happy to make your acquaintance, sir.&rdquo; He looked at Madame de
+Cintré, but she was not looking at him. If his personal self-consciousness had
+been of a nature to make him constantly refer to her, as the critic before
+whom, in company, he played his part, he might have found it a flattering proof
+of her confidence that he never caught her eyes resting upon him. It is a
+reflection Newman did not make, but we nevertheless risk it, that in spite of
+this circumstance she probably saw every movement of his little finger. Young
+Madame de Bellegarde was dressed in an audacious toilet of crimson crape,
+bestrewn with huge silver moons&mdash;thin crescent and full disks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t say anything about my dress,&rdquo; she said to Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I feel,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;as if I were looking at you through a
+telescope. It is very strange.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If it is strange it matches the occasion. But I am not a heavenly
+body.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never saw the sky at midnight that particular shade of crimson,&rdquo;
+said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is my originality; anyone could have chosen blue. My sister-in-law
+would have chosen a lovely shade of blue, with a dozen little delicate moons.
+But I think crimson is much more amusing. And I give my idea, which is
+moonshine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Moonshine and bloodshed,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A murder by moonlight,&rdquo; laughed Madame de Bellegarde. &ldquo;What
+a delicious idea for a toilet! To make it complete, there is the silver dagger,
+you see, stuck into my hair. But here comes Lord Deepmere,&rdquo; she added in
+a moment. &ldquo;I must find out what he thinks of it.&rdquo; Lord Deepmere
+came up, looking very red in the face, and laughing. &ldquo;Lord Deepmere
+can&rsquo;t decide which he prefers, my sister-in-law or me,&rdquo; said Madame
+de Bellegarde. &ldquo;He likes Claire because she is his cousin, and me because
+I am not. But he has no right to make love to Claire, whereas I am perfectly
+<i>disponible</i>. It is very wrong to make love to a woman who is engaged, but
+it is very wrong not to make love to a woman who is married.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, it&rsquo;s very jolly making love to married women,&rdquo; said Lord
+Deepmere, &ldquo;because they can&rsquo;t ask you to marry them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is that what the others do, the spinsters?&rdquo; Newman inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh dear, yes,&rdquo; said Lord Deepmere; &ldquo;in England all the girls
+ask a fellow to marry them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And a fellow brutally refuses,&rdquo; said Madame de Bellegarde.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, really, you know, a fellow can&rsquo;t marry any girl that asks
+him,&rdquo; said his lordship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your cousin won&rsquo;t ask you. She is going to marry Mr.
+Newman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, that&rsquo;s a very different thing!&rdquo; laughed Lord Deepmere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You would have accepted <i>her</i>, I suppose. That makes me hope that
+after all you prefer me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, when things are nice I never prefer one to the other,&rdquo; said
+the young Englishman. &ldquo;I take them all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, what a horror! I won&rsquo;t be taken in that way; I must be kept
+apart,&rdquo; cried Madame de Bellegarde. &ldquo;Mr. Newman is much better; he
+knows how to choose. Oh, he chooses as if he were threading a needle. He
+prefers Madame de Cintré to any conceivable creature or thing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, you can&rsquo;t help my being her cousin,&rdquo; said Lord
+Deepmere to Newman, with candid hilarity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, no, I can&rsquo;t help that,&rdquo; said Newman, laughing back;
+&ldquo;neither can she!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you can&rsquo;t help my dancing with her,&rdquo; said Lord Deepmere,
+with sturdy simplicity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I could prevent that only by dancing with her myself,&rdquo; said
+Newman. &ldquo;But unfortunately I don&rsquo;t know how to dance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, you may dance without knowing how; may you not, milord?&rdquo; said
+Madame de Bellegarde. But to this Lord Deepmere replied that a fellow ought to
+know how to dance if he didn&rsquo;t want to make an ass of himself; and at
+this moment Urbain de Bellegarde joined the group, slow-stepping and with his
+hands behind him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is a very splendid entertainment,&rdquo; said Newman, cheerfully.
+&ldquo;The old house looks very bright.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If <i>you</i> are pleased, we are content,&rdquo; said the marquis,
+lifting his shoulders and bending them forward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I suspect everyone is pleased,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;How can
+they help being pleased when the first thing they see as they come in is your
+sister, standing there as beautiful as an angel?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, she is very beautiful,&rdquo; rejoined the marquis, solemnly.
+&ldquo;But that is not so great a source of satisfaction to other people,
+naturally, as to you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I am satisfied, marquis, I am satisfied,&rdquo; said Newman, with
+his protracted enunciation. &ldquo;And now tell me,&rdquo; he added, looking
+round, &ldquo;who some of your friends are.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. de Bellegarde looked about him in silence, with his head bent and his hand
+raised to his lower lip, which he slowly rubbed. A stream of people had been
+pouring into the salon in which Newman stood with his host, the rooms were
+filling up and the spectacle had become brilliant. It borrowed its splendor
+chiefly from the shining shoulders and profuse jewels of the women, and from
+the voluminous elegance of their dresses. There were no uniforms, as Madame de
+Bellegarde&rsquo;s door was inexorably closed against the myrmidons of the
+upstart power which then ruled the fortunes of France, and the great company of
+smiling and chattering faces was not graced by any very frequent suggestions of
+harmonious beauty. It is a pity, nevertheless, that Newman had not been a
+physiognomist, for a great many of the faces were irregularly agreeable,
+expressive, and suggestive. If the occasion had been different they would
+hardly have pleased him; he would have thought the women not pretty enough and
+the men too smirking; but he was now in a humor to receive none but agreeable
+impressions, and he looked no more narrowly than to perceive that everyone was
+brilliant, and to feel that the sun of their brilliancy was a part of his
+credit. &ldquo;I will present you to some people,&rdquo; said M. de Bellegarde
+after a while. &ldquo;I will make a point of it, in fact. You will allow
+me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I will shake hands with anyone you want,&rdquo; said Newman.
+&ldquo;Your mother just introduced me to half a dozen old gentlemen. Take care
+you don&rsquo;t pick up the same parties again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who are the gentlemen to whom my mother presented you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Upon my word, I forgot them,&rdquo; said Newman, laughing. &ldquo;The
+people here look very much alike.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suspect they have not forgotten you,&rdquo; said the marquis. And he
+began to walk through the rooms. Newman, to keep near him in the crowd, took
+his arm; after which for some time, the marquis walked straight along, in
+silence. At last, reaching the farther end of the suite of reception-rooms,
+Newman found himself in the presence of a lady of monstrous proportions, seated
+in a very capacious armchair, with several persons standing in a semicircle
+round her. This little group had divided as the marquis came up, and M. de
+Bellegarde stepped forward and stood for an instant silent and obsequious, with
+his hat raised to his lips, as Newman had seen some gentlemen stand in churches
+as soon as they entered their pews. The lady, indeed, bore a very fair likeness
+to a reverend effigy in some idolatrous shrine. She was monumentally stout and
+imperturbably serene. Her aspect was to Newman almost formidable; he had a
+troubled consciousness of a triple chin, a small piercing eye, a vast expanse
+of uncovered bosom, a nodding and twinkling tiara of plumes and gems, and an
+immense circumference of satin petticoat. With her little circle of beholders
+this remarkable woman reminded him of the Fat Lady at a fair. She fixed her
+small, unwinking eyes at the new-comers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dear duchess,&rdquo; said the marquis, &ldquo;let me present you our
+good friend Mr. Newman, of whom you have heard us speak. Wishing to make Mr.
+Newman known to those who are dear to us, I could not possibly fail to begin
+with you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Charmed, dear friend; charmed, monsieur,&rdquo; said the duchess in a
+voice which, though small and shrill, was not disagreeable, while Newman
+executed his obeisance. &ldquo;I came on purpose to see monsieur. I hope he
+appreciates the compliment. You have only to look at me to do so, sir,&rdquo;
+she continued, sweeping her person with a much-encompassing glance. Newman
+hardly knew what to say, though it seemed that to a duchess who joked about her
+corpulence one might say almost anything. On hearing that the duchess had come
+on purpose to see Newman, the gentlemen who surrounded her turned a little and
+looked at him with sympathetic curiosity. The marquis with supernatural gravity
+mentioned to him the name of each, while the gentleman who bore it bowed; they
+were all what are called in France <i>beaux noms</i>. &ldquo;I wanted extremely
+to see you,&rdquo; the duchess went on. &ldquo;<i>C&rsquo;est positif</i>. In
+the first place, I am very fond of the person you are going to marry; she is
+the most charming creature in France. Mind you treat her well, or you shall
+hear some news of me. But you look as if you were good. I am told you are very
+remarkable. I have heard all sorts of extraordinary things about you.
+<i>Voyons</i>, are they true?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what you can have heard,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, you have your <i>légende</i>. We have heard that you have had a
+career the most checkered, the most <i>bizarre</i>. What is that about your
+having founded a city some ten years ago in the great West, a city which
+contains to-day half a million of inhabitants? Isn&rsquo;t it half a million,
+messieurs? You are exclusive proprietor of this flourishing settlement, and are
+consequently fabulously rich, and you would be richer still if you didn&rsquo;t
+grant lands and houses free of rent to all new-comers who will pledge
+themselves never to smoke cigars. At this game, in three years, we are told,
+you are going to be made president of America.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The duchess recited this amazing &ldquo;legend&rdquo; with a smooth
+self-possession which gave the speech to Newman&rsquo;s mind, the air of being
+a bit of amusing dialogue in a play, delivered by a veteran comic actress.
+Before she had ceased speaking he had burst into loud, irrepressible laughter.
+&ldquo;Dear duchess, dear duchess,&rdquo; the marquis began to murmur,
+soothingly. Two or three persons came to the door of the room to see who was
+laughing at the duchess. But the lady continued with the soft, serene assurance
+of a person who, as a duchess, was certain of being listened to, and, as a
+garrulous woman, was independent of the pulse of her auditors. &ldquo;But I
+know you are very remarkable. You must be, to have endeared yourself to this
+good marquis and to his admirable world. They are very exacting. I myself am
+not very sure at this hour of really possessing it. Eh, Bellegarde? To please
+you, I see, one must be an American millionaire. But your real triumph, my dear
+sir, is pleasing the countess; she is as difficult as a princess in a fairy
+tale. Your success is a miracle. What is your secret? I don&rsquo;t ask you to
+reveal it before all these gentlemen, but come and see me some day and give me
+a specimen of your talents.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The secret is with Madame de Cintré,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;You must
+ask her for it. It consists in her having a great deal of charity.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very pretty!&rdquo; said the duchess. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s a very nice
+specimen, to begin with. What, Bellegarde, are you already taking monsieur
+away?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have a duty to perform, dear friend,&rdquo; said the marquis, pointing
+to the other groups.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, for you I know what that means. Well, I have seen monsieur; that is
+what I wanted. He can&rsquo;t persuade me that he isn&rsquo;t very clever.
+Farewell.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As Newman passed on with his host, he asked who the duchess was. &ldquo;The
+greatest lady in France,&rdquo; said the marquis. M. de Bellegarde then
+presented his prospective brother-in-law to some twenty other persons of both
+sexes, selected apparently for their typically august character. In some cases
+this character was written in good round hand upon the countenance of the
+wearer; in others Newman was thankful for such help as his companion&rsquo;s
+impressively brief intimation contributed to the discovery of it. There were
+large, majestic men, and small demonstrative men; there were ugly ladies in
+yellow lace and quaint jewels, and pretty ladies with white shoulders from
+which jewels and everything else were absent. Everyone gave Newman extreme
+attention, everyone smiled, everyone was charmed to make his acquaintance,
+everyone looked at him with that soft hardness of good society which puts out
+its hand but keeps its fingers closed over the coin. If the marquis was going
+about as a bear-leader, if the fiction of Beauty and the Beast was supposed to
+have found its companion-piece, the general impression appeared to be that the
+bear was a very fair imitation of humanity. Newman found his reception among
+the marquis&rsquo;s friends very &ldquo;pleasant;&rdquo; he could not have said
+more for it. It was pleasant to be treated with so much explicit politeness; it
+was pleasant to hear neatly turned civilities, with a flavor of wit, uttered
+from beneath carefully-shaped moustaches; it was pleasant to see clever
+Frenchwomen&mdash;they all seemed clever&mdash;turn their backs to their
+partners to get a good look at the strange American whom Claire de Cintré was
+to marry, and reward the object of the exhibition with a charming smile. At
+last, as he turned away from a battery of smiles and other amenities, Newman
+caught the eye of the marquis looking at him heavily; and thereupon, for a
+single instant, he checked himself. &ldquo;Am I behaving like a d&mdash;d
+fool?&rdquo; he asked himself. &ldquo;Am I stepping about like a terrier on his
+hind legs?&rdquo; At this moment he perceived Mrs. Tristram at the other side
+of the room, and he waved his hand in farewell to M. de Bellegarde and made his
+way toward her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Am I holding my head too high?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Do I look as if I
+had the lower end of a pulley fastened to my chin?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You look like all happy men, very ridiculous,&rdquo; said Mrs. Tristram.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the usual thing, neither better nor worse. I have been
+watching you for the last ten minutes, and I have been watching M. de
+Bellegarde. He doesn&rsquo;t like it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The more credit to him for putting it through,&rdquo; replied Newman.
+&ldquo;But I shall be generous. I shan&rsquo;t trouble him any more. But I am
+very happy. I can&rsquo;t stand still here. Please to take my arm and we will
+go for a walk.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He led Mrs. Tristram through all the rooms. There were a great many of them,
+and, decorated for the occasion and filled with a stately crowd, their somewhat
+tarnished nobleness recovered its lustre. Mrs. Tristram, looking about her,
+dropped a series of softly-incisive comments upon her fellow-guests. But Newman
+made vague answers; he hardly heard her, his thoughts were elsewhere. They were
+lost in a cheerful sense of success, of attainment and victory. His momentary
+care as to whether he looked like a fool passed away, leaving him simply with a
+rich contentment. He had got what he wanted. The savor of success had always
+been highly agreeable to him, and it had been his fortune to know it often. But
+it had never before been so sweet, been associated with so much that was
+brilliant and suggestive and entertaining. The lights, the flowers, the music,
+the crowd, the splendid women, the jewels, the strangeness even of the
+universal murmur of a clever foreign tongue were all a vivid symbol and
+assurance of his having grasped his purpose and forced along his groove. If
+Newman&rsquo;s smile was larger than usual, it was not tickled vanity that
+pulled the strings; he had no wish to be shown with the finger or to achieve a
+personal success. If he could have looked down at the scene, invisible, from a
+hole in the roof, he would have enjoyed it quite as much. It would have spoken
+to him about his own prosperity and deepened that easy feeling about life to
+which, sooner or later, he made all experience contribute. Just now the cup
+seemed full.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is a very pretty party,&rdquo; said Mrs. Tristram, after they had
+walked a while. &ldquo;I have seen nothing objectionable except my husband
+leaning against the wall and talking to an individual whom I suppose he takes
+for a duke, but whom I more than suspect to be the functionary who attends to
+the lamps. Do you think you could separate them? Knock over a lamp!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I doubt whether Newman, who saw no harm in Tristram&rsquo;s conversing with an
+ingenious mechanic, would have complied with this request; but at this moment
+Valentin de Bellegarde drew near. Newman, some weeks previously, had presented
+Madame de Cintré&rsquo;s youngest brother to Mrs. Tristram, for whose merits
+Valentin professed a discriminating relish and to whom he had paid several
+visits.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you ever read Keats&rsquo;s Belle Dame sans Merci?&rdquo; asked Mrs.
+Tristram. &ldquo;You remind me of the hero of the ballad:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&lsquo;Oh, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,<br />
+Alone and palely loitering?&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I am alone, it is because I have been deprived of your
+society,&rdquo; said Valentin. &ldquo;Besides it is good manners for no man
+except Newman to look happy. This is all to his address. It is not for you and
+me to go before the curtain.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You promised me last spring,&rdquo; said Newman to Mrs. Tristram,
+&ldquo;that six months from that time I should get into a monstrous rage. It
+seems to me the time&rsquo;s up, and yet the nearest I can come to doing
+anything rough now is to offer you a <i>café glacé</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I told you we should do things grandly,&rdquo; said Valentin. &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t allude to the <i>cafés glacés</i>. But everyone is here, and my
+sister told me just now that Urbain had been adorable.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s a good fellow, he&rsquo;s a good fellow,&rdquo; said Newman.
+&ldquo;I love him as a brother. That reminds me that I ought to go and say
+something polite to your mother.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let it be something very polite indeed,&rdquo; said Valentin. &ldquo;It
+may be the last time you will feel so much like it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman walked away, almost disposed to clasp old Madame de Bellegarde round the
+waist. He passed through several rooms and at last found the old marquise in
+the first saloon, seated on a sofa, with her young kinsman, Lord Deepmere,
+beside her. The young man looked somewhat bored; his hands were thrust into his
+pockets and his eyes were fixed upon the toes of his shoes, his feet being
+thrust out in front of him. Madame de Bellegarde appeared to have been talking
+to him with some intensity and to be waiting for an answer to what she had
+said, or for some sign of the effect of her words. Her hands were folded in her
+lap, and she was looking at his lordship&rsquo;s simple physiognomy with an air
+of politely suppressed irritation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lord Deepmere looked up as Newman approached, met his eyes, and changed color.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am afraid I disturb an interesting interview,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Bellegarde rose, and her companion rising at the same time, she put
+her hand into his arm. She answered nothing for an instant, and then, as he
+remained silent, she said with a smile, &ldquo;It would be polite for Lord
+Deepmere to say it was very interesting.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m not polite!&rdquo; cried his lordship. &ldquo;But it
+<i>was</i> interesting.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Madame de Bellegarde was giving you some good advice, eh?&rdquo; said
+Newman; &ldquo;toning you down a little?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was giving him some excellent advice,&rdquo; said the marquise, fixing
+her fresh, cold eyes upon our hero. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s for him to take
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Take it, sir&mdash;take it,&rdquo; Newman exclaimed. &ldquo;Any advice
+the marquise gives you to-night must be good. For to-night, marquise, you must
+speak from a cheerful, comfortable spirit, and that makes good advice. You see
+everything going on so brightly and successfully round you. Your party is
+magnificent; it was a very happy thought. It is much better than that thing of
+mine would have been.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you are pleased I am satisfied,&rdquo; said Madame de Bellegarde.
+&ldquo;My desire was to please you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you want to please me a little more?&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;Just
+drop our lordly friend; I am sure he wants to be off and shake his heels a
+little. Then take my arm and walk through the rooms.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My desire was to please you,&rdquo; the old lady repeated. And she
+liberated Lord Deepmere, Newman rather wondering at her docility. &ldquo;If
+this young man is wise,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;he will go and find my
+daughter and ask her to dance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have been endorsing your advice,&rdquo; said Newman, bending over her
+and laughing, &ldquo;I suppose I must swallow that!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lord Deepmere wiped his forehead and departed, and Madame de Bellegarde took
+Newman&rsquo;s arm. &ldquo;Yes, it&rsquo;s a very pleasant, sociable
+entertainment,&rdquo; the latter declared, as they proceeded on their circuit.
+&ldquo;Everyone seems to know everyone and to be glad to see everyone. The
+marquis has made me acquainted with ever so many people, and I feel quite like
+one of the family. It&rsquo;s an occasion,&rdquo; Newman continued, wanting to
+say something thoroughly kind and comfortable, &ldquo;that I shall always
+remember, and remember very pleasantly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think it is an occasion that we shall none of us forget,&rdquo; said
+the marquise, with her pure, neat enunciation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+People made way for her as she passed, others turned round and looked at her,
+and she received a great many greetings and pressings of the hand, all of which
+she accepted with the most delicate dignity. But though she smiled upon
+everyone, she said nothing until she reached the last of the rooms, where she
+found her elder son. Then, &ldquo;This is enough, sir,&rdquo; she declared with
+measured softness to Newman, and turned to the marquis. He put out both his
+hands and took both hers, drawing her to a seat with an air of the tenderest
+veneration. It was a most harmonious family group, and Newman discreetly
+retired. He moved through the rooms for some time longer, circulating freely,
+overtopping most people by his great height, renewing acquaintance with some of
+the groups to which Urbain de Bellegarde had presented him, and expending
+generally the surplus of his equanimity. He continued to find it all extremely
+agreeable; but the most agreeable things have an end, and the revelry on this
+occasion began to deepen to a close. The music was sounding its ultimate
+strains and people were looking for the marquise, to make their farewells.
+There seemed to be some difficulty in finding her, and Newman heard a report
+that she had left the ball, feeling faint. &ldquo;She has succumbed to the
+emotions of the evening,&rdquo; he heard a lady say. &ldquo;Poor, dear
+marquise; I can imagine all that they may have been for her!&rdquo; But he
+learned immediately afterwards that she had recovered herself and was seated in
+an armchair near the doorway, receiving parting compliments from great ladies
+who insisted upon her not rising. He himself set out in quest of Madame de
+Cintré. He had seen her move past him many times in the rapid circles of a
+waltz, but in accordance with her explicit instructions he had exchanged no
+words with her since the beginning of the evening. The whole house having been
+thrown open, the apartments of the <i>rez-de-chaussée</i> were also accessible,
+though a smaller number of persons had gathered there. Newman wandered through
+them, observing a few scattered couples to whom this comparative seclusion
+appeared grateful and reached a small conservatory which opened into the
+garden. The end of the conservatory was formed by a clear sheet of glass,
+unmasked by plants, and admitting the winter starlight so directly that a
+person standing there would seem to have passed into the open air. Two persons
+stood there now, a lady and a gentleman; the lady Newman, from within the room
+and although she had turned her back to it, immediately recognized as Madame de
+Cintré. He hesitated as to whether he would advance, but as he did so she
+looked round, feeling apparently that he was there. She rested her eyes on him
+a moment and then turned again to her companion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is almost a pity not to tell Mr. Newman,&rdquo; she said softly, but
+in a tone that Newman could hear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell him if you like!&rdquo; the gentleman answered, in the voice of
+Lord Deepmere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, tell me by all means!&rdquo; said Newman advancing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lord Deepmere, he observed, was very red in the face, and he had twisted his
+gloves into a tight cord as if he had been squeezing them dry. These,
+presumably, were tokens of violent emotion, and it seemed to Newman that the
+traces of corresponding agitation were visible in Madame de Cintré&rsquo;s
+face. The two had been talking with much vivacity. &ldquo;What I should tell
+you is only to my lord&rsquo;s credit,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré, smiling
+frankly enough.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He wouldn&rsquo;t like it any better for that!&rdquo; said my lord, with
+his awkward laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come; what&rsquo;s the mystery?&rdquo; Newman demanded. &ldquo;Clear it
+up. I don&rsquo;t like mysteries.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We must have some things we don&rsquo;t like, and go without some we
+do,&rdquo; said the ruddy young nobleman, laughing still.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s to Lord Deepmere&rsquo;s credit, but it is not to
+everyone&rsquo;s,&rdquo; said Madam de Cintré. &ldquo;So I shall say nothing
+about it. You may be sure,&rdquo; she added; and she put out her hand to the
+Englishman, who took it half shyly, half impetuously. &ldquo;And now go and
+dance!&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes, I feel awfully like dancing!&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;I shall
+go and get tipsy.&rdquo; And he walked away with a gloomy guffaw.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What has happened between you?&rdquo; Newman asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t tell you&mdash;now,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré.
+&ldquo;Nothing that need make you unhappy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Has the little Englishman been trying to make love to you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She hesitated, and then she uttered a grave &ldquo;No! he&rsquo;s a very honest
+little fellow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you are agitated. Something is the matter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing, I repeat, that need make you unhappy. My agitation is over.
+Some day I will tell you what it was; not now. I can&rsquo;t now!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I confess,&rdquo; remarked Newman, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to
+hear anything unpleasant. I am satisfied with everything&mdash;most of all with
+you. I have seen all the ladies and talked with a great many of them; but I am
+satisfied with you.&rdquo; Madame de Cintré covered him for a moment with her
+large, soft glance, and then turned her eyes away into the starry night. So
+they stood silent a moment, side by side. &ldquo;Say you are satisfied with
+me,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had to wait a moment for the answer; but it came at last, low yet distinct:
+&ldquo;I am very happy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was presently followed by a few words from another source, which made them
+both turn round. &ldquo;I am sadly afraid Madame de Cintré will take a chill. I
+have ventured to bring a shawl.&rdquo; Mrs. Bread stood there softly
+solicitous, holding a white drapery in her hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré, &ldquo;the sight of those cold
+stars gives one a sense of frost. I won&rsquo;t take your shawl, but we will go
+back into the house.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She passed back and Newman followed her, Mrs. Bread standing respectfully aside
+to make way for them. Newman paused an instant before the old woman, and she
+glanced up at him with a silent greeting. &ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; he said,
+&ldquo;you must come and live with us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well then, sir, if you will,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;you have not
+seen the last of me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap17"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+<p>
+Newman was fond of music and went often to the opera. A couple of evenings
+after Madame de Bellegarde&rsquo;s ball he sat listening to &ldquo;Don
+Giovanni,&rdquo; having in honor of this work, which he had never yet seen
+represented, come to occupy his orchestra-chair before the rising of the
+curtain. Frequently he took a large box and invited a party of his compatriots;
+this was a mode of recreation to which he was much addicted. He liked making up
+parties of his friends and conducting them to the theatre, and taking them to
+drive on high drags or to dine at remote restaurants. He liked doing things
+which involved his paying for people; the vulgar truth is that he enjoyed
+&ldquo;treating&rdquo; them. This was not because he was what is called
+purse-proud; handling money in public was on the contrary positively
+disagreeable to him; he had a sort of personal modesty about it, akin to what
+he would have felt about making a toilet before spectators. But just as it was
+a gratification to him to be handsomely dressed, just so it was a private
+satisfaction to him (he enjoyed it very clandestinely) to have interposed,
+pecuniarily, in a scheme of pleasure. To set a large group of people in motion
+and transport them to a distance, to have special conveyances, to charter
+railway-carriages and steamboats, harmonized with his relish for bold
+processes, and made hospitality seem more active and more to the purpose. A few
+evenings before the occasion of which I speak he had invited several ladies and
+gentlemen to the opera to listen to Madame Alboni&mdash;a party which included
+Miss Dora Finch. It befell, however, that Miss Dora Finch, sitting near Newman
+in the box, discoursed brilliantly, not only during the entr&rsquo;actes, but
+during many of the finest portions of the performance, so that Newman had
+really come away with an irritated sense that Madame Alboni had a thin, shrill
+voice, and that her musical phrase was much garnished with a laugh of the
+giggling order. After this he promised himself to go for a while to the opera
+alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the curtain had fallen upon the first act of &ldquo;Don Giovanni&rdquo; he
+turned round in his place to observe the house. Presently, in one of the boxes,
+he perceived Urbain de Bellegarde and his wife. The little marquise was
+sweeping the house very busily with a glass, and Newman, supposing that she saw
+him, determined to go and bid her good evening. M. de Bellegarde was leaning
+against a column, motionless, looking straight in front of him, with one hand
+in the breast of his white waistcoat and the other resting his hat on his
+thigh. Newman was about to leave his place when he noticed in that obscure
+region devoted to the small boxes which in France are called, not inaptly,
+&ldquo;bathing-tubs,&rdquo; a face which even the dim light and the distance
+could not make wholly indistinct. It was the face of a young and pretty woman,
+and it was surmounted with a <i>coiffure</i> of pink roses and diamonds. This
+person was looking round the house, and her fan was moving to and fro with the
+most practiced grace; when she lowered it, Newman perceived a pair of plump
+white shoulders and the edge of a rose-colored dress. Beside her, very close to
+the shoulders and talking, apparently with an earnestness which it pleased her
+scantily to heed, sat a young man with a red face and a very low shirt-collar.
+A moment&rsquo;s gazing left Newman with no doubts; the pretty young woman was
+Noémie Nioche. He looked hard into the depths of the box, thinking her father
+might perhaps be in attendance, but from what he could see the young
+man&rsquo;s eloquence had no other auditor. Newman at last made his way out,
+and in doing so he passed beneath the <i>baignoire</i> of Mademoiselle Noémie.
+She saw him as he approached and gave him a nod and smile which seemed meant as
+an assurance that she was still a good-natured girl, in spite of her enviable
+rise in the world. Newman passed into the <i>foyer</i> and walked through it.
+Suddenly he paused in front of a gentleman seated on one of the divans. The
+gentleman&rsquo;s elbows were on his knees; he was leaning forward and staring
+at the pavement, lost apparently in meditations of a somewhat gloomy cast. But
+in spite of his bent head Newman recognized him, and in a moment sat down
+beside him. Then the gentleman looked up and displayed the expressive
+countenance of Valentin de Bellegarde.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What in the world are you thinking of so hard?&rdquo; asked Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A subject that requires hard thinking to do it justice,&rdquo; said
+Valentin. &ldquo;My immeasurable idiocy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is the matter now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The matter now is that I am a man again, and no more a fool than usual.
+But I came within an inch of taking that girl <i>au sérieux</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean the young lady below stairs, in a <i>baignoire</i> in a pink
+dress?&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you notice what a brilliant kind of pink it was?&rdquo; Valentin
+inquired, by way of answer. &ldquo;It makes her look as white as new
+milk.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;White or black, as you please. But you have stopped going to see
+her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, bless you, no. Why should I stop? I have changed, but she
+hasn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; said Valentin. &ldquo;I see she is a vulgar little wretch,
+after all. But she is as amusing as ever, and one <i>must</i> be amused.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I am glad she strikes you so unpleasantly,&rdquo; Newman rejoiced.
+&ldquo;I suppose you have swallowed all those fine words you used about her the
+other night. You compared her to a sapphire, or a topaz, or an
+amethyst&mdash;some precious stone; what was it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t remember,&rdquo; said Valentin, &ldquo;it may have been to
+a carbuncle! But she won&rsquo;t make a fool of me now. She has no real charm.
+It&rsquo;s an awfully low thing to make a mistake about a person of that
+sort.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I congratulate you,&rdquo; Newman declared, &ldquo;upon the scales
+having fallen from your eyes. It&rsquo;s a great triumph; it ought to make you
+feel better.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, it makes me feel better!&rdquo; said Valentin, gaily. Then,
+checking himself, he looked askance at Newman. &ldquo;I rather think you are
+laughing at me. If you were not one of the family I would take it up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, no, I&rsquo;m not laughing, any more than I am one of the family.
+You make me feel badly. You are too clever a fellow, you are made of too good
+stuff, to spend your time in ups and downs over that class of goods. The idea
+of splitting hairs about Miss Nioche! It seems to me awfully foolish. You say
+you have given up taking her seriously; but you take her seriously so long as
+you take her at all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin turned round in his place and looked a while at Newman, wrinkling his
+forehead and rubbing his knees. &ldquo;<i>Vous parlez d&rsquo;or</i>. But she
+has wonderfully pretty arms. Would you believe I didn&rsquo;t know it till this
+evening?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But she is a vulgar little wretch, remember, all the same,&rdquo; said
+Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes; the other day she had the bad taste to begin to abuse her father,
+to his face, in my presence. I shouldn&rsquo;t have expected it of her; it was
+a disappointment; heigho!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, she cares no more for her father than for her door-mat,&rdquo; said
+Newman. &ldquo;I discovered that the first time I saw her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, that&rsquo;s another affair; she may think of the poor old beggar
+what she pleases. But it was low in her to call him bad names; it quite threw
+me off. It was about a frilled petticoat that he was to have fetched from the
+washer-woman&rsquo;s; he appeared to have neglected this graceful duty. She
+almost boxed his ears. He stood there staring at her with his little blank eyes
+and smoothing his old hat with his coat-tail. At last he turned round and went
+out without a word. Then I told her it was in very bad taste to speak so to
+one&rsquo;s papa. She said she should be so thankful to me if I would mention
+it to her whenever her taste was at fault; she had immense confidence in mine.
+I told her I couldn&rsquo;t have the bother of forming her manners; I had had
+an idea they were already formed, after the best models. She had disappointed
+me. But I shall get over it,&rdquo; said Valentin, gaily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, time&rsquo;s a great consoler!&rdquo; Newman answered with humorous
+sobriety. He was silent a moment, and then he added, in another tone, &ldquo;I
+wish you would think of what I said to you the other day. Come over to America
+with us, and I will put you in the way of doing some business. You have a very
+good head, if you will only use it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin made a genial grimace. &ldquo;My head is much obliged to you. Do you
+mean the place in a bank?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There are several places, but I suppose you would consider the bank the
+most aristocratic.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin burst into a laugh. &ldquo;My dear fellow, at night all cats are gray!
+When one derogates there are no degrees.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman answered nothing for a minute. Then, &ldquo;I think you will find there
+are degrees in success,&rdquo; he said with a certain dryness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin had leaned forward again, with his elbows on his knees, and he was
+scratching the pavement with his stick. At last he said, looking up, &ldquo;Do
+you really think I ought to do something?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman laid his hand on his companion&rsquo;s arm and looked at him a moment
+through sagaciously-narrowed eyelids. &ldquo;Try it and see. You are not good
+enough for it, but we will stretch a point.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you really think I can make some money? I should like to see how it
+feels to have a little.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do what I tell you, and you shall be rich,&rdquo; said Newman.
+&ldquo;Think of it.&rdquo; And he looked at his watch and prepared to resume
+his way to Madame de Bellegarde&rsquo;s box.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Upon my word I will think of it,&rdquo; said Valentin. &ldquo;I will go
+and listen to Mozart another half hour&mdash;I can always think better to
+music&mdash;and profoundly meditate upon it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The marquis was with his wife when Newman entered their box; he was bland,
+remote, and correct as usual; or, as it seemed to Newman, even more than usual.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you think of the opera?&rdquo; asked our hero. &ldquo;What do
+you think of the Don?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We all know what Mozart is,&rdquo; said the marquis; &ldquo;our
+impressions don&rsquo;t date from this evening. Mozart is youth, freshness,
+brilliancy, facility&mdash;a little too great facility, perhaps. But the
+execution is here and there deplorably rough.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am very curious to see how it ends,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You speak as if it were a <i>feuilleton</i> in the <i>Figaro</i>,&rdquo;
+observed the marquis. &ldquo;You have surely seen the opera before?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;I am sure I should have remembered it.
+Donna Elvira reminds me of Madame de Cintré; I don&rsquo;t mean in her
+circumstances, but in the music she sings.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is a very nice distinction,&rdquo; laughed the marquis lightly.
+&ldquo;There is no great possibility, I imagine, of Madame de Cintré being
+forsaken.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not much!&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;But what becomes of the Don?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The devil comes down&mdash;or comes up,&rdquo; said Madame de
+Bellegarde, &ldquo;and carries him off. I suppose Zerlina reminds you of
+me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will go to the <i>foyer</i> for a few moments,&rdquo; said the
+marquis, &ldquo;and give you a chance to say that the commander&mdash;the man
+of stone&mdash;resembles me.&rdquo; And he passed out of the box.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The little marquise stared an instant at the velvet ledge of the balcony, and
+then murmured, &ldquo;Not a man of stone, a man of wood.&rdquo; Newman had
+taken her husband&rsquo;s empty chair. She made no protest, and then she turned
+suddenly and laid her closed fan upon his arm. &ldquo;I am very glad you came
+in,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I want to ask you a favor. I wanted to do so on
+Thursday, at my mother-in-law&rsquo;s ball, but you would give me no chance.
+You were in such very good spirits that I thought you might grant my little
+favor then; not that you look particularly doleful now. It is something you
+must promise me; now is the time to take you; after you are married you will be
+good for nothing. Come, promise!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never sign a paper without reading it first,&rdquo; said Newman.
+&ldquo;Show me your document.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, you must sign with your eyes shut; I will hold your hand. Come,
+before you put your head into the noose. You ought to be thankful to me for
+giving you a chance to do something amusing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If it is so amusing,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;it will be in even
+better season after I am married.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In other words,&rdquo; cried Madame de Bellegarde, &ldquo;you will not
+do it at all. You will be afraid of your wife.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, if the thing is intrinsically improper,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;I
+won&rsquo;t go into it. If it is not, I will do it after my marriage.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You talk like a treatise on logic, and English logic into the
+bargain!&rdquo; exclaimed Madame de Bellegarde. &ldquo;Promise, then, after you
+are married. After all, I shall enjoy keeping you to it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, then, after I am married,&rdquo; said Newman serenely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The little marquise hesitated a moment, looking at him, and he wondered what
+was coming. &ldquo;I suppose you know what my life is,&rdquo; she presently
+said. &ldquo;I have no pleasure, I see nothing, I do nothing. I live in Paris
+as I might live at Poitiers. My mother-in-law calls me&mdash;what is the pretty
+word?&mdash;a gad-about? accuses me of going to unheard-of places, and thinks
+it ought to be joy enough for me to sit at home and count over my ancestors on
+my fingers. But why should I bother about my ancestors? I am sure they never
+bothered about me. I don&rsquo;t propose to live with a green shade on my eyes;
+I hold that things were made to look at. My husband, you know, has principles,
+and the first on the list is that the Tuileries are dreadfully vulgar. If the
+Tuileries are vulgar, his principles are tiresome. If I chose I might have
+principles quite as well as he. If they grew on one&rsquo;s family tree I
+should only have to give mine a shake to bring down a shower of the finest. At
+any rate, I prefer clever Bonapartes to stupid Bourbons.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I see; you want to go to court,&rdquo; said Newman, vaguely
+conjecturing that she might wish him to appeal to the United States legation to
+smooth her way to the imperial halls.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The marquise gave a little sharp laugh. &ldquo;You are a thousand miles away. I
+will take care of the Tuileries myself; the day I decide to go they will be
+very glad to have me. Sooner or later I shall dance in an imperial quadrille. I
+know what you are going to say: &lsquo;How will you dare?&rsquo; But I
+<i>shall</i> dare. I am afraid of my husband; he is soft, smooth,
+irreproachable; everything that you know; but I am afraid of him&mdash;horribly
+afraid of him. And yet I shall arrive at the Tuileries. But that will not be
+this winter, nor perhaps next, and meantime I must live. For the moment, I want
+to go somewhere else; it&rsquo;s my dream. I want to go to the Bal
+Bullier.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To the Bal Bullier?&rdquo; repeated Newman, for whom the words at first
+meant nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The ball in the Latin Quarter, where the students dance with their
+mistresses. Don&rsquo;t tell me you have not heard of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes,&rdquo; said Newman; &ldquo;I have heard of it; I remember now. I
+have even been there. And you want to go there?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is silly, it is low, it is anything you please. But I want to go.
+Some of my friends have been, and they say it is awfully <i>drôle</i>. My
+friends go everywhere; it is only I who sit moping at home.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It seems to me you are not at home now,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;and I
+shouldn&rsquo;t exactly say you were moping.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am bored to death. I have been to the opera twice a week for the last
+eight years. Whenever I ask for anything my mouth is stopped with that: Pray,
+madam, haven&rsquo;t you an opera box? Could a woman of taste want more? In the
+first place, my opera box was down in my <i>contrat</i>; they have to give it
+to me. To-night, for instance, I should have preferred a thousand times to go
+to the Palais Royal. But my husband won&rsquo;t go to the Palais Royal because
+the ladies of the court go there so much. You may imagine, then, whether he
+would take me to Bullier&rsquo;s; he says it is a mere imitation&mdash;and a
+bad one&mdash;of what they do at the Princess Kleinfuss&rsquo;s. But as I
+don&rsquo;t go to the Princess Kleinfuss&rsquo;s, the next best thing is to go
+to Bullier&rsquo;s. It is my dream, at any rate, it&rsquo;s a fixed idea. All I
+ask of you is to give me your arm; you are less compromising than anyone else.
+I don&rsquo;t know why, but you are. I can arrange it. I shall risk something,
+but that is my own affair. Besides, fortune favors the bold. Don&rsquo;t refuse
+me; it is my dream!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman gave a loud laugh. It seemed to him hardly worth while to be the wife of
+the Marquis de Bellegarde, a daughter of the crusaders, heiress of six
+centuries of glories and traditions, to have centred one&rsquo;s aspirations
+upon the sight of a couple of hundred young ladies kicking off young
+men&rsquo;s hats. It struck him as a theme for the moralist; but he had no time
+to moralize upon it. The curtain rose again; M. de Bellegarde returned, and
+Newman went back to his seat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He observed that Valentin de Bellegarde had taken his place in the
+<i>baignoire</i> of Mademoiselle Nioche, behind this young lady and her
+companion, where he was visible only if one carefully looked for him. In the
+next act Newman met him in the lobby and asked him if he had reflected upon
+possible emigration. &ldquo;If you really meant to meditate,&rdquo; he said,
+&ldquo;you might have chosen a better place for it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, the place was not bad,&rdquo; said Valentin. &ldquo;I was not
+thinking of that girl. I listened to the music, and, without thinking of the
+play or looking at the stage, I turned over your proposal. At first it seemed
+quite fantastic. And then a certain fiddle in the orchestra&mdash;I could
+distinguish it&mdash;began to say as it scraped away, &lsquo;Why not, why
+not?&rsquo; And then, in that rapid movement, all the fiddles took it up and
+the conductor&rsquo;s stick seemed to beat it in the air: &lsquo;Why not, why
+not?&rsquo; I&rsquo;m sure I can&rsquo;t say! I don&rsquo;t see why not. I
+don&rsquo;t see why I shouldn&rsquo;t do something. It appears to me really a
+very bright idea. This sort of thing is certainly very stale. And then I could
+come back with a trunk full of dollars. Besides, I might possibly find it
+amusing. They call me a <i>raffiné</i>; who knows but that I might discover an
+unsuspected charm in shop-keeping? It would really have a certain romantic,
+picturesque side; it would look well in my biography. It would look as if I
+were a strong man, a first-rate man, a man who dominated circumstances.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never mind how it would look,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;It always looks
+well to have half a million of dollars. There is no reason why you
+shouldn&rsquo;t have them if you will mind what I tell you&mdash;I
+alone&mdash;and not talk to other parties.&rdquo; He passed his arm into that
+of his companion, and the two walked for some time up and down one of the less
+frequented corridors. Newman&rsquo;s imagination began to glow with the idea of
+converting his bright, impracticable friend into a first-class man of business.
+He felt for the moment a sort of spiritual zeal, the zeal of the propagandist.
+Its ardor was in part the result of that general discomfort which the sight of
+all uninvested capital produced in him; so fine an intelligence as
+Bellegarde&rsquo;s ought to be dedicated to high uses. The highest uses known
+to Newman&rsquo;s experience were certain transcendent sagacities in the
+handling of railway stock. And then his zeal was quickened by his personal
+kindness for Valentin; he had a sort of pity for him which he was well aware he
+never could have made the Comte de Bellegarde understand. He never lost a sense
+of its being pitiable that Valentin should think it a large life to revolve in
+varnished boots between the Rue d&rsquo;Anjou and the Rue de
+l&rsquo;Université, taking the Boulevard des Italiens on the way, when over
+there in America one&rsquo;s promenade was a continent, and one&rsquo;s
+Boulevard stretched from New York to San Francisco. It mortified him, moreover,
+to think that Valentin lacked money; there was a painful grotesqueness in it.
+It affected him as the ignorance of a companion, otherwise without reproach,
+touching some rudimentary branch of learning would have done. There were things
+that one knew about as a matter of course, he would have said in such a case.
+Just so, if one pretended to be easy in the world, one had money as a matter of
+course, one had made it! There was something almost ridiculously anomalous to
+Newman in the sight of lively pretensions unaccompanied by large investments in
+railroads; though I may add that he would not have maintained that such
+investments were in themselves a proper ground for pretensions. &ldquo;I will
+make you do something,&rdquo; he said to Valentin; &ldquo;I will put you
+through. I know half a dozen things in which we can make a place for you. You
+will see some lively work. It will take you a little while to get used to the
+life, but you will work in before long, and at the end of six
+months&mdash;after you have done a thing or two on your own account&mdash;you
+will like it. And then it will be very pleasant for you, having your sister
+over there. It will be pleasant for her to have you, too. Yes, Valentin,&rdquo;
+continued Newman, pressing his friend&rsquo;s arm genially, &ldquo;I think I
+see just the opening for you. Keep quiet and I&rsquo;ll push you right
+in.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman pursued this favoring strain for some time longer. The two men strolled
+about for a quarter of an hour. Valentin listened and questioned, many of his
+questions making Newman laugh loud at the <i>naïveté</i> of his ignorance of
+the vulgar processes of money-getting; smiling himself, too, half ironical and
+half curious. And yet he was serious; he was fascinated by Newman&rsquo;s plain
+prose version of the legend of El Dorado. It is true, however, that though to
+accept an &ldquo;opening&rdquo; in an American mercantile house might be a
+bold, original, and in its consequences extremely agreeable thing to do, he did
+not quite see himself objectively doing it. So that when the bell rang to
+indicate the close of the entr&rsquo;acte, there was a certain mock-heroism in
+his saying, with his brilliant smile, &ldquo;Well, then, put me through; push
+me in! I make myself over to you. Dip me into the pot and turn me into
+gold.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had passed into the corridor which encircled the row of <i>baignoires</i>,
+and Valentin stopped in front of the dusky little box in which Mademoiselle
+Nioche had bestowed herself, laying his hand on the doorknob. &ldquo;Oh, come,
+are you going back there?&rdquo; asked Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Mon Dieu, oui</i>,&rdquo; said Valentin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t you another place?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I have my usual place, in the stalls.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You had better go and occupy it, then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see her very well from there, too,&rdquo; added Valentin, serenely,
+&ldquo;and to-night she is worth seeing. But,&rdquo; he added in a moment,
+&ldquo;I have a particular reason for going back just now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I give you up,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;You are infatuated!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, it is only this. There is a young man in the box whom I shall annoy
+by going in, and I want to annoy him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am sorry to hear it,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you leave
+the poor fellow alone?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, he has given me cause. The box is not his. Noémie came in alone and
+installed herself. I went and spoke to her, and in a few moments she asked me
+to go and get her fan from the pocket of her cloak, which the <i>ouvreuse</i>
+had carried off. In my absence this gentleman came in and took the chair beside
+Noémie in which I had been sitting. My reappearance disgusted him, and he had
+the grossness to show it. He came within an ace of being impertinent. I
+don&rsquo;t know who he is; he is some vulgar wretch. I can&rsquo;t think where
+she picks up such acquaintances. He has been drinking, too, but he knows what
+he is about. Just now, in the second act, he was unmannerly again. I shall put
+in another appearance for ten minutes&mdash;time enough to give him an
+opportunity to commit himself, if he feels inclined. I really can&rsquo;t let
+the brute suppose that he is keeping me out of the box.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear fellow,&rdquo; said Newman, remonstrantly, &ldquo;what
+child&rsquo;s play! You are not going to pick a quarrel about that girl, I
+hope.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That girl has nothing to do with it, and I have no intention of picking
+a quarrel. I am not a bully nor a fire-eater. I simply wish to make a point
+that a gentleman must.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, damn your point!&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;That is the trouble with
+you Frenchmen; you must be always making points. Well,&rdquo; he added,
+&ldquo;be short. But if you are going in for this kind of thing, we must ship
+you off to America in advance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good,&rdquo; Valentin answered, &ldquo;whenever you please. But if
+I go to America, I must not let this gentleman suppose that it is to run away
+from him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And they separated. At the end of the act Newman observed that Valentin was
+still in the <i>baignoire</i>. He strolled into the corridor again, expecting
+to meet him, and when he was within a few yards of Mademoiselle Nioche&rsquo;s
+box saw his friend pass out, accompanied by the young man who had been seated
+beside its fair occupant. The two gentlemen walked with some quickness of step
+to a distant part of the lobby, where Newman perceived them stop and stand
+talking. The manner of each was perfectly quiet, but the stranger, who looked
+flushed, had begun to wipe his face very emphatically with his
+pocket-handkerchief. By this time Newman was abreast of the <i>baignoire</i>;
+the door had been left ajar, and he could see a pink dress inside. He
+immediately went in. Mademoiselle Nioche turned and greeted him with a
+brilliant smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, you have at last decided to come and see me?&rdquo; she exclaimed.
+&ldquo;You just save your politeness. You find me in a fine moment. Sit
+down.&rdquo; There was a very becoming little flush in her cheek, and her eye
+had a noticeable spark. You would have said that she had received some very
+good news.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Something has happened here!&rdquo; said Newman, without sitting down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You find me in a very fine moment,&rdquo; she repeated. &ldquo;Two
+gentlemen&mdash;one of them is M. de Bellegarde, the pleasure of whose
+acquaintance I owe to you&mdash;have just had words about your humble servant.
+Very big words too. They can&rsquo;t come off without crossing swords. A
+duel&mdash;that will give me a push!&rdquo; cried Mademoiselle Noémie clapping
+her little hands. &ldquo;<i>C&rsquo;est ça qui pose une femme!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean to say that Bellegarde is going to fight about
+<i>you!</i>&rdquo; exclaimed Newman disgustedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing else!&rdquo; and she looked at him with a hard little smile.
+&ldquo;No, no, you are not <i>galant!</i> And if you prevent this affair I
+shall owe you a grudge&mdash;and pay my debt!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman uttered an imprecation which, though brief&mdash;it consisted simply of
+the interjection &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; followed by a geographical, or more
+correctly, perhaps a theological noun in four letters&mdash;had better not be
+transferred to these pages. He turned his back without more ceremony upon the
+pink dress and went out of the box. In the corridor he found Valentin and his
+companion walking towards him. The latter was thrusting a card into his
+waistcoat pocket. Mademoiselle Noémie&rsquo;s jealous votary was a tall, robust
+young man with a thick nose, a prominent blue eye, a Germanic physiognomy, and
+a massive watch-chain. When they reached the box, Valentin with an emphasized
+bow made way for him to pass in first. Newman touched Valentin&rsquo;s arm as a
+sign that he wished to speak with him, and Bellegarde answered that he would be
+with him in an instant. Valentin entered the box after the robust young man,
+but a couple of minutes afterwards he reappeared, largely smiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is immensely tickled,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;She says we will make
+her fortune. I don&rsquo;t want to be fatuous, but I think it is very
+possible.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So you are going to fight?&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear fellow, don&rsquo;t look so mortally disgusted. It was not my
+choice. The thing is all arranged.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I told you so!&rdquo; groaned Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I told <i>him</i> so,&rdquo; said Valentin, smiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What did he do to you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My good friend, it doesn&rsquo;t matter what. He used an
+expression&mdash;I took it up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I insist upon knowing; I can&rsquo;t, as your elder brother, have
+you rushing into this sort of nonsense.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am very much obliged to you,&rdquo; said Valentin. &ldquo;I have
+nothing to conceal, but I can&rsquo;t go into particulars now and here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We will leave this place, then. You can tell me outside.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no, I can&rsquo;t leave this place, why should I hurry away? I will
+go to my orchestra-stall and sit out the opera.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will not enjoy it; you will be preoccupied.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin looked at him a moment, colored a little, smiled, and patted him on
+the arm. &ldquo;You are delightfully simple! Before an affair a man is quiet.
+The quietest thing I can do is to go straight to my place.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;you want her to see you there&mdash;you
+and your quietness. I am not so simple! It is a poor business.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin remained, and the two men, in their respective places, sat out the
+rest of the performance, which was also enjoyed by Mademoiselle Nioche and her
+truculent admirer. At the end Newman joined Valentin again, and they went into
+the street together. Valentin shook his head at his friend&rsquo;s proposal
+that he should get into Newman&rsquo;s own vehicle, and stopped on the edge of
+the pavement. &ldquo;I must go off alone,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I must look up
+a couple of friends who will take charge of this matter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will take charge of it,&rdquo; Newman declared. &ldquo;Put it into my
+hands.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are very kind, but that is hardly possible. In the first place, you
+are, as you said just now, almost my brother; you are about to marry my sister.
+That alone disqualifies you; it casts doubts on your impartiality. And if it
+didn&rsquo;t, it would be enough for me that I strongly suspect you of
+disapproving of the affair. You would try to prevent a meeting.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course I should,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;Whoever your friends are,
+I hope they will do that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Unquestionably they will. They will urge that excuses be made, proper
+excuses. But you would be too good-natured. You won&rsquo;t do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman was silent a moment. He was keenly annoyed, but he saw it was useless to
+attempt interference. &ldquo;When is this precious performance to come
+off?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The sooner the better,&rdquo; said Valentin. &ldquo;The day after
+to-morrow, I hope.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;I have certainly a claim to know the
+facts. I can&rsquo;t consent to shut my eyes to the matter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall be most happy to tell you the facts,&rdquo; said Valentin.
+&ldquo;They are very simple, and it will be quickly done. But now everything
+depends on my putting my hands on my friends without delay. I will jump into a
+cab; you had better drive to my room and wait for me there. I will turn up at
+the end of an hour.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman assented protestingly, let his friend go, and then betook himself to the
+picturesque little apartment in the Rue d&rsquo;Anjou. It was more than an hour
+before Valentin returned, but when he did so he was able to announce that he
+had found one of his desired friends, and that this gentleman had taken upon
+himself the care of securing an associate. Newman had been sitting without
+lights by Valentin&rsquo;s faded fire, upon which he had thrown a log; the
+blaze played over the richly-encumbered little sitting-room and produced
+fantastic gleams and shadows. He listened in silence to Valentin&rsquo;s
+account of what had passed between him and the gentleman whose card he had in
+his pocket&mdash;M. Stanislas Kapp, of Strasbourg&mdash;after his return to
+Mademoiselle Nioche&rsquo;s box. This hospitable young lady had espied an
+acquaintance on the other side of the house, and had expressed her displeasure
+at his not having the civility to come and pay her a visit. &ldquo;Oh, let him
+alone!&rdquo; M. Stanislas Kapp had hereupon exclaimed. &ldquo;There are too
+many people in the box already.&rdquo; And he had fixed his eyes with a
+demonstrative stare upon M. de Bellegarde. Valentin had promptly retorted that
+if there were too many people in the box it was easy for M. Kapp to diminish
+the number. &ldquo;I shall be most happy to open the door for
+<i>you!</i>&rdquo; M. Kapp exclaimed. &ldquo;I shall be delighted to fling you
+into the pit!&rdquo; Valentin had answered. &ldquo;Oh, do make a rumpus and get
+into the papers!&rdquo; Miss Noémie had gleefully ejaculated. &ldquo;M. Kapp,
+turn him out; or, M. de Bellegarde, pitch him into the pit, into the
+orchestra&mdash;anywhere! I don&rsquo;t care who does which, so long as you
+make a scene.&rdquo; Valentin answered that they would make no scene, but that
+the gentleman would be so good as to step into the corridor with him. In the
+corridor, after a brief further exchange of words, there had been an exchange
+of cards. M. Stanislas Kapp was very stiff. He evidently meant to force his
+offence home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The man, no doubt, was insolent,&rdquo; Newman said; &ldquo;but if you
+hadn&rsquo;t gone back into the box the thing wouldn&rsquo;t have
+happened.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, don&rsquo;t you see,&rdquo; Valentin replied, &ldquo;that the event
+proves the extreme propriety of my going back into the box? M. Kapp wished to
+provoke me; he was awaiting his chance. In such a case&mdash;that is, when he
+has been, so to speak, notified&mdash;a man must be on hand to receive the
+provocation. My not returning would simply have been tantamount to my saying to
+M. Stanislas Kapp, &lsquo;Oh, if you are going to be
+disagreeable&rsquo;&rdquo;&mdash; &mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;You must manage it by yourself; damned if I&rsquo;ll help
+you!&rsquo; That would have been a thoroughly sensible thing to say. The only
+attraction for you seems to have been the prospect of M. Kapp&rsquo;s
+impertinence,&rdquo; Newman went on. &ldquo;You told me you were not going back
+for that girl.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t mention that girl any more,&rdquo; murmured Valentin.
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s a bore.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;With all my heart. But if that is the way you feel about her, why
+couldn&rsquo;t you let her alone?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin shook his head with a fine smile. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think you quite
+understand, and I don&rsquo;t believe I can make you. She understood the
+situation; she knew what was in the air; she was watching us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A cat may look at a king! What difference does that make?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, a man can&rsquo;t back down before a woman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t call her a woman. You said yourself she was a
+stone,&rdquo; cried Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; Valentin rejoined, &ldquo;there is no disputing about
+tastes. It&rsquo;s a matter of feeling; it&rsquo;s measured by one&rsquo;s
+sense of honor.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, confound your sense of honor!&rdquo; cried Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is vain talking,&rdquo; said Valentin; &ldquo;words have passed, and
+the thing is settled.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman turned away, taking his hat. Then pausing with his hand on the door,
+&ldquo;What are you going to use?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is for M. Stanislas Kapp, as the challenged party, to decide. My
+own choice would be a short, light sword. I handle it well. I&rsquo;m an
+indifferent shot.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman had put on his hat; he pushed it back, gently scratching his forehead,
+high up. &ldquo;I wish it were pistols,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I could show you
+how to lodge a bullet!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin broke into a laugh. &ldquo;What is it some English poet says about
+consistency? It&rsquo;s a flower, or a star, or a jewel. Yours has the beauty
+of all three!&rdquo; But he agreed to see Newman again on the morrow, after the
+details of his meeting with M. Stanislas Kapp should have been arranged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the course of the day Newman received three lines from him, saying that it
+had been decided that he should cross the frontier, with his adversary, and
+that he was to take the night express to Geneva. He should have time, however,
+to dine with Newman. In the afternoon Newman called upon Madame de Cintré, but
+his visit was brief. She was as gracious and sympathetic as he had ever found
+her, but she was sad, and she confessed, on Newman&rsquo;s charging her with
+her red eyes, that she had been crying. Valentin had been with her a couple of
+hours before, and his visit had left her with a painful impression. He had
+laughed and gossiped, he had brought her no bad news, he had only been, in his
+manner, rather more affectionate than usual. His fraternal tenderness had
+touched her, and on his departure she had burst into tears. She had felt as if
+something strange and sad were going to happen; she had tried to reason away
+the fancy, and the effort had only given her a headache. Newman, of course, was
+perforce tongue-tied about Valentin&rsquo;s projected duel, and his dramatic
+talent was not equal to satirizing Madame de Cintré&rsquo;s presentiment as
+pointedly as perfect security demanded. Before he went away he asked Madame de
+Cintré whether Valentin had seen his mother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;but he didn&rsquo;t make her cry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was in Newman&rsquo;s own apartment that Valentin dined, having brought his
+portmanteau, so that he might adjourn directly to the railway. M. Stanislas
+Kapp had positively declined to make excuses, and he, on his side, obviously,
+had none to offer. Valentin had found out with whom he was dealing. M.
+Stanislas Kapp was the son of and heir of a rich brewer of Strasbourg, a youth
+of a sanguineous&mdash;and sanguinary&mdash;temperament. He was making ducks
+and drakes of the paternal brewery, and although he passed in a general way for
+a good fellow, he had already been observed to be quarrelsome after dinner.
+&ldquo;<i>Que voulez-vous?</i>&rdquo; said Valentin. &ldquo;Brought up on beer,
+he can&rsquo;t stand champagne.&rdquo; He had chosen pistols. Valentin, at
+dinner, had an excellent appetite; he made a point, in view of his long
+journey, of eating more than usual. He took the liberty of suggesting to Newman
+a slight modification in the composition of a certain fish-sauce; he thought it
+would be worth mentioning to the cook. But Newman had no thoughts for
+fish-sauce; he felt thoroughly discontented. As he sat and watched his amiable
+and clever companion going through his excellent repast with the delicate
+deliberation of hereditary epicurism, the folly of so charming a fellow
+traveling off to expose his agreeable young life for the sake of M. Stanislas
+and Mademoiselle Noémie struck him with intolerable force. He had grown fond of
+Valentin, he felt now how fond; and his sense of helplessness only increased
+his irritation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, this sort of thing may be all very well,&rdquo; he cried at last,
+&ldquo;but I declare I don&rsquo;t see it. I can&rsquo;t stop you, perhaps, but
+at least I can protest. I do protest, violently.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear fellow, don&rsquo;t make a scene,&rdquo; said Valentin.
+&ldquo;Scenes in these cases are in very bad taste.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your duel itself is a scene,&rdquo; said Newman; &ldquo;that&rsquo;s all
+it is! It&rsquo;s a wretched theatrical affair. Why don&rsquo;t you take a band
+of music with you outright? It&rsquo;s d&mdash;d barbarous and it&rsquo;s
+d&mdash;d corrupt, both.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I can&rsquo;t begin, at this time of day, to defend the theory of
+dueling,&rdquo; said Valentin. &ldquo;It is our custom, and I think it is a
+good thing. Quite apart from the goodness of the cause in which a duel may be
+fought, it has a kind of picturesque charm which in this age of vile prose
+seems to me greatly to recommend it. It&rsquo;s a remnant of a higher-tempered
+time; one ought to cling to it. Depend upon it, a duel is never amiss.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what you mean by a higher-tempered time,&rdquo; said
+Newman. &ldquo;Because your great-grandfather was an ass, is that any reason
+why you should be? For my part I think we had better let our temper take care
+of itself; it generally seems to me quite high enough; I am not afraid of being
+too meek. If your great-grandfather were to make himself unpleasant to me, I
+think I could manage him yet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear friend,&rdquo; said Valentin, smiling, &ldquo;you can&rsquo;t
+invent anything that will take the place of satisfaction for an insult. To
+demand it and to give it are equally excellent arrangements.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you call this sort of thing satisfaction?&rdquo; Newman asked.
+&ldquo;Does it satisfy you to receive a present of the carcass of that coarse
+fop? does it gratify you to make him a present of yours? If a man hits you, hit
+him back; if a man libels you, haul him up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Haul him up, into court? Oh, that is very nasty!&rdquo; said Valentin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The nastiness is his&mdash;not yours. And for that matter, what you are
+doing is not particularly nice. You are too good for it. I don&rsquo;t say you
+are the most useful man in the world, or the cleverest, or the most amiable.
+But you are too good to go and get your throat cut for a prostitute.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin flushed a little, but he laughed. &ldquo;I shan&rsquo;t get my throat
+cut if I can help it. Moreover, one&rsquo;s honor hasn&rsquo;t two different
+measures. It only knows that it is hurt; it doesn&rsquo;t ask when, or how, or
+where.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The more fool it is!&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin ceased to laugh; he looked grave. &ldquo;I beg you not to say any
+more,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If you do I shall almost fancy you don&rsquo;t
+care about&mdash;about&rdquo;&mdash;and he paused.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;About what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;About that matter&mdash;about one&rsquo;s honor.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fancy what you please,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;Fancy while you are at
+it that I care about <i>you</i>&mdash;though you are not worth it. But come
+back without damage,&rdquo; he added in a moment, &ldquo;and I will forgive
+you. And then,&rdquo; he continued, as Valentin was going, &ldquo;I will ship
+you straight off to America.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; answered Valentin, &ldquo;if I am to turn over a new page,
+this may figure as a tail-piece to the old.&rdquo; And then he lit another
+cigar and departed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Blast that girl!&rdquo; said Newman as the door closed upon Valentin.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap18"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+<p>
+Newman went the next morning to see Madame de Cintré, timing his visit so as to
+arrive after the noonday breakfast. In the court of the <i>hôtel</i>, before
+the portico, stood Madame de Bellegarde&rsquo;s old square carriage. The
+servant who opened the door answered Newman&rsquo;s inquiry with a slightly
+embarrassed and hesitating murmur, and at the same moment Mrs. Bread appeared
+in the background, dim-visaged as usual, and wearing a large black bonnet and
+shawl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is the matter?&rdquo; asked Newman. &ldquo;Is Madame la Comtesse at
+home, or not?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Bread advanced, fixing her eyes upon him: he observed that she held a
+sealed letter, very delicately, in her fingers. &ldquo;The countess has left a
+message for you, sir; she has left this,&rdquo; said Mrs. Bread, holding out
+the letter, which Newman took.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Left it? Is she out? Is she gone away?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is going away, sir; she is leaving town,&rdquo; said Mrs. Bread.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Leaving town!&rdquo; exclaimed Newman. &ldquo;What has happened?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is not for me to say, sir,&rdquo; said Mrs. Bread, with her eyes on
+the ground. &ldquo;But I thought it would come.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What would come, pray?&rdquo; Newman demanded. He had broken the seal of
+the letter, but he still questioned. &ldquo;She is in the house? She is
+visible?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think she expected you this morning,&rdquo; the old
+waiting-woman replied. &ldquo;She was to leave immediately.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where is she going?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To Fleurières.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To Fleurières? But surely I can see her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Bread hesitated a moment, and then clasping together her two hands,
+&ldquo;I will take you!&rdquo; she said. And she led the way upstairs. At the
+top of the staircase she paused and fixed her dry, sad eyes upon Newman.
+&ldquo;Be very easy with her,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;she is most
+unhappy!&rdquo; Then she went on to Madame de Cintré&rsquo;s apartment; Newman,
+perplexed and alarmed, followed her rapidly. Mrs. Bread threw open the door,
+and Newman pushed back the curtain at the farther side of its deep embrasure.
+In the middle of the room stood Madame de Cintré; her face was pale and she was
+dressed for traveling. Behind her, before the fire-place, stood Urbain de
+Bellegarde, looking at his finger-nails; near the marquis sat his mother,
+buried in an armchair, and with her eyes immediately fixing themselves upon
+Newman. He felt, as soon as he entered the room, that he was in the presence of
+something evil; he was startled and pained, as he would have been by a
+threatening cry in the stillness of the night. He walked straight to Madame de
+Cintré and seized her by the hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is the matter?&rdquo; he asked commandingly; &ldquo;what is
+happening?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Urbain de Bellegarde stared, then left his place and came and leaned upon his
+mother&rsquo;s chair, behind. Newman&rsquo;s sudden irruption had evidently
+discomposed both mother and son. Madame de Cintré stood silent, with her eyes
+resting upon Newman&rsquo;s. She had often looked at him with all her soul, as
+it seemed to him; but in this present gaze there was a sort of bottomless
+depth. She was in distress; it was the most touching thing he had ever seen.
+His heart rose into his throat, and he was on the point of turning to her
+companions, with an angry challenge; but she checked him, pressing the hand
+that held her own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Something very grave has happened,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I cannot
+marry you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman dropped her hand and stood staring, first at her and then at the others.
+&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; he asked, as quietly as possible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Cintré almost smiled, but the attempt was strange. &ldquo;You must
+ask my mother, you must ask my brother.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why can&rsquo;t she marry me?&rdquo; said Newman, looking at them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Bellegarde did not move in her place, but she was as pale as her
+daughter. The marquis looked down at her. She said nothing for some moments,
+but she kept her keen, clear eyes upon Newman, bravely. The marquis drew
+himself up and looked at the ceiling. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s impossible!&rdquo; he
+said softly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s improper,&rdquo; said Madame de Bellegarde.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman began to laugh. &ldquo;Oh, you are fooling!&rdquo; he exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My sister, you have no time; you are losing your train,&rdquo; said the
+marquis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come, is he mad?&rdquo; asked Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No; don&rsquo;t think that,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré. &ldquo;But I
+am going away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where are you going?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To the country, to Fleurières; to be alone.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To leave me?&rdquo; said Newman, slowly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t see you, now,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Now</i>&mdash;why not?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am ashamed,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré, simply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman turned toward the marquis. &ldquo;What have you done to her&mdash;what
+does it mean?&rdquo; he asked with the same effort at calmness, the fruit of
+his constant practice in taking things easily. He was excited, but excitement
+with him was only an intenser deliberateness; it was the swimmer stripped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It means that I have given you up,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré.
+&ldquo;It means that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her face was too charged with tragic expression not fully to confirm her words.
+Newman was profoundly shocked, but he felt as yet no resentment against her. He
+was amazed, bewildered, and the presence of the old marquise and her son seemed
+to smite his eyes like the glare of a watchman&rsquo;s lantern.
+&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t I see you alone?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It would be only more painful. I hoped I should not see you&mdash;I
+should escape. I wrote to you. Good-bye.&rdquo; And she put out her hand again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman put both his own into his pockets. &ldquo;I will go with you,&rdquo; he
+said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laid her two hands on his arm. &ldquo;Will you grant me a last
+request?&rdquo; and as she looked at him, urging this, her eyes filled with
+tears. &ldquo;Let me go alone&mdash;let me go in peace. I can&rsquo;t call it
+peace&mdash;it&rsquo;s death. But let me bury myself. So&mdash;good-bye.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman passed his hand into his hair and stood slowly rubbing his head and
+looking through his keenly-narrowed eyes from one to the other of the three
+persons before him. His lips were compressed, and the two lines which had
+formed themselves beside his mouth might have made it appear at a first glance
+that he was smiling. I have said that his excitement was an intenser
+deliberateness, and now he looked grimly deliberate. &ldquo;It seems very much
+as if you had interfered, marquis,&rdquo; he said slowly. &ldquo;I thought you
+said you wouldn&rsquo;t interfere. I know you don&rsquo;t like me; but that
+doesn&rsquo;t make any difference. I thought you promised me you wouldn&rsquo;t
+interfere. I thought you swore on your honor that you wouldn&rsquo;t interfere.
+Don&rsquo;t you remember, marquis?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The marquis lifted his eyebrows; but he was apparently determined to be even
+more urbane than usual. He rested his two hands upon the back of his
+mother&rsquo;s chair and bent forward, as if he were leaning over the edge of a
+pulpit or a lecture-desk. He did not smile, but he looked softly grave.
+&ldquo;Excuse me, sir,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I assured you that I would not
+influence my sister&rsquo;s decision. I adhered, to the letter, to my
+engagement. Did I not, sister?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t appeal, my son,&rdquo; said the marquise, &ldquo;your word
+is sufficient.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;she accepted me,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;That is very true,
+I can&rsquo;t deny that. At least,&rdquo; he added, in a different tone,
+turning to Madame de Cintré, &ldquo;you <i>did</i> accept me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Something in the tone seemed to move her strongly. She turned away, burying her
+face in her hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you have interfered now, haven&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; inquired Newman
+of the marquis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Neither then nor now have I attempted to influence my sister. I used no
+persuasion then, I have used no persuasion to-day.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what have you used?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We have used authority,&rdquo; said Madame de Bellegarde in a rich,
+bell-like voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, you have used authority,&rdquo; Newman exclaimed. &ldquo;They have
+used authority,&rdquo; he went on, turning to Madame de Cintré. &ldquo;What is
+it? how did they use it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My mother commanded,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Commanded you to give me up&mdash;I see. And you obey&mdash;I see. But
+why do you obey?&rdquo; asked Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Cintré looked across at the old marquise; her eyes slowly measured
+her from head to foot. &ldquo;I am afraid of my mother,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Bellegarde rose with a certain quickness, crying, &ldquo;This is a
+most indecent scene!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have no wish to prolong it,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré; and turning
+to the door she put out her hand again. &ldquo;If you can pity me a little, let
+me go alone.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman shook her hand quietly and firmly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll come down
+there,&rdquo; he said. The <i>portière</i> dropped behind her, and Newman sank
+with a long breath into the nearest chair. He leaned back in it, resting his
+hands on the knobs of the arms and looking at Madame de Bellegarde and Urbain.
+There was a long silence. They stood side by side, with their heads high and
+their handsome eyebrows arched.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So you make a distinction?&rdquo; Newman said at last. &ldquo;You make a
+distinction between persuading and commanding? It&rsquo;s very neat. But the
+distinction is in favor of commanding. That rather spoils it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We have not the least objection to defining our position,&rdquo; said M.
+de Bellegarde. &ldquo;We understand that it should not at first appear to you
+quite clear. We rather expected, indeed, that you should not do us
+justice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;ll do you justice,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be
+afraid. Please proceed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The marquise laid her hand on her son&rsquo;s arm, as if to deprecate the
+attempt to define their position. &ldquo;It is quite useless,&rdquo; she said,
+&ldquo;to try and arrange this matter so as to make it agreeable to you. It can
+never be agreeable to you. It is a disappointment, and disappointments are
+unpleasant. I thought it over carefully and tried to arrange it better; but I
+only gave myself a headache and lost my sleep. Say what we will, you will think
+yourself ill-treated, and you will publish your wrongs among your friends. But
+we are not afraid of that. Besides, your friends are not our friends, and it
+will not matter. Think of us as you please. I only beg you not to be violent. I
+have never in my life been present at a violent scene of any kind, and at my
+age I can&rsquo;t be expected to begin.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is <i>that</i> all you have got to say?&rdquo; asked Newman, slowly
+rising out of his chair. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s a poor show for a clever lady like
+you, marquise. Come, try again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My mother goes to the point, with her usual honesty and
+intrepidity,&rdquo; said the marquis, toying with his watch-guard. &ldquo;But
+it is perhaps well to say a little more. We of course quite repudiate the
+charge of having broken faith with you. We left you entirely at liberty to make
+yourself agreeable to my sister. We left her quite at liberty to entertain your
+proposal. When she accepted you we said nothing. We therefore quite observed
+our promise. It was only at a later stage of the affair, and on quite a
+different basis, as it were, that we determined to speak. It would have been
+better, perhaps, if we had spoken before. But really, you see, nothing has yet
+been done.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing has yet been done?&rdquo; Newman repeated the words, unconscious
+of their comical effect. He had lost the sense of what the marquis was saying;
+M. de Bellegarde&rsquo;s superior style was a mere humming in his ears. All
+that he understood, in his deep and simple indignation, was that the matter was
+not a violent joke, and that the people before him were perfectly serious.
+&ldquo;Do you suppose I can take this?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Do you suppose
+it can matter to me what you say? Do you suppose I can seriously listen to you?
+You are simply crazy!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Bellegarde gave a rap with her fan in the palm of her hand. &ldquo;If
+you don&rsquo;t take it you can leave it, sir. It matters very little what you
+do. My daughter has given you up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She doesn&rsquo;t mean it,&rdquo; Newman declared after a moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think I can assure you that she does,&rdquo; said the marquis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Poor woman, what damnable thing have you done to her?&rdquo; cried
+Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Gently, gently!&rdquo; murmured M. de Bellegarde.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She told you,&rdquo; said the old lady. &ldquo;I commanded her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman shook his head, heavily. &ldquo;This sort of thing can&rsquo;t be, you
+know,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;A man can&rsquo;t be used in this fashion. You
+have got no right; you have got no power.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My power,&rdquo; said Madame de Bellegarde, &ldquo;is in my
+children&rsquo;s obedience.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In their fear, your daughter said. There is something very strange in
+it. Why should your daughter be afraid of you?&rdquo; added Newman, after
+looking a moment at the old lady. &ldquo;There is some foul play.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The marquise met his gaze without flinching, and as if she did not hear or heed
+what he said. &ldquo;I did my best,&rdquo; she said, quietly. &ldquo;I could
+endure it no longer.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was a bold experiment!&rdquo; said the marquis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman felt disposed to walk to him, clutch his neck with his fingers and press
+his windpipe with his thumb. &ldquo;I needn&rsquo;t tell you how you strike
+me,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;of course you know that. But I should think you
+would be afraid of your friends&mdash;all those people you introduced me to the
+other night. There were some very nice people among them; you may depend upon
+it there were some honest men and women.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Our friends approve us,&rdquo; said M. de Bellegarde, &ldquo;there is
+not a family among them that would have acted otherwise. And however that may
+be, we take the cue from no one. The Bellegardes have been used to set the
+example, not to wait for it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You would have waited long before anyone would have set you such an
+example as this,&rdquo; exclaimed Newman. &ldquo;Have I done anything
+wrong?&rdquo; he demanded. &ldquo;Have I given you reason to change your
+opinion? Have you found out anything against me? I can&rsquo;t imagine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Our opinion,&rdquo; said Madame de Bellegarde, &ldquo;is quite the same
+as at first&mdash;exactly. We have no ill-will towards yourself; we are very
+far from accusing you of misconduct. Since your relations with us began you
+have been, I frankly confess, less&mdash;less peculiar than I expected. It is
+not your disposition that we object to, it is your antecedents. We really
+cannot reconcile ourselves to a commercial person. We fancied in an evil hour
+that we could; it was a great misfortune. We determined to persevere to the
+end, and to give you every advantage. I was resolved that you should have no
+reason to accuse me of want of loyalty. We let the thing certainly go very far;
+we introduced you to our friends. To tell the truth, it was that, I think, that
+broke me down. I succumbed to the scene that took place on Thursday night in
+these rooms. You must excuse me if what I say is disagreeable to you, but we
+cannot release ourselves without an explanation.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There can be no better proof of our good faith,&rdquo; said the marquis,
+&ldquo;than our committing ourselves to you in the eyes of the world the other
+evening. We endeavored to bind ourselves&mdash;to tie our hands, as it
+were.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But it was that,&rdquo; added his mother, &ldquo;that opened our eyes
+and broke our bonds. We should have been most uncomfortable! You know,&rdquo;
+she added in a moment, &ldquo;that you were forewarned. I told you we were very
+proud.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman took up his hat and began mechanically to smooth it; the very fierceness
+of his scorn kept him from speaking. &ldquo;You are not proud enough,&rdquo; he
+observed at last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In all this matter,&rdquo; said the marquis, smiling, &ldquo;I really
+see nothing but our humility.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let us have no more discussion than is necessary,&rdquo; resumed Madame
+de Bellegarde. &ldquo;My daughter told you everything when she said she gave
+you up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am not satisfied about your daughter,&rdquo; said Newman; &ldquo;I
+want to know what you did to her. It is all very easy talking about authority
+and saying you commanded her. She didn&rsquo;t accept me blindly, and she
+wouldn&rsquo;t have given me up blindly. Not that I believe yet she has really
+given me up; she will talk it over with me. But you have frightened her, you
+have bullied her, you have <i>hurt</i> her. What was it you did to her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I did very little!&rdquo; said Madame de Bellegarde, in a tone which
+gave Newman a chill when he afterwards remembered it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let me remind you that we offered you these explanations,&rdquo; the
+marquis observed, &ldquo;with the express understanding that you should abstain
+from violence of language.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am not violent,&rdquo; Newman answered, &ldquo;it is you who are
+violent! But I don&rsquo;t know that I have much more to say to you. What you
+expect of me, apparently, is to go my way, thanking you for favors received,
+and promising never to trouble you again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We expect of you to act like a clever man,&rdquo; said Madame de
+Bellegarde. &ldquo;You have shown yourself that already, and what we have done
+is altogether based upon your being so. When one must submit, one must. Since
+my daughter absolutely withdraws, what will be the use of your making a
+noise?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It remains to be seen whether your daughter absolutely withdraws. Your
+daughter and I are still very good friends; nothing is changed in that. As I
+say, I will talk it over with her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That will be of no use,&rdquo; said the old lady. &ldquo;I know my
+daughter well enough to know that words spoken as she just now spoke to you are
+final. Besides, she has promised me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have no doubt her promise is worth a great deal more than your
+own,&rdquo; said Newman; &ldquo;nevertheless I don&rsquo;t give her up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Just as you please! But if she won&rsquo;t even see you,&mdash;and she
+won&rsquo;t,&mdash;your constancy must remain purely Platonic.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor Newman was feigning a greater confidence than he felt. Madame de
+Cintré&rsquo;s strange intensity had in fact struck a chill to his heart; her
+face, still impressed upon his vision, had been a terribly vivid image of
+renunciation. He felt sick, and suddenly helpless. He turned away and stood for
+a moment with his hand on the door; then he faced about and after the briefest
+hesitation broke out with a different accent. &ldquo;Come, think of what this
+must be to me, and let her alone! Why should you object to me
+so&mdash;what&rsquo;s the matter with me? I can&rsquo;t hurt you. I
+wouldn&rsquo;t if I could. I&rsquo;m the most unobjectionable fellow in the
+world. What if I am a commercial person? What under the sun do you mean? A
+commercial person? I will be any sort of a person you want. I never talked to
+you about business. Let her go, and I will ask no questions. I will take her
+away, and you shall never see me or hear of me again. I will stay in America if
+you like. I&rsquo;ll sign a paper promising never to come back to Europe! All I
+want is not to lose her!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Bellegarde and her son exchanged a glance of lucid irony, and Urbain
+said, &ldquo;My dear sir, what you propose is hardly an improvement. We have
+not the slightest objection to seeing you, as an amiable foreigner, and we have
+every reason for not wishing to be eternally separated from my sister. We
+object to the marriage; and in that way,&rdquo; and M. de Bellegarde gave a
+small, thin laugh, &ldquo;she would be more married than ever.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, then,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;where is this place of
+yours&mdash;Fleurières? I know it is near some old city on a hill.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Precisely. Poitiers is on a hill,&rdquo; said Madame de Bellegarde.
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know how old it is. We are not afraid to tell you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is Poitiers, is it? Very good,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;I shall
+immediately follow Madame de Cintré.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The trains after this hour won&rsquo;t serve you,&rdquo; said Urbain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall hire a special train!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That will be a very silly waste of money,&rdquo; said Madame de
+Bellegarde.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It will be time enough to talk about waste three days hence,&rdquo;
+Newman answered; and clapping his hat on his head, he departed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not immediately start for Fleurières; he was too stunned and wounded for
+consecutive action. He simply walked; he walked straight before him, following
+the river, till he got out of the <i>enceinte</i> of Paris. He had a burning,
+tingling sense of personal outrage. He had never in his life received so
+absolute a check; he had never been pulled up, or, as he would have said,
+&ldquo;let down,&rdquo; so short; and he found the sensation intolerable; he
+strode along, tapping the trees and lamp-posts fiercely with his stick and
+inwardly raging. To lose Madame de Cintré after he had taken such jubilant and
+triumphant possession of her was as great an affront to his pride as it was an
+injury to his happiness. And to lose her by the interference and the dictation
+of others, by an impudent old woman and a pretentious fop stepping in with
+their &ldquo;authority&rdquo;! It was too preposterous, it was too pitiful.
+Upon what he deemed the unblushing treachery of the Bellegardes Newman wasted
+little thought; he consigned it, once for all, to eternal perdition. But the
+treachery of Madame de Cintré herself amazed and confounded him; there was a
+key to the mystery, of course, but he groped for it in vain. Only three days
+had elapsed since she stood beside him in the starlight, beautiful and tranquil
+as the trust with which he had inspired her, and told him that she was happy in
+the prospect of their marriage. What was the meaning of the change? of what
+infernal potion had she tasted? Poor Newman had a terrible apprehension that
+she had really changed. His very admiration for her attached the idea of force
+and weight to her rupture. But he did not rail at her as false, for he was sure
+she was unhappy. In his walk he had crossed one of the bridges of the Seine,
+and he still followed, unheedingly, the long, unbroken quay. He had left Paris
+behind him, and he was almost in the country; he was in the pleasant suburb of
+Auteuil. He stopped at last, looked around him without seeing or caring for its
+pleasantness, and then slowly turned and at a slower pace retraced his steps.
+When he came abreast of the fantastic embankment known as the Trocadero, he
+reflected, through his throbbing pain, that he was near Mrs. Tristram&rsquo;s
+dwelling, and that Mrs. Tristram, on particular occasions, had much of a
+woman&rsquo;s kindness in her utterance. He felt that he needed to pour out his
+ire and he took the road to her house. Mrs. Tristram was at home and alone, and
+as soon as she had looked at him, on his entering the room, she told him that
+she knew what he had come for. Newman sat down heavily, in silence, looking at
+her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They have backed out!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Well, you may think it
+strange, but I felt something the other night in the air.&rdquo; Presently he
+told her his story; she listened, with her eyes fixed on him. When he had
+finished she said quietly, &ldquo;They want her to marry Lord Deepmere.&rdquo;
+Newman stared. He did not know that she knew anything about Lord Deepmere.
+&ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t think she will,&rdquo; Mrs. Tristram added.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>She</i> marry that poor little cub!&rdquo; cried Newman. &ldquo;Oh,
+Lord! And yet, why did she refuse me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But that isn&rsquo;t the only thing,&rdquo; said Mrs. Tristram.
+&ldquo;They really couldn&rsquo;t endure you any longer. They had overrated
+their courage. I must say, to give the devil his due, that there is something
+rather fine in that. It was your commercial quality in the abstract they
+couldn&rsquo;t swallow. That is really aristocratic. They wanted your money,
+but they have given you up for an idea.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman frowned most ruefully, and took up his hat again. &ldquo;I thought you
+would encourage me!&rdquo; he said, with almost childlike sadness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Excuse me,&rdquo; she answered very gently. &ldquo;I feel none the less
+sorry for you, especially as I am at the bottom of your troubles. I have not
+forgotten that I suggested the marriage to you. I don&rsquo;t believe that
+Madame de Cintré has any intention of marrying Lord Deepmere. It is true he is
+not younger than she, as he looks. He is thirty-three years old; I looked in
+the Peerage. But no&mdash;I can&rsquo;t believe her so horribly, cruelly
+false.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Please say nothing against her,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Poor woman, she <i>is</i> cruel. But of course you will go after her and
+you will plead powerfully. Do you know that as you are now,&rdquo; Mrs.
+Tristram pursued, with characteristic audacity of comment, &ldquo;you are
+extremely eloquent, even without speaking? To resist you a woman must have a
+very fixed idea in her head. I wish I had done you a wrong, that you might come
+to me in that fine fashion! But go to Madame de Cintré at any rate, and tell
+her that she is a puzzle even to me. I am very curious to see how far family
+discipline will go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman sat a while longer, leaning his elbows on his knees and his head in his
+hands, and Mrs. Tristram continued to temper charity with philosophy and
+compassion with criticism. At last she inquired, &ldquo;And what does the Count
+Valentin say to it?&rdquo; Newman started; he had not thought of Valentin and
+his errand on the Swiss frontier since the morning. The reflection made him
+restless again, and he took his leave. He went straight to his apartment,
+where, upon the table of the vestibule, he found a telegram. It ran (with the
+date and place) as follows: &ldquo;I am seriously ill; please to come to me as
+soon as possible. V. B.&rdquo; Newman groaned at this miserable news, and at
+the necessity of deferring his journey to the Château de Fleurières. But he
+wrote to Madame de Cintré these few lines; they were all he had time
+for:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t give you up, and I don&rsquo;t really believe you give me
+up. I don&rsquo;t understand it, but we shall clear it up together. I
+can&rsquo;t follow you to-day, as I am called to see a friend at a distance who
+is very ill, perhaps dying. But I shall come to you as soon as I can leave my
+friend. Why shouldn&rsquo;t I say that he is your brother? C. N.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After this he had only time to catch the night express to Geneva.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap19"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+
+<p>
+Newman possessed a remarkable talent for sitting still when it was necessary,
+and he had an opportunity to use it on his journey to Switzerland. The
+successive hours of the night brought him no sleep, but he sat motionless in
+his corner of the railway-carriage, with his eyes closed, and the most
+observant of his fellow-travelers might have envied him his apparent slumber.
+Toward morning slumber really came, as an effect of mental rather than of
+physical fatigue. He slept for a couple of hours, and at last, waking, found
+his eyes resting upon one of the snow-powdered peaks of the Jura, behind which
+the sky was just reddening with the dawn. But he saw neither the cold mountain
+nor the warm sky; his consciousness began to throb again, on the very instant,
+with a sense of his wrong. He got out of the train half an hour before it
+reached Geneva, in the cold morning twilight, at the station indicated in
+Valentin&rsquo;s telegram. A drowsy station-master was on the platform with a
+lantern, and the hood of his overcoat over his head, and near him stood a
+gentleman who advanced to meet Newman. This personage was a man of forty, with
+a tall lean figure, a sallow face, a dark eye, a neat moustache, and a pair of
+fresh gloves. He took off his hat, looking very grave, and pronounced
+Newman&rsquo;s name. Our hero assented and said, &ldquo;You are M. de
+Bellegarde&rsquo;s friend?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I unite with you in claiming that sad honor,&rdquo; said the gentleman.
+&ldquo;I had placed myself at M. de Bellegarde&rsquo;s service in this
+melancholy affair, together with M. de Grosjoyaux, who is now at his bedside.
+M. de Grosjoyaux, I believe, has had the honor of meeting you in Paris, but as
+he is a better nurse than I he remained with our poor friend. Bellegarde has
+been eagerly expecting you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And how is Bellegarde?&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;He was badly
+hit?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The doctor has condemned him; we brought a surgeon with us. But he will
+die in the best sentiments. I sent last evening for the curé of the nearest
+French village, who spent an hour with him. The curé was quite
+satisfied.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Heaven forgive us!&rdquo; groaned Newman. &ldquo;I would rather the
+doctor were satisfied! And can he see me&mdash;shall he know me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When I left him, half an hour ago, he had fallen asleep after a
+feverish, wakeful night. But we shall see.&rdquo; And Newman&rsquo;s companion
+proceeded to lead the way out of the station to the village, explaining as he
+went that the little party was lodged in the humblest of Swiss inns, where,
+however, they had succeeded in making M. de Bellegarde much more comfortable
+than could at first have been expected. &ldquo;We are old companions in
+arms,&rdquo; said Valentin&rsquo;s second; &ldquo;it is not the first time that
+one of us has helped the other to lie easily. It is a very nasty wound, and the
+nastiest thing about it is that Bellegarde&rsquo;s adversary was not shot. He
+put his bullet where he could. It took it into its head to walk straight into
+Bellegarde&rsquo;s left side, just below the heart.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As they picked their way in the gray, deceptive dawn, between the manure-heaps
+of the village street, Newman&rsquo;s new acquaintance narrated the particulars
+of the duel. The conditions of the meeting had been that if the first exchange
+of shots should fail to satisfy one of the two gentlemen, a second should take
+place. Valentin&rsquo;s first bullet had done exactly what Newman&rsquo;s
+companion was convinced he had intended it to do; it had grazed the arm of M.
+Stanislas Kapp, just scratching the flesh. M. Kapp&rsquo;s own projectile,
+meanwhile, had passed at ten good inches from the person of Valentin. The
+representatives of M. Stanislas had demanded another shot, which was granted.
+Valentin had then fired aside and the young Alsatian had done effective
+execution. &ldquo;I saw, when we met him on the ground,&rdquo; said
+Newman&rsquo;s informant, &ldquo;that he was not going to be <i>commode</i>. It
+is a kind of bovine temperament.&rdquo; Valentin had immediately been installed
+at the inn, and M. Stanislas and his friends had withdrawn to regions unknown.
+The police authorities of the canton had waited upon the party at the inn, had
+been extremely majestic, and had drawn up a long <i>procès-verbal</i>; but it
+was probable that they would wink at so very gentlemanly a bit of bloodshed.
+Newman asked whether a message had not been sent to Valentin&rsquo;s family,
+and learned that up to a late hour on the preceding evening Valentin had
+opposed it. He had refused to believe his wound was dangerous. But after his
+interview with the curé he had consented, and a telegram had been dispatched to
+his mother. &ldquo;But the marquise had better hurry!&rdquo; said
+Newman&rsquo;s conductor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s an abominable affair!&rdquo; said Newman.
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s all I have to say!&rdquo; To say this, at least, in a tone
+of infinite disgust was an irresistible need.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, you don&rsquo;t approve?&rdquo; questioned his conductor, with
+curious urbanity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Approve?&rdquo; cried Newman. &ldquo;I wish that when I had him there,
+night before last, I had locked him up in my <i>cabinet de toilette!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin&rsquo;s late second opened his eyes, and shook his head up and down
+two or three times, gravely, with a little flute-like whistle. But they had
+reached the inn, and a stout maid-servant in a night-cap was at the door with a
+lantern, to take Newman&rsquo;s traveling-bag from the porter who trudged
+behind him. Valentin was lodged on the ground-floor at the back of the house,
+and Newman&rsquo;s companion went along a stone-faced passage and softly opened
+a door. Then he beckoned to Newman, who advanced and looked into the room,
+which was lighted by a single shaded candle. Beside the fire sat M. de
+Grosjoyaux asleep in his dressing-gown&mdash;a little plump, fair man whom
+Newman had seen several times in Valentin&rsquo;s company. On the bed lay
+Valentin, pale and still, with his eyes closed&mdash;a figure very shocking to
+Newman, who had seen it hitherto awake to its fingertips. M. de
+Grosjoyaux&rsquo;s colleague pointed to an open door beyond, and whispered that
+the doctor was within, keeping guard. So long as Valentin slept, or seemed to
+sleep, of course Newman could not approach him; so our hero withdrew for the
+present, committing himself to the care of the half-waked <i>bonne</i>. She
+took him to a room above-stairs, and introduced him to a bed on which a
+magnified bolster, in yellow calico, figured as a counterpane. Newman lay down,
+and, in spite of his counterpane, slept for three or four hours. When he awoke,
+the morning was advanced and the sun was filling his window, and he heard,
+outside of it, the clucking of hens. While he was dressing there came to his
+door a messenger from M. de Grosjoyaux and his companion proposing that he
+should breakfast with them. Presently he went downstairs to the little
+stone-paved dining-room, where the maid-servant, who had taken off her
+night-cap, was serving the repast. M. de Grosjoyaux was there, surprisingly
+fresh for a gentleman who had been playing sick-nurse half the night, rubbing
+his hands and watching the breakfast table attentively. Newman renewed
+acquaintance with him, and learned that Valentin was still sleeping; the
+surgeon, who had had a fairly tranquil night, was at present sitting with him.
+Before M. de Grosjoyaux&rsquo;s associate reappeared, Newman learned that his
+name was M. Ledoux, and that Bellegarde&rsquo;s acquaintance with him dated
+from the days when they served together in the Pontifical Zouaves. M. Ledoux
+was the nephew of a distinguished Ultramontane bishop. At last the
+bishop&rsquo;s nephew came in with a toilet in which an ingenious attempt at
+harmony with the peculiar situation was visible, and with a gravity tempered by
+a decent deference to the best breakfast that the Croix Helvétique had ever set
+forth. Valentin&rsquo;s servant, who was allowed only in scanty measure the
+honor of watching with his master, had been lending a light Parisian hand in
+the kitchen. The two Frenchmen did their best to prove that if circumstances
+might overshadow, they could not really obscure, the national talent for
+conversation, and M. Ledoux delivered a neat little eulogy on poor Bellegarde,
+whom he pronounced the most charming Englishman he had ever known.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you call him an Englishman?&rdquo; Newman asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. Ledoux smiled a moment and then made an epigram. <i>&ldquo;C&rsquo;est plus
+qu&rsquo;un Anglais&mdash;c&rsquo;est un Anglomane!&rdquo;</i> Newman said
+soberly that he had never noticed it; and M. de Grosjoyaux remarked that it was
+really too soon to deliver a funeral oration upon poor Bellegarde.
+&ldquo;Evidently,&rdquo; said M. Ledoux. &ldquo;But I couldn&rsquo;t help
+observing this morning to Mr. Newman that when a man has taken such excellent
+measures for his salvation as our dear friend did last evening, it seems almost
+a pity he should put it in peril again by returning to the world.&rdquo; M.
+Ledoux was a great Catholic, and Newman thought him a queer mixture. His
+countenance, by daylight, had a sort of amiably saturnine cast; he had a very
+large thin nose, and looked like a Spanish picture. He appeared to think
+dueling a very perfect arrangement, provided, if one should get hit, one could
+promptly see the priest. He seemed to take a great satisfaction in
+Valentin&rsquo;s interview with the curé, and yet his conversation did not at
+all indicate a sanctimonious habit of mind. M. Ledoux had evidently a high
+sense of the becoming, and was prepared to be urbane and tasteful on all
+points. He was always furnished with a smile (which pushed his moustache up
+under his nose) and an explanation. <i>Savoir-vivre</i>&mdash;knowing how to
+live&mdash;was his specialty, in which he included knowing how to die; but, as
+Newman reflected, with a good deal of dumb irritation, he seemed disposed to
+delegate to others the application of his learning on this latter point. M. de
+Grosjoyaux was of quite another complexion, and appeared to regard his
+friend&rsquo;s theological unction as the sign of an inaccessibly superior
+mind. He was evidently doing his utmost, with a kind of jovial tenderness, to
+make life agreeable to Valentin to the last, and help him as little as possible
+to miss the Boulevard des Italiens; but what chiefly occupied his mind was the
+mystery of a bungling brewer&rsquo;s son making so neat a shot. He himself
+could snuff a candle, etc., and yet he confessed that he could not have done
+better than this. He hastened to add that on the present occasion he would have
+made a point of not doing so well. It was not an occasion for that sort of
+murderous work, <i>que diable!</i> He would have picked out some quiet fleshy
+spot and just tapped it with a harmless ball. M. Stanislas Kapp had been
+deplorably heavy-handed; but really, when the world had come to that pass that
+one granted a meeting to a brewer&rsquo;s son!... This was M. de
+Grosjoyaux&rsquo;s nearest approach to a generalization. He kept looking
+through the window, over the shoulder of M. Ledoux, at a slender tree which
+stood at the end of a lane, opposite to the inn, and seemed to be measuring its
+distance from his extended arm and secretly wishing that, since the subject had
+been introduced, propriety did not forbid a little speculative pistol-practice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman was in no humor to enjoy good company. He could neither eat nor talk;
+his soul was sore with grief and anger, and the weight of his double sorrow was
+intolerable. He sat with his eyes fixed upon his plate, counting the minutes,
+wishing at one moment that Valentin would see him and leave him free to go in
+quest of Madame de Cintré and his lost happiness, and mentally calling himself
+a vile brute the next, for the impatient egotism of the wish. He was very poor
+company, himself, and even his acute preoccupation and his general lack of the
+habit of pondering the impression he produced did not prevent him from
+reflecting that his companions must be puzzled to see how poor Bellegarde came
+to take such a fancy to this taciturn Yankee that he must needs have him at his
+death-bed. After breakfast he strolled forth alone into the village and looked
+at the fountain, the geese, the open barn doors, the brown, bent old women,
+showing their hugely darned stocking-heels at the ends of their slowly-clicking
+sabots, and the beautiful view of snowy Alps and purple Jura at either end of
+the little street. The day was brilliant; early spring was in the air and in
+the sunshine, and the winter&rsquo;s damp was trickling out of the cottage
+eaves. It was birth and brightness for all nature, even for chirping chickens
+and waddling goslings, and it was to be death and burial for poor, foolish,
+generous, delightful Bellegarde. Newman walked as far as the village church,
+and went into the small graveyard beside it, where he sat down and looked at
+the awkward tablets which were planted around. They were all sordid and
+hideous, and Newman could feel nothing but the hardness and coldness of death.
+He got up and came back to the inn, where he found M. Ledoux having coffee and
+a cigarette at a little green table which he had caused to be carried into the
+small garden. Newman, learning that the doctor was still sitting with Valentin,
+asked M. Ledoux if he might not be allowed to relieve him; he had a great
+desire to be useful to his poor friend. This was easily arranged; the doctor
+was very glad to go to bed. He was a youthful and rather jaunty practitioner,
+but he had a clever face, and the ribbon of the Legion of Honor in his
+buttonhole; Newman listened attentively to the instructions he gave him before
+retiring, and took mechanically from his hand a small volume which the surgeon
+recommended as a help to wakefulness, and which turned out to be an old copy of
+&ldquo;Les Liaisons Dangereuses.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin was still lying with his eyes closed, and there was no visible change
+in his condition. Newman sat down near him, and for a long time narrowly
+watched him. Then his eyes wandered away with his thoughts upon his own
+situation, and rested upon the chain of the Alps, disclosed by the drawing of
+the scant white cotton curtain of the window, through which the sunshine passed
+and lay in squares upon the red-tiled floor. He tried to interweave his
+reflections with hope, but he only half succeeded. What had happened to him
+seemed to have, in its violence and audacity, the force of a real
+calamity&mdash;the strength and insolence of Destiny herself. It was unnatural
+and monstrous, and he had no arms against it. At last a sound struck upon the
+stillness, and he heard Valentin&rsquo;s voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It can&rsquo;t be about <i>me</i> you are pulling that long face!&rdquo;
+He found, when he turned, that Valentin was lying in the same position; but his
+eyes were open, and he was even trying to smile. It was with a very slender
+strength that he returned the pressure of Newman&rsquo;s hand. &ldquo;I have
+been watching you for a quarter of an hour,&rdquo; Valentin went on; &ldquo;you
+have been looking as black as thunder. You are greatly disgusted with me, I
+see. Well, of course! So am I!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I shall not scold you,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;I feel too badly.
+And how are you getting on?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m getting off! They have quite settled that; haven&rsquo;t
+they?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s for you to settle; you can get well if you try,&rdquo; said
+Newman, with resolute cheerfulness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear fellow, how can I try? Trying is violent exercise, and that sort
+of thing isn&rsquo;t in order for a man with a hole in his side as big as your
+hat, that begins to bleed if he moves a hair&rsquo;s-breadth. I knew you would
+come,&rdquo; he continued; &ldquo;I knew I should wake up and find you here; so
+I&rsquo;m not surprised. But last night I was very impatient. I didn&rsquo;t
+see how I could keep still until you came. It was a matter of keeping still,
+just like this; as still as a mummy in his case. You talk about trying; I tried
+that! Well, here I am yet&mdash;these twenty hours. It seems like twenty
+days.&rdquo; Bellegarde talked slowly and feebly, but distinctly enough. It was
+visible, however, that he was in extreme pain, and at last he closed his eyes.
+Newman begged him to remain silent and spare himself; the doctor had left
+urgent orders. &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Valentin, &ldquo;let us eat and drink,
+for to-morrow&mdash;to-morrow&rdquo;&mdash;and he paused again. &ldquo;No, not
+to-morrow, perhaps, but to-day. I can&rsquo;t eat and drink, but I can talk.
+What&rsquo;s to be gained, at this pass, by renun&mdash;renunciation? I
+mustn&rsquo;t use such big words. I was always a chatterer; Lord, how I have
+talked in my day!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s a reason for keeping quiet now,&rdquo; said Newman.
+&ldquo;We know how well you talk, you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Valentin, without heeding him, went on in the same weak, dying drawl.
+&ldquo;I wanted to see you because you have seen my sister. Does she
+know&mdash;will she come?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman was embarrassed. &ldquo;Yes, by this time she must know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t you tell her?&rdquo; Valentin asked. And then, in a moment,
+&ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t you bring me any message from her?&rdquo; His eyes rested
+upon Newman&rsquo;s with a certain soft keenness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t see her after I got your telegram,&rdquo; said Newman.
+&ldquo;I wrote to her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And she sent you no answer?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman was obliged to reply that Madame de Cintré had left Paris. &ldquo;She
+went yesterday to Fleurières.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yesterday&mdash;to Fleurières? Why did she go to Fleurières? What day is
+this? What day was yesterday? Ah, then I shan&rsquo;t see her,&rdquo; said
+Valentin sadly. &ldquo;Fleurières is too far!&rdquo; And then he closed his
+eyes again. Newman sat silent, summoning pious invention to his aid, but he was
+relieved at finding that Valentin was apparently too weak to reason or to be
+curious. Bellegarde, however, presently went on. &ldquo;And my mother&mdash;and
+my brother&mdash;will they come? Are they at Fleurières?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They were in Paris, but I didn&rsquo;t see them, either,&rdquo; Newman
+answered. &ldquo;If they received your telegram in time, they will have started
+this morning. Otherwise they will be obliged to wait for the night-express, and
+they will arrive at the same hour as I did.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They won&rsquo;t thank me&mdash;they won&rsquo;t thank me,&rdquo;
+Valentin murmured. &ldquo;They will pass an atrocious night, and Urbain
+doesn&rsquo;t like the early morning air. I don&rsquo;t remember ever in my
+life to have seen him before noon&mdash;before breakfast. No one ever saw him.
+We don&rsquo;t know how he is then. Perhaps he&rsquo;s different. Who knows?
+Posterity, perhaps, will know. That&rsquo;s the time he works, in his
+<i>cabinet</i>, at the history of the Princesses. But I had to send for
+them&mdash;hadn&rsquo;t I? And then I want to see my mother sit there where you
+sit, and say good-bye to her. Perhaps, after all, I don&rsquo;t know her, and
+she will have some surprise for me. Don&rsquo;t think you know her yet,
+yourself; perhaps she may surprise <i>you</i>. But if I can&rsquo;t see Claire,
+I don&rsquo;t care for anything. I have been thinking of it&mdash;and in my
+dreams, too. Why did she go to Fleurières to-day? She never told me. What has
+happened? Ah, she ought to have guessed I was here&mdash;this way. It is the
+first time in her life she ever disappointed me. Poor Claire!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know we are not man and wife quite yet,&mdash;your sister and
+I,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;She doesn&rsquo;t yet account to me for all her
+actions.&rdquo; And, after a fashion, he smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin looked at him a moment. &ldquo;Have you quarreled?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never, never, never!&rdquo; Newman exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How happily you say that!&rdquo; said Valentin. &ldquo;You are going to
+be happy&mdash;<i>va!</i>&rdquo; In answer to this stroke of irony, none the
+less powerful for being so unconscious, all poor Newman could do was to give a
+helpless and transparent stare. Valentin continued to fix him with his own
+rather over-bright gaze, and presently he said, &ldquo;But something <i>is</i>
+the matter with you. I watched you just now; you haven&rsquo;t a
+bridegroom&rsquo;s face.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear fellow,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;how can I show <i>you</i> a
+bridegroom&rsquo;s face? If you think I enjoy seeing you lie there and not
+being able to help you&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, you are just the man to be cheerful; don&rsquo;t forfeit your
+rights! I&rsquo;m a proof of your wisdom. When was a man ever gloomy when he
+could say, &lsquo;I told you so?&rsquo; You told me so, you know. You did what
+you could about it. You said some very good things; I have thought them over.
+But, my dear friend, I was right, all the same. This is the regular way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t do what I ought,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;I ought to
+have done something else.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For instance?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, something or other. I ought to have treated you as a small
+boy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m a very small boy, now,&rdquo; said Valentin.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m rather less than an infant. An infant is helpless, but
+it&rsquo;s generally voted promising. I&rsquo;m not promising, eh? Society
+can&rsquo;t lose a less valuable member.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman was strongly moved. He got up and turned his back upon his friend and
+walked away to the window, where he stood looking out, but only vaguely seeing.
+&ldquo;No, I don&rsquo;t like the look of your back,&rdquo; Valentin continued.
+&ldquo;I have always been an observer of backs; yours is quite out of
+sorts.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman returned to his bedside and begged him to be quiet. &ldquo;Be quiet and
+get well,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what you must do. Get well and
+help me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I told you you were in trouble! How can I help you?&rdquo; Valentin
+asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll let you know when you are better. You were always curious;
+there is something to get well for!&rdquo; Newman answered, with resolute
+animation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin closed his eyes and lay a long time without speaking. He seemed even
+to have fallen asleep. But at the end of half an hour he began to talk again.
+&ldquo;I am rather sorry about that place in the bank. Who knows but that I
+might have become another Rothschild? But I wasn&rsquo;t meant for a banker;
+bankers are not so easy to kill. Don&rsquo;t you think I have been very easy to
+kill? It&rsquo;s not like a serious man. It&rsquo;s really very mortifying.
+It&rsquo;s like telling your hostess you must go, when you count upon her
+begging you to stay, and then finding she does no such thing.
+&lsquo;Really&mdash;so soon? You&rsquo;ve only just come!&rsquo; Life
+doesn&rsquo;t make me any such polite little speech.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman for some time said nothing, but at last he broke out. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+a bad case&mdash;it&rsquo;s a bad case&mdash;it&rsquo;s the worst case I ever
+met. I don&rsquo;t want to say anything unpleasant, but I can&rsquo;t help it.
+I&rsquo;ve seen men dying before&mdash;and I&rsquo;ve seen men shot. But it
+always seemed more natural; they were not so clever as you.
+Damnation&mdash;damnation! You might have done something better than this.
+It&rsquo;s about the meanest winding-up of a man&rsquo;s affairs that I can
+imagine!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin feebly waved his hand to and fro. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t
+insist&mdash;don&rsquo;t insist! It is mean&mdash;decidedly mean. For you see
+at the bottom&mdash;down at the bottom, in a little place as small as the end
+of a wine funnel&mdash;I agree with you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A few moments after this the doctor put his head through the half-opened door
+and, perceiving that Valentin was awake, came in and felt his pulse. He shook
+his head and declared that he had talked too much&mdash;ten times too much.
+&ldquo;Nonsense!&rdquo; said Valentin; &ldquo;a man sentenced to death can
+never talk too much. Have you never read an account of an execution in a
+newspaper? Don&rsquo;t they always set a lot of people at the
+prisoner&mdash;lawyers, reporters, priests&mdash;to make him talk? But
+it&rsquo;s not Mr. Newman&rsquo;s fault; he sits there as mum as a
+death&rsquo;s-head.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor observed that it was time his patient&rsquo;s wound should be
+dressed again; MM. de Grosjoyaux and Ledoux, who had already witnessed this
+delicate operation, taking Newman&rsquo;s place as assistants. Newman withdrew
+and learned from his fellow-watchers that they had received a telegram from
+Urbain de Bellegarde to the effect that their message had been delivered in the
+Rue de l&rsquo;Université too late to allow him to take the morning train, but
+that he would start with his mother in the evening. Newman wandered away into
+the village again, and walked about restlessly for two or three hours. The day
+seemed terribly long. At dusk he came back and dined with the doctor and M.
+Ledoux. The dressing of Valentin&rsquo;s wound had been a very critical
+operation; the doctor didn&rsquo;t really see how he was to endure a repetition
+of it. He then declared that he must beg of Mr. Newman to deny himself for the
+present the satisfaction of sitting with M. de Bellegarde; more than anyone
+else, apparently, he had the flattering but inconvenient privilege of exciting
+him. M. Ledoux, at this, swallowed a glass of wine in silence; he must have
+been wondering what the deuce Bellegarde found so exciting in the American.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman, after dinner, went up to his room, where he sat for a long time staring
+at his lighted candle, and thinking that Valentin was dying downstairs. Late,
+when the candle had burnt low, there came a soft rap at his door. The doctor
+stood there with a candlestick and a shrug.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He must amuse himself still!&rdquo; said Valentin&rsquo;s medical
+adviser. &ldquo;He insists upon seeing you, and I am afraid you must come. I
+think at this rate, that he will hardly outlast the night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman went back to Valentin&rsquo;s room, which he found lighted by a taper on
+the hearth. Valentin begged him to light a candle. &ldquo;I want to see your
+face,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;They say you excite me,&rdquo; he went on, as
+Newman complied with this request, &ldquo;and I confess I do feel excited. But
+it isn&rsquo;t you&mdash;it&rsquo;s my own thoughts. I have been
+thinking&mdash;thinking. Sit down there and let me look at you again.&rdquo;
+Newman seated himself, folded his arms, and bent a heavy gaze upon his friend.
+He seemed to be playing a part, mechanically, in a lugubrious comedy. Valentin
+looked at him for some time. &ldquo;Yes, this morning I was right; you have
+something on your mind heavier than Valentin de Bellegarde. Come, I&rsquo;m a
+dying man and it&rsquo;s indecent to deceive me. Something happened after I
+left Paris. It was not for nothing that my sister started off at this season of
+the year for Fleurières. Why was it? It sticks in my crop. I have been thinking
+it over, and if you don&rsquo;t tell me I shall guess.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I had better not tell you,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;It won&rsquo;t do
+you any good.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you think it will do me any good not to tell me, you are very much
+mistaken. There is trouble about your marriage.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;There is trouble about my
+marriage.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good!&rdquo; And Valentin was silent again. &ldquo;They have stopped
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They have stopped it,&rdquo; said Newman. Now that he had spoken out, he
+found a satisfaction in it which deepened as he went on. &ldquo;Your mother and
+brother have broken faith. They have decided that it can&rsquo;t take place.
+They have decided that I am not good enough, after all. They have taken back
+their word. Since you insist, there it is!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin gave a sort of groan, lifted his hands a moment, and then let them
+drop.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am sorry not to have anything better to tell you about them,&rdquo;
+Newman pursued. &ldquo;But it&rsquo;s not my fault. I was, indeed, very unhappy
+when your telegram reached me; I was quite upside down. You may imagine whether
+I feel any better now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin moaned gaspingly, as if his wound were throbbing. &ldquo;Broken faith,
+broken faith!&rdquo; he murmured. &ldquo;And my sister&mdash;my sister?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your sister is very unhappy; she has consented to give me up. I
+don&rsquo;t know why. I don&rsquo;t know what they have done to her; it must be
+something pretty bad. In justice to her you ought to know it. They have made
+her suffer. I haven&rsquo;t seen her alone, but only before them! We had an
+interview yesterday morning. They came out flat, in so many words. They told me
+to go about my business. It seems to me a very bad case. I&rsquo;m angry,
+I&rsquo;m sore, I&rsquo;m sick.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin lay there staring, with his eyes more brilliantly lighted, his lips
+soundlessly parted, and a flush of color in his pale face. Newman had never
+before uttered so many words in the plaintive key, but now, in speaking to
+Valentin in the poor fellow&rsquo;s extremity, he had a feeling that he was
+making his complaint somewhere within the presence of the power that men pray
+to in trouble; he felt his outgush of resentment as a sort of spiritual
+privilege.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And Claire,&rdquo;&mdash;said Bellegarde,&mdash;&ldquo;Claire? She has
+given you up?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t really believe it,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. Don&rsquo;t believe it, don&rsquo;t believe it. She is gaining time;
+excuse her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I pity her!&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Poor Claire!&rdquo; murmured Valentin. &ldquo;But they&mdash;but
+they&rdquo;&mdash;and he paused again. &ldquo;You saw them; they dismissed you,
+face to face?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Face to face. They were very explicit.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What did they say?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They said they couldn&rsquo;t stand a commercial person.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin put out his hand and laid it upon Newman&rsquo;s arm. &ldquo;And about
+their promise&mdash;their engagement with you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They made a distinction. They said it was to hold good only until Madame
+de Cintré accepted me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin lay staring a while, and his flush died away. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t tell
+me any more,&rdquo; he said at last. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m ashamed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You? You are the soul of honor,&rdquo; said Newman simply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin groaned and turned away his head. For some time nothing more was said.
+Then Valentin turned back again and found a certain force to press
+Newman&rsquo;s arm. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very bad&mdash;very bad. When my
+people&mdash;when my race&mdash;come to that, it is time for me to withdraw. I
+believe in my sister; she will explain. Excuse her. If she can&rsquo;t&mdash;if
+she can&rsquo;t, forgive her. She has suffered. But for the others it is very
+bad&mdash;very bad. You take it very hard? No, it&rsquo;s a shame to make you
+say so.&rdquo; He closed his eyes and again there was a silence. Newman felt
+almost awed; he had evoked a more solemn spirit than he expected. Presently
+Valentin looked at him again, removing his hand from his arm. &ldquo;I
+apologize,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Do you understand? Here on my death-bed. I
+apologize for my family. For my mother. For my brother. For the ancient house
+of Bellegarde. <i>Voilà!</i>&rdquo; he added softly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman for an answer took his hand and pressed it with a world of kindness.
+Valentin remained quiet, and at the end of half an hour the doctor softly came
+in. Behind him, through the half-open door, Newman saw the two questioning
+faces of MM. de Grosjoyaux and Ledoux. The doctor laid his hand on
+Valentin&rsquo;s wrist and sat looking at him. He gave no sign and the two
+gentlemen came in, M. Ledoux having first beckoned to someone outside. This was
+M. le Curé, who carried in his hand an object unknown to Newman, and covered
+with a white napkin. M. le Curé was short, round, and red: he advanced, pulling
+off his little black cap to Newman, and deposited his burden on the table; and
+then he sat down in the best armchair, with his hands folded across his person.
+The other gentlemen had exchanged glances which expressed unanimity as to the
+timeliness of their presence. But for a long time Valentin neither spoke nor
+moved. It was Newman&rsquo;s belief, afterwards, that M. le Curé went to sleep.
+At last abruptly, Valentin pronounced Newman&rsquo;s name. His friend went to
+him, and he said in French, &ldquo;You are not alone. I want to speak to you
+alone.&rdquo; Newman looked at the doctor, and the doctor looked at the curé,
+who looked back at him; and then the doctor and the curé, together, gave a
+shrug. &ldquo;Alone&mdash;for five minutes,&rdquo; Valentin repeated.
+&ldquo;Please leave us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The curé took up his burden again and led the way out, followed by his
+companions. Newman closed the door behind them and came back to
+Valentin&rsquo;s bedside. Bellegarde had watched all this intently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s very bad, it&rsquo;s very bad,&rdquo; he said, after Newman
+had seated himself close to him. &ldquo;The more I think of it the worse it
+is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t think of it,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Valentin went on, without heeding him. &ldquo;Even if they should come
+round again, the shame&mdash;the baseness&mdash;is there.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, they won&rsquo;t come round!&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, you can make them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Make them?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can tell you something&mdash;a great secret&mdash;an immense secret.
+You can use it against them&mdash;frighten them, force them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A secret!&rdquo; Newman repeated. The idea of letting Valentin, on his
+death-bed, confide him an &ldquo;immense secret&rdquo; shocked him, for the
+moment, and made him draw back. It seemed an illicit way of arriving at
+information, and even had a vague analogy with listening at a keyhole. Then,
+suddenly, the thought of &ldquo;forcing&rdquo; Madame de Bellegarde and her son
+became attractive, and Newman bent his head closer to Valentin&rsquo;s lips.
+For some time, however, the dying man said nothing more. He only lay and looked
+at his friend with his kindled, expanded, troubled eye, and Newman began to
+believe that he had spoken in delirium. But at last he said,&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There was something done&mdash;something done at Fleurières. It was foul
+play. My father&mdash;something happened to him. I don&rsquo;t know; I have
+been ashamed&mdash;afraid to know. But I know there is something. My mother
+knows&mdash;Urbain knows.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Something happened to your father?&rdquo; said Newman, urgently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Valentin looked at him, still more wide-eyed. &ldquo;He didn&rsquo;t get
+well.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Get well of what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the immense effort which Valentin had made, first to decide to utter these
+words and then to bring them out, appeared to have taken his last strength. He
+lapsed again into silence, and Newman sat watching him. &ldquo;Do you
+understand?&rdquo; he began again, presently. &ldquo;At Fleurières. You can
+find out. Mrs. Bread knows. Tell her I begged you to ask her. Then tell them
+that, and see. It may help you. If not, tell everyone. It will&mdash;it
+will&rdquo;&mdash;here Valentin&rsquo;s voice sank to the feeblest
+murmur&mdash;&ldquo;it will avenge you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The words died away in a long, soft groan. Newman stood up, deeply impressed,
+not knowing what to say; his heart was beating violently. &ldquo;Thank
+you,&rdquo; he said at last. &ldquo;I am much obliged.&rdquo; But Valentin
+seemed not to hear him, he remained silent, and his silence continued. At last
+Newman went and opened the door. M. le Curé re-entered, bearing his sacred
+vessel and followed by the three gentlemen and by Valentin&rsquo;s servant. It
+was almost processional.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap20"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+<p>
+Valentin de Bellegarde died tranquilly, just as the cold faint March dawn began
+to illumine the faces of the little knot of friends gathered about his bedside.
+An hour afterwards Newman left the inn and drove to Geneva; he was naturally
+unwilling to be present at the arrival of Madame de Bellegarde and her
+first-born. At Geneva, for the moment, he remained. He was like a man who has
+had a fall and wants to sit still and count his bruises. He instantly wrote to
+Madame de Cintré, relating to her the circumstances of her brother&rsquo;s
+death&mdash;with certain exceptions&mdash;and asking her what was the earliest
+moment at which he might hope that she would consent to see him. M. Ledoux had
+told him that he had reason to know that Valentin&rsquo;s will&mdash;Bellegarde
+had a great deal of elegant personal property to dispose of&mdash;contained a
+request that he should be buried near his father in the churchyard of
+Fleurières, and Newman intended that the state of his own relations with the
+family should not deprive him of the satisfaction of helping to pay the last
+earthly honors to the best fellow in the world. He reflected that
+Valentin&rsquo;s friendship was older than Urbain&rsquo;s enmity, and that at a
+funeral it was easy to escape notice. Madame de Cintré&rsquo;s answer to his
+letter enabled him to time his arrival at Fleurières. This answer was very
+brief; it ran as follows:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thank you for your letter, and for your being with Valentin. It is a
+most inexpressible sorrow to me that I was not. To see you will be nothing but
+a distress to me; there is no need, therefore, to wait for what you call
+brighter days. It is all one now, and I shall have no brighter days. Come when
+you please; only notify me first. My brother is to be buried here on Friday,
+and my family is to remain here. C. de C.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+As soon as he received this letter Newman went straight to Paris and to
+Poitiers. The journey took him far southward, through green Touraine and across
+the far-shining Loire, into a country where the early spring deepened about him
+as he went. But he had never made a journey during which he heeded less what he
+would have called the lay of the land. He obtained lodging at the inn at
+Poitiers, and the next morning drove in a couple of hours to the village of
+Fleurières. But here, preoccupied though he was, he could not fail to notice
+the picturesqueness of the place. It was what the French call a <i>petit
+bourg</i>; it lay at the base of a sort of huge mound on the summit of which
+stood the crumbling ruins of a feudal castle, much of whose sturdy material, as
+well as that of the wall which dropped along the hill to enclose the clustered
+houses defensively, had been absorbed into the very substance of the village.
+The church was simply the former chapel of the castle, fronting upon its
+grass-grown court, which, however, was of generous enough width to have given
+up its quaintest corner to a little graveyard. Here the very headstones
+themselves seemed to sleep, as they slanted into the grass; the patient elbow
+of the rampart held them together on one side, and in front, far beneath their
+mossy lids, the green plains and blue distances stretched away. The way to
+church, up the hill, was impracticable to vehicles. It was lined with peasants,
+two or three rows deep, who stood watching old Madame de Bellegarde slowly
+ascend it, on the arm of her elder son, behind the pall-bearers of the other.
+Newman chose to lurk among the common mourners who murmured &ldquo;Madame la
+Comtesse&rdquo; as a tall figure veiled in black passed before them. He stood
+in the dusky little church while the service was going forward, but at the
+dismal tomb-side he turned away and walked down the hill. He went back to
+Poitiers, and spent two days in which patience and impatience were singularly
+commingled. On the third day he sent Madame de Cintré a note, saying that he
+would call upon her in the afternoon, and in accordance with this he again took
+his way to Fleurières. He left his vehicle at the tavern in the village street,
+and obeyed the simple instructions which were given him for finding the
+château.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is just beyond there,&rdquo; said the landlord, and pointed to the
+tree-tops of the park, above the opposite houses. Newman followed the first
+cross-road to the right&mdash;it was bordered with mouldy cottages&mdash;and in
+a few moments saw before him the peaked roofs of the towers. Advancing farther,
+he found himself before a vast iron gate, rusty and closed; here he paused a
+moment, looking through the bars. The château was near the road; this was at
+once its merit and its defect; but its aspect was extremely impressive. Newman
+learned afterwards, from a guide-book of the province, that it dated from the
+time of Henry IV. It presented to the wide, paved area which preceded it and
+which was edged with shabby farm-buildings an immense façade of dark
+time-stained brick, flanked by two low wings, each of which terminated in a
+little Dutch-looking pavilion capped with a fantastic roof. Two towers rose
+behind, and behind the towers was a mass of elms and beeches, now just faintly
+green.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the great feature was a wide, green river which washed the foundations of
+the château. The building rose from an island in the circling stream, so that
+this formed a perfect moat spanned by a two-arched bridge without a parapet.
+The dull brick walls, which here and there made a grand, straight sweep; the
+ugly little cupolas of the wings, the deep-set windows, the long, steep
+pinnacles of mossy slate, all mirrored themselves in the tranquil river. Newman
+rang at the gate, and was almost frightened at the tone with which a big rusty
+bell above his head replied to him. An old woman came out from the gate-house
+and opened the creaking portal just wide enough for him to pass, and he went
+in, across the dry, bare court and the little cracked white slabs of the
+causeway on the moat. At the door of the château he waited for some moments,
+and this gave him a chance to observe that Fleurières was not &ldquo;kept
+up,&rdquo; and to reflect that it was a melancholy place of residence.
+&ldquo;It looks,&rdquo; said Newman to himself&mdash;and I give the comparison
+for what it is worth&mdash;&ldquo;like a Chinese penitentiary.&rdquo; At last
+the door was opened by a servant whom he remembered to have seen in the Rue de
+l&rsquo;Université. The man&rsquo;s dull face brightened as he perceived our
+hero, for Newman, for indefinable reasons, enjoyed the confidence of the
+liveried gentry. The footman led the way across a great central vestibule, with
+a pyramid of plants in tubs in the middle of glass doors all around, to what
+appeared to be the principal drawing-room of the château. Newman crossed the
+threshold of a room of superb proportions, which made him feel at first like a
+tourist with a guide-book and a cicerone awaiting a fee. But when his guide had
+left him alone, with the observation that he would call Madame la Comtesse,
+Newman perceived that the salon contained little that was remarkable save a
+dark ceiling with curiously carved rafters, some curtains of elaborate,
+antiquated tapestry, and a dark oaken floor, polished like a mirror. He waited
+some minutes, walking up and down; but at length, as he turned at the end of
+the room, he saw that Madame de Cintré had come in by a distant door. She wore
+a black dress, and she stood looking at him. As the length of the immense room
+lay between them he had time to look at her before they met in the middle of
+it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was dismayed at the change in her appearance. Pale, heavy-browed, almost
+haggard with a sort of monastic rigidity in her dress, she had little but her
+pure features in common with the woman whose radiant good grace he had hitherto
+admired. She let her eyes rest on his own, and she let him take her hand; but
+her eyes looked like two rainy autumn moons, and her touch was portentously
+lifeless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was at your brother&rsquo;s funeral,&rdquo; Newman said. &ldquo;Then I
+waited three days. But I could wait no longer.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing can be lost or gained by waiting,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré.
+&ldquo;But it was very considerate of you to wait, wronged as you have
+been.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad you think I have been wronged,&rdquo; said Newman, with
+that oddly humorous accent with which he often uttered words of the gravest
+meaning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do I need to say so?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I have
+wronged, seriously, many persons; certainly not consciously. To you, to whom I
+have done this hard and cruel thing, the only reparation I can make is to say,
+&lsquo;I know it, I feel it!&rsquo; The reparation is pitifully small!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, it&rsquo;s a great step forward!&rdquo; said Newman, with a gracious
+smile of encouragement. He pushed a chair towards her and held it, looking at
+her urgently. She sat down, mechanically, and he seated himself near her; but
+in a moment he got up, restlessly, and stood before her. She remained seated,
+like a troubled creature who had passed through the stage of restlessness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I say nothing is to be gained by my seeing you,&rdquo; she went on,
+&ldquo;and yet I am very glad you came. Now I can tell you what I feel. It is a
+selfish pleasure, but it is one of the last I shall have.&rdquo; And she
+paused, with her great misty eyes fixed upon him. &ldquo;I know how I have
+deceived and injured you; I know how cruel and cowardly I have been. I see it
+as vividly as you do&mdash;I feel it to the ends of my fingers.&rdquo; And she
+unclasped her hands, which were locked together in her lap, lifted them, and
+dropped them at her side. &ldquo;Anything that you may have said of me in your
+angriest passion is nothing to what I have said to myself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In my angriest passion,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;I have said nothing
+hard of you. The very worst thing I have said of you yet is that you are the
+loveliest of women.&rdquo; And he seated himself before her again abruptly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She flushed a little, but even her flush was pale. &ldquo;That is because you
+think I will come back. But I will not come back. It is in that hope you have
+come here, I know; I am very sorry for you. I would do almost anything for you.
+To say that, after what I have done, seems simply impudent; but what can I say
+that will not seem impudent? To wrong you and apologize&mdash;that is easy
+enough. I should not have wronged you.&rdquo; She stopped a moment, looking at
+him, and motioned him to let her go on. &ldquo;I ought never to have listened
+to you at first; that was the wrong. No good could come of it. I felt it, and
+yet I listened; that was your fault. I liked you too much; I believed in
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And don&rsquo;t you believe in me now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;More than ever. But now it doesn&rsquo;t matter. I have given you
+up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman gave a powerful thump with his clenched fist upon his knee. &ldquo;Why,
+why, why?&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Give me a reason&mdash;a decent reason. You
+are not a child&mdash;you are not a minor, nor an idiot. You are not obliged to
+drop me because your mother told you to. Such a reason isn&rsquo;t worthy of
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know that; it&rsquo;s not worthy of me. But it&rsquo;s the only one I
+have to give. After all,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré, throwing out her hands,
+&ldquo;think me an idiot and forget me! That will be the simplest way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman got up and walked away with a crushing sense that his cause was lost,
+and yet with an equal inability to give up fighting. He went to one of the
+great windows, and looked out at the stiffly embanked river and the formal
+gardens which lay beyond it. When he turned round, Madame de Cintré had risen;
+she stood there silent and passive. &ldquo;You are not frank,&rdquo; said
+Newman; &ldquo;you are not honest. Instead of saying that you are imbecile, you
+should say that other people are wicked. Your mother and your brother have been
+false and cruel; they have been so to me, and I am sure they have been so to
+you. Why do you try to shield them? Why do you sacrifice me to them? I&rsquo;m
+not false; I&rsquo;m not cruel. You don&rsquo;t know what you give up; I can
+tell you that&mdash;you don&rsquo;t. They bully you and plot about you; and
+I&mdash;I&rdquo;&mdash;And he paused, holding out his hands. She turned away
+and began to leave him. &ldquo;You told me the other day that you were afraid
+of your mother,&rdquo; he said, following her. &ldquo;What did you mean?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Cintré shook her head. &ldquo;I remember; I was sorry
+afterwards.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You were sorry when she came down and put on the thumbscrews. In
+God&rsquo;s name what <i>is</i> it she does to you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing. Nothing that you can understand. And now that I have given you
+up, I must not complain of her to you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s no reasoning!&rdquo; cried Newman. &ldquo;Complain of her,
+on the contrary. Tell me all about it, frankly and trustfully, as you ought,
+and we will talk it over so satisfactorily that you won&rsquo;t give me
+up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Cintré looked down some moments, fixedly; and then, raising her eyes,
+she said, &ldquo;One good at least has come of this: I have made you judge me
+more fairly. You thought of me in a way that did me great honor; I don&rsquo;t
+know why you had taken it into your head. But it left me no loophole for
+escape&mdash;no chance to be the common, weak creature I am. It was not my
+fault; I warned you from the first. But I ought to have warned you more. I
+ought to have convinced you that I was doomed to disappoint you. But I
+<i>was</i>, in a way, too proud. You see what my superiority amounts to, I
+hope!&rdquo; she went on, raising her voice with a tremor which even then and
+there Newman thought beautiful. &ldquo;I am too proud to be honest, I am not
+too proud to be faithless. I am timid and cold and selfish. I am afraid of
+being uncomfortable.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you call marrying me uncomfortable!&rdquo; said Newman staring.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Cintré blushed a little and seemed to say that if begging his pardon
+in words was impudent, she might at least thus mutely express her perfect
+comprehension of his finding her conduct odious. &ldquo;It is not marrying you;
+it is doing all that would go with it. It&rsquo;s the rupture, the defiance,
+the insisting upon being happy in my own way. What right have I to be happy
+when&mdash;when&rdquo;&mdash;And she paused.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When what?&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When others have been most unhappy!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What others?&rdquo; Newman asked. &ldquo;What have you to do with any
+others but me? Besides you said just now that you wanted happiness, and that
+you should find it by obeying your mother. You contradict yourself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I contradict myself; that shows you that I am not even
+intelligent.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are laughing at me!&rdquo; cried Newman. &ldquo;You are mocking
+me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at him intently, and an observer might have said that she was asking
+herself whether she might not most quickly end their common pain by confessing
+that she was mocking him. &ldquo;No; I am not,&rdquo; she presently said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Granting that you are not intelligent,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;that
+you are weak, that you are common, that you are nothing that I have believed
+you were&mdash;what I ask of you is not heroic effort, it is a very common
+effort. There is a great deal on my side to make it easy. The simple truth is
+that you don&rsquo;t care enough about me to make it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am cold,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré, &ldquo;I am as cold as that
+flowing river.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman gave a great rap on the floor with his stick, and a long, grim laugh.
+&ldquo;Good, good!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;You go altogether too far&mdash;you
+overshoot the mark. There isn&rsquo;t a woman in the world as bad as you would
+make yourself out. I see your game; it&rsquo;s what I said. You are blackening
+yourself to whiten others. You don&rsquo;t want to give me up, at all; you like
+me&mdash;you like me. I know you do; you have shown it, and I have felt it.
+After that, you may be as cold as you please! They have bullied you, I say;
+they have tortured you. It&rsquo;s an outrage, and I insist upon saving you
+from the extravagance of your own generosity. Would you chop off your hand if
+your mother requested it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Cintré looked a little frightened. &ldquo;I spoke of my mother too
+blindly, the other day. I am my own mistress, by law and by her approval. She
+can do nothing to me; she has done nothing. She has never alluded to those hard
+words I used about her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She has made you feel them, I&rsquo;ll promise you!&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s my conscience that makes me feel them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your conscience seems to me to be rather mixed!&rdquo; exclaimed Newman,
+passionately.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It has been in great trouble, but now it is very clear,&rdquo; said
+Madame de Cintré. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t give you up for any worldly advantage or
+for any worldly happiness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, you don&rsquo;t give me up for Lord Deepmere, I know,&rdquo; said
+Newman. &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t pretend, even to provoke you, that I think that.
+But that&rsquo;s what your mother and your brother wanted, and your mother, at
+that villainous ball of hers&mdash;I liked it at the time, but the very thought
+of it now makes me rabid&mdash;tried to push him on to make up to you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who told you this?&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré softly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not Valentin. I observed it. I guessed it. I didn&rsquo;t know at the
+time that I was observing it, but it stuck in my memory. And afterwards, you
+recollect, I saw Lord Deepmere with you in the conservatory. You said then that
+you would tell me at another time what he had said to you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That was before&mdash;before <i>this</i>,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t matter,&rdquo; said Newman; &ldquo;and, besides, I
+think I know. He&rsquo;s an honest little Englishman. He came and told you what
+your mother was up to&mdash;that she wanted him to supplant me; not being a
+commercial person. If he would make you an offer she would undertake to bring
+you over and give me the slip. Lord Deepmere isn&rsquo;t very intellectual, so
+she had to spell it out to him. He said he admired you &lsquo;no end,&rsquo;
+and that he wanted you to know it; but he didn&rsquo;t like being mixed up with
+that sort of underhand work, and he came to you and told tales. That was about
+the amount of it, wasn&rsquo;t it? And then you said you were perfectly
+happy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see why we should talk of Lord Deepmere,&rdquo; said
+Madame de Cintré. &ldquo;It was not for that you came here. And about my
+mother, it doesn&rsquo;t matter what you suspect and what you know. When once
+my mind has been made up, as it is now, I should not discuss these things.
+Discussing anything, now, is very idle. We must try and live each as we can. I
+believe you will be happy again; even, sometimes, when you think of me. When
+you do so, think this&mdash;that it was not easy, and that I did the best I
+could. I have things to reckon with that you don&rsquo;t know. I mean I have
+feelings. I must do as they force me&mdash;I must, I must. They would haunt me
+otherwise,&rdquo; she cried, with vehemence; &ldquo;they would kill me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know what your feelings are: they are superstitions! They are the
+feeling that, after all, though I <i>am</i> a good fellow, I have been in
+business; the feeling that your mother&rsquo;s looks are law and your
+brother&rsquo;s words are gospel; that you all hang together, and that
+it&rsquo;s a part of the everlasting proprieties that they should have a hand
+in everything you do. It makes my blood boil. That <i>is</i> cold; you are
+right. And what I feel here,&rdquo; and Newman struck his heart and became more
+poetical than he knew, &ldquo;is a glowing fire!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A spectator less preoccupied than Madame de Cintré&rsquo;s distracted wooer
+would have felt sure from the first that her appealing calm of manner was the
+result of violent effort, in spite of which the tide of agitation was rapidly
+rising. On these last words of Newman&rsquo;s it overflowed, though at first
+she spoke low, for fear of her voice betraying her. &ldquo;No. I was not
+right&mdash;I am not cold! I believe that if I am doing what seems so bad, it
+is not mere weakness and falseness. Mr. Newman, it&rsquo;s like a religion. I
+can&rsquo;t tell you&mdash;I can&rsquo;t! It&rsquo;s cruel of you to insist. I
+don&rsquo;t see why I shouldn&rsquo;t ask you to believe me&mdash;and pity me.
+It&rsquo;s like a religion. There&rsquo;s a curse upon the house; I don&rsquo;t
+know what&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know why&mdash;don&rsquo;t ask me. We must all
+bear it. I have been too selfish; I wanted to escape from it. You offered me a
+great chance&mdash;besides my liking you. It seemed good to change completely,
+to break, to go away. And then I admired you. But I can&rsquo;t&mdash;it has
+overtaken and come back to me.&rdquo; Her self-control had now completely
+abandoned her, and her words were broken with long sobs. &ldquo;Why do such
+dreadful things happen to us&mdash;why is my brother Valentin killed, like a
+beast in the midst of his youth and his gaiety and his brightness and all that
+we loved him for? Why are there things I can&rsquo;t ask about&mdash;that I am
+afraid to know? Why are there places I can&rsquo;t look at, sounds I
+can&rsquo;t hear? Why is it given to me to choose, to decide, in a case so hard
+and so terrible as this? I am not meant for that&mdash;I am not made for
+boldness and defiance. I was made to be happy in a quiet, natural way.&rdquo;
+At this Newman gave a most expressive groan, but Madame de Cintré went on.
+&ldquo;I was made to do gladly and gratefully what is expected of me. My mother
+has always been very good to me; that&rsquo;s all I can say. I must not judge
+her; I must not criticize her. If I did, it would come back to me. I
+can&rsquo;t change!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Newman, bitterly; &ldquo;<i>I</i> must change&mdash;if I
+break in two in the effort!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are different. You are a man; you will get over it. You have all
+kinds of consolation. You were born&mdash;you were trained, to changes.
+Besides&mdash;besides, I shall always think of you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care for that!&rdquo; cried Newman. &ldquo;You are
+cruel&mdash;you are terribly cruel. God forgive you! You may have the best
+reasons and the finest feelings in the world; that makes no difference. You are
+a mystery to me; I don&rsquo;t see how such hardness can go with such
+loveliness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Cintré fixed him a moment with her swimming eyes. &ldquo;You believe
+I am hard, then?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman answered her look, and then broke out, &ldquo;You are a perfect,
+faultless creature! Stay by me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course I am hard,&rdquo; she went on. &ldquo;Whenever we give pain we
+are hard. And we <i>must</i> give pain; that&rsquo;s the world,&mdash;the
+hateful, miserable world! Ah!&rdquo; and she gave a long, deep sigh, &ldquo;I
+can&rsquo;t even say I am glad to have known you&mdash;though I am. That too is
+to wrong you. I can say nothing that is not cruel. Therefore let us part,
+without more of this. Good-bye!&rdquo; And she put out her hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman stood and looked at it without taking it, and raised his eyes to her
+face. He felt, himself, like shedding tears of rage. &ldquo;What are you going
+to do?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Where are you going?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where I shall give no more pain and suspect no more evil. I am going out
+of the world.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Out of the world?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am going into a convent.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Into a convent!&rdquo; Newman repeated the words with the deepest
+dismay; it was as if she had said she was going into an hospital. &ldquo;Into a
+convent&mdash;<i>you!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I told you that it was not for my worldly advantage or pleasure I was
+leaving you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But still Newman hardly understood. &ldquo;You are going to be a nun,&rdquo; he
+went on, &ldquo;in a cell&mdash;for life&mdash;with a gown and white
+veil?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A nun&mdash;a Carmelite nun,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré. &ldquo;For
+life, with God&rsquo;s leave.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The idea struck Newman as too dark and horrible for belief, and made him feel
+as he would have done if she had told him that she was going to mutilate her
+beautiful face, or drink some potion that would make her mad. He clasped his
+hands and began to tremble, visibly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Madame de Cintré, don&rsquo;t, don&rsquo;t!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I
+beseech you! On my knees, if you like, I&rsquo;ll beseech you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laid her hand upon his arm, with a tender, pitying, almost reassuring
+gesture. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t understand,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You have
+wrong ideas. It&rsquo;s nothing horrible. It is only peace and safety. It is to
+be out of the world, where such troubles as this come to the innocent, to the
+best. And for life&mdash;that&rsquo;s the blessing of it! They can&rsquo;t
+begin again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman dropped into a chair and sat looking at her with a long, inarticulate
+murmur. That this superb woman, in whom he had seen all human grace and
+household force, should turn from him and all the brightness that he offered
+her&mdash;him and his future and his fortune and his fidelity&mdash;to muffle
+herself in ascetic rags and entomb herself in a cell was a confounding
+combination of the inexorable and the grotesque. As the image deepened before
+him the grotesque seemed to expand and overspread it; it was a reduction to the
+absurd of the trial to which he was subjected. &ldquo;You&mdash;you a
+nun!&rdquo; he exclaimed; &ldquo;you with your beauty defaced&mdash;you behind
+locks and bars! Never, never, if I can prevent it!&rdquo; And he sprang to his
+feet with a violent laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t prevent it,&rdquo; said Madame de Cintré, &ldquo;and it
+ought&mdash;a little&mdash;to satisfy you. Do you suppose I will go on living
+in the world, still beside you, and yet not with you? It is all arranged.
+Good-bye, good-bye.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This time he took her hand, took it in both his own. &ldquo;Forever?&rdquo; he
+said. Her lips made an inaudible movement and his own uttered a deep
+imprecation. She closed her eyes, as if with the pain of hearing it; then he
+drew her towards him and clasped her to his breast. He kissed her white face;
+for an instant she resisted and for a moment she submitted; then, with force,
+she disengaged herself and hurried away over the long shining floor. The next
+moment the door closed behind her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman made his way out as he could.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap21"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+<p>
+There is a pretty public walk at Poitiers, laid out upon the crest of the high
+hill around which the little city clusters, planted with thick trees and
+looking down upon the fertile fields in which the old English princes fought
+for their right and held it. Newman paced up and down this quiet promenade for
+the greater part of the next day and let his eyes wander over the historic
+prospect; but he would have been sadly at a loss to tell you afterwards whether
+the latter was made up of coal-fields or of vineyards. He was wholly given up
+to his grievance, of which reflection by no means diminished the weight. He
+feared that Madame de Cintré was irretrievably lost; and yet, as he would have
+said himself, he didn&rsquo;t see his way clear to giving her up. He found it
+impossible to turn his back upon Fleurières and its inhabitants; it seemed to
+him that some germ of hope or reparation must lurk there somewhere, if he could
+only stretch his arm out far enough to pluck it. It was as if he had his hand
+on a door-knob and were closing his clenched fist upon it: he had thumped, he
+had called, he had pressed the door with his powerful knee and shaken it with
+all his strength, and dead, damning silence had answered him. And yet something
+held him there&mdash;something hardened the grasp of his fingers.
+Newman&rsquo;s satisfaction had been too intense, his whole plan too deliberate
+and mature, his prospect of happiness too rich and comprehensive for this fine
+moral fabric to crumble at a stroke. The very foundation seemed fatally
+injured, and yet he felt a stubborn desire still to try to save the edifice. He
+was filled with a sorer sense of wrong than he had ever known, or than he had
+supposed it possible he should know. To accept his injury and walk away without
+looking behind him was a stretch of good-nature of which he found himself
+incapable. He looked behind him intently and continually, and what he saw there
+did not assuage his resentment. He saw himself trustful, generous, liberal,
+patient, easy, pocketing frequent irritation and furnishing unlimited modesty.
+To have eaten humble pie, to have been snubbed and patronized and satirized and
+have consented to take it as one of the conditions of the bargain&mdash;to have
+done this, and done it all for nothing, surely gave one a right to protest. And
+to be turned off because one was a commercial person! As if he had ever talked
+or dreamt of the commercial since his connection with the Bellegardes
+began&mdash;as if he had made the least circumstance of the commercial&mdash;as
+if he would not have consented to confound the commercial fifty times a day, if
+it might have increased by a hair&rsquo;s breadth the chance of the
+Bellegardes&rsquo; not playing him a trick! Granted that being commercial was
+fair ground for having a trick played upon one, how little they knew about the
+class so designed and its enterprising way of not standing upon trifles! It was
+in the light of his injury that the weight of Newman&rsquo;s past endurance
+seemed so heavy; his actual irritation had not been so great, merged as it was
+in his vision of the cloudless blue that overarched his immediate wooing. But
+now his sense of outrage was deep, rancorous, and ever present; he felt that he
+was a good fellow wronged. As for Madame de Cintré&rsquo;s conduct, it struck
+him with a kind of awe, and the fact that he was powerless to understand it or
+feel the reality of its motives only deepened the force with which he had
+attached himself to her. He had never let the fact of her Catholicism trouble
+him; Catholicism to him was nothing but a name, and to express a mistrust of
+the form in which her religious feelings had moulded themselves would have
+seemed to him on his own part a rather pretentious affectation of Protestant
+zeal. If such superb white flowers as that could bloom in Catholic soil, the
+soil was not insalubrious. But it was one thing to be a Catholic, and another
+to turn nun&mdash;on your hand! There was something lugubriously comical in the
+way Newman&rsquo;s thoroughly contemporaneous optimism was confronted with this
+dusky old-world expedient. To see a woman made for him and for motherhood to
+his children juggled away in this tragic travesty&mdash;it was a thing to rub
+one&rsquo;s eyes over, a nightmare, an illusion, a hoax. But the hours passed
+away without disproving the thing, and leaving him only the after-sense of the
+vehemence with which he had embraced Madame de Cintré. He remembered her words
+and her looks; he turned them over and tried to shake the mystery out of them
+and to infuse them with an endurable meaning. What had she meant by her feeling
+being a kind of religion? It was the religion simply of the family laws, the
+religion of which her implacable little mother was the high priestess. Twist
+the thing about as her generosity would, the one certain fact was that they had
+used force against her. Her generosity had tried to screen them, but
+Newman&rsquo;s heart rose into his throat at the thought that they should go
+scot-free.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The twenty-four hours wore themselves away, and the next morning Newman sprang
+to his feet with the resolution to return to Fleurières and demand another
+interview with Madame de Bellegarde and her son. He lost no time in putting it
+into practice. As he rolled swiftly over the excellent road in the little
+calèche furnished him at the inn at Poitiers, he drew forth, as it were, from
+the very safe place in his mind to which he had consigned it, the last
+information given him by poor Valentin. Valentin had told him he could do
+something with it, and Newman thought it would be well to have it at hand. This
+was of course not the first time, lately, that Newman had given it his
+attention. It was information in the rough,&mdash;it was dark and puzzling; but
+Newman was neither helpless nor afraid. Valentin had evidently meant to put him
+in possession of a powerful instrument, though he could not be said to have
+placed the handle very securely within his grasp. But if he had not really told
+him the secret, he had at least given him the clew to it&mdash;a clew of which
+that queer old Mrs. Bread held the other end. Mrs. Bread had always looked to
+Newman as if she knew secrets; and as he apparently enjoyed her esteem, he
+suspected she might be induced to share her knowledge with him. So long as
+there was only Mrs. Bread to deal with, he felt easy. As to what there was to
+find out, he had only one fear&mdash;that it might not be bad enough. Then,
+when the image of the marquise and her son rose before him again, standing side
+by side, the old woman&rsquo;s hand in Urbain&rsquo;s arm, and the same cold,
+unsociable fixedness in the eyes of each, he cried out to himself that the fear
+was groundless. There was blood in the secret at the very least! He arrived at
+Fleurières almost in a state of elation; he had satisfied himself, logically,
+that in the presence of his threat of exposure they would, as he mentally
+phrased it, rattle down like unwound buckets. He remembered indeed that he must
+first catch his hare&mdash;first ascertain what there was to expose; but after
+that, why shouldn&rsquo;t his happiness be as good as new again? Mother and son
+would drop their lovely victim in terror and take to hiding, and Madame de
+Cintré, left to herself, would surely come back to him. Give her a chance and
+she would rise to the surface, return to the light. How could she fail to
+perceive that his house would be much the most comfortable sort of convent?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman, as he had done before, left his conveyance at the inn and walked the
+short remaining distance to the château. When he reached the gate, however, a
+singular feeling took possession of him&mdash;a feeling which, strange as it
+may seem, had its source in its unfathomable good nature. He stood there a
+while, looking through the bars at the large, time-stained face of the edifice,
+and wondering to what crime it was that the dark old house, with its flowery
+name, had given convenient occasion. It had given occasion, first and last, to
+tyrannies and sufferings enough, Newman said to himself; it was an evil-looking
+place to live in. Then, suddenly, came the reflection&mdash;What a horrible
+rubbish-heap of iniquity to fumble in! The attitude of inquisitor turned its
+ignobler face, and with the same movement Newman declared that the Bellegardes
+should have another chance. He would appeal once more directly to their sense
+of fairness, and not to their fear, and if they should be accessible to reason,
+he need know nothing worse about them than what he already knew. That was bad
+enough.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The gate-keeper let him in through the same stiff crevice as before, and he
+passed through the court and over the little rustic bridge on the moat. The
+door was opened before he had reached it, and, as if to put his clemency to
+rout with the suggestion of a richer opportunity, Mrs. Bread stood there
+awaiting him. Her face, as usual, looked as hopelessly blank as the
+tide-smoothed sea-sand, and her black garments seemed of an intenser sable.
+Newman had already learned that her strange inexpressiveness could be a vehicle
+for emotion, and he was not surprised at the muffled vivacity with which she
+whispered, &ldquo;I thought you would try again, sir. I was looking out for
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am glad to see you,&rdquo; said Newman; &ldquo;I think you are my
+friend.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Bread looked at him opaquely. &ldquo;I wish you well sir; but it&rsquo;s
+vain wishing now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know, then, how they have treated me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, sir,&rdquo; said Mrs. Bread, dryly, &ldquo;I know everything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman hesitated a moment. &ldquo;Everything?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Bread gave him a glance somewhat more lucent. &ldquo;I know at least too
+much, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One can never know too much. I congratulate you. I have come to see
+Madame de Bellegarde and her son,&rdquo; Newman added. &ldquo;Are they at home?
+If they are not, I will wait.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My lady is always at home,&rdquo; Mrs. Bread replied, &ldquo;and the
+marquis is mostly with her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Please then tell them&mdash;one or the other, or both&mdash;that I am
+here and that I desire to see them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Bread hesitated. &ldquo;May I take a great liberty, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have never taken a liberty but you have justified it,&rdquo; said
+Newman, with diplomatic urbanity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Bread dropped her wrinkled eyelids as if she were curtseying; but the
+curtsey stopped there; the occasion was too grave. &ldquo;You have come to
+plead with them again, sir? Perhaps you don&rsquo;t know this&mdash;that Madame
+de Cintré returned this morning to Paris.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, she&rsquo;s gone!&rdquo; And Newman, groaning, smote the pavement
+with his stick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She has gone straight to the convent&mdash;the Carmelites they call it.
+I see you know, sir. My lady and the marquis take it very ill. It was only last
+night she told them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, she had kept it back, then?&rdquo; cried Newman. &ldquo;Good, good!
+And they are very fierce?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They are not pleased,&rdquo; said Mrs. Bread. &ldquo;But they may well
+dislike it. They tell me it&rsquo;s most dreadful, sir; of all the nuns in
+Christendom the Carmelites are the worst. You may say they are really not
+human, sir; they make you give up everything&mdash;forever. And to think of
+<i>her</i> there! If I was one that cried, sir, I could cry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman looked at her an instant. &ldquo;We mustn&rsquo;t cry, Mrs. Bread; we
+must act. Go and call them!&rdquo; And he made a movement to enter farther.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Mrs. Bread gently checked him. &ldquo;May I take another liberty? I am told
+you were with my dearest Mr. Valentin, in his last hours. If you would tell me
+a word about him! The poor count was my own boy, sir; for the first year of his
+life he was hardly out of my arms; I taught him to speak. And the count spoke
+so well, sir! He always spoke well to his poor old Bread. When he grew up and
+took his pleasure he always had a kind word for me. And to die in that wild
+way! They have a story that he fought with a wine-merchant. I can&rsquo;t
+believe that, sir! And was he in great pain?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are a wise, kind old woman, Mrs. Bread,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;I
+hoped I might see you with my own children in your arms. Perhaps I shall,
+yet.&rdquo; And he put out his hand. Mrs. Bread looked for a moment at his open
+palm, and then, as if fascinated by the novelty of the gesture, extended her
+own ladylike fingers. Newman held her hand firmly and deliberately, fixing his
+eyes upon her. &ldquo;You want to know all about Mr. Valentin?&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It would be a sad pleasure, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can tell you everything. Can you sometimes leave this place?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The château, sir? I really don&rsquo;t know. I never tried.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Try, then; try hard. Try this evening, at dusk. Come to me in the old
+ruin there on the hill, in the court before the church. I will wait for you
+there; I have something very important to tell you. An old woman like you can
+do as she pleases.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Bread stared, wondering, with parted lips. &ldquo;Is it from the count,
+sir?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;From the count&mdash;from his death-bed,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will come, then. I will be bold, for once, for <i>him</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She led Newman into the great drawing-room with which he had already made
+acquaintance, and retired to execute his commands. Newman waited a long time;
+at last he was on the point of ringing and repeating his request. He was
+looking round him for a bell when the marquis came in with his mother on his
+arm. It will be seen that Newman had a logical mind when I say that he declared
+to himself, in perfect good faith, as a result of Valentin&rsquo;s dark hints,
+that his adversaries looked grossly wicked. &ldquo;There is no mistake about it
+now,&rdquo; he said to himself as they advanced. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re a bad
+lot; they have pulled off the mask.&rdquo; Madame de Bellegarde and her son
+certainly bore in their faces the signs of extreme perturbation; they looked
+like people who had passed a sleepless night. Confronted, moreover, with an
+annoyance which they hoped they had disposed of, it was not natural that they
+should have any very tender glances to bestow upon Newman. He stood before
+them, and such eye-beams as they found available they leveled at him; Newman
+feeling as if the door of a sepulchre had suddenly been opened, and the damp
+darkness were being exhaled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You see I have come back,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I have come to try
+again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It would be ridiculous,&rdquo; said M. de Bellegarde, &ldquo;to pretend
+that we are glad to see you or that we don&rsquo;t question the taste of your
+visit.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t talk about taste,&rdquo; said Newman, with a laugh,
+&ldquo;or that will bring us round to yours! If I consulted my taste I
+certainly shouldn&rsquo;t come to see you. Besides, I will make as short work
+as you please. Promise me to raise the blockade&mdash;to set Madame de Cintré
+at liberty&mdash;and I will retire instantly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We hesitated as to whether we would see you,&rdquo; said Madame de
+Bellegarde; &ldquo;and we were on the point of declining the honor. But it
+seemed to me that we should act with civility, as we have always done, and I
+wished to have the satisfaction of informing you that there are certain
+weaknesses that people of our way of feeling can be guilty of but once.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You may be weak but once, but you will be audacious many times,
+madam,&rdquo; Newman answered. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t come however, for
+conversational purposes. I came to say this, simply: that if you will write
+immediately to your daughter that you withdraw your opposition to her marriage,
+I will take care of the rest. You don&rsquo;t want her to turn nun&mdash;you
+know more about the horrors of it than I do. Marrying a commercial person is
+better than that. Give me a letter to her, signed and sealed, saying you
+retract and that she may marry me with your blessing, and I will take it to her
+at the convent and bring her out. There&rsquo;s your chance&mdash;I call those
+easy terms.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We look at the matter otherwise, you know. We call them very hard
+terms,&rdquo; said Urbain de Bellegarde. They had all remained standing rigidly
+in the middle of the room. &ldquo;I think my mother will tell you that she
+would rather her daughter should become S&oelig;ur Catherine than Mrs.
+Newman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the old lady, with the serenity of supreme power, let her son make her
+epigrams for her. She only smiled, almost sweetly, shaking her head and
+repeating, &ldquo;But once, Mr. Newman; but once!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nothing that Newman had ever seen or heard gave him such a sense of marble
+hardness as this movement and the tone that accompanied it. &ldquo;Could
+anything compel you?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Do you know of anything that would
+force you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This language, sir,&rdquo; said the marquis, &ldquo;addressed to people
+in bereavement and grief is beyond all qualification.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In most cases,&rdquo; Newman answered, &ldquo;your objection would have
+some weight, even admitting that Madame de Cintré&rsquo;s present intentions
+make time precious. But I have thought of what you speak of, and I have come
+here to-day without scruple simply because I consider your brother and you two
+very different parties. I see no connection between you. Your brother was
+ashamed of you. Lying there wounded and dying, the poor fellow apologized to me
+for your conduct. He apologized to me for that of his mother.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a moment the effect of these words was as if Newman had struck a physical
+blow. A quick flush leaped into the faces of Madame de Bellegarde and her son,
+and they exchanged a glance like a twinkle of steel. Urbain uttered two words
+which Newman but half heard, but of which the sense came to him as it were in
+the reverberation of the sound, &ldquo;<i>Le misérable!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You show little respect for the living,&rdquo; said Madame de
+Bellegarde, &ldquo;but at least respect the dead. Don&rsquo;t
+profane&mdash;don&rsquo;t insult&mdash;the memory of my innocent son.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I speak the simple truth,&rdquo; Newman declared, &ldquo;and I speak it
+for a purpose. I repeat it&mdash;distinctly. Your son was utterly
+disgusted&mdash;your son apologized.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Urbain de Bellegarde was frowning portentously, and Newman supposed he was
+frowning at poor Valentin&rsquo;s invidious image. Taken by surprise, his scant
+affection for his brother had made a momentary concession to dishonor. But not
+for an appreciable instant did his mother lower her flag. &ldquo;You are
+immensely mistaken, sir,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;My son was sometimes light,
+but he was never indecent. He died faithful to his name.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You simply misunderstood him,&rdquo; said the marquis, beginning to
+rally. &ldquo;You affirm the impossible!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t care for poor Valentin&rsquo;s apology,&rdquo; said
+Newman. &ldquo;It was far more painful than pleasant to me. This atrocious
+thing was not his fault; he never hurt me, or anyone else; he was the soul of
+honor. But it shows how he took it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you wish to prove that my poor brother, in his last moments, was out
+of his head, we can only say that under the melancholy circumstances nothing
+was more possible. But confine yourself to that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He was quite in his right mind,&rdquo; said Newman, with gentle but
+dangerous doggedness; &ldquo;I have never seen him so bright and clever. It was
+terrible to see that witty, capable fellow dying such a death. You know I was
+very fond of your brother. And I have further proof of his sanity,&rdquo;
+Newman concluded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The marquise gathered herself together majestically. &ldquo;This is too
+gross!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;We decline to accept your story, sir&mdash;we
+repudiate it. Urbain, open the door.&rdquo; She turned away, with an imperious
+motion to her son, and passed rapidly down the length of the room. The marquis
+went with her and held the door open. Newman was left standing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He lifted his finger, as a sign to M. de Bellegarde, who closed the door behind
+his mother and stood waiting. Newman slowly advanced, more silent, for the
+moment, than life. The two men stood face to face. Then Newman had a singular
+sensation; he felt his sense of injury almost brimming over into jocularity.
+&ldquo;Come,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you don&rsquo;t treat me well; at least
+admit that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. de Bellegarde looked at him from head to foot, and then, in the most
+delicate, best-bred voice, &ldquo;I detest you personally,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the way I feel to you, but for politeness sake I
+don&rsquo;t say it,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s singular I should
+want so much to be your brother-in-law, but I can&rsquo;t give it up. Let me
+try once more.&rdquo; And he paused a moment. &ldquo;You have a
+secret&mdash;you have a skeleton in the closet.&rdquo; M. de Bellegarde
+continued to look at him hard, but Newman could not see whether his eyes
+betrayed anything; the look of his eyes was always so strange. Newman paused
+again, and then went on. &ldquo;You and your mother have committed a
+crime.&rdquo; At this M. de Bellegarde&rsquo;s eyes certainly did change; they
+seemed to flicker, like blown candles. Newman could see that he was profoundly
+startled; but there was something admirable in his self-control.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Continue,&rdquo; said M. de Bellegarde.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman lifted a finger and made it waver a little in the air. &ldquo;Need I
+continue? You are trembling.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pray where did you obtain this interesting information?&rdquo; M. de
+Bellegarde asked, very softly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall be strictly accurate,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t
+pretend to know more than I do. At present that is all I know. You have done
+something that you must hide, something that would damn you if it were known,
+something that would disgrace the name you are so proud of. I don&rsquo;t know
+what it is, but I can find out. Persist in your present course and I
+<i>will</i> find out. Change it, let your sister go in peace, and I will leave
+you alone. It&rsquo;s a bargain?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The marquis almost succeeded in looking untroubled; the breaking up of the ice
+in his handsome countenance was an operation that was necessarily gradual. But
+Newman&rsquo;s mildly-syllabled argumentation seemed to press, and press, and
+presently he averted his eyes. He stood some moments, reflecting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My brother told you this,&rdquo; he said, looking up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman hesitated a moment. &ldquo;Yes, your brother told me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The marquis smiled, handsomely. &ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t I say that he was out of
+his mind?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He was out of his mind if I don&rsquo;t find out. He was very much in it
+if I do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. de Bellegarde gave a shrug. &ldquo;Eh, sir, find out or not, as you
+please.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t frighten you?&rdquo; demanded Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s for you to judge.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, it&rsquo;s for you to judge, at your leisure. Think it over, feel
+yourself all round. I will give you an hour or two. I can&rsquo;t give you
+more, for how do we know how fast they may be making Madame de Cintré a nun?
+Talk it over with your mother; let her judge whether she is frightened. I
+don&rsquo;t believe she is as easily frightened, in general, as you; but you
+will see. I will go and wait in the village, at the inn, and I beg you to let
+me know as soon as possible. Say by three o&rsquo;clock. A simple <i>yes</i> or
+<i>no</i> on paper will do. Only, you know, in case of a <i>yes</i> I shall
+expect you, this time, to stick to your bargain.&rdquo; And with this Newman
+opened the door and let himself out. The marquis did not move, and Newman,
+retiring, gave him another look. &ldquo;At the inn, in the village,&rdquo; he
+repeated. Then he turned away altogether and passed out of the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was extremely excited by what he had been doing, for it was inevitable that
+there should be a certain emotion in calling up the spectre of dishonor before
+a family a thousand years old. But he went back to the inn and contrived to
+wait there, deliberately, for the next two hours. He thought it more than
+probable that Urbain de Bellegarde would give no sign; for an answer to his
+challenge, in either sense, would be a confession of guilt. What he most
+expected was silence&mdash;in other words defiance. But he prayed that, as he
+imagined it, his shot might bring them down. It did bring, by three
+o&rsquo;clock, a note, delivered by a footman; a note addressed in Urbain de
+Bellegarde&rsquo;s handsome English hand. It ran as follows:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I cannot deny myself the satisfaction of letting you know that I return
+to Paris, to-morrow, with my mother, in order that we may see my sister and
+confirm her in the resolution which is the most effectual reply to your
+audacious pertinacity.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+&ldquo;HENRI-URBAIN DE BELLEGARDE.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman put the letter into his pocket, and continued his walk up and down the
+inn-parlor. He had spent most of his time, for the past week, in walking up and
+down. He continued to measure the length of the little <i>salle</i> of the
+Armes de France until the day began to wane, when he went out to keep his
+rendezvous with Mrs. Bread. The path which led up the hill to the ruin was easy
+to find, and Newman in a short time had followed it to the top. He passed
+beneath the rugged arch of the castle wall, and looked about him in the early
+dusk for an old woman in black. The castle yard was empty, but the door of the
+church was open. Newman went into the little nave and of course found a deeper
+dusk than without. A couple of tapers, however, twinkled on the altar and just
+enabled him to perceive a figure seated by one of the pillars. Closer
+inspection helped him to recognize Mrs. Bread, in spite of the fact that she
+was dressed with unwonted splendor. She wore a large black silk bonnet, with
+imposing bows of crape, and an old black satin dress disposed itself in vaguely
+lustrous folds about her person. She had judged it proper to the occasion to
+appear in her stateliest apparel. She had been sitting with her eyes fixed upon
+the ground, but when Newman passed before her she looked up at him, and then
+she rose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you a Catholic, Mrs. Bread?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, sir; I&rsquo;m a good Church-of-England woman, very Low,&rdquo; she
+answered. &ldquo;But I thought I should be safer in here than outside. I was
+never out in the evening before, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We shall be safer,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;where no one can hear
+us.&rdquo; And he led the way back into the castle court and then followed a
+path beside the church, which he was sure must lead into another part of the
+ruin. He was not deceived. It wandered along the crest of the hill and
+terminated before a fragment of wall pierced by a rough aperture which had once
+been a door. Through this aperture Newman passed and found himself in a nook
+peculiarly favorable to quiet conversation, as probably many an earnest couple,
+otherwise assorted than our friends, had assured themselves. The hill sloped
+abruptly away, and on the remnant of its crest were scattered two or three
+fragments of stone. Beneath, over the plain, lay the gathered twilight, through
+which, in the near distance, gleamed two or three lights from the château. Mrs.
+Bread rustled slowly after her guide, and Newman, satisfying himself that one
+of the fallen stones was steady, proposed to her to sit upon it. She cautiously
+complied, and he placed himself upon another, near her.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap22"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am very much obliged to you for coming,&rdquo; Newman said. &ldquo;I
+hope it won&rsquo;t get you into trouble.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I shall be missed. My lady, in these days, is not
+fond of having me about her.&rdquo; This was said with a certain fluttered
+eagerness which increased Newman&rsquo;s sense of having inspired the old woman
+with confidence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;From the first, you know,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;you took an
+interest in my prospects. You were on my side. That gratified me, I assure you.
+And now that you know what they have done to me, I am sure you are with me all
+the more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They have not done well&mdash;I must say it,&rdquo; said Mrs. Bread.
+&ldquo;But you mustn&rsquo;t blame the poor countess; they pressed her
+hard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would give a million of dollars to know what they did to her!&rdquo;
+cried Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Bread sat with a dull, oblique gaze fixed upon the lights of the château.
+&ldquo;They worked on her feelings; they knew that was the way. She is a
+delicate creature. They made her feel wicked. She is only too good.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, they made her feel wicked,&rdquo; said Newman, slowly; and then he
+repeated it. &ldquo;They made her feel wicked,&mdash;they made her feel
+wicked.&rdquo; The words seemed to him for the moment a vivid description of
+infernal ingenuity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was because she was so good that she gave up&mdash;poor sweet
+lady!&rdquo; added Mrs. Bread.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But she was better to them than to me,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She was afraid,&rdquo; said Mrs. Bread, very confidently; &ldquo;she has
+always been afraid, or at least for a long time. That was the real trouble,
+sir. She was like a fair peach, I may say, with just one little speck. She had
+one little sad spot. You pushed her into the sunshine, sir, and it almost
+disappeared. Then they pulled her back into the shade and in a moment it began
+to spread. Before we knew it she was gone. She was a delicate creature.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This singular attestation of Madame de Cintré&rsquo;s delicacy, for all its
+singularity, set Newman&rsquo;s wound aching afresh. &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; he
+presently said; &ldquo;she knew something bad about her mother.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, sir, she knew nothing,&rdquo; said Mrs. Bread, holding her head very
+stiff and keeping her eyes fixed upon the glimmering windows of the château.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She guessed something, then, or suspected it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She was afraid to know,&rdquo; said Mrs. Bread.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But <i>you</i> know, at any rate,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She slowly turned her vague eyes upon Newman, squeezing her hands together in
+her lap. &ldquo;You are not quite faithful, sir. I thought it was to tell me
+about Mr. Valentin you asked me to come here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, the more we talk of Mr. Valentin the better,&rdquo; said Newman.
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s exactly what I want. I was with him, as I told you, in his
+last hour. He was in a great deal of pain, but he was quite himself. You know
+what that means; he was bright and lively and clever.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, he would always be clever, sir,&rdquo; said Mrs. Bread. &ldquo;And
+did he know of your trouble?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, he guessed it of himself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what did he say to it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He said it was a disgrace to his name&mdash;but it was not the
+first.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lord, Lord!&rdquo; murmured Mrs. Bread.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He said that his mother and his brother had once put their heads
+together and invented something even worse.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You shouldn&rsquo;t have listened to that, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps not. But I <i>did</i> listen, and I don&rsquo;t forget it. Now I
+want to know what it is they did.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Bread gave a soft moan. &ldquo;And you have enticed me up into this
+strange place to tell you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be alarmed,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t say a
+word that shall be disagreeable to you. Tell me as it suits you, and when it
+suits you. Only remember that it was Mr. Valentin&rsquo;s last wish that you
+should.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did he say that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He said it with his last breath&mdash;&lsquo;Tell Mrs. Bread I told you
+to ask her.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why didn&rsquo;t he tell you himself?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was too long a story for a dying man; he had no breath left in his
+body. He could only say that he wanted me to know&mdash;that, wronged as I was,
+it was my right to know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But how will it help you, sir?&rdquo; said Mrs. Bread.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s for me to decide. Mr. Valentin believed it would, and
+that&rsquo;s why he told me. Your name was almost the last word he
+spoke.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Bread was evidently awe-struck by this statement; she shook her clasped
+hands slowly up and down. &ldquo;Excuse me, sir,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;if I
+take a great liberty. Is it the solemn truth you are speaking? I <i>must</i>
+ask you that; must I not, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no offense. It <i>is</i> the solemn truth; I solemnly
+swear it. Mr. Valentin himself would certainly have told me more if he had been
+able.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, sir, if he knew more!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you suppose he did?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no saying what he knew about anything,&rdquo; said Mrs.
+Bread, with a mild head-shake. &ldquo;He was so mightily clever. He could make
+you believe he knew things that he didn&rsquo;t, and that he didn&rsquo;t know
+others that he had better not have known.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suspect he knew something about his brother that kept the marquis
+civil to him,&rdquo; Newman propounded; &ldquo;he made the marquis feel him.
+What he wanted now was to put me in his place; he wanted to give me a chance to
+make the marquis feel <i>me</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mercy on us!&rdquo; cried the old waiting-woman, &ldquo;how wicked we
+all are!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; said Newman; &ldquo;some of us are wicked,
+certainly. I am very angry, I am very sore, and I am very bitter, but I
+don&rsquo;t know that I am wicked. I have been cruelly injured. They have hurt
+me, and I want to hurt them. I don&rsquo;t deny that; on the contrary, I tell
+you plainly that it is the use I want to make of your secret.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Bread seemed to hold her breath. &ldquo;You want to publish them&mdash;you
+want to shame them?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I want to bring them down,&mdash;down, down, down! I want to turn the
+tables upon them&mdash;I want to mortify them as they mortified me. They took
+me up into a high place and made me stand there for all the world to see me,
+and then they stole behind me and pushed me into this bottomless pit, where I
+lie howling and gnashing my teeth! I made a fool of myself before all their
+friends; but I shall make something worse of them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This passionate sally, which Newman uttered with the greater fervor that it was
+the first time he had had a chance to say all this aloud, kindled two small
+sparks in Mrs. Bread&rsquo;s fixed eyes. &ldquo;I suppose you have a right to
+your anger, sir; but think of the dishonor you will draw down on Madame de
+Cintré.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Madame de Cintré is buried alive,&rdquo; cried Newman. &ldquo;What are
+honor or dishonor to her? The door of the tomb is at this moment closing behind
+her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, it&rsquo;s most awful,&rdquo; moaned Mrs. Bread.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She has moved off, like her brother Valentin, to give me room to work.
+It&rsquo;s as if it were done on purpose.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Surely,&rdquo; said Mrs. Bread, apparently impressed by the ingenuity of
+this reflection. She was silent for some moments; then she added, &ldquo;And
+would you bring my lady before the courts?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The courts care nothing for my lady,&rdquo; Newman replied. &ldquo;If
+she has committed a crime, she will be nothing for the courts but a wicked old
+woman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And will they hang her, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That depends upon what she has done.&rdquo; And Newman eyed Mrs. Bread
+intently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It would break up the family most terribly, sir!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s time such a family should be broken up!&rdquo; said Newman,
+with a laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And me at my age out of place, sir!&rdquo; sighed Mrs. Bread.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I will take care of you! You shall come and live with me. You shall
+be my housekeeper, or anything you like. I will pension you for life.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dear, dear, sir, you think of everything.&rdquo; And she seemed to fall
+a-brooding.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman watched her a while, and then he said suddenly. &ldquo;Ah, Mrs. Bread,
+you are too fond of my lady!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at him as quickly. &ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t have you say that, sir. I
+don&rsquo;t think it any part of my duty to be fond of my lady. I have served
+her faithfully this many a year; but if she were to die to-morrow, I believe,
+before Heaven I shouldn&rsquo;t shed a tear for her.&rdquo; Then, after a
+pause, &ldquo;I have no reason to love her!&rdquo; Mrs. Bread added. &ldquo;The
+most she has done for me has been not to turn me out of the house.&rdquo;
+Newman felt that decidedly his companion was more and more
+confidential&mdash;that if luxury is corrupting, Mrs. Bread&rsquo;s
+conservative habits were already relaxed by the spiritual comfort of this
+preconcerted interview, in a remarkable locality, with a free-spoken
+millionaire. All his native shrewdness admonished him that his part was simply
+to let her take her time&mdash;let the charm of the occasion work. So he said
+nothing; he only looked at her kindly. Mrs. Bread sat nursing her lean elbows.
+&ldquo;My lady once did me a great wrong,&rdquo; she went on at last.
+&ldquo;She has a terrible tongue when she is vexed. It was many a year ago, but
+I have never forgotten it. I have never mentioned it to a human creature; I
+have kept my grudge to myself. I dare say I have been wicked, but my grudge has
+grown old with me. It has grown good for nothing, too, I dare say; but it has
+lived along, as I have lived. It will die when I die,&mdash;not before!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what <i>is</i> your grudge?&rdquo; Newman asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Bread dropped her eyes and hesitated. &ldquo;If I were a foreigner, sir, I
+should make less of telling you; it comes harder to a decent Englishwoman. But
+I sometimes think I have picked up too many foreign ways. What I was telling
+you belongs to a time when I was much younger and very different looking to
+what I am now. I had a very high color, sir, if you can believe it, indeed I
+was a very smart lass. My lady was younger, too, and the late marquis was
+youngest of all&mdash;I mean in the way he went on, sir; he had a very high
+spirit; he was a magnificent man. He was fond of his pleasure, like most
+foreigners, and it must be owned that he sometimes went rather below him to
+take it. My lady was often jealous, and, if you&rsquo;ll believe it, sir, she
+did me the honor to be jealous of me. One day I had a red ribbon in my cap, and
+my lady flew out at me and ordered me to take it off. She accused me of putting
+it on to make the marquis look at me. I don&rsquo;t know that I was
+impertinent, but I spoke up like an honest girl and didn&rsquo;t count my
+words. A red ribbon indeed! As if it was my ribbons the marquis looked at! My
+lady knew afterwards that I was perfectly respectable, but she never said a
+word to show that she believed it. But the marquis did!&rdquo; Mrs. Bread
+presently added, &ldquo;I took off my red ribbon and put it away in a drawer,
+where I have kept it to this day. It&rsquo;s faded now, it&rsquo;s a very pale
+pink; but there it lies. My grudge has faded, too; the red has all gone out of
+it; but it lies here yet.&rdquo; And Mrs. Bread stroked her black satin bodice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman listened with interest to this decent narrative, which seemed to have
+opened up the deeps of memory to his companion. Then, as she remained silent,
+and seemed to be losing herself in retrospective meditation upon her perfect
+respectability, he ventured upon a short cut to his goal. &ldquo;So Madame de
+Bellegarde was jealous; I see. And M. de Bellegarde admired pretty women,
+without distinction of class. I suppose one mustn&rsquo;t be hard upon him, for
+they probably didn&rsquo;t all behave so properly as you. But years afterwards
+it could hardly have been jealousy that turned Madame de Bellegarde into a
+criminal.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Bread gave a weary sigh. &ldquo;We are using dreadful words, sir, but I
+don&rsquo;t care now. I see you have your idea, and I have no will of my own.
+My will was the will of my children, as I called them; but I have lost my
+children now. They are dead&mdash;I may say it of both of them; and what should
+I care for the living? What is anyone in the house to me now&mdash;what am I to
+them? My lady objects to me&mdash;she has objected to me these thirty years. I
+should have been glad to be something to young Madame de Bellegarde, though I
+never was nurse to the present marquis. When he was a baby I was too young;
+they wouldn&rsquo;t trust me with him. But his wife told her own maid, Mamselle
+Clarisse, the opinion she had of me. Perhaps you would like to hear it,
+sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, immensely,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She said that if I would sit in her children&rsquo;s schoolroom I should
+do very well for a penwiper! When things have come to that I don&rsquo;t think
+I need stand upon ceremony.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Decidedly not,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;Go on, Mrs. Bread.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Bread, however, relapsed again into troubled dumbness, and all Newman
+could do was to fold his arms and wait. But at last she appeared to have set
+her memories in order. &ldquo;It was when the late marquis was an old man and
+his eldest son had been two years married. It was when the time came on for
+marrying Mademoiselle Claire; that&rsquo;s the way they talk of it here, you
+know, sir. The marquis&rsquo;s health was bad; he was very much broken down. My
+lady had picked out M. de Cintré, for no good reason that I could see. But
+there are reasons, I very well know, that are beyond me, and you must be high
+in the world to understand them. Old M. de Cintré was very high, and my lady
+thought him almost as good as herself; that&rsquo;s saying a good deal. Mr.
+Urbain took sides with his mother, as he always did. The trouble, I believe,
+was that my lady would give very little money, and all the other gentlemen
+asked more. It was only M. de Cintré that was satisfied. The Lord willed it he
+should have that one soft spot; it was the only one he had. He may have been
+very grand in his birth, and he certainly was very grand in his bows and
+speeches; but that was all the grandeur he had. I think he was like what I have
+heard of comedians; not that I have ever seen one. But I know he painted his
+face. He might paint it all he would; he could never make me like it! The
+marquis couldn&rsquo;t abide him, and declared that sooner than take such a
+husband as that Mademoiselle Claire should take none at all. He and my lady had
+a great scene; it came even to our ears in the servants&rsquo; hall. It was not
+their first quarrel, if the truth must be told. They were not a loving couple,
+but they didn&rsquo;t often come to words, because, I think, neither of them
+thought the other&rsquo;s doings worth the trouble. My lady had long ago got
+over her jealousy, and she had taken to indifference. In this, I must say, they
+were well matched. The marquis was very easy-going; he had a most gentlemanly
+temper. He got angry only once a year, but then it was very bad. He always took
+to bed directly afterwards. This time I speak of he took to bed as usual, but
+he never got up again. I&rsquo;m afraid the poor gentleman was paying for his
+dissipation; isn&rsquo;t it true they mostly do, sir, when they get old? My
+lady and Mr. Urbain kept quiet, but I know my lady wrote letters to M. de
+Cintré. The marquis got worse and the doctors gave him up. My lady, she gave
+him up too, and if the truth must be told, she gave him up gladly. When once he
+was out of the way she could do what she pleased with her daughter, and it was
+all arranged that my poor innocent child should be handed over to M. de Cintré.
+You don&rsquo;t know what Mademoiselle was in those days, sir; she was the
+sweetest young creature in France, and knew as little of what was going on
+around her as the lamb does of the butcher. I used to nurse the marquis, and I
+was always in his room. It was here at Fleurières, in the autumn. We had a
+doctor from Paris, who came and stayed two or three weeks in the house. Then
+there came two others, and there was a consultation, and these two others, as I
+said, declared that the marquis couldn&rsquo;t be saved. After this they went
+off, pocketing their fees, but the other one stayed and did what he could. The
+marquis himself kept crying out that he wouldn&rsquo;t die, that he
+didn&rsquo;t want to die, that he would live and look after his daughter.
+Mademoiselle Claire and the viscount&mdash;that was Mr. Valentin, you
+know&mdash;were both in the house. The doctor was a clever man,&mdash;that I
+could see myself,&mdash;and I think he believed that the marquis might get
+well. We took good care of him, he and I, between us, and one day, when my lady
+had almost ordered her mourning, my patient suddenly began to mend. He got
+better and better, till the doctor said he was out of danger. What was killing
+him was the dreadful fits of pain in his stomach. But little by little they
+stopped, and the poor marquis began to make his jokes again. The doctor found
+something that gave him great comfort&mdash;some white stuff that we kept in a
+great bottle on the chimney-piece. I used to give it to the marquis through a
+glass tube; it always made him easier. Then the doctor went away, after telling
+me to keep on giving him the mixture whenever he was bad. After that there was
+a little doctor from Poitiers, who came every day. So we were alone in the
+house&mdash;my lady and her poor husband and their three children. Young Madame
+de Bellegarde had gone away, with her little girl, to her mothers. You know she
+is very lively, and her maid told me that she didn&rsquo;t like to be where
+people were dying.&rdquo; Mrs. Bread paused a moment, and then she went on with
+the same quiet consistency. &ldquo;I think you have guessed, sir, that when the
+marquis began to turn my lady was disappointed.&rdquo; And she paused again,
+bending upon Newman a face which seemed to grow whiter as the darkness settled
+down upon them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman had listened eagerly&mdash;with an eagerness greater even than that with
+which he had bent his ear to Valentin de Bellegarde&rsquo;s last words. Every
+now and then, as his companion looked up at him, she reminded him of an ancient
+tabby cat, protracting the enjoyment of a dish of milk. Even her triumph was
+measured and decorous; the faculty of exultation had been chilled by disuse.
+She presently continued. &ldquo;Late one night I was sitting by the marquis in
+his room, the great red room in the west tower. He had been complaining a
+little, and I gave him a spoonful of the doctor&rsquo;s dose. My lady had been
+there in the early part of the evening; she sat far more than an hour by his
+bed. Then she went away and left me alone. After midnight she came back, and
+her eldest son was with her. They went to the bed and looked at the marquis,
+and my lady took hold of his hand. Then she turned to me and said he was not so
+well; I remember how the marquis, without saying anything, lay staring at her.
+I can see his white face, at this moment, in the great black square between the
+bed-curtains. I said I didn&rsquo;t think he was very bad; and she told me to
+go to bed&mdash;she would sit a while with him. When the marquis saw me going
+he gave a sort of groan, and called out to me not to leave him; but Mr. Urbain
+opened the door for me and pointed the way out. The present
+marquis&mdash;perhaps you have noticed, sir&mdash;has a very proud way of
+giving orders, and I was there to take orders. I went to my room, but I
+wasn&rsquo;t easy; I couldn&rsquo;t tell you why. I didn&rsquo;t undress; I sat
+there waiting and listening. For what, would you have said, sir? I
+couldn&rsquo;t have told you; for surely a poor gentleman might be comfortable
+with his wife and his son. It was as if I expected to hear the marquis moaning
+after me again. I listened, but I heard nothing. It was a very still night; I
+never knew a night so still. At last the very stillness itself seemed to
+frighten me, and I came out of my room and went very softly downstairs. In the
+anteroom, outside of the marquis&rsquo;s chamber, I found Mr. Urbain walking up
+and down. He asked me what I wanted, and I said I came back to relieve my lady.
+He said <i>he</i> would relieve my lady, and ordered me back to bed; but as I
+stood there, unwilling to turn away, the door of the room opened and my lady
+came out. I noticed she was very pale; she was very strange. She looked a
+moment at the count and at me, and then she held out her arms to the count. He
+went to her, and she fell upon him and hid her face. I went quickly past her
+into the room and to the marquis&rsquo;s bed. He was lying there, very white,
+with his eyes shut, like a corpse. I took hold of his hand and spoke to him,
+and he felt to me like a dead man. Then I turned round; my lady and Mr. Urbain
+were there. &lsquo;My poor Bread,&rsquo; said my lady, &lsquo;M. le Marquis is
+gone.&rsquo; Mr. Urbain knelt down by the bed and said softly, &lsquo;<i>Mon
+père, mon père</i>.&rsquo; I thought it wonderful strange, and asked my lady
+what in the world had happened, and why she hadn&rsquo;t called me. She said
+nothing had happened; that she had only been sitting there with the marquis,
+very quiet. She had closed her eyes, thinking she might sleep, and she had
+slept, she didn&rsquo;t know how long. When she woke up he was dead.
+&lsquo;It&rsquo;s death, my son, it&rsquo;s death,&rsquo; she said to the
+count. Mr. Urbain said they must have the doctor, immediately, from Poitiers,
+and that he would ride off and fetch him. He kissed his father&rsquo;s face,
+and then he kissed his mother and went away. My lady and I stood there at the
+bedside. As I looked at the poor marquis it came into my head that he was not
+dead, that he was in a kind of swoon. And then my lady repeated, &lsquo;My poor
+Bread, it&rsquo;s death, it&rsquo;s death;&rsquo; and I said, &lsquo;Yes, my
+lady, it&rsquo;s certainly death.&rsquo; I said just the opposite to what I
+believed; it was my notion. Then my lady said we must wait for the doctor, and
+we sat there and waited. It was a long time; the poor marquis neither stirred
+nor changed. &lsquo;I have seen death before,&rsquo; said my lady, &lsquo;and
+it&rsquo;s terribly like this.&rsquo; &lsquo;Yes, please, my lady,&rsquo; said
+I; and I kept thinking. The night wore away without the count&rsquo;s coming
+back, and my lady began to be frightened. She was afraid he had had an accident
+in the dark, or met with some wild people. At last she got so restless that she
+went below to watch in the court for her son&rsquo;s return. I sat there alone
+and the marquis never stirred.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here Mrs. Bread paused again, and the most artistic of romancers could not have
+been more effective. Newman made a movement as if he were turning over the page
+of a novel. &ldquo;So he <i>was</i> dead!&rdquo; he exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Three days afterwards he was in his grave,&rdquo; said Mrs. Bread,
+sententiously. &ldquo;In a little while I went away to the front of the house
+and looked out into the court, and there, before long, I saw Mr. Urbain ride in
+alone. I waited a bit, to hear him come upstairs with his mother, but they
+stayed below, and I went back to the marquis&rsquo;s room. I went to the bed
+and held up the light to him, but I don&rsquo;t know why I didn&rsquo;t let the
+candlestick fall. The marquis&rsquo;s eyes were open&mdash;open wide! they were
+staring at me. I knelt down beside him and took his hands, and begged him to
+tell me, in the name of wonder, whether he was alive or dead. Still he looked
+at me a long time, and then he made me a sign to put my ear close to him:
+&lsquo;I am dead,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;I am dead. The marquise has killed
+me.&rsquo; I was all in a tremble; I didn&rsquo;t understand him. He seemed
+both a man and a corpse, if you can fancy, sir. &lsquo;But you&rsquo;ll get
+well now, sir,&rsquo; I said. And then he whispered again, ever so weak;
+&lsquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t get well for a kingdom. I wouldn&rsquo;t be that
+woman&rsquo;s husband again.&rsquo; And then he said more; he said she had
+murdered him. I asked him what she had done to him, but he only replied,
+&lsquo;Murder, murder. And she&rsquo;ll kill my daughter,&rsquo; he said;
+&lsquo;my poor unhappy child.&rsquo; And he begged me to prevent that, and then
+he said that he was dying, that he was dead. I was afraid to move or to leave
+him; I was almost dead myself. All of a sudden he asked me to get a pencil and
+write for him; and then I had to tell him that I couldn&rsquo;t manage a
+pencil. He asked me to hold him up in bed while he wrote himself, and I said he
+could never, never do such a thing. But he seemed to have a kind of terror that
+gave him strength. I found a pencil in the room and a piece of paper and a
+book, and I put the paper on the book and the pencil into his hand, and moved
+the candle near him. You will think all this very strange, sir; and very
+strange it was. The strangest part of it was that I believed he was dying, and
+that I was eager to help him to write. I sat on the bed and put my arm round
+him, and held him up. I felt very strong; I believe I could have lifted him and
+carried him. It was a wonder how he wrote, but he did write, in a big
+scratching hand; he almost covered one side of the paper. It seemed a long
+time; I suppose it was three or four minutes. He was groaning, terribly, all
+the while. Then he said it was ended, and I let him down upon his pillows and
+he gave me the paper and told me to fold it, and hide it, and give it to those
+who would act upon it. &lsquo;Whom do you mean?&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;Who are
+those who will act upon it?&rsquo; But he only groaned, for an answer; he
+couldn&rsquo;t speak, for weakness. In a few minutes he told me to go and look
+at the bottle on the chimney-piece. I knew the bottle he meant; the white stuff
+that was good for his stomach. I went and looked at it, but it was empty. When
+I came back his eyes were open and he was staring at me; but soon he closed
+them and he said no more. I hid the paper in my dress; I didn&rsquo;t look at
+what was written upon it, though I can read very well, sir, if I haven&rsquo;t
+any handwriting. I sat down near the bed, but it was nearly half an hour before
+my lady and the count came in. The marquis looked as he did when they left him,
+and I never said a word about his having been otherwise. Mr. Urbain said that
+the doctor had been called to a person in childbirth, but that he promised to
+set out for Fleurières immediately. In another half hour he arrived, and as
+soon as he had examined the marquis he said that we had had a false alarm. The
+poor gentleman was very low, but he was still living. I watched my lady and her
+son when he said this, to see if they looked at each other, and I am obliged to
+admit that they didn&rsquo;t. The doctor said there was no reason he should
+die; he had been going on so well. And then he wanted to know how he had
+suddenly fallen off; he had left him so very hearty. My lady told her little
+story again&mdash;what she had told Mr. Urbain and me&mdash;and the doctor
+looked at her and said nothing. He stayed all the next day at the château, and
+hardly left the marquis. I was always there. Mademoiselle and Mr. Valentin came
+and looked at their father, but he never stirred. It was a strange, deathly
+stupor. My lady was always about; her face was as white as her husband&rsquo;s,
+and she looked very proud, as I had seen her look when her orders or her wishes
+had been disobeyed. It was as if the poor marquis had defied her; and the way
+she took it made me afraid of her. The apothecary from Poitiers kept the
+marquis along through the day, and we waited for the other doctor from Paris,
+who, as I told you, had been staying at Fleurières. They had telegraphed for
+him early in the morning, and in the evening he arrived. He talked a bit
+outside with the doctor from Poitiers, and then they came in to see the marquis
+together. I was with him, and so was Mr. Urbain. My lady had been to receive
+the doctor from Paris, and she didn&rsquo;t come back with him into the room.
+He sat down by the marquis; I can see him there now, with his hand on the
+marquis&rsquo;s wrist, and Mr. Urbain watching him with a little looking-glass
+in his hand. &lsquo;I&rsquo;m sure he&rsquo;s better,&rsquo; said the little
+doctor from Poitiers; &lsquo;I&rsquo;m sure he&rsquo;ll come back.&rsquo; A few
+moments after he had said this the marquis opened his eyes, as if he were
+waking up, and looked at us, from one to the other. I saw him look at me very
+softly, as you&rsquo;d say. At the same moment my lady came in on tiptoe; she
+came up to the bed and put in her head between me and the count. The marquis
+saw her and gave a long, most wonderful moan. He said something we
+couldn&rsquo;t understand, and he seemed to have a kind of spasm. He shook all
+over and then closed his eyes, and the doctor jumped up and took hold of my
+lady. He held her for a moment a bit roughly. The marquis was stone dead! This
+time there were those there that knew.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman felt as if he had been reading by starlight the report of highly
+important evidence in a great murder case. &ldquo;And the paper&mdash;the
+paper!&rdquo; he said, excitedly. &ldquo;What was written upon it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t tell you, sir,&rdquo; answered Mrs. Bread. &ldquo;I
+couldn&rsquo;t read it; it was in French.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But could no one else read it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never asked a human creature.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No one has ever seen it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you see it you&rsquo;ll be the first.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman seized the old woman&rsquo;s hand in both his own and pressed it
+vigorously. &ldquo;I thank you ever so much for that,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;I
+want to be the first, I want it to be my property and no one else&rsquo;s!
+You&rsquo;re the wisest old woman in Europe. And what did you do with the
+paper?&rdquo; This information had made him feel extraordinarily strong.
+&ldquo;Give it to me quick!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Bread got up with a certain majesty. &ldquo;It is not so easy as that,
+sir. If you want the paper, you must wait.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But waiting is horrible, you know,&rdquo; urged Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am sure <i>I</i> have waited; I have waited these many years,&rdquo;
+said Mrs. Bread.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is very true. You have waited for me. I won&rsquo;t forget it. And
+yet, how comes it you didn&rsquo;t do as M. de Bellegarde said, show the paper
+to someone?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To whom should I show it?&rdquo; answered Mrs. Bread, mournfully.
+&ldquo;It was not easy to know, and many&rsquo;s the night I have lain awake
+thinking of it. Six months afterwards, when they married Mademoiselle to her
+vicious old husband, I was very near bringing it out. I thought it was my duty
+to do something with it, and yet I was mightily afraid. I didn&rsquo;t know
+what was written on the paper or how bad it might be, and there was no one I
+could trust enough to ask. And it seemed to me a cruel kindness to do that
+sweet young creature, letting her know that her father had written her mother
+down so shamefully; for that&rsquo;s what he did, I suppose. I thought she
+would rather be unhappy with her husband than be unhappy that way. It was for
+her and for my dear Mr. Valentin I kept quiet. Quiet I call it, but for me it
+was a weary quietness. It worried me terribly, and it changed me altogether.
+But for others I held my tongue, and no one, to this hour, knows what passed
+between the poor marquis and me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But evidently there were suspicions,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;Where
+did Mr. Valentin get his ideas?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was the little doctor from Poitiers. He was very ill-satisfied, and
+he made a great talk. He was a sharp Frenchman, and coming to the house, as he
+did day after day, I suppose he saw more than he seemed to see. And indeed the
+way the poor marquis went off as soon as his eyes fell on my lady was a most
+shocking sight for anyone. The medical gentleman from Paris was much more
+accommodating, and he hushed up the other. But for all he could do Mr. Valentin
+and Mademoiselle heard something; they knew their father&rsquo;s death was
+somehow against nature. Of course they couldn&rsquo;t accuse their mother, and,
+as I tell you, I was as dumb as that stone. Mr. Valentin used to look at me
+sometimes, and his eyes seemed to shine, as if he were thinking of asking me
+something. I was dreadfully afraid he would speak, and I always looked away and
+went about my business. If I were to tell him, I was sure he would hate me
+afterwards, and that I could never have borne. Once I went up to him and took a
+great liberty; I kissed him, as I had kissed him when he was a child.
+&lsquo;You oughtn&rsquo;t to look so sad, sir,&rsquo; I said; &lsquo;believe
+your poor old Bread. Such a gallant, handsome young man can have nothing to be
+sad about.&rsquo; And I think he understood me; he understood that I was
+begging off, and he made up his mind in his own way. He went about with his
+unasked question in his mind, as I did with my untold tale; we were both afraid
+of bringing dishonor on a great house. And it was the same with Mademoiselle.
+She didn&rsquo;t know what happened; she wouldn&rsquo;t know. My lady and Mr.
+Urbain asked me no questions because they had no reason. I was as still as a
+mouse. When I was younger my lady thought me a hussy, and now she thought me a
+fool. How should I have any ideas?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you say the little doctor from Poitiers made a talk,&rdquo; said
+Newman. &ldquo;Did no one take it up?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I heard nothing of it, sir. They are always talking scandal in these
+foreign countries you may have noticed&mdash;and I suppose they shook their
+heads over Madame de Bellegarde. But after all, what could they say? The
+marquis had been ill, and the marquis had died; he had as good a right to die
+as anyone. The doctor couldn&rsquo;t say he had not come honestly by his
+cramps. The next year the little doctor left the place and bought a practice in
+Bordeaux, and if there has been any gossip it died out. And I don&rsquo;t think
+there could have been much gossip about my lady that anyone would listen to. My
+lady is so very respectable.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman, at this last affirmation, broke into an immense, resounding laugh. Mrs.
+Bread had begun to move away from the spot where they were sitting, and he
+helped her through the aperture in the wall and along the homeward path.
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;my lady&rsquo;s respectability is delicious;
+it will be a great crash!&rdquo; They reached the empty space in front of the
+church, where they stopped a moment, looking at each other with something of an
+air of closer fellowship&mdash;like two sociable conspirators. &ldquo;But what
+was it,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;what was it she did to her husband? She
+didn&rsquo;t stab him or poison him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know, sir; no one saw it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Unless it was Mr. Urbain. You say he was walking up and down, outside
+the room. Perhaps he looked through the keyhole. But no; I think that with his
+mother he would take it on trust.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You may be sure I have often thought of it,&rdquo; said Mrs. Bread.
+&ldquo;I am sure she didn&rsquo;t touch him with her hands. I saw nothing on
+him, anywhere. I believe it was in this way. He had a fit of his great pain,
+and he asked her for his medicine. Instead of giving it to him she went and
+poured it away, before his eyes. Then he saw what she meant, and, weak and
+helpless as he was, he was frightened, he was terrified. &lsquo;You want to
+kill me,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;Yes, M. le Marquis, I want to kill you,&rsquo;
+says my lady, and sits down and fixes her eyes upon him. You know my
+lady&rsquo;s eyes, I think, sir; it was with them she killed him; it was with
+the terrible strong will she put into them. It was like a frost on
+flowers.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, you are a very intelligent woman; you have shown great
+discretion,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;I shall value your services as
+housekeeper extremely.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had begun to descend the hill, and Mrs. Bread said nothing until they
+reached the foot. Newman strolled lightly beside her; his head was thrown back
+and he was gazing at all the stars; he seemed to himself to be riding his
+vengeance along the Milky Way. &ldquo;So you are serious, sir, about
+that?&rdquo; said Mrs. Bread, softly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;About your living with me? Why of course I will take care of you to the
+end of your days. You can&rsquo;t live with those people any longer. And you
+oughtn&rsquo;t to, you know, after this. You give me the paper, and you move
+away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It seems very flighty in me to be taking a new place at this time of
+life,&rdquo; observed Mrs. Bread, lugubriously. &ldquo;But if you are going to
+turn the house upside down, I would rather be out of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Newman, in the cheerful tone of a man who feels rich in
+alternatives. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I shall bring in the constables, if
+that&rsquo;s what you mean. Whatever Madame de Bellegarde did, I am afraid the
+law can&rsquo;t take hold of it. But I am glad of that; it leaves it altogether
+to me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are a mighty bold gentleman, sir,&rdquo; murmured Mrs. Bread,
+looking at him round the edge of her great bonnet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He walked with her back to the château; the curfew had tolled for the laborious
+villagers of Fleurières, and the street was unlighted and empty. She promised
+him that he should have the marquis&rsquo;s manuscript in half an hour. Mrs.
+Bread choosing not to go in by the great gate, they passed round by a winding
+lane to a door in the wall of the park, of which she had the key, and which
+would enable her to enter the château from behind. Newman arranged with her
+that he should await outside the wall her return with the coveted document.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She went in, and his half hour in the dusky lane seemed very long. But he had
+plenty to think about. At last the door in the wall opened and Mrs. Bread stood
+there, with one hand on the latch and the other holding out a scrap of white
+paper, folded small. In a moment he was master of it, and it had passed into
+his waistcoat pocket. &ldquo;Come and see me in Paris,&rdquo; he said;
+&ldquo;we are to settle your future, you know; and I will translate poor M. de
+Bellegarde&rsquo;s French to you.&rdquo; Never had he felt so grateful as at
+this moment for M. Nioche&rsquo;s instructions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Bread&rsquo;s dull eyes had followed the disappearance of the paper, and
+she gave a heavy sigh. &ldquo;Well, you have done what you would with me, sir,
+and I suppose you will do it again. You <i>must</i> take care of me now. You
+are a terribly positive gentleman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Just now,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m a terribly impatient
+gentleman!&rdquo; And he bade her good-night and walked rapidly back to the
+inn. He ordered his vehicle to be prepared for his return to Poitiers, and then
+he shut the door of the common salle and strode toward the solitary lamp on the
+chimney-piece. He pulled out the paper and quickly unfolded it. It was covered
+with pencil-marks, which at first, in the feeble light, seemed indistinct. But
+Newman&rsquo;s fierce curiosity forced a meaning from the tremulous signs. The
+English of them was as follows:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My wife has tried to kill me, and she has done it; I am dying, dying
+horribly. It is to marry my dear daughter to M. de Cintré. With all my soul I
+protest,&mdash;I forbid it. I am not insane,&mdash;ask the doctors, ask Mrs.
+B&mdash;&mdash;. It was alone with me here, to-night; she attacked me and put
+me to death. It is murder, if murder ever was. Ask the doctors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;HENRI-URBAIN DE BELLEGARDE&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap23"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+
+<p>
+Newman returned to Paris the second day after his interview with Mrs. Bread.
+The morrow he had spent at Poitiers, reading over and over again the little
+document which he had lodged in his pocket-book, and thinking what he would do
+in the circumstances and how he would do it. He would not have said that
+Poitiers was an amusing place; yet the day seemed very short. Domiciled once
+more in the Boulevard Haussmann, he walked over to the Rue de
+l&rsquo;Université and inquired of Madame de Bellegarde&rsquo;s portress
+whether the marquise had come back. The portress told him that she had arrived,
+with M. le Marquis, on the preceding day, and further informed him that if he
+desired to enter, Madame de Bellegarde and her son were both at home. As she
+said these words the little white-faced old woman who peered out of the dusky
+gate-house of the Hôtel de Bellegarde gave a small wicked smile&mdash;a smile
+which seemed to Newman to mean, &ldquo;Go in if you dare!&rdquo; She was
+evidently versed in the current domestic history; she was placed where she
+could feel the pulse of the house. Newman stood a moment, twisting his
+moustache and looking at her; then he abruptly turned away. But this was not
+because he was afraid to go in&mdash;though he doubted whether, if he did so,
+he should be able to make his way, unchallenged, into the presence of Madame de
+Cintré&rsquo;s relatives. Confidence&mdash;excessive confidence,
+perhaps&mdash;quite as much as timidity prompted his retreat. He was nursing
+his thunderbolt; he loved it; he was unwilling to part with it. He seemed to be
+holding it aloft in the rumbling, vaguely-flashing air, directly over the heads
+of his victims, and he fancied he could see their pale, upturned faces. Few
+specimens of the human countenance had ever given him such pleasure as these,
+lighted in the lurid fashion I have hinted at, and he was disposed to sip the
+cup of contemplative revenge in a leisurely fashion. It must be added, too,
+that he was at a loss to see exactly how he could arrange to witness the
+operation of his thunder. To send in his card to Madame de Bellegarde would be
+a waste of ceremony; she would certainly decline to receive him. On the other
+hand he could not force his way into her presence. It annoyed him keenly to
+think that he might be reduced to the blind satisfaction of writing her a
+letter; but he consoled himself in a measure with the reflection that a letter
+might lead to an interview. He went home, and feeling rather
+tired&mdash;nursing a vengeance was, it must be confessed, a rather fatiguing
+process; it took a good deal out of one&mdash;flung himself into one of his
+brocaded fauteuils, stretched his legs, thrust his hands into his pockets, and,
+while he watched the reflected sunset fading from the ornate house-tops on the
+opposite side of the Boulevard, began mentally to compose a cool epistle to
+Madame de Bellegarde. While he was so occupied his servant threw open the door
+and announced ceremoniously, &ldquo;Madame Brett!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman roused himself, expectantly, and in a few moments perceived upon his
+threshold the worthy woman with whom he had conversed to such good purpose on
+the starlit hill-top of Fleurières. Mrs. Bread had made for this visit the same
+toilet as for her former expedition. Newman was struck with her distinguished
+appearance. His lamp was not lit, and as her large, grave face gazed at him
+through the light dusk from under the shadow of her ample bonnet, he felt the
+incongruity of such a person presenting herself as a servant. He greeted her
+with high geniality and bade her come in and sit down and make herself
+comfortable. There was something which might have touched the springs both of
+mirth and of melancholy in the ancient maidenliness with which Mrs. Bread
+endeavored to comply with these directions. She was not playing at being
+fluttered, which would have been simply ridiculous; she was doing her best to
+carry herself as a person so humble that, for her, even embarrassment would
+have been pretentious; but evidently she had never dreamed of its being in her
+horoscope to pay a visit, at night-fall, to a friendly single gentleman who
+lived in theatrical-looking rooms on one of the new Boulevards.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I truly hope I am not forgetting my place, sir,&rdquo; she murmured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Forgetting your place?&rdquo; cried Newman. &ldquo;Why, you are
+remembering it. This is your place, you know. You are already in my service;
+your wages, as housekeeper, began a fortnight ago. I can tell you my house
+wants keeping! Why don&rsquo;t you take off your bonnet and stay?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Take off my bonnet?&rdquo; said Mrs. Bread, with timid literalness.
+&ldquo;Oh, sir, I haven&rsquo;t my cap. And with your leave, sir, I
+couldn&rsquo;t keep house in my best gown.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never mind your gown,&rdquo; said Newman, cheerfully. &ldquo;You shall
+have a better gown than that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Bread stared solemnly and then stretched her hands over her lustreless
+satin skirt, as if the perilous side of her situation were defining itself.
+&ldquo;Oh, sir, I am fond of my own clothes,&rdquo; she murmured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hope you have left those wicked people, at any rate,&rdquo; said
+Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, sir, here I am!&rdquo; said Mrs. Bread. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s all I
+can tell you. Here I sit, poor Catherine Bread. It&rsquo;s a strange place for
+me to be. I don&rsquo;t know myself; I never supposed I was so bold. But
+indeed, sir, I have gone as far as my own strength will bear me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, come, Mrs. Bread,&rdquo; said Newman, almost caressingly,
+&ldquo;don&rsquo;t make yourself uncomfortable. Now&rsquo;s the time to feel
+lively, you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She began to speak again with a trembling voice. &ldquo;I think it would be
+more respectable if I could&mdash;if I could&rdquo;&mdash;and her voice
+trembled to a pause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you could give up this sort of thing altogether?&rdquo; said Newman
+kindly, trying to anticipate her meaning, which he supposed might be a wish to
+retire from service.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I could give up everything, sir! All I should ask is a decent
+Protestant burial.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Burial!&rdquo; cried Newman, with a burst of laughter. &ldquo;Why, to
+bury you now would be a sad piece of extravagance. It&rsquo;s only rascals who
+have to be buried to get respectable. Honest folks like you and me can live our
+time out&mdash;and live together. Come! Did you bring your baggage?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My box is locked and corded; but I haven&rsquo;t yet spoken to my
+lady.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Speak to her, then, and have done with it. I should like to have your
+chance!&rdquo; cried Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would gladly give it you, sir. I have passed some weary hours in my
+lady&rsquo;s dressing-room; but this will be one of the longest. She will tax
+me with ingratitude.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;so long as you can tax her with
+murder&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, sir, I can&rsquo;t; not I,&rdquo; sighed Mrs. Bread.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean to say anything about it? So much the better. Leave
+that to me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If she calls me a thankless old woman,&rdquo; said Mrs. Bread, &ldquo;I
+shall have nothing to say. But it is better so,&rdquo; she softly added.
+&ldquo;She shall be my lady to the last. That will be more respectable.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And then you will come to me and I shall be your gentleman,&rdquo; said
+Newman; &ldquo;that will be more respectable still!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Bread rose, with lowered eyes, and stood a moment; then, looking up, she
+rested her eyes upon Newman&rsquo;s face. The disordered proprieties were
+somehow settling to rest. She looked at Newman so long and so fixedly, with
+such a dull, intense devotedness, that he himself might have had a pretext for
+embarrassment. At last she said gently, &ldquo;You are not looking well,
+sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s natural enough,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;I have nothing
+to feel well about. To be very indifferent and very fierce, very dull and very
+jovial, very sick and very lively, all at once,&mdash;why, it rather mixes one
+up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Bread gave a noiseless sigh. &ldquo;I can tell you something that will
+make you feel duller still, if you want to feel all one way. About Madame de
+Cintré.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What can you tell me?&rdquo; Newman demanded. &ldquo;Not that you have
+seen her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She shook her head. &ldquo;No, indeed, sir, nor ever shall. That&rsquo;s the
+dullness of it. Nor my lady. Nor M. de Bellegarde.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean that she is kept so close.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Close, close,&rdquo; said Mrs. Bread, very softly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These words, for an instant, seemed to check the beating of Newman&rsquo;s
+heart. He leaned back in his chair, staring up at the old woman. &ldquo;They
+have tried to see her, and she wouldn&rsquo;t&mdash;she couldn&rsquo;t?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She refused&mdash;forever! I had it from my lady&rsquo;s own
+maid,&rdquo; said Mrs. Bread, &ldquo;who had it from my lady. To speak of it to
+such a person my lady must have felt the shock. Madame de Cintré won&rsquo;t
+see them now, and now is her only chance. A while hence she will have no
+chance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean the other women&mdash;the mothers, the daughters, the sisters;
+what is it they call them?&mdash;won&rsquo;t let her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is what they call the rule of the house,&mdash;or of the order, I
+believe,&rdquo; said Mrs. Bread. &ldquo;There is no rule so strict as that of
+the Carmelites. The bad women in the reformatories are fine ladies to them.
+They wear old brown cloaks&mdash;so the <i>femme de chambre</i> told
+me&mdash;that you wouldn&rsquo;t use for a horse blanket. And the poor countess
+was so fond of soft-feeling dresses; she would never have anything stiff! They
+sleep on the ground,&rdquo; Mrs. Bread went on; &ldquo;they are no better, no
+better,&rdquo;&mdash;and she hesitated for a comparison,&mdash;&ldquo;they are
+no better than tinkers&rsquo; wives. They give up everything, down to the very
+name their poor old nurses called them by. They give up father and mother,
+brother and sister,&mdash;to say nothing of other persons,&rdquo; Mrs. Bread
+delicately added. &ldquo;They wear a shroud under their brown cloaks and a rope
+round their waists, and they get up on winter nights and go off into cold
+places to pray to the Virgin Mary. The Virgin Mary is a hard mistress!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Bread, dwelling on these terrible facts, sat dry-eyed and pale, with her
+hands clasped in her satin lap. Newman gave a melancholy groan and fell
+forward, leaning his head on his hands. There was a long silence, broken only
+by the ticking of the great gilded clock on the chimney-piece.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where is this place&mdash;where is the convent?&rdquo; Newman asked at
+last, looking up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There are two houses,&rdquo; said Mrs. Bread. &ldquo;I found out; I
+thought you would like to know&mdash;though it&rsquo;s poor comfort, I think.
+One is in the Avenue de Messine; they have learned that Madame de Cintré is
+there. The other is in the Rue d&rsquo;Enfer. That&rsquo;s a terrible name; I
+suppose you know what it means.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman got up and walked away to the end of his long room. When he came back
+Mrs. Bread had got up, and stood by the fire with folded hands. &ldquo;Tell me
+this,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Can I get near her&mdash;even if I don&rsquo;t see
+her? Can I look through a grating, or some such thing, at the place where she
+is?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is said that all women love a lover, and Mrs. Bread&rsquo;s sense of the
+pre-established harmony which kept servants in their &ldquo;place,&rdquo; even
+as planets in their orbits (not that Mrs. Bread had ever consciously likened
+herself to a planet), barely availed to temper the maternal melancholy with
+which she leaned her head on one side and gazed at her new employer. She
+probably felt for the moment as if, forty years before, she had held him also
+in her arms. &ldquo;That wouldn&rsquo;t help you, sir. It would only make her
+seem farther away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I want to go there, at all events,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;Avenue de
+Messine, you say? And what is it they call themselves?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Carmelites,&rdquo; said Mrs. Bread.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall remember that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Bread hesitated a moment, and then, &ldquo;It&rsquo;s my duty to tell you
+this, sir,&rdquo; she went on. &ldquo;The convent has a chapel, and some people
+are admitted on Sunday to the mass. You don&rsquo;t see the poor creatures that
+are shut up there, but I am told you can hear them sing. It&rsquo;s a wonder
+they have any heart for singing! Some Sunday I shall make bold to go. It seems
+to me I should know <i>her</i> voice in fifty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman looked at his visitor very gratefully; then he held out his hand and
+shook hers. &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If anyone can get in, I
+will.&rdquo; A moment later Mrs. Bread proposed, deferentially, to retire, but
+he checked her and put a lighted candle into her hand. &ldquo;There are half a
+dozen rooms there I don&rsquo;t use,&rdquo; he said, pointing through an open
+door. &ldquo;Go and look at them and take your choice. You can live in the one
+you like best.&rdquo; From this bewildering opportunity Mrs. Bread at first
+recoiled; but finally, yielding to Newman&rsquo;s gentle, reassuring push, she
+wandered off into the dusk with her tremulous taper. She remained absent a
+quarter of an hour, during which Newman paced up and down, stopped occasionally
+to look out of the window at the lights on the Boulevard, and then resumed his
+walk. Mrs. Bread&rsquo;s relish for her investigation apparently increased as
+she proceeded; but at last she reappeared and deposited her candlestick on the
+chimney-piece.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, have you picked one out?&rdquo; asked Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A room, sir? They are all too fine for a dingy old body like me. There
+isn&rsquo;t one that hasn&rsquo;t a bit of gilding.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s only tinsel, Mrs. Bread,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;If you
+stay there a while it will all peel off of itself.&rdquo; And he gave a dismal
+smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, sir, there are things enough peeling off already!&rdquo; rejoined
+Mrs. Bread, with a head-shake. &ldquo;Since I was there I thought I would look
+about me. I don&rsquo;t believe you know, sir. The corners are most dreadful.
+You do want a housekeeper, that you do; you want a tidy Englishwoman that
+isn&rsquo;t above taking hold of a broom.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman assured her that he suspected, if he had not measured, his domestic
+abuses, and that to reform them was a mission worthy of her powers. She held
+her candlestick aloft again and looked around the salon with compassionate
+glances; then she intimated that she accepted the mission, and that its sacred
+character would sustain her in her rupture with Madame de Bellegarde. With this
+she curtsied herself away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She came back the next day with her worldly goods, and Newman, going into his
+drawing-room, found her upon her aged knees before a divan, sewing up some
+detached fringe. He questioned her as to her leave-taking with her late
+mistress, and she said it had proved easier than she feared. &ldquo;I was
+perfectly civil, sir, but the Lord helped me to remember that a good woman has
+no call to tremble before a bad one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should think so!&rdquo; cried Newman. &ldquo;And does she know you
+have come to me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She asked me where I was going, and I mentioned your name,&rdquo; said
+Mrs. Bread.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What did she say to that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She looked at me very hard, and she turned very red. Then she bade me
+leave her. I was all ready to go, and I had got the coachman, who is an
+Englishman, to bring down my poor box and to fetch me a cab. But when I went
+down myself to the gate I found it closed. My lady had sent orders to the
+porter not to let me pass, and by the same orders the porter&rsquo;s
+wife&mdash;she is a dreadful sly old body&mdash;had gone out in a cab to fetch
+home M. de Bellegarde from his club.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman slapped his knee. &ldquo;She <i>is</i> scared! she <i>is</i>
+scared!&rdquo; he cried, exultantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was frightened too, sir,&rdquo; said Mrs. Bread, &ldquo;but I was also
+mightily vexed. I took it very high with the porter and asked him by what right
+he used violence to an honorable Englishwoman who had lived in the house for
+thirty years before he was heard of. Oh, sir, I was very grand, and I brought
+the man down. He drew his bolts and let me out, and I promised the cabman
+something handsome if he would drive fast. But he was terribly slow; it seemed
+as if we should never reach your blessed door. I am all of a tremble still; it
+took me five minutes, just now, to thread my needle.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman told her, with a gleeful laugh, that if she chose she might have a
+little maid on purpose to thread her needles; and he went away murmuring to
+himself again that the old woman <i>was</i> scared&mdash;she <i>was</i> scared!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had not shown Mrs. Tristram the little paper that he carried in his
+pocket-book, but since his return to Paris he had seen her several times, and
+she had told him that he seemed to her to be in a strange way&mdash;an even
+stranger way than his sad situation made natural. Had his disappointment gone
+to his head? He looked like a man who was going to be ill, and yet she had
+never seen him more restless and active. One day he would sit hanging his head
+and looking as if he were firmly resolved never to smile again; another he
+would indulge in laughter that was almost unseemly and make jokes that were bad
+even for him. If he was trying to carry off his sorrow, he at such times really
+went too far. She begged him of all things not to be &ldquo;strange.&rdquo;
+Feeling in a measure responsible as she did for the affair which had turned out
+so ill for him, she could endure anything but his strangeness. He might be
+melancholy if he would, or he might be stoical; he might be cross and
+cantankerous with her and ask her why she had ever dared to meddle with his
+destiny: to this she would submit; for this she would make allowances. Only,
+for Heaven&rsquo;s sake, let him not be incoherent. That would be extremely
+unpleasant. It was like people talking in their sleep; they always frightened
+her. And Mrs. Tristram intimated that, taking very high ground as regards the
+moral obligation which events had laid upon her, she proposed not to rest quiet
+until she should have confronted him with the least inadequate substitute for
+Madame de Cintré that the two hemispheres contained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;we are even now, and we had better not
+open a new account! You may bury me some day, but you shall never marry me.
+It&rsquo;s too rough. I hope, at any rate,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;that there
+is nothing incoherent in this&mdash;that I want to go next Sunday to the
+Carmelite chapel in the Avenue de Messine. You know one of the Catholic
+ministers&mdash;an abbé, is that it?&mdash;I have seen him here, you know; that
+motherly old gentleman with the big waistband. Please ask him if I need a
+special leave to go in, and if I do, beg him to obtain it for me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Tristram gave expression to the liveliest joy. &ldquo;I am so glad you
+have asked me to do something!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You shall get into the
+chapel if the abbé is disfrocked for his share in it.&rdquo; And two days
+afterwards she told him that it was all arranged; the abbé was enchanted to
+serve him, and if he would present himself civilly at the convent gate there
+would be no difficulty.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap24"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+
+<p>
+Sunday was as yet two days off; but meanwhile, to beguile his impatience,
+Newman took his way to the Avenue de Messine and got what comfort he could in
+staring at the blank outer wall of Madame de Cintré&rsquo;s present residence.
+The street in question, as some travelers will remember, adjoins the Parc
+Monceau, which is one of the prettiest corners of Paris. The quarter has an air
+of modern opulence and convenience which seems at variance with the ascetic
+institution, and the impression made upon Newman&rsquo;s gloomily-irritated
+gaze by the fresh-looking, windowless expanse behind which the woman he loved
+was perhaps even then pledging herself to pass the rest of her days was less
+exasperating than he had feared. The place suggested a convent with the modern
+improvements&mdash;an asylum in which privacy, though unbroken, might be not
+quite identical with privation, and meditation, though monotonous, might be of
+a cheerful cast. And yet he knew the case was otherwise; only at present it was
+not a reality to him. It was too strange and too mocking to be real; it was
+like a page torn out of a romance, with no context in his own experience.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On Sunday morning, at the hour which Mrs. Tristram had indicated, he rang at
+the gate in the blank wall. It instantly opened and admitted him into a clean,
+cold-looking court, from beyond which a dull, plain edifice looked down upon
+him. A robust lay sister with a cheerful complexion emerged from a
+porter&rsquo;s lodge, and, on his stating his errand, pointed to the open door
+of the chapel, an edifice which occupied the right side of the court and was
+preceded by the high flight of steps. Newman ascended the steps and immediately
+entered the open door. Service had not yet begun; the place was dimly lighted,
+and it was some moments before he could distinguish its features. Then he saw
+it was divided by a large close iron screen into two unequal portions. The
+altar was on the hither side of the screen, and between it and the entrance
+were disposed several benches and chairs. Three or four of these were occupied
+by vague, motionless figures&mdash;figures that he presently perceived to be
+women, deeply absorbed in their devotion. The place seemed to Newman very cold;
+the smell of the incense itself was cold. Besides this there was a twinkle of
+tapers and here and there a glow of colored glass. Newman seated himself; the
+praying women kept still, with their backs turned. He saw they were visitors
+like himself and he would have liked to see their faces; for he believed that
+they were the mourning mothers and sisters of other women who had had the same
+pitiless courage as Madame de Cintré. But they were better off than he, for
+they at least shared the faith to which the others had sacrificed themselves.
+Three or four persons came in; two of them were elderly gentlemen. Everyone was
+very quiet. Newman fastened his eyes upon the screen behind the altar. That was
+the convent, the real convent, the place where she was. But he could see
+nothing; no light came through the crevices. He got up and approached the
+partition very gently, trying to look through. But behind it there was
+darkness, with nothing stirring. He went back to his place, and after that a
+priest and two altar boys came in and began to say mass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman watched their genuflections and gyrations with a grim, still enmity;
+they seemed aids and abettors of Madame de Cintré&rsquo;s desertion; they were
+mouthing and droning out their triumph. The priest&rsquo;s long, dismal
+intonings acted upon his nerves and deepened his wrath; there was something
+defiant in his unintelligible drawl; it seemed meant for Newman himself.
+Suddenly there arose from the depths of the chapel, from behind the inexorable
+grating, a sound which drew his attention from the altar&mdash;the sound of a
+strange, lugubrious chant, uttered by women&rsquo;s voices. It began softly,
+but it presently grew louder, and as it increased it became more of a wail and
+a dirge. It was the chant of the Carmelite nuns, their only human utterance. It
+was their dirge over their buried affections and over the vanity of earthly
+desires. At first Newman was bewildered&mdash;almost stunned&mdash;by the
+strangeness of the sound; then, as he comprehended its meaning, he listened
+intently and his heart began to throb. He listened for Madame de Cintré&rsquo;s
+voice, and in the very heart of the tuneless harmony he imagined he made it
+out. (We are obliged to believe that he was wrong, inasmuch as she had
+obviously not yet had time to become a member of the invisible sisterhood.) The
+chant kept on, mechanical and monotonous, with dismal repetitions and
+despairing cadences. It was hideous, it was horrible; as it continued, Newman
+felt that he needed all his self-control. He was growing more agitated; he felt
+tears in his eyes. At last, as in its full force the thought came over him that
+this confused, impersonal wail was all that either he or the world she had
+deserted should ever hear of the voice he had found so sweet, he felt that he
+could bear it no longer. He rose abruptly and made his way out. On the
+threshold he paused, listened again to the dreary strain, and then hastily
+descended into the court. As he did so he saw the good sister with the
+high-colored cheeks and the fanlike frill to her coiffure, who had admitted
+him, was in conference at the gate with two persons who had just come in. A
+second glance informed him that these persons were Madame de Bellegarde and her
+son, and that they were about to avail themselves of that method of approach to
+Madame de Cintré which Newman had found but a mockery of consolation. As he
+crossed the court M. de Bellegarde recognized him; the marquis was coming to
+the steps, leading his mother. The old lady also gave Newman a look, and it
+resembled that of her son. Both faces expressed a franker perturbation,
+something more akin to the humbleness of dismay, than Newman had yet seen in
+them. Evidently he startled the Bellegardes, and they had not their grand
+behavior immediately in hand. Newman hurried past them, guided only by the
+desire to get out of the convent walls and into the street. The gate opened
+itself at his approach; he strode over the threshold and it closed behind him.
+A carriage which appeared to have been standing there, was just turning away
+from the sidewalk. Newman looked at it for a moment, blankly; then he became
+conscious, through the dusky mist that swam before his eyes, that a lady seated
+in it was bowing to him. The vehicle had turned away before he recognized her;
+it was an ancient landau with one half the cover lowered. The lady&rsquo;s bow
+was very positive and accompanied with a smile; a little girl was seated beside
+her. He raised his hat, and then the lady bade the coachman stop. The carriage
+halted again beside the pavement, and she sat there and beckoned to
+Newman&mdash;beckoned with the demonstrative grace of Madame Urbain de
+Bellegarde. Newman hesitated a moment before he obeyed her summons, during this
+moment he had time to curse his stupidity for letting the others escape him. He
+had been wondering how he could get at them; fool that he was for not stopping
+them then and there! What better place than beneath the very prison walls to
+which they had consigned the promise of his joy? He had been too bewildered to
+stop them, but now he felt ready to wait for them at the gate. Madame Urbain,
+with a certain attractive petulance, beckoned to him again, and this time he
+went over to the carriage. She leaned out and gave him her hand, looking at him
+kindly, and smiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, monsieur,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you don&rsquo;t include me in your
+wrath? I had nothing to do with it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t suppose <i>you</i> could have prevented it!&rdquo;
+Newman answered in a tone which was not that of studied gallantry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What you say is too true for me to resent the small account it makes of
+my influence. I forgive you, at any rate, because you look as if you had seen a
+ghost.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have!&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am glad, then, I didn&rsquo;t go in with Madame de Bellegarde and my
+husband. You must have seen them, eh? Was the meeting affectionate? Did you
+hear the chanting? They say it&rsquo;s like the lamentations of the damned. I
+wouldn&rsquo;t go in: one is certain to hear that soon enough. Poor
+Claire&mdash;in a white shroud and a big brown cloak! That&rsquo;s the
+<i>toilette</i> of the Carmelites, you know. Well, she was always fond of long,
+loose things. But I must not speak of her to you; only I must say that I am
+very sorry for you, that if I could have helped you I would, and that I think
+everyone has been very shabby. I was afraid of it, you know; I felt it in the
+air for a fortnight before it came. When I saw you at my mother-in-law&rsquo;s
+ball, taking it all so easily, I felt as if you were dancing on your grave. But
+what could I do? I wish you all the good I can think of. You will say that
+isn&rsquo;t much! Yes; they have been very shabby; I am not a bit afraid to say
+it; I assure you everyone thinks so. We are not all like that. I am sorry I am
+not going to see you again; you know I think you very good company. I would
+prove it by asking you to get into the carriage and drive with me for a quarter
+of an hour, while I wait for my mother-in-law. Only if we were
+seen&mdash;considering what has passed, and everyone knows you have been turned
+away&mdash;it might be thought I was going a little too far, even for me. But I
+shall see you sometimes&mdash;somewhere, eh? You know&rdquo;&mdash;this was
+said in English&mdash;&ldquo;we have a plan for a little amusement.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman stood there with his hand on the carriage-door listening to this
+consolatory murmur with an unlighted eye. He hardly knew what Madame de
+Bellegarde was saying; he was only conscious that she was chattering
+ineffectively. But suddenly it occurred to him that, with her pretty
+professions, there was a way of making her effective; she might help him to get
+at the old woman and the marquis. &ldquo;They are coming back soon&mdash;your
+companions?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You are waiting for them?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They will hear the mass out; there is nothing to keep them longer.
+Claire has refused to see them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I want to speak to them,&rdquo; said Newman; &ldquo;and you can help me,
+you can do me a favor. Delay your return for five minutes and give me a chance
+at them. I will wait for them here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Bellegarde clasped her hands with a tender grimace. &ldquo;My poor
+friend, what do you want to do to them? To beg them to come back to you? It
+will be wasted words. They will never come back!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I want to speak to them, all the same. Pray do what I ask you. Stay away
+and leave them to me for five minutes; you needn&rsquo;t be afraid; I shall not
+be violent; I am very quiet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, you look very quiet! If they had <i>le c&oelig;ur tendre</i> you
+would move them. But they haven&rsquo;t! However, I will do better for you than
+what you propose. The understanding is not that I shall come back for them. I
+am going into the Parc Monceau with my little girl to give her a walk, and my
+mother-in-law, who comes so rarely into this quarter, is to profit by the same
+opportunity to take the air. We are to wait for her in the park, where my
+husband is to bring her to us. Follow me now; just within the gates I shall get
+out of my carriage. Sit down on a chair in some quiet corner and I will bring
+them near you. There&rsquo;s devotion for you! <i>Le reste vous
+regarde</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This proposal seemed to Newman extremely felicitous; it revived his drooping
+spirit, and he reflected that Madame Urbain was not such a goose as she seemed.
+He promised immediately to overtake her, and the carriage drove away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Parc Monceau is a very pretty piece of landscape-gardening, but Newman,
+passing into it, bestowed little attention upon its elegant vegetation, which
+was full of the freshness of spring. He found Madame de Bellegarde promptly,
+seated in one of the quiet corners of which she had spoken, while before her,
+in the alley, her little girl, attended by the footman and the lap-dog, walked
+up and down as if she were taking a lesson in deportment. Newman sat down
+beside the mamma, and she talked a great deal, apparently with the design of
+convincing him that&mdash;if he would only see it&mdash;poor dear Claire did
+not belong to the most fascinating type of woman. She was too tall and thin,
+too stiff and cold; her mouth was too wide and her nose too narrow. She had no
+dimples anywhere. And then she was eccentric, eccentric in cold blood; she was
+an Anglaise, after all. Newman was very impatient; he was counting the minutes
+until his victims should reappear. He sat silent, leaning upon his cane,
+looking absently and insensibly at the little marquise. At length Madame de
+Bellegarde said she would walk toward the gate of the park and meet her
+companions; but before she went she dropped her eyes, and, after playing a
+moment with the lace of her sleeve, looked up again at Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you remember,&rdquo; she asked, &ldquo;the promise you made me three
+weeks ago?&rdquo; And then, as Newman, vainly consulting his memory, was
+obliged to confess that the promise had escaped it, she declared that he had
+made her, at the time, a very queer answer&mdash;an answer at which, viewing it
+in the light of the sequel, she had fair ground for taking offense. &ldquo;You
+promised to take me to Bullier&rsquo;s after your marriage. After your
+marriage&mdash;you made a great point of that. Three days after that your
+marriage was broken off. Do you know, when I heard the news, the first thing I
+said to myself? &lsquo;Oh heaven, now he won&rsquo;t go with me to
+Bullier&rsquo;s!&rsquo; And I really began to wonder if you had not been
+expecting the rupture.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, my dear lady,&rdquo; murmured Newman, looking down the path to see
+if the others were not coming.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall be good-natured,&rdquo; said Madame de Bellegarde. &ldquo;One
+must not ask too much of a gentleman who is in love with a cloistered nun.
+Besides, I can&rsquo;t go to Bullier&rsquo;s while we are in mourning. But I
+haven&rsquo;t given it up for that. The <i>partie</i> is arranged; I have my
+cavalier. Lord Deepmere, if you please! He has gone back to his dear Dublin;
+but a few months hence I am to name any evening and he will come over from
+Ireland, on purpose. That&rsquo;s what I call gallantry!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Shortly after this Madame de Bellegarde walked away with her little girl.
+Newman sat in his place; the time seemed terribly long. He felt how fiercely
+his quarter of an hour in the convent chapel had raked over the glowing coals
+of his resentment. Madame de Bellegarde kept him waiting, but she proved as
+good as her word. At last she reappeared at the end of the path, with her
+little girl and her footman; beside her slowly walked her husband, with his
+mother on his arm. They were a long time advancing, during which Newman sat
+unmoved. Tingling as he was with passion, it was extremely characteristic of
+him that he was able to moderate his expression of it, as he would have turned
+down a flaring gas-burner. His native coolness, shrewdness, and deliberateness,
+his life-long submissiveness to the sentiment that words were acts and acts
+were steps in life, and that in this matter of taking steps curveting and
+prancing were exclusively reserved for quadrupeds and foreigners&mdash;all this
+admonished him that rightful wrath had no connection with being a fool and
+indulging in spectacular violence. So as he rose, when old Madame de Bellegarde
+and her son were close to him, he only felt very tall and light. He had been
+sitting beside some shrubbery, in such a way as not to be noticeable at a
+distance; but M. de Bellegarde had evidently already perceived him. His mother
+and he were holding their course, but Newman stepped in front of them, and they
+were obliged to pause. He lifted his hat slightly, and looked at them for a
+moment; they were pale with amazement and disgust.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Excuse me for stopping you,&rdquo; he said in a low tone, &ldquo;but I
+must profit by the occasion. I have ten words to say to you. Will you listen to
+them?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The marquis glared at him and then turned to his mother. &ldquo;Can Mr. Newman
+possibly have anything to say that is worth our listening to?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I assure you I have something,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;besides, it is
+my duty to say it. It&rsquo;s a notification&mdash;a warning.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your duty?&rdquo; said old Madame de Bellegarde, her thin lips curving
+like scorched paper. &ldquo;That is your affair, not ours.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame Urbain meanwhile had seized her little girl by the hand, with a gesture
+of surprise and impatience which struck Newman, intent as he was upon his own
+words, with its dramatic effectiveness. &ldquo;If Mr. Newman is going to make a
+scene in public,&rdquo; she exclaimed, &ldquo;I will take my poor child out of
+the <i>mêlée</i>. She is too young to see such naughtiness!&rdquo; and she
+instantly resumed her walk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You had much better listen to me,&rdquo; Newman went on. &ldquo;Whether
+you do or not, things will be disagreeable for you; but at any rate you will be
+prepared.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We have already heard something of your threats,&rdquo; said the
+marquis, &ldquo;and you know what we think of them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You think a good deal more than you admit. A moment,&rdquo; Newman added
+in reply to an exclamation of the old lady. &ldquo;I remember perfectly that we
+are in a public place, and you see I am very quiet. I am not going to tell your
+secret to the passers-by; I shall keep it, to begin with, for certain picked
+listeners. Anyone who observes us will think that we are having a friendly
+chat, and that I am complimenting you, madam, on your venerable virtues.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The marquis gave three short sharp raps on the ground with his stick. &ldquo;I
+demand of you to step out of our path!&rdquo; he hissed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman instantly complied, and M. de Bellegarde stepped forward with his
+mother. Then Newman said, &ldquo;Half an hour hence Madame de Bellegarde will
+regret that she didn&rsquo;t learn exactly what I mean.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The marquise had taken a few steps, but at these words she paused, looking at
+Newman with eyes like two scintillating globules of ice. &ldquo;You are like a
+peddler with something to sell,&rdquo; she said, with a little cold laugh which
+only partially concealed the tremor in her voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, no, not to sell,&rdquo; Newman rejoined; &ldquo;I give it to you for
+nothing.&rdquo; And he approached nearer to her, looking her straight in the
+eyes. &ldquo;You killed your husband,&rdquo; he said, almost in a whisper.
+&ldquo;That is, you tried once and failed, and then, without trying, you
+succeeded.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Bellegarde closed her eyes and gave a little cough, which, as a piece
+of dissimulation, struck Newman as really heroic. &ldquo;Dear mother,&rdquo;
+said the marquis, &ldquo;does this stuff amuse you so much?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The rest is more amusing,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;You had better not
+lose it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Bellegarde opened her eyes; the scintillations had gone out of them;
+they were fixed and dead. But she smiled superbly with her narrow little lips,
+and repeated Newman&rsquo;s word. &ldquo;Amusing? Have I killed someone
+else?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t count your daughter,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;though I
+might! Your husband knew what you were doing. I have a proof of it whose
+existence you have never suspected.&rdquo; And he turned to the marquis, who
+was terribly white&mdash;whiter than Newman had ever seen anyone out of a
+picture. &ldquo;A paper written by the hand, and signed with the name, of
+Henri-Urbain de Bellegarde. Written after you, madam, had left him for dead,
+and while you, sir, had gone&mdash;not very fast&mdash;for the doctor.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The marquis looked at his mother; she turned away, looking vaguely round her.
+&ldquo;I must sit down,&rdquo; she said in a low tone, going toward the bench
+on which Newman had been sitting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Couldn&rsquo;t you have spoken to me alone?&rdquo; said the marquis to
+Newman, with a strange look.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, yes, if I could have been sure of speaking to your mother alone,
+too,&rdquo; Newman answered. &ldquo;But I have had to take you as I could get
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Bellegarde, with a movement very eloquent of what he would have
+called her &ldquo;grit,&rdquo; her steel-cold pluck and her instinctive appeal
+to her own personal resources, drew her hand out of her son&rsquo;s arm and
+went and seated herself upon the bench. There she remained, with her hands
+folded in her lap, looking straight at Newman. The expression of her face was
+such that he fancied at first that she was smiling; but he went and stood in
+front of her and saw that her elegant features were distorted by agitation. He
+saw, however, equally, that she was resisting her agitation with all the rigor
+of her inflexible will, and there was nothing like either fear or submission in
+her stony stare. She had been startled, but she was not terrified. Newman had
+an exasperating feeling that she would get the better of him still; he would
+not have believed it possible that he could so utterly fail to be touched by
+the sight of a woman (criminal or other) in so tight a place. Madame de
+Bellegarde gave a glance at her son which seemed tantamount to an injunction to
+be silent and leave her to her own devices. The marquis stood beside her, with
+his hands behind him, looking at Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What paper is this you speak of?&rdquo; asked the old lady, with an
+imitation of tranquillity which would have been applauded in a veteran actress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Exactly what I have told you,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;A paper written
+by your husband after you had left him for dead, and during the couple of hours
+before you returned. You see he had the time; you shouldn&rsquo;t have stayed
+away so long. It declares distinctly his wife&rsquo;s murderous intent.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should like to see it,&rdquo; Madame de Bellegarde observed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought you might,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;and I have taken a
+copy.&rdquo; And he drew from his waistcoat pocket a small, folded sheet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Give it to my son,&rdquo; said Madame de Bellegarde. Newman handed it to
+the marquis, whose mother, glancing at him, said simply, &ldquo;Look at
+it.&rdquo; M. de Bellegarde&rsquo;s eyes had a pale eagerness which it was
+useless for him to try to dissimulate; he took the paper in his light-gloved
+fingers and opened it. There was a silence, during which he read it. He had
+more than time to read it, but still he said nothing; he stood staring at it.
+&ldquo;Where is the original?&rdquo; asked Madame de Bellegarde, in a voice
+which was really a consummate negation of impatience.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In a very safe place. Of course I can&rsquo;t show you that,&rdquo; said
+Newman. &ldquo;You might want to take hold of it,&rdquo; he added with
+conscious quaintness. &ldquo;But that&rsquo;s a very correct copy&mdash;except,
+of course, the handwriting. I am keeping the original to show someone
+else.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. de Bellegarde at last looked up, and his eyes were still very eager.
+&ldquo;To whom do you mean to show it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m thinking of beginning with the duchess,&rdquo; said
+Newman; &ldquo;that stout lady I saw at your ball. She asked me to come and see
+her, you know. I thought at the moment I shouldn&rsquo;t have much to say to
+her; but my little document will give us something to talk about.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You had better keep it, my son,&rdquo; said Madame de Bellegarde.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By all means,&rdquo; said Newman; &ldquo;keep it and show it to your
+mother when you get home.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And after showing it to the duchess?&rdquo;&mdash;asked the marquis,
+folding the paper and putting it away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ll take up the dukes,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;Then the
+counts and the barons&mdash;all the people you had the cruelty to introduce me
+to in a character of which you meant immediately to deprive me. I have made out
+a list.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a moment neither Madame de Bellegarde nor her son said a word; the old lady
+sat with her eyes upon the ground; M. de Bellegarde&rsquo;s blanched pupils
+were fixed upon her face. Then, looking at Newman, &ldquo;Is that all you have
+to say?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I want to say a few words more. I want to say that I hope you quite
+understand what I&rsquo;m about. This is my revenge, you know. You have treated
+me before the world&mdash;convened for the express purpose&mdash;as if I were
+not good enough for you. I mean to show the world that, however bad I may be,
+you are not quite the people to say it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Bellegarde was silent again, and then she broke her silence. Her
+self-possession continued to be extraordinary. &ldquo;I needn&rsquo;t ask you
+who has been your accomplice. Mrs. Bread told me that you had purchased her
+services.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t accuse Mrs. Bread of venality,&rdquo; said Newman.
+&ldquo;She has kept your secret all these years. She has given you a long
+respite. It was beneath her eyes your husband wrote that paper; he put it into
+her hands with a solemn injunction that she was to make it public. She was too
+good-hearted to make use of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old lady appeared for an instant to hesitate, and then, &ldquo;She was my
+husband&rsquo;s mistress,&rdquo; she said, softly. This was the only concession
+to self-defense that she condescended to make.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I doubt that,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Bellegarde got up from her bench. &ldquo;It was not to your opinions
+I undertook to listen, and if you have nothing left but them to tell me I think
+this remarkable interview may terminate.&rdquo; And turning to the marquis she
+took his arm again. &ldquo;My son,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;say
+something!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. de Bellegarde looked down at his mother, passing his hand over his forehead,
+and then, tenderly, caressingly, &ldquo;What shall I say?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is only one thing to say,&rdquo; said the Marquise. &ldquo;That it
+was really not worth while to have interrupted our walk.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the marquis thought he could improve this. &ldquo;Your paper&rsquo;s a
+forgery,&rdquo; he said to Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman shook his head a little, with a tranquil smile. &ldquo;M. de
+Bellegarde,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;your mother does better. She has done better
+all along, from the first of my knowing you. You&rsquo;re a mighty plucky
+woman, madam,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a great pity you have made
+me your enemy. I should have been one of your greatest admirers.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Mon pauvre ami</i>,&rdquo; said Madame de Bellegarde to her son in
+French, and as if she had not heard these words, &ldquo;you must take me
+immediately to my carriage.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman stepped back and let them leave him; he watched them a moment and saw
+Madame Urbain, with her little girl, come out of a by-path to meet them. The
+old lady stooped and kissed her grandchild. &ldquo;Damn it, she <i>is</i>
+plucky!&rdquo; said Newman, and he walked home with a slight sense of being
+balked. She was so inexpressively defiant! But on reflection he decided that
+what he had witnessed was no real sense of security, still less a real
+innocence. It was only a very superior style of brazen assurance. &ldquo;Wait
+till she reads the paper!&rdquo; he said to himself; and he concluded that he
+should hear from her soon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He heard sooner than he expected. The next morning, before midday, when he was
+about to give orders for his breakfast to be served, M. de Bellegarde&rsquo;s
+card was brought to him. &ldquo;She has read the paper and she has passed a bad
+night,&rdquo; said Newman. He instantly admitted his visitor, who came in with
+the air of the ambassador of a great power meeting the delegate of a barbarous
+tribe whom an absurd accident had enabled for the moment to be abominably
+annoying. The ambassador, at all events, had passed a bad night, and his
+faultlessly careful toilet only threw into relief the frigid rancor in his eyes
+and the mottled tones of his refined complexion. He stood before Newman a
+moment, breathing quickly and softly, and shaking his forefinger curtly as his
+host pointed to a chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What I have come to say is soon said,&rdquo; he declared &ldquo;and can
+only be said without ceremony.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am good for as much or for as little as you desire,&rdquo; said
+Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The marquis looked round the room a moment, and then, &ldquo;On what terms will
+you part with your scrap of paper?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;On none!&rdquo; And while Newman, with his head on one side and his
+hands behind him sounded the marquis&rsquo;s turbid gaze with his own, he
+added, &ldquo;Certainly, that is not worth sitting down about.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. de Bellegarde meditated a moment, as if he had not heard Newman&rsquo;s
+refusal. &ldquo;My mother and I, last evening,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;talked
+over your story. You will be surprised to learn that we think your little
+document is&mdash;a&rdquo;&mdash;and he held back his word a
+moment&mdash;&ldquo;is genuine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You forget that with you I am used to surprises!&rdquo; exclaimed
+Newman, with a laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The very smallest amount of respect that we owe to my father&rsquo;s
+memory,&rdquo; the marquis continued, &ldquo;makes us desire that he should not
+be held up to the world as the author of so&mdash;so infernal an attack upon
+the reputation of a wife whose only fault was that she had been submissive to
+accumulated injury.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I see,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s for your father&rsquo;s
+sake.&rdquo; And he laughed the laugh in which he indulged when he was most
+amused&mdash;a noiseless laugh, with his lips closed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But M. de Bellegarde&rsquo;s gravity held good. &ldquo;There are a few of my
+father&rsquo;s particular friends for whom the knowledge of so&mdash;so
+unfortunate an&mdash;inspiration&mdash;would be a real grief. Even say we
+firmly established by medical evidence the presumption of a mind disordered by
+fever, <i>il en resterait quelque chose</i>. At the best it would look ill in
+him. Very ill!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t try medical evidence,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t
+touch the doctors and they won&rsquo;t touch you. I don&rsquo;t mind your
+knowing that I have not written to them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman fancied that he saw signs in M. de Bellegarde&rsquo;s discolored mask
+that this information was extremely pertinent. But it may have been merely
+fancy; for the marquis remained majestically argumentative. &ldquo;For
+instance, Madame d&rsquo;Outreville,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;of whom you spoke
+yesterday. I can imagine nothing that would shock her more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I am quite prepared to shock Madame d&rsquo;Outreville, you know.
+That&rsquo;s on the cards. I expect to shock a great many people.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. de Bellegarde examined for a moment the stitching on the back of one of his
+gloves. Then, without looking up, &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t offer you money,&rdquo;
+he said. &ldquo;That we supposed to be useless.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman, turning away, took a few turns about the room and then came back.
+&ldquo;What <i>do</i> you offer me? By what I can make out, the generosity is
+all to be on my side.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The marquis dropped his arms at his side and held his head a little higher.
+&ldquo;What we offer you is a chance&mdash;a chance that a gentleman should
+appreciate. A chance to abstain from inflicting a terrible blot upon the memory
+of a man who certainly had his faults, but who, personally, had done you no
+wrong.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There are two things to say to that,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;The
+first is, as regards appreciating your &lsquo;chance,&rsquo; that you
+don&rsquo;t consider me a gentleman. That&rsquo;s your great point you know.
+It&rsquo;s a poor rule that won&rsquo;t work both ways. The second is
+that&mdash;well, in a word, you are talking great nonsense!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman, who in the midst of his bitterness had, as I have said, kept well
+before his eyes a certain ideal of saying nothing rude, was immediately
+somewhat regretfully conscious of the sharpness of these words. But he speedily
+observed that the marquis took them more quietly than might have been expected.
+M. de Bellegarde, like the stately ambassador that he was, continued the policy
+of ignoring what was disagreeable in his adversary&rsquo;s replies. He gazed at
+the gilded arabesques on the opposite wall, and then presently transferred his
+glance to Newman, as if he too were a large grotesque in a rather vulgar system
+of chamber-decoration. &ldquo;I suppose you know that as regards yourself it
+won&rsquo;t do at all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How do you mean it won&rsquo;t do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, of course you damn yourself. But I suppose that&rsquo;s in your
+programme. You propose to throw mud at us; you believe, you hope, that some of
+it may stick. We know, of course, it can&rsquo;t,&rdquo; explained the marquis
+in a tone of conscious lucidity; &ldquo;but you take the chance, and are
+willing at any rate to show that you yourself have dirty hands.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s a good comparison; at least half of it is,&rdquo; said
+Newman. &ldquo;I take the chance of something sticking. But as regards my
+hands, they are clean. I have taken the matter up with my finger-tips.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. de Bellegarde looked a moment into his hat. &ldquo;All our friends are quite
+with us,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;They would have done exactly as we have
+done.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall believe that when I hear them say it. Meanwhile I shall think
+better of human nature.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The marquis looked into his hat again. &ldquo;Madame de Cintré was extremely
+fond of her father. If she knew of the existence of the few written words of
+which you propose to make this scandalous use, she would demand of you proudly
+for his sake to give it up to her, and she would destroy it without reading
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very possibly,&rdquo; Newman rejoined. &ldquo;But she will not know. I
+was in that convent yesterday and I know what <i>she</i> is doing. Lord deliver
+us! You can guess whether it made me feel forgiving!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. de Bellegarde appeared to have nothing more to suggest; but he continued to
+stand there, rigid and elegant, as a man who believed that his mere personal
+presence had an argumentative value. Newman watched him, and, without yielding
+an inch on the main issue, felt an incongruously good-natured impulse to help
+him to retreat in good order.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your visit&rsquo;s a failure, you see,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You offer
+too little.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Propose something yourself,&rdquo; said the marquis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Give me back Madame de Cintré in the same state in which you took her
+from me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. de Bellegarde threw back his head and his pale face flushed.
+&ldquo;Never!&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We wouldn&rsquo;t if we could! In the sentiment which led us to
+deprecate her marriage nothing is changed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Deprecate&rsquo; is good!&rdquo; cried Newman. &ldquo;It was
+hardly worth while to come here only to tell me that you are not ashamed of
+yourselves. I could have guessed that!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The marquis slowly walked toward the door, and Newman, following, opened it for
+him. &ldquo;What you propose to do will be very disagreeable,&rdquo; M. de
+Bellegarde said. &ldquo;That is very evident. But it will be nothing
+more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As I understand it,&rdquo; Newman answered, &ldquo;that will be quite
+enough!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. de Bellegarde stood for a moment looking on the ground, as if he were
+ransacking his ingenuity to see what else he could do to save his
+father&rsquo;s reputation. Then, with a little cold sigh, he seemed to signify
+that he regretfully surrendered the late marquis to the penalty of his
+turpitude. He gave a hardly perceptible shrug, took his neat umbrella from the
+servant in the vestibule, and, with his gentlemanly walk, passed out. Newman
+stood listening till he heard the door close; then he slowly exclaimed,
+&ldquo;Well, I ought to begin to be satisfied now!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap25"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
+
+<p>
+Newman called upon the comical duchess and found her at home. An old gentleman
+with a high nose and a gold-headed cane was just taking leave of her; he made
+Newman a protracted obeisance as he retired, and our hero supposed that he was
+one of the mysterious grandees with whom he had shaken hands at Madame de
+Bellegarde&rsquo;s ball. The duchess, in her armchair, from which she did not
+move, with a great flower-pot on one side of her, a pile of pink-covered novels
+on the other, and a large piece of tapestry depending from her lap, presented
+an expansive and imposing front; but her aspect was in the highest degree
+gracious, and there was nothing in her manner to check the effusion of his
+confidence. She talked to him about flowers and books, getting launched with
+marvelous promptitude; about the theatres, about the peculiar institutions of
+his native country, about the humidity of Paris about the pretty complexions of
+the American ladies, about his impressions of France and his opinion of its
+female inhabitants. All this was a brilliant monologue on the part of the
+duchess, who, like many of her country-women, was a person of an affirmative
+rather than an interrogative cast of mind, who made <i>mots</i> and put them
+herself into circulation, and who was apt to offer you a present of a
+convenient little opinion, neatly enveloped in the gilt paper of a happy
+Gallicism. Newman had come to her with a grievance, but he found himself in an
+atmosphere in which apparently no cognizance was taken of grievance; an
+atmosphere into which the chill of discomfort had never penetrated, and which
+seemed exclusively made up of mild, sweet, stale intellectual perfumes. The
+feeling with which he had watched Madame d&rsquo;Outreville at the treacherous
+festival of the Bellegardes came back to him; she struck him as a wonderful old
+lady in a comedy, particularly well up in her part. He observed before long
+that she asked him no questions about their common friends; she made no
+allusion to the circumstances under which he had been presented to her. She
+neither feigned ignorance of a change in these circumstances nor pretended to
+condole with him upon it; but she smiled and discoursed and compared the
+tender-tinted wools of her tapestry, as if the Bellegardes and their wickedness
+were not of this world. &ldquo;She is fighting shy!&rdquo; said Newman to
+himself; and, having made the observation, he was prompted to observe, farther,
+how the duchess would carry off her indifference. She did so in a masterly
+manner. There was not a gleam of disguised consciousness in those small, clear,
+demonstrative eyes which constituted her nearest claim to personal loveliness,
+there was not a symptom of apprehension that Newman would trench upon the
+ground she proposed to avoid. &ldquo;Upon my word, she does it very
+well,&rdquo; he tacitly commented. &ldquo;They all hold together bravely, and,
+whether anyone else can trust them or not, they can certainly trust each
+other.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman, at this juncture, fell to admiring the duchess for her fine manners. He
+felt, most accurately, that she was not a grain less urbane than she would have
+been if his marriage were still in prospect; but he felt also that she was not
+a particle more urbane. He had come, so reasoned the duchess&mdash;Heaven knew
+why he had come, after what had happened; and for the half hour, therefore, she
+would be <i>charmante</i>. But she would never see him again. Finding no
+ready-made opportunity to tell his story, Newman pondered these things more
+dispassionately than might have been expected; he stretched his legs, as usual,
+and even chuckled a little, appreciatively and noiselessly. And then as the
+duchess went on relating a <i>mot</i> with which her mother had snubbed the
+great Napoleon, it occurred to Newman that her evasion of a chapter of French
+history more interesting to himself might possibly be the result of an extreme
+consideration for his feelings. Perhaps it was delicacy on the duchess&rsquo;s
+part&mdash;not policy. He was on the point of saying something himself, to make
+the chance which he had determined to give her still better, when the servant
+announced another visitor. The duchess, on hearing the name&mdash;it was that
+of an Italian prince&mdash;gave a little imperceptible pout, and said to
+Newman, rapidly: &ldquo;I beg you to remain; I desire this visit to be
+short.&rdquo; Newman said to himself, at this, that Madame d&rsquo;Outreville
+intended, after all, that they should discuss the Bellegardes together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The prince was a short, stout man, with a head disproportionately large. He had
+a dusky complexion and a bushy eyebrow, beneath which his eye wore a fixed and
+somewhat defiant expression; he seemed to be challenging you to insinuate that
+he was top-heavy. The duchess, judging from her charge to Newman, regarded him
+as a bore; but this was not apparent from the unchecked flow of her
+conversation. She made a fresh series of <i>mots</i>, characterized with great
+felicity the Italian intellect and the taste of the figs at Sorrento, predicted
+the ultimate future of the Italian kingdom (disgust with the brutal Sardinian
+rule and complete reversion, throughout the peninsula, to the sacred sway of
+the Holy Father), and, finally, gave a history of the love affairs of the
+Princess X&mdash;&mdash;. This narrative provoked some rectifications on the
+part of the prince, who, as he said, pretended to know something about that
+matter; and having satisfied himself that Newman was in no laughing mood,
+either with regard to the size of his head or anything else, he entered into
+the controversy with an animation for which the duchess, when she set him down
+as a bore, could not have been prepared. The sentimental vicissitudes of the
+Princess X&mdash;&mdash; led to a discussion of the heart history of Florentine
+nobility in general; the duchess had spent five weeks in Florence and had
+gathered much information on the subject. This was merged, in turn, in an
+examination of the Italian heart <i>per se</i>. The duchess took a brilliantly
+heterodox view&mdash;thought it the least susceptible organ of its kind that
+she had ever encountered, related examples of its want of susceptibility, and
+at last declared that for her the Italians were a people of ice. The prince
+became flame to refute her, and his visit really proved charming. Newman was
+naturally out of the conversation; he sat with his head a little on one side,
+watching the interlocutors. The duchess, as she talked, frequently looked at
+him with a smile, as if to intimate, in the charming manner of her nation, that
+it lay only with him to say something very much to the point. But he said
+nothing at all, and at last his thoughts began to wander. A singular feeling
+came over him&mdash;a sudden sense of the folly of his errand. What under the
+sun had he to say to the duchess, after all? Wherein would it profit him to
+tell her that the Bellegardes were traitors and that the old lady, into the
+bargain was a murderess? He seemed morally to have turned a sort of somersault,
+and to find things looking differently in consequence. He felt a sudden
+stiffening of his will and quickening of his reserve. What in the world had he
+been thinking of when he fancied the duchess could help him, and that it would
+conduce to his comfort to make her think ill of the Bellegardes? What did her
+opinion of the Bellegardes matter to him? It was only a shade more important
+than the opinion the Bellegardes entertained of her. The duchess help
+him&mdash;that cold, stout, soft, artificial woman help him?&mdash;she who in
+the last twenty minutes had built up between them a wall of polite conversation
+in which she evidently flattered herself that he would never find a gate. Had
+it come to that&mdash;that he was asking favors of conceited people, and
+appealing for sympathy where he had no sympathy to give? He rested his arms on
+his knees, and sat for some minutes staring into his hat. As he did so his ears
+tingled&mdash;he had come very near being an ass. Whether or no the duchess
+would hear his story, he wouldn&rsquo;t tell it. Was he to sit there another
+half hour for the sake of exposing the Bellegardes? The Bellegardes be hanged!
+He got up abruptly, and advanced to shake hands with his hostess.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t stay longer?&rdquo; she asked very graciously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am afraid not,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She hesitated a moment, and then, &ldquo;I had an idea you had something
+particular to say to me,&rdquo; she declared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman looked at her; he felt a little dizzy; for the moment he seemed to be
+turning his somersault again. The little Italian prince came to his help:
+&ldquo;Ah, madam, who has not that?&rdquo; he softly sighed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t teach Mr. Newman to say <i>fadaises</i>,&rdquo; said the
+duchess. &ldquo;It is his merit that he doesn&rsquo;t know how.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I don&rsquo;t know how to say <i>fadaises</i>,&rdquo; said Newman,
+&ldquo;and I don&rsquo;t want to say anything unpleasant.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am sure you are very considerate,&rdquo; said the duchess with a
+smile; and she gave him a little nod for good-bye with which he took his
+departure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once in the street, he stood for some time on the pavement, wondering whether,
+after all, he was not an ass not to have discharged his pistol. And then again
+he decided that to talk to anyone whomsoever about the Bellegardes would be
+extremely disagreeable to him. The least disagreeable thing, under the
+circumstances, was to banish them from his mind, and never think of them again.
+Indecision had not hitherto been one of Newman&rsquo;s weaknesses, and in this
+case it was not of long duration. For three days after this he did not, or at
+least he tried not to, think of the Bellegardes. He dined with Mrs. Tristram,
+and on her mentioning their name, he begged her almost severely to desist. This
+gave Tom Tristram a much-coveted opportunity to offer his condolences.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He leaned forward, laying his hand on Newman&rsquo;s arm compressing his lips
+and shaking his head. &ldquo;The fact is my dear fellow, you see, that you
+ought never to have gone into it. It was not your doing, I know&mdash;it was
+all my wife. If you want to come down on her, I&rsquo;ll stand off; I give you
+leave to hit her as hard as you like. You know she has never had a word of
+reproach from me in her life, and I think she is in need of something of the
+kind. Why didn&rsquo;t you listen to <i>me?</i> You know I didn&rsquo;t believe
+in the thing. I thought it at the best an amiable delusion. I don&rsquo;t
+profess to be a Don Juan or a gay Lothario,&mdash;that class of man, you know;
+but I do pretend to know something about the harder sex. I have never disliked
+a woman in my life that she has not turned out badly. I was not at all deceived
+in Lizzie, for instance; I always had my doubts about her. Whatever you may
+think of my present situation, I must at least admit that I got into it with my
+eyes open. Now suppose you had got into something like this box with Madame de
+Cintré. You may depend upon it she would have turned out a stiff one. And upon
+my word I don&rsquo;t see where you could have found your comfort. Not from the
+marquis, my dear Newman; he wasn&rsquo;t a man you could go and talk things
+over with in a sociable, common-sense way. Did he ever seem to want to have you
+on the premises&mdash;did he ever try to see you alone? Did he ever ask you to
+come and smoke a cigar with him of an evening, or step in, when you had been
+calling on the ladies, and take something? I don&rsquo;t think you would have
+got much encouragement out of <i>him</i>. And as for the old lady, she struck
+one as an uncommonly strong dose. They have a great expression here, you know;
+they call it &lsquo;sympathetic.&rsquo; Everything is sympathetic&mdash;or
+ought to be. Now Madame de Bellegarde is about as sympathetic as that
+mustard-pot. They&rsquo;re a d&mdash;d cold-blooded lot, any way; I felt it
+awfully at that ball of theirs. I felt as if I were walking up and down in the
+Armory, in the Tower of London! My dear boy, don&rsquo;t think me a vulgar
+brute for hinting at it, but you may depend upon it, all they wanted was your
+money. I know something about that; I can tell when people want one&rsquo;s
+money! Why they stopped wanting yours I don&rsquo;t know; I suppose because
+they could get someone else&rsquo;s without working so hard for it. It
+isn&rsquo;t worth finding out. It may be that it was not Madame de Cintré that
+backed out first, very likely the old woman put her up to it. I suspect she and
+her mother are really as thick as thieves, eh? You are well out of it, my boy;
+make up your mind to that. If I express myself strongly it is all because I
+love you so much; and from that point of view I may say I should as soon have
+thought of making up to that piece of pale high-mightiness as I should have
+thought of making up to the Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman sat gazing at Tristram during this harangue with a lack-lustre eye;
+never yet had he seemed to himself to have outgrown so completely the phase of
+equal comradeship with Tom Tristram. Mrs. Tristram&rsquo;s glance at her
+husband had more of a spark; she turned to Newman with a slightly lurid smile.
+&ldquo;You must at least do justice,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;to the felicity
+with which Mr. Tristram repairs the indiscretions of a too zealous wife.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But even without the aid of Tom Tristram&rsquo;s conversational felicities,
+Newman would have begun to think of the Bellegardes again. He could cease to
+think of them only when he ceased to think of his loss and privation, and the
+days had as yet but scantily lightened the weight of this incommodity. In vain
+Mrs. Tristram begged him to cheer up; she assured him that the sight of his
+countenance made her miserable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How can I help it?&rdquo; he demanded with a trembling voice. &ldquo;I
+feel like a widower&mdash;and a widower who has not even the consolation of
+going to stand beside the grave of his wife&mdash;who has not the right to wear
+so much mourning as a weed on his hat. I feel,&rdquo; he added in a moment
+&ldquo;as if my wife had been murdered and her assassins were still at
+large.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Tristram made no immediate rejoinder, but at last she said, with a smile
+which, in so far as it was a forced one, was less successfully simulated than
+such smiles, on her lips, usually were; &ldquo;Are you very sure that you would
+have been happy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman stared a moment, and then shook his head. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s
+weak,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;that won&rsquo;t do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Mrs. Tristram with a more triumphant bravery, &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t believe you would have been happy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman gave a little laugh. &ldquo;Say I should have been miserable, then;
+it&rsquo;s a misery I should have preferred to any happiness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Tristram began to muse. &ldquo;I should have been curious to see; it would
+have been very strange.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Was it from curiosity that you urged me to try and marry her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A little,&rdquo; said Mrs. Tristram, growing still more audacious.
+Newman gave her the one angry look he had been destined ever to give her,
+turned away and took up his hat. She watched him a moment, and then she said,
+&ldquo;That sounds very cruel, but it is less so than it sounds. Curiosity has
+a share in almost everything I do. I wanted very much to see, first, whether
+such a marriage could actually take place; second, what would happen if it
+should take place.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So you didn&rsquo;t believe,&rdquo; said Newman, resentfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I believed&mdash;I believed that it would take place, and that you
+would be happy. Otherwise I should have been, among my speculations, a very
+heartless creature. <i>But</i>,&rdquo; she continued, laying her hand upon
+Newman&rsquo;s arm and hazarding a grave smile, &ldquo;it was the highest
+flight ever taken by a tolerably bold imagination!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Shortly after this she recommended him to leave Paris and travel for three
+months. Change of scene would do him good, and he would forget his misfortune
+sooner in absence from the objects which had witnessed it. &ldquo;I really
+feel,&rdquo; Newman rejoined, &ldquo;as if to leave <i>you</i>, at least, would
+do me good&mdash;and cost me very little effort. You are growing cynical, you
+shock me and pain me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good,&rdquo; said Mrs. Tristram, good-naturedly or cynically, as
+may be thought most probable. &ldquo;I shall certainly see you again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman was very willing to get away from Paris; the brilliant streets he had
+walked through in his happier hours, and which then seemed to wear a higher
+brilliancy in honor of his happiness, appeared now to be in the secret of his
+defeat and to look down upon it in shining mockery. He would go somewhere; he
+cared little where; and he made his preparations. Then, one morning, at
+haphazard, he drove to the train that would transport him to Boulogne and
+dispatch him thence to the shores of Britain. As he rolled along in the train
+he asked himself what had become of his revenge, and he was able to say that it
+was provisionally pigeon-holed in a very safe place; it would keep till called
+for.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He arrived in London in the midst of what is called &ldquo;the season,&rdquo;
+and it seemed to him at first that he might here put himself in the way of
+being diverted from his heavy-heartedness. He knew no one in all England, but
+the spectacle of the mighty metropolis roused him somewhat from his apathy.
+Anything that was enormous usually found favor with Newman, and the
+multitudinous energies and industries of England stirred within him a dull
+vivacity of contemplation. It is on record that the weather, at that moment,
+was of the finest English quality; he took long walks and explored London in
+every direction; he sat by the hour in Kensington Gardens and beside the
+adjoining Drive, watching the people and the horses and the carriages; the rosy
+English beauties, the wonderful English dandies, and the splendid flunkies. He
+went to the opera and found it better than in Paris; he went to the theatre and
+found a surprising charm in listening to dialogue the finest points of which
+came within the range of his comprehension. He made several excursions into the
+country, recommended by the waiter at his hotel, with whom, on this and similar
+points, he had established confidential relations. He watched the deer in
+Windsor Forest and admired the Thames from Richmond Hill; he ate white-bait and
+brown-bread and butter at Greenwich, and strolled in the grassy shadow of the
+cathedral of Canterbury. He also visited the Tower of London and Madame
+Tussaud&rsquo;s exhibition. One day he thought he would go to Sheffield, and
+then, thinking again, he gave it up. Why should he go to Sheffield? He had a
+feeling that the link which bound him to a possible interest in the manufacture
+of cutlery was broken. He had no desire for an &ldquo;inside view&rdquo; of any
+successful enterprise whatever, and he would not have given the smallest sum
+for the privilege of talking over the details of the most
+&ldquo;splendid&rdquo; business with the shrewdest of overseers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One afternoon he had walked into Hyde Park, and was slowly threading his way
+through the human maze which edges the Drive. The stream of carriages was no
+less dense, and Newman, as usual, marveled at the strange, dingy figures which
+he saw taking the air in some of the stateliest vehicles. They reminded him of
+what he had read of eastern and southern countries, in which grotesque idols
+and fetiches were sometimes taken out of their temples and carried abroad in
+golden chariots to be displayed to the multitude. He saw a great many pretty
+cheeks beneath high-plumed hats as he squeezed his way through serried waves of
+crumpled muslin; and sitting on little chairs at the base of the great serious
+English trees, he observed a number of quiet-eyed maidens who seemed only to
+remind him afresh that the magic of beauty had gone out of the world with
+Madame de Cintré: to say nothing of other damsels, whose eyes were not quiet,
+and who struck him still more as a satire on possible consolation. He had been
+walking for some time, when, directly in front of him, borne back by the summer
+breeze, he heard a few words uttered in that bright Parisian idiom from which
+his ears had begun to alienate themselves. The voice in which the words were
+spoken made them seem even more like a thing with which he had once been
+familiar, and as he bent his eyes it lent an identity to the commonplace
+elegance of the back hair and shoulders of a young lady walking in the same
+direction as himself. Mademoiselle Nioche, apparently, had come to seek a more
+rapid advancement in London, and another glance led Newman to suppose that she
+had found it. A gentleman was strolling beside her, lending a most attentive
+ear to her conversation and too entranced to open his lips. Newman did not hear
+his voice, but perceived that he presented the dorsal expression of a
+well-dressed Englishman. Mademoiselle Nioche was attracting attention: the
+ladies who passed her turned round to survey the Parisian perfection of her
+toilet. A great cataract of flounces rolled down from the young lady&rsquo;s
+waist to Newman&rsquo;s feet; he had to step aside to avoid treading upon them.
+He stepped aside, indeed, with a decision of movement which the occasion
+scarcely demanded; for even this imperfect glimpse of Miss Noémie had excited
+his displeasure. She seemed an odious blot upon the face of nature; he wanted
+to put her out of his sight. He thought of Valentin de Bellegarde, still green
+in the earth of his burial&mdash;his young life clipped by this flourishing
+impudence. The perfume of the young lady&rsquo;s finery sickened him; he turned
+his head and tried to deflect his course; but the pressure of the crowd kept
+him near her a few minutes longer, so that he heard what she was saying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, I am sure he will miss me,&rdquo; she murmured. &ldquo;It was very
+cruel in me to leave him; I am afraid you will think me a very heartless
+creature. He might perfectly well have come with us. I don&rsquo;t think he is
+very well,&rdquo; she added; &ldquo;it seemed to me to-day that he was not very
+gay.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman wondered whom she was talking about, but just then an opening among his
+neighbors enabled him to turn away, and he said to himself that she was
+probably paying a tribute to British propriety and playing at tender solicitude
+about her papa. Was that miserable old man still treading the path of vice in
+her train? Was he still giving her the benefit of his experience of affairs,
+and had he crossed the sea to serve as her interpreter? Newman walked some
+distance farther, and then began to retrace his steps taking care not to
+traverse again the orbit of Mademoiselle Nioche. At last he looked for a chair
+under the trees, but he had some difficulty in finding an empty one. He was
+about to give up the search when he saw a gentleman rise from the seat he had
+been occupying, leaving Newman to take it without looking at his neighbors. He
+sat there for some time without heeding them; his attention was lost in the
+irritation and bitterness produced by his recent glimpse of Miss Noémie&rsquo;s
+iniquitous vitality. But at the end of a quarter of an hour, dropping his eyes,
+he perceived a small pug-dog squatted upon the path near his feet&mdash;a
+diminutive but very perfect specimen of its interesting species. The pug was
+sniffing at the fashionable world, as it passed him, with his little black
+muzzle, and was kept from extending his investigation by a large blue ribbon
+attached to his collar with an enormous rosette and held in the hand of a
+person seated next to Newman. To this person Newman transferred his attention,
+and immediately perceived that he was the object of all that of his neighbor,
+who was staring up at him from a pair of little fixed white eyes. These eyes
+Newman instantly recognized; he had been sitting for the last quarter of an
+hour beside M. Nioche. He had vaguely felt that someone was staring at him. M.
+Nioche continued to stare; he appeared afraid to move, even to the extent of
+evading Newman&rsquo;s glance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dear me,&rdquo; said Newman; &ldquo;are you here, too?&rdquo; And he
+looked at his neighbor&rsquo;s helplessness more grimly than he knew. M. Nioche
+had a new hat and a pair of kid gloves; his clothes, too, seemed to belong to a
+more recent antiquity than of yore. Over his arm was suspended a lady&rsquo;s
+mantilla&mdash;a light and brilliant tissue, fringed with white
+lace&mdash;which had apparently been committed to his keeping; and the little
+dog&rsquo;s blue ribbon was wound tightly round his hand. There was no
+expression of recognition in his face&mdash;or of anything indeed save a sort
+of feeble, fascinated dread; Newman looked at the pug and the lace mantilla,
+and then he met the old man&rsquo;s eyes again. &ldquo;You know me, I
+see,&rdquo; he pursued. &ldquo;You might have spoken to me before.&rdquo; M.
+Nioche still said nothing, but it seemed to Newman that his eyes began faintly
+to water. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t expect,&rdquo; our hero went on, &ldquo;to meet
+you so far from&mdash;from the Café de la Patrie.&rdquo; The old man remained
+silent, but decidedly Newman had touched the source of tears. His neighbor sat
+staring and Newman added, &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter, M. Nioche? You used
+to talk&mdash;to talk very prettily. Don&rsquo;t you remember you even gave
+lessons in conversation?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this M. Nioche decided to change his attitude. He stooped and picked up the
+pug, lifted it to his face and wiped his eyes on its little soft back.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid to speak to you,&rdquo; he presently said, looking over
+the puppy&rsquo;s shoulder. &ldquo;I hoped you wouldn&rsquo;t notice me. I
+should have moved away, but I was afraid that if I moved you would notice me.
+So I sat very still.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suspect you have a bad conscience, sir,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old man put down the little dog and held it carefully in his lap. Then he
+shook his head, with his eyes still fixed upon his interlocutor. &ldquo;No, Mr.
+Newman, I have a good conscience,&rdquo; he murmured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then why should you want to slink away from me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because&mdash;because you don&rsquo;t understand my position.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I think you once explained it to me,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;But
+it seems improved.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Improved!&rdquo; exclaimed M. Nioche, under his breath. &ldquo;Do you
+call this improvement?&rdquo; And he glanced at the treasures in his arms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, you are on your travels,&rdquo; Newman rejoined. &ldquo;A visit to
+London in the season is certainly a sign of prosperity.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. Nioche, in answer to this cruel piece of irony, lifted the puppy up to his
+face again, peering at Newman with his small blank eye-holes. There was
+something almost imbecile in the movement, and Newman hardly knew whether he
+was taking refuge in a convenient affectation of unreason, or whether he had in
+fact paid for his dishonor by the loss of his wits. In the latter case, just
+now, he felt little more tenderly to the foolish old man than in the former.
+Responsible or not, he was equally an accomplice of his detestably mischievous
+daughter. Newman was going to leave him abruptly, when a ray of entreaty
+appeared to disengage itself from the old man&rsquo;s misty gaze. &ldquo;Are
+you going away?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you want me to stay?&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should have left you&mdash;from consideration. But my dignity suffers
+at your leaving me&mdash;that way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have you got anything particular to say to me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. Nioche looked around him to see that no one was listening, and then he said,
+very softly but distinctly, &ldquo;I have <i>not</i> forgiven her!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman gave a short laugh, but the old man seemed for the moment not to
+perceive it; he was gazing away, absently, at some metaphysical image of his
+implacability. &ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t much matter whether you forgive her or
+not,&rdquo; said Newman. &ldquo;There are other people who won&rsquo;t, I
+assure you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What has she done?&rdquo; M. Nioche softly questioned, turning round
+again. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what she does, you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She has done a devilish mischief; it doesn&rsquo;t matter what,&rdquo;
+said Newman. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s a nuisance; she ought to be stopped.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+M. Nioche stealthily put out his hand and laid it very gently upon
+Newman&rsquo;s arm. &ldquo;Stopped, yes,&rdquo; he whispered.
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s it. Stopped short. She is running away&mdash;she must be
+stopped.&rdquo; Then he paused a moment and looked round him. &ldquo;I mean to
+stop her,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;I am only waiting for my chance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said Newman, laughing briefly again. &ldquo;She is running
+away and you are running after her. You have run a long distance!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But M. Nioche stared insistently: &ldquo;I shall stop her!&rdquo; he softly
+repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had hardly spoken when the crowd in front of them separated, as if by the
+impulse to make way for an important personage. Presently, through the opening,
+advanced Mademoiselle Nioche, attended by the gentleman whom Newman had lately
+observed. His face being now presented to our hero, the latter recognized the
+irregular features, the hardly more regular complexion, and the amiable
+expression of Lord Deepmere. Noémie, on finding herself suddenly confronted
+with Newman, who, like M. Nioche, had risen from his seat, faltered for a
+barely perceptible instant. She gave him a little nod, as if she had seen him
+yesterday, and then, with a good-natured smile, &ldquo;<i>Tiens</i>, how we
+keep meeting!&rdquo; she said. She looked consummately pretty, and the front of
+her dress was a wonderful work of art. She went up to her father, stretching
+out her hands for the little dog, which he submissively placed in them, and she
+began to kiss it and murmur over it: &ldquo;To think of leaving him all
+alone,&mdash;what a wicked, abominable creature he must believe me! He has been
+very unwell,&rdquo; she added, turning and affecting to explain to Newman, with
+a spark of infernal impudence, fine as a needlepoint, in her eye. &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t think the English climate agrees with him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It seems to agree wonderfully well with his mistress,&rdquo; said
+Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean me? I have never been better, thank you,&rdquo; Miss Noémie
+declared. &ldquo;But with <i>milord</i>&rdquo;&mdash;and she gave a brilliant
+glance at her late companion&mdash;&ldquo;how can one help being well?&rdquo;
+She seated herself in the chair from which her father had risen, and began to
+arrange the little dog&rsquo;s rosette.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lord Deepmere carried off such embarrassment as might be incidental to this
+unexpected encounter with the inferior grace of a male and a Briton. He blushed
+a good deal, and greeted the object of his late momentary aspiration to rivalry
+in the favor of a person other than the mistress of the invalid pug with an
+awkward nod and a rapid ejaculation&mdash;an ejaculation to which Newman, who
+often found it hard to understand the speech of English people, was able to
+attach no meaning. Then the young man stood there, with his hand on his hip,
+and with a conscious grin, staring askance at Miss Noémie. Suddenly an idea
+seemed to strike him, and he said, turning to Newman, &ldquo;Oh, you know
+her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;I know her. I don&rsquo;t believe you
+do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh dear, yes, I do!&rdquo; said Lord Deepmere, with another grin.
+&ldquo;I knew her in Paris&mdash;by my poor cousin Bellegarde, you know. He
+knew her, poor fellow, didn&rsquo;t he? It was she, you know, who was at the
+bottom of his affair. Awfully sad, wasn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; continued the young
+man, talking off his embarrassment as his simple nature permitted. &ldquo;They
+got up some story about its being for the Pope; about the other man having said
+something against the Pope&rsquo;s morals. They always do that, you know. They
+put it on the Pope because Bellegarde was once in the Zouaves. But it was about
+<i>her</i> morals&mdash;<i>she</i> was the Pope!&rdquo; Lord Deepmere pursued,
+directing an eye illumined by this pleasantry toward Mademoiselle Nioche, who
+was bending gracefully over her lap-dog, apparently absorbed in conversation
+with it. &ldquo;I dare say you think it rather odd that I
+should&mdash;ah&mdash;keep up the acquaintance,&rdquo; the young man resumed;
+&ldquo;but she couldn&rsquo;t help it, you know, and Bellegarde was only my
+twentieth cousin. I dare say you think it&rsquo;s rather cheeky, my showing
+with her in Hyde Park, but you see she isn&rsquo;t known yet, and she&rsquo;s
+in such very good form&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; And Lord Deepmere&rsquo;s
+conclusion was lost in the attesting glance which he again directed toward the
+young lady.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman turned away; he was having more of her than he relished. M. Nioche had
+stepped aside on his daughter&rsquo;s approach, and he stood there, within a
+very small compass, looking down hard at the ground. It had never yet, as
+between him and Newman, been so apposite to place on record the fact that he
+had not forgiven his daughter. As Newman was moving away he looked up and drew
+near to him, and Newman, seeing the old man had something particular to say,
+bent his head for an instant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will see it some day in the papers,&rdquo; murmured M. Nioche.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our hero departed to hide his smile, and to this day, though the newspapers
+form his principal reading, his eyes have not been arrested by any paragraph
+forming a sequel to this announcement.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap26"></a>CHAPTER XXVI</h2>
+
+<p>
+In that uninitiated observation of the great spectacle of English life upon
+which I have touched, it might be supposed that Newman passed a great many dull
+days. But the dullness of his days pleased him; his melancholy, which was
+settling into a secondary stage, like a healing wound, had in it a certain
+acrid, palatable sweetness. He had company in his thoughts, and for the present
+he wanted no other. He had no desire to make acquaintances, and he left
+untouched a couple of notes of introduction which had been sent him by Tom
+Tristram. He thought a great deal of Madame de Cintré&mdash;sometimes with a
+dogged tranquillity which might have seemed, for a quarter of an hour at a
+time, a near neighbor to forgetfulness. He lived over again the happiest hours
+he had known&mdash;that silver chain of numbered days in which his afternoon
+visits, tending sensibly to the ideal result, had subtilized his good humor to
+a sort of spiritual intoxication. He came back to reality, after such reveries,
+with a somewhat muffled shock; he had begun to feel the need of accepting the
+unchangeable. At other times the reality became an infamy again and the
+unchangeable an imposture, and he gave himself up to his angry restlessness
+till he was weary. But on the whole he fell into a rather reflective mood.
+Without in the least intending it or knowing it, he attempted to read the moral
+of his strange misadventure. He asked himself, in his quieter hours, whether
+perhaps, after all, he <i>was</i> more commercial than was pleasant. We know
+that it was in obedience to a strong reaction against questions exclusively
+commercial that he had come out to pick up æsthetic entertainment in Europe; it
+may therefore be understood that he was able to conceive that a man might be
+too commercial. He was very willing to grant it, but the concession, as to his
+own case, was not made with any very oppressive sense of shame. If he had been
+too commercial, he was ready to forget it, for in being so he had done no man
+any wrong that might not be as easily forgotten. He reflected with sober
+placidity that at least there were no monuments of his &ldquo;meanness&rdquo;
+scattered about the world. If there was any reason in the nature of things why
+his connection with business should have cast a shadow upon a
+connection&mdash;even a connection broken&mdash;with a woman justly proud, he
+was willing to sponge it out of his life forever. The thing seemed a
+possibility; he could not feel it, doubtless, as keenly as some people, and it
+hardly seemed worth while to flap his wings very hard to rise to the idea; but
+he could feel it enough to make any sacrifice that still remained to be made.
+As to what such sacrifice was now to be made to, here Newman stopped short
+before a blank wall over which there sometimes played a shadowy imagery. He had
+a fancy of carrying out his life as he would have directed it if Madame de
+Cintré had been left to him&mdash;of making it a religion to do nothing that
+she would have disliked. In this, certainly, there was no sacrifice; but there
+was a pale, oblique ray of inspiration. It would be lonely
+entertainment&mdash;a good deal like a man talking to himself in the mirror for
+want of better company. Yet the idea yielded Newman several half hours&rsquo;
+dumb exaltation as he sat, with his hands in his pockets and his legs
+stretched, over the relics of an expensively poor dinner, in the undying
+English twilight. If, however, his commercial imagination was dead, he felt no
+contempt for the surviving actualities begotten by it. He was glad he had been
+prosperous and had been a great man of business rather than a small one; he was
+extremely glad he was rich. He felt no impulse to sell all he had and give to
+the poor, or to retire into meditative economy and asceticism. He was glad he
+was rich and tolerably young; if it was possible to think too much about buying
+and selling, it was a gain to have a good slice of life left in which not to
+think about them. Come, what should he think about now? Again and again Newman
+could think only of one thing; his thoughts always came back to it, and as they
+did so, with an emotional rush which seemed physically to express itself in a
+sudden upward choking, he leaned forward&mdash;the waiter having left the
+room&mdash;and, resting his arms on the table, buried his troubled face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He remained in England till midsummer, and spent a month in the country,
+wandering about cathedrals, castles, and ruins. Several times, taking a walk
+from his inn into meadows and parks, he stopped by a well-worn stile, looked
+across through the early evening at a gray church tower, with its dusky nimbus
+of thick-circling swallows, and remembered that this might have been part of
+the entertainment of his honeymoon. He had never been so much alone or indulged
+so little in accidental dialogue. The period of recreation appointed by Mrs.
+Tristram had at last expired, and he asked himself what he should do now. Mrs.
+Tristram had written to him, proposing to him that he should join her in the
+Pyrenees; but he was not in the humor to return to France. The simplest thing
+was to repair to Liverpool and embark on the first American steamer. Newman
+made his way to the great seaport and secured his berth; and the night before
+sailing he sat in his room at the hotel, staring down, vacantly and wearily, at
+an open portmanteau. A number of papers were lying upon it, which he had been
+meaning to look over; some of them might conveniently be destroyed. But at last
+he shuffled them roughly together, and pushed them into a corner of the valise;
+they were business papers, and he was in no humor for sifting them. Then he
+drew forth his pocket-book and took out a paper of smaller size than those he
+had dismissed. He did not unfold it; he simply sat looking at the back of it.
+If he had momentarily entertained the idea of destroying it, the idea quickly
+expired. What the paper suggested was the feeling that lay in his innermost
+heart and that no reviving cheerfulness could long quench&mdash;the feeling
+that after all and above all he was a good fellow wronged. With it came a
+hearty hope that the Bellegardes were enjoying their suspense as to what he
+would do yet. The more it was prolonged the more they would enjoy it! He had
+hung fire once, yes; perhaps, in his present queer state of mind, he might hang
+fire again. But he restored the little paper to his pocket-book very tenderly,
+and felt better for thinking of the suspense of the Bellegardes. He felt better
+every time he thought of it after that, as he sailed the summer seas. He landed
+in New York and journeyed across the continent to San Francisco, and nothing
+that he observed by the way contributed to mitigate his sense of being a good
+fellow wronged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He saw a great many other good fellows&mdash;his old friends&mdash;but he told
+none of them of the trick that had been played him. He said simply that the
+lady he was to have married had changed her mind, and when he was asked if he
+had changed his own, he said, &ldquo;Suppose we change the subject.&rdquo; He
+told his friends that he had brought home no &ldquo;new ideas&rdquo; from
+Europe, and his conduct probably struck them as an eloquent proof of failing
+invention. He took no interest in chatting about his affairs and manifested no
+desire to look over his accounts. He asked half a dozen questions which, like
+those of an eminent physician inquiring for particular symptoms, showed that he
+still knew what he was talking about; but he made no comments and gave no
+directions. He not only puzzled the gentlemen on the stock exchange, but he was
+himself surprised at the extent of his indifference. As it seemed only to
+increase, he made an effort to combat it; he tried to interest himself and to
+take up his old occupations. But they appeared unreal to him; do what he would
+he somehow could not believe in them. Sometimes he began to fear that there was
+something the matter with his head; that his brain, perhaps, had softened, and
+that the end of his strong activities had come. This idea came back to him with
+an exasperating force. A hopeless, helpless loafer, useful to no one and
+detestable to himself&mdash;this was what the treachery of the Bellegardes had
+made of him. In his restless idleness he came back from San Francisco to New
+York, and sat for three days in the lobby of his hotel, looking out through a
+huge wall of plate-glass at the unceasing stream of pretty girls in
+Parisian-looking dresses, undulating past with little parcels nursed against
+their neat figures. At the end of three days he returned to San Francisco, and
+having arrived there he wished he had stayed away. He had nothing to do, his
+occupation was gone, and it seemed to him that he should never find it again.
+He had nothing to do <i>here</i>, he sometimes said to himself; but there was
+something beyond the ocean that he was still to do; something that he had left
+undone experimentally and speculatively, to see if it could content itself to
+remain undone. But it was not content: it kept pulling at his heartstrings and
+thumping at his reason; it murmured in his ears and hovered perpetually before
+his eyes. It interposed between all new resolutions and their fulfillment; it
+seemed like a stubborn ghost, dumbly entreating to be laid. Till that was done
+he should never be able to do anything else.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One day, toward the end of the winter, after a long interval, he received a
+letter from Mrs. Tristram, who apparently was animated by a charitable desire
+to amuse and distract her correspondent. She gave him much Paris gossip, talked
+of General Packard and Miss Kitty Upjohn, enumerated the new plays at the
+theatre, and enclosed a note from her husband, who had gone down to spend a
+month at Nice. Then came her signature, and after this her postscript. The
+latter consisted of these few lines: &ldquo;I heard three days since from my
+friend, the Abbé Aubert, that Madame de Cintré last week took the veil at the
+Carmelites. It was on her twenty-seventh birthday, and she took the name of
+her, patroness, St. Veronica. Sister Veronica has a lifetime before her!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This letter came to Newman in the morning; in the evening he started for Paris.
+His wound began to ache with its first fierceness, and during his long bleak
+journey the thought of Madame de Cintré&rsquo;s &ldquo;life-time,&rdquo; passed
+within prison walls on whose outer side he might stand, kept him perpetual
+company. Now he would fix himself in Paris forever; he would extort a sort of
+happiness from the knowledge that if she was not there, at least the stony
+sepulchre that held her was. He descended, unannounced, upon Mrs. Bread, whom
+he found keeping lonely watch in his great empty saloons on the Boulevard
+Haussmann. They were as neat as a Dutch village, Mrs. Bread&rsquo;s only
+occupation had been removing individual dust-particles. She made no complaint,
+however, of her loneliness, for in her philosophy a servant was but a
+mysteriously projected machine, and it would be as fantastic for a housekeeper
+to comment upon a gentleman&rsquo;s absences as for a clock to remark upon not
+being wound up. No particular clock, Mrs. Bread supposed, went all the time,
+and no particular servant could enjoy all the sunshine diffused by the career
+of an exacting master. She ventured, nevertheless, to express a modest hope
+that Newman meant to remain a while in Paris. Newman laid his hand on hers and
+shook it gently. &ldquo;I mean to remain forever,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went after this to see Mrs. Tristram, to whom he had telegraphed, and who
+expected him. She looked at him a moment and shook her head. &ldquo;This
+won&rsquo;t do,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;you have come back too soon.&rdquo; He
+sat down and asked about her husband and her children, tried even to inquire
+about Miss Dora Finch. In the midst of this&mdash;&ldquo;Do you know where she
+is?&rdquo; he asked, abruptly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Tristram hesitated a moment; of course he couldn&rsquo;t mean Miss Dora
+Finch. Then she answered, properly: &ldquo;She has gone to the other
+house&mdash;in the Rue d&rsquo;Enfer.&rdquo; After Newman had sat a while
+longer looking very sombre, she went on: &ldquo;You are not so good a man as I
+thought. You are more&mdash;you are more&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;More what?&rdquo; Newman asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;More unforgiving.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good God!&rdquo; cried Newman; &ldquo;do you expect me to
+forgive?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, not that. I have forgiven, so of course you can&rsquo;t. But you
+might forget! You have a worse temper about it than I should have expected. You
+look wicked&mdash;you look dangerous.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I may be dangerous,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;but I am not wicked. No, I am
+not wicked.&rdquo; And he got up to go. Mrs. Tristram asked him to come back to
+dinner; but he answered that he did not feel like pledging himself to be
+present at an entertainment, even as a solitary guest. Later in the evening, if
+he should be able, he would come.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He walked away through the city, beside the Seine and over it, and took the
+direction of the Rue d&rsquo;Enfer. The day had the softness of early spring;
+but the weather was gray and humid. Newman found himself in a part of Paris
+which he little knew&mdash;a region of convents and prisons, of streets
+bordered by long dead walls and traversed by a few wayfarers. At the
+intersection of two of these streets stood the house of the Carmelites&mdash;a
+dull, plain edifice, with a high-shouldered blank wall all round it. From
+without Newman could see its upper windows, its steep roof and its chimneys.
+But these things revealed no symptoms of human life; the place looked dumb,
+deaf, inanimate. The pale, dead, discolored wall stretched beneath it, far down
+the empty side street&mdash;a vista without a human figure. Newman stood there
+a long time; there were no passers; he was free to gaze his fill. This seemed
+the goal of his journey; it was what he had come for. It was a strange
+satisfaction, and yet it was a satisfaction; the barren stillness of the place
+seemed to be his own release from ineffectual longing. It told him that the
+woman within was lost beyond recall, and that the days and years of the future
+would pile themselves above her like the huge immovable slab of a tomb. These
+days and years, in this place, would always be just so gray and silent.
+Suddenly, from the thought of their seeing him stand there, again the charm
+utterly departed. He would never stand there again; it was gratuitous
+dreariness. He turned away with a heavy heart, but with a heart lighter than
+the one he had brought. Everything was over, and he too at last could rest. He
+walked down through narrow, winding streets to the edge of the Seine again, and
+there he saw, close above him, the soft, vast towers of Notre Dame. He crossed
+one of the bridges and stood a moment in the empty place before the great
+cathedral; then he went in beneath the grossly-imaged portals. He wandered some
+distance up the nave and sat down in the splendid dimness. He sat a long time;
+he heard far-away bells chiming off, at long intervals, to the rest of the
+world. He was very tired; this was the best place he could be in. He said no
+prayers; he had no prayers to say. He had nothing to be thankful for, and he
+had nothing to ask; nothing to ask, because now he must take care of himself.
+But a great cathedral offers a very various hospitality, and Newman sat in his
+place, because while he was there he was out of the world. The most unpleasant
+thing that had ever happened to him had reached its formal conclusion, as it
+were; he could close the book and put it away. He leaned his head for a long
+time on the chair in front of him; when he took it up he felt that he was
+himself again. Somewhere in his mind, a tight knot seemed to have loosened. He
+thought of the Bellegardes; he had almost forgotten them. He remembered them as
+people he had meant to do something to. He gave a groan as he remembered what
+he had meant to do; he was annoyed at having meant to do it; the bottom,
+suddenly, had fallen out of his revenge. Whether it was Christian charity or
+unregenerate good nature&mdash;what it was, in the background of his
+soul&mdash;I don&rsquo;t pretend to say; but Newman&rsquo;s last thought was
+that of course he would let the Bellegardes go.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If he had spoken it aloud he would have said that he didn&rsquo;t want to hurt
+them. He was ashamed of having wanted to hurt them. They had hurt him, but such
+things were really not his game. At last he got up and came out of the
+darkening church; not with the elastic step of a man who had won a victory or
+taken a resolve, but strolling soberly, like a good-natured man who is still a
+little ashamed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Going home, he said to Mrs. Bread that he must trouble her to put back his
+things into the portmanteau she had unpacked the evening before. His gentle
+stewardess looked at him through eyes a trifle bedimmed. &ldquo;Dear me,
+sir,&rdquo; she exclaimed, &ldquo;I thought you said that you were going to
+stay forever.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I meant that I was going to stay away forever,&rdquo; said Newman
+kindly. And since his departure from Paris on the following day he has
+certainly not returned. The gilded apartments I have so often spoken of stand
+ready to receive him; but they serve only as a spacious residence for Mrs.
+Bread, who wanders eternally from room to room, adjusting the tassels of the
+curtains, and keeps her wages, which are regularly brought her by a
+banker&rsquo;s clerk, in a great pink Sèvres vase on the drawing-room
+mantelshelf.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Late in the evening Newman went to Mrs. Tristram&rsquo;s and found Tom Tristram
+by the domestic fireside. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad to see you back in
+Paris,&rdquo; this gentleman declared. &ldquo;You know it&rsquo;s really the
+only place for a white man to live.&rdquo; Mr. Tristram made his friend
+welcome, according to his own rosy light, and offered him a convenient
+<i>résumé</i> of the Franco-American gossip of the last six months. Then at
+last he got up and said he would go for half an hour to the club. &ldquo;I
+suppose a man who has been for six months in California wants a little
+intellectual conversation. I&rsquo;ll let my wife have a go at you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman shook hands heartily with his host, but did not ask him to remain; and
+then he relapsed into his place on the sofa, opposite to Mrs. Tristram. She
+presently asked him what he had done after leaving her. &ldquo;Nothing
+particular,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You struck me,&rdquo; she rejoined, &ldquo;as a man with a plot in his
+head. You looked as if you were bent on some sinister errand, and after you had
+left me I wondered whether I ought to have let you go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I only went over to the other side of the river&mdash;to the
+Carmelites,&rdquo; said Newman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Tristram looked at him a moment and smiled. &ldquo;What did you do there?
+Try to scale the wall?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I did nothing. I looked at the place for a few minutes and then came
+away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Tristram gave him a sympathetic glance. &ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t happen to
+meet M. de Bellegarde,&rdquo; she asked, &ldquo;staring hopelessly at the
+convent wall as well? I am told he takes his sister&rsquo;s conduct very
+hard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I didn&rsquo;t meet him, I am happy to say,&rdquo; Newman answered,
+after a pause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They are in the country,&rdquo; Mrs. Tristram went on;
+&ldquo;at&mdash;what is the name of the place?&mdash;Fleurières. They returned
+there at the time you left Paris and have been spending the year in extreme
+seclusion. The little marquise must enjoy it; I expect to hear that she has
+eloped with her daughter&rsquo;s music-master!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman was looking at the light wood-fire; but he listened to this with extreme
+interest. At last he spoke: &ldquo;I mean never to mention the name of those
+people again, and I don&rsquo;t want to hear anything more about them.&rdquo;
+And then he took out his pocket-book and drew forth a scrap of paper. He looked
+at it an instant, then got up and stood by the fire. &ldquo;I am going to burn
+them up,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I am glad to have you as a witness. There they
+go!&rdquo; And he tossed the paper into the flame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Tristram sat with her embroidery needle suspended. &ldquo;What is that
+paper?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman leaning against the fireplace, stretched his arms and drew a longer
+breath than usual. Then after a moment, &ldquo;I can tell you now,&rdquo; he
+said. &ldquo;It was a paper containing a secret of the
+Bellegardes&mdash;something which would damn them if it were known.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Tristram dropped her embroidery with a reproachful moan. &ldquo;Ah, why
+didn&rsquo;t you show it to me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought of showing it to you&mdash;I thought of showing it to
+everyone. I thought of paying my debt to the Bellegardes that way. So I told
+them, and I frightened them. They have been staying in the country as you tell
+me, to keep out of the explosion. But I have given it up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Tristram began to take slow stitches again. &ldquo;Have you quite given it
+up?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it very bad, this secret?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, very bad.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For myself,&rdquo; said Mrs. Tristram, &ldquo;I am sorry you have given
+it up. I should have liked immensely to see your paper. They have wronged me
+too, you know, as your sponsor and guarantee, and it would have served for my
+revenge as well. How did you come into possession of your secret?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a long story. But honestly, at any rate.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And they knew you were master of it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I told them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dear me, how interesting!&rdquo; cried Mrs. Tristram. &ldquo;And you
+humbled them at your feet?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman was silent a moment. &ldquo;No, not at all. They pretended not to
+care&mdash;not to be afraid. But I know they did care&mdash;they were
+afraid.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you very sure?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman stared a moment. &ldquo;Yes, I&rsquo;m sure.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Tristram resumed her slow stitches. &ldquo;They defied you, eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Newman, &ldquo;it was about that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You tried by the threat of exposure to make them retract?&rdquo; Mrs.
+Tristram pursued.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, but they wouldn&rsquo;t. I gave them their choice, and they chose
+to take their chance of bluffing off the charge and convicting me of fraud. But
+they <i>were</i> frightened,&rdquo; Newman added, &ldquo;and I have had all the
+vengeance I want.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is most provoking,&rdquo; said Mrs. Tristram, &ldquo;to hear you talk
+of the &lsquo;charge&rsquo; when the charge is burnt up. Is it quite
+consumed?&rdquo; she asked, glancing at the fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman assured her that there was nothing left of it. &ldquo;Well then,&rdquo;
+she said, &ldquo;I suppose there is no harm in saying that you probably did not
+make them so very uncomfortable. My impression would be that since, as you say,
+they defied you, it was because they believed that, after all, you would never
+really come to the point. Their confidence, after counsel taken of each other,
+was not in their innocence, nor in their talent for bluffing things off; it was
+in your remarkable good nature! You see they were right.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Newman instinctively turned to see if the little paper was in fact consumed;
+but there was nothing left of it.
+</p>
+
+<h5>THE END</h5>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
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+
+
+The American by Henry James 1877
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+On a brilliant day in May, in the year 1868, a gentleman was reclining
+at his ease on the great circular divan which at that period occupied
+the centre of the Salon Carre, in the Museum of the Louvre.
+This commodious ottoman has since been removed, to the extreme regret
+of all weak-kneed lovers of the fine arts, but the gentleman in question
+had taken serene possession of its softest spot, and, with his head
+thrown back and his legs outstretched, was staring at Murillo's
+beautiful moon-borne Madonna in profound enjoyment of his posture.
+He had removed his hat, and flung down beside him a little red guide-book
+and an opera-glass. The day was warm; he was heated with walking,
+and he repeatedly passed his handkerchief over his forehead,
+with a somewhat wearied gesture.  And yet he was evidently not
+a man to whom fatigue was familiar; long, lean, and muscular,
+he suggested the sort of vigor that is commonly known as "toughness."
+But his exertions on this particular day had been of an unwonted sort,
+and he had performed great physical feats which left him less jaded
+than his tranquil stroll through the Louvre.  He had looked out all
+the pictures to which an asterisk was affixed in those formidable
+pages of fine print in his Badeker; his attention had been strained
+and his eyes dazzled, and he had sat down with an aesthetic headache.
+He had looked, moreover, not only at all the pictures, but at all
+the copies that were going forward around them, in the hands of those
+innumerable young women in irreproachable toilets who devote themselves,
+in France, to the propagation of masterpieces, and if the truth must
+be told, he had often admired the copy much more than the original.
+His physiognomy would have sufficiently indicated that he was a shrewd
+and capable fellow, and in truth he had often sat up all night over
+a bristling bundle of accounts, and heard the cock crow without a yawn.
+But Raphael and Titian and Rubens were a new kind of arithmetic,
+and they inspired our friend, for the first time in his life,
+with a vague self-mistrust.
+
+An observer with anything of an eye for national types would
+have had no difficulty in determining the local origin
+of this undeveloped connoisseur, and indeed such an observer
+might have felt a certain humorous relish of the almost ideal
+completeness with which he filled out the national mould.
+The gentleman on the divan was a powerful specimen of an American.
+But he was not only a fine American; he was in the first place,
+physically, a fine man.  He appeared to possess that kind of health
+and strength which, when found in perfection, are the most impressive--
+the physical capital which the owner does nothing to "keep up."
+If he was a muscular Christian, it was quite without knowing it.
+If it was necessary to walk to a remote spot, he walked,
+but he had never known himself to "exercise."  He had no theory
+with regard to cold bathing or the use of Indian clubs;
+he was neither an oarsman, a rifleman, nor a fencer--he had
+never had time for these amusements--and he was quite unaware
+that the saddle is recommended for certain forms of indigestion.
+He was by inclination a temperate man; but he had supped
+the night before his visit to the Louvre at the Cafe Anglais--
+some one had told him it was an experience not to be omitted--
+and he had slept none the less the sleep of the just.
+His usual attitude and carriage were of a rather relaxed
+and lounging kind, but when under a special inspiration,
+he straightened himself, he looked like a grenadier on parade.
+He never smoked.  He had been assured--such things are said--
+that cigars were excellent for the health, and he was quite
+capable of believing it; but he knew as little about tobacco as
+about homeopathy.  He had a very well-formed head, with a shapely,
+symmetrical balance of the frontal and the occipital development,
+and a good deal of straight, rather dry brown hair.
+His complexion was brown, and his nose had a bold well-marked arch.
+His eye was of a clear, cold gray, and save for a rather
+abundant mustache he was clean-shaved. He had the flat jaw
+and sinewy neck which are frequent in the American type;
+but the traces of national origin are a matter of expression even
+more than of feature, and it was in this respect that our friend's
+countenance was supremely eloquent.  The discriminating observer
+we have been supposing might, however, perfectly have measured
+its expressiveness, and yet have been at a loss to describe it.
+It had that typical vagueness which is not vacuity,
+that blankness which is not simplicity, that look of being
+committed to nothing in particular, of standing in an attitude
+of general hospitality to the chances of life, of being very much
+at one's own disposal so characteristic of many American faces.
+It was our friend's eye that chiefly told his story; an eye
+in which innocence and experience were singularly blended.
+It was full of contradictory suggestions, and though it
+was by no means the glowing orb of a hero of romance,
+you could find in it almost anything you looked for.
+Frigid and yet friendly, frank yet cautious, shrewd yet credulous,
+positive yet skeptical, confident yet shy, extremely intelligent
+and extremely good-humored, there was something vaguely defiant in
+its concessions, and something profoundly reassuring in its reserve.
+The cut of this gentleman's mustache, with the two premature
+wrinkles in the cheek above it, and the fashion of his garments,
+in which an exposed shirt-front and a cerulean cravat played perhaps
+an obtrusive part, completed the conditions of his identity.
+We have approached him, perhaps, at a not especially favorable moment;
+he is by no means sitting for his portrait.  But listless
+as he lounges there, rather baffled on the aesthetic question,
+and guilty of the damning fault (as we have lately discovered it to be)
+of confounding the merit of the artist with that of his work
+(for he admires the squinting Madonna of the young lady with
+the boyish coiffure, because he thinks the young lady herself
+uncommonly taking), he is a sufficiently promising acquaintance.
+Decision, salubrity, jocosity, prosperity, seem to hover
+within his call; he is evidently a practical man, but the idea
+in his case, has undefined and mysterious boundaries,
+which invite the imagination to bestir itself on his behalf.
+
+As the little copyist proceeded with her work, she sent every now and then
+a responsive glance toward her admirer.  The cultivation of the fine
+arts appeared to necessitate, to her mind, a great deal of byplay,
+a great standing off with folded arms and head drooping from side to side,
+stroking of a dimpled chin with a dimpled hand, sighing and frowning
+and patting of the foot, fumbling in disordered tresses for wandering
+hair-pins. These performances were accompanied by a restless glance,
+which lingered longer than elsewhere upon the gentleman we have described.
+At last he rose abruptly, put on his hat, and approached the young lady.
+He placed himself before her picture and looked at it for some moments,
+during which she pretended to be quite unconscious of his inspection.
+Then, addressing her with the single word which constituted the strength
+of his French vocabulary, and holding up one finger in a manner which appeared
+to him to illuminate his meaning, "Combien?" he abruptly demanded.
+
+The artist stared a moment, gave a little pout, shrugged her shoulders,
+put down her palette and brushes, and stood rubbing her hands.
+
+"How much?" said our friend, in English.  "Combien?"
+
+"Monsieur wishes to buy it?" asked the young lady in French.
+
+"Very pretty, splendide.  Combien?" repeated the American.
+
+"It pleases monsieur, my little picture?  It's a very beautiful subject,"
+said the young lady.
+
+"The Madonna, yes; I am not a Catholic, but I want to buy it.  Combien?
+Write it here."  And he took a pencil from his pocket and showed
+her the fly-leaf of his guide-book. She stood looking at him and
+scratching her chin with the pencil.  "Is it not for sale?" he asked.
+And as she still stood reflecting, and looking at him with an eye which,
+in spite of her desire to treat this avidity of patronage as a very old story,
+betrayed an almost touching incredulity, he was afraid he had offended her.
+She simply trying to look indifferent, and wondering how far she might go.
+"I haven't made a mistake--pas insulte, no?" her interlocutor continued.
+"Don't you understand a little English?"
+
+The young lady's aptitude for playing a part at short notice
+was remarkable.  She fixed him with her conscious, perceptive eye
+and asked him if he spoke no French.  Then, "Donnez!" she said briefly,
+and took the open guide-book. In the upper corner of the fly-leaf
+she traced a number, in a minute and extremely neat hand.
+Then she handed back the book and took up her palette again.
+
+Our friend read the number:  "2,000 francs."
+He said nothing for a time, but stood looking at the picture,
+while the copyist began actively to dabble with her paint.
+"For a copy, isn't that a good deal?" he asked at last.
+"Pas beaucoup?"
+
+The young lady raised her eyes from her palette, scanned him from head
+to foot, and alighted with admirable sagacity upon exactly the right answer.
+"Yes, it's a good deal.  But my copy has remarkable qualities, it is
+worth nothing less."
+
+The gentleman in whom we are interested understood no French, but I
+have said he was intelligent, and here is a good chance to prove it.
+He apprehended, by a natural instinct, the meaning of the young
+woman's phrase, and it gratified him to think that she was
+so honest.  Beauty, talent, virtue; she combined everything!
+"But you must finish it," he said.  "FINISH, you know;"
+and he pointed to the unpainted hand of the figure.
+
+"Oh, it shall be finished in perfection; in the perfection of perfections!"
+cried mademoiselle; and to confirm her promise, she deposited a rosy blotch
+in the middle of the Madonna's cheek.
+
+But the American frowned.  "Ah, too red, too red!" he rejoined.
+"Her complexion," pointing to the Murillo, "is--more delicate."
+
+"Delicate?  Oh, it shall be delicate, monsieur; delicate as Sevres biscuit.
+I am going to tone that down; I know all the secrets of my art.
+And where will you allow us to send it to you?  Your address?"
+
+"My address?  Oh yes!"  And the gentleman drew a card from
+his pocket-book and wrote something upon it.  Then hesitating
+a moment he said, "If I don't like it when it it's finished,
+you know, I shall not be obliged to take it."
+
+The young lady seemed as good a guesser as himself.
+"Oh, I am very sure that monsieur is not capricious,"
+she said with a roguish smile.
+
+"Capricious?"  And at this monsieur began to laugh.
+"Oh no, I'm not capricious.  I am very faithful.
+I am very constant.  Comprenez?"
+
+"Monsieur is constant; I understand perfectly.  It's a rare virtue.
+To recompense you, you shall have your picture on the first possible day;
+next week--as soon as it is dry.  I will take the card of monsieur."
+And she took it and read his name:  "Christopher Newman."
+Then she tried to repeat it aloud, and laughed at her bad accent.
+"Your English names are so droll!"
+
+"Droll?" said Mr. Newman, laughing too.  "Did you ever hear
+of Christopher Columbus?"
+
+"Bien sur!  He invented America; a very great man.
+And is he your patron?"
+
+"My patron?"
+
+"Your patron-saint, in the calendar."
+
+"Oh, exactly; my parents named me for him."
+
+"Monsieur is American?"
+
+"Don't you see it?" monsieur inquired.
+
+"And you mean to carry my little picture away over there?"
+and she explained her phrase with a gesture.
+
+"Oh, I mean to buy a great many pictures--beaucoup, beaucoup,"
+said Christopher Newman.
+
+"The honor is not less for me," the young lady answered,
+"for I am sure monsieur has a great deal of taste."
+
+"But you must give me your card," Newman said; "your card, you know."
+
+The young lady looked severe for an instant, and then said,
+"My father will wait upon you."
+
+But this time Mr. Newman's powers of divination were at fault.
+"Your card, your address," he simply repeated.
+
+"My address?" said mademoiselle.  Then with a little shrug,
+"Happily for you, you are an American!  It is the first time I
+ever gave my card to a gentleman."  And, taking from her pocket
+a rather greasy porte-monnaie, she extracted from it a small
+glazed visiting card, and presented the latter to her patron.
+It was neatly inscribed in pencil, with a great many flourishes,
+"Mlle. Noemie Nioche."  But Mr. Newman, unlike his companion,
+read the name with perfect gravity; all French names to him
+were equally droll.
+
+"And precisely, here is my father, who has come to escort me home,"
+said Mademoiselle Noemie.  "He speaks English.  He will arrange with you."
+And she turned to welcome a little old gentleman who came shuffling up,
+peering over his spectacles at Newman.
+
+M. Nioche wore a glossy wig, of an unnatural color which overhung his
+little meek, white, vacant face, and left it hardly more expressive
+than the unfeatured block upon which these articles are displayed
+in the barber's window.  He was an exquisite image of shabby gentility.
+His scant ill-made coat, desperately brushed, his darned gloves,
+his highly polished boots, his rusty, shapely hat, told the story
+of a person who had "had losses" and who clung to the spirit
+of nice habits even though the letter had been hopelessly effaced.
+Among other things M. Nioche had lost courage.  Adversity had not only
+ruined him, it had frightened him, and he was evidently going through
+his remnant of life on tiptoe, for fear of waking up the hostile fates.
+If this strange gentleman was saying anything improper to his daughter,
+M. Nioche would entreat him huskily, as a particular favor, to forbear;
+but he would admit at the same time that he was very presumptuous
+to ask for particular favors.
+
+"Monsieur has bought my picture," said Mademoiselle Noemie.
+"When it's finished you'll carry it to him in a cab."
+
+"In a cab!" cried M. Nioche; and he stared, in a bewildered way,
+as if he had seen the sun rising at midnight.
+
+"Are you the young lady's father?" said Newman.
+"I think she said you speak English."
+
+"Speak English--yes," said the old man slowly rubbing his hands.
+"I will bring it in a cab."
+
+"Say something, then," cried his daughter.  "Thank him a little--
+not too much."
+
+"A little, my daughter, a little?" said M. Nioche perplexed.
+"How much?"
+
+"Two thousand!" said Mademoiselle Noemie.  "Don't make a fuss
+or he'll take back his word."
+
+"Two thousand!" cried the old man, and he began to fumble
+for his snuff-box. He looked at Newman from head to foot;
+he looked at his daughter and then at the picture.
+"Take care you don't spoil it!" he cried almost sublimely.
+
+"We must go home," said Mademoiselle Noemie.  "This is a good day's work.
+Take care how you carry it!"  And she began to put up her utensils.
+
+"How can I thank you?" said M. Nioche.  "My English does not suffice."
+
+"I wish I spoke French as well," said Newman, good-naturedly. "Your
+daughter is very clever."
+
+"Oh, sir!" and M. Nioche looked over his spectacles with tearful
+eyes and nodded several times with a world of sadness.
+"She has had an education--tres-superieure! Nothing was spared.
+Lessons in pastel at ten francs the lesson, lessons in oil
+at twelve francs.  I didn't look at the francs then.
+She's an artiste, ah!"
+
+"Do I understand you to say that you have had reverses?" asked Newman.
+
+"Reverses?  Oh, sir, misfortunes--terrible."
+
+"Unsuccessful in business, eh?"
+
+"Very unsuccessful, sir."
+
+"Oh, never fear, you'll get on your legs again," said Newman cheerily.
+
+The old man drooped his head on one side and looked at him with an expression
+of pain, as if this were an unfeeling jest.
+
+"What does he say?" demanded Mademoiselle Noemie.
+
+M. Nioche took a pinch of snuff.  "He says I will make my fortune again."
+
+"Perhaps he will help you.  And what else?"
+
+"He says thou art very clever."
+
+"It is very possible.  You believe it yourself, my father?"
+
+"Believe it, my daughter?  With this evidence!"
+And the old man turned afresh, with a staring, wondering homage,
+to the audacious daub on the easel.
+
+"Ask him, then.  if he would not like to learn French."
+
+"To learn French?"
+
+"To take lessons."
+
+"To take lessons, my daughter?  From thee?"
+
+"From you!"
+
+"From me, my child?  How should I give lessons?"
+
+"Pas de raisons!  Ask him immediately!" said Mademoiselle Noemie,
+with soft brevity.
+
+M. Nioche stood aghast, but under his daughter's eye he collected his wits,
+and, doing his best to assume an agreeable smile, he executed her commands.
+"Would it please you to receive instruction in our beautiful language?"
+he inquired, with an appealing quaver.
+
+"To study French?" asked Newman, staring.
+
+M. Nioche pressed his finger-tips together and slowly raised his shoulders.
+"A little conversation!"
+
+"Conversation--that's it!" murmured Mademoiselle Noemie, who had caught
+the word.  "The conversation of the best society."
+
+"Our French conversation is famous, you know," M. Nioche ventured
+to continue.  "It's a great talent."
+
+"But isn't it awfully difficult?" asked Newman, very simply.
+
+"Not to a man of esprit, like monsieur, an admirer of beauty in every form!"
+and M. Nioche cast a significant glance at his daughter's Madonna.
+
+"I can't fancy myself chattering French!" said Newman with a laugh.
+"And yet, I suppose that the more a man knows the better."
+
+"Monsieur expresses that very happily.  Helas, oui!"
+
+"I suppose it would help me a great deal, knocking about Paris,
+to know the language."
+
+"Ah, there are so many things monsieur must want to say:  difficult things!"
+
+"Everything I want to say is difficult.  But you give lessons?"
+
+Poor M. Nioche was embarrassed; he smiled more appealingly.
+"I am not a regular professor," he admitted.  "I can't nevertheless
+tell him that I'm a professor," he said to his daughter.
+
+"Tell him it's a very exceptional chance," answered Mademoiselle Noemie;
+"an homme du monde--one gentleman conversing with another!
+Remember what you are--what you have been!"
+
+"A teacher of languages in neither case!  Much more formerly and much
+less to-day! And if he asks the price of the lessons?"
+
+"He won't ask it," said Mademoiselle Noemie.
+
+"What he pleases, I may say?"
+
+"Never!  That's bad style."
+
+"If he asks, then?"
+
+Mademoiselle Noemie had put on her bonnet and was tying the ribbons.
+She smoothed them out, with her soft little chin thrust forward.
+"Ten francs," she said quickly.
+
+"Oh, my daughter!  I shall never dare."
+
+"Don't dare, then!  He won't ask till the end of the lessons,
+and then I will make out the bill."
+
+M. Nioche turned to the confiding foreigner again, and stood
+rubbing his hands, with an air of seeming to plead guilty which
+was not intenser only because it was habitually so striking.
+It never occurred to Newman to ask him for a guarantee of his
+skill in imparting instruction; he supposed of course M. Nioche
+knew his own language, and his appealing forlornness was quite
+the perfection of what the American, for vague reasons, had always
+associated with all elderly foreigners of the lesson-giving class.
+Newman had never reflected upon philological processes.
+His chief impression with regard to ascertaining those mysterious
+correlatives of his familiar English vocables which were current
+in this extraordinary city of Paris was, that it was simply
+a matter of a good deal of unwonted and rather ridiculous
+muscular effort on his own part.  "How did you learn English?"
+he asked of the old man.
+
+"When I was young, before my miseries.  Oh, I was wide awake, then.
+My father was a great commercant; he placed me for a year
+in a counting-house in England.  Some of it stuck to me;
+but I have forgotten!"
+
+"How much French can I learn in a month?"
+
+"What does he say?" asked Mademoiselle Noemie.
+
+M. Nioche explained.
+
+"He will speak like an angel!" said his daughter.
+
+But the native integrity which had been vainly exerted to
+secure M. Nioche's commercial prosperity flickered up again.
+"Dame, monsieur!" he answered.  "All I can teach you!"
+And then, recovering himself at a sign from his daughter,
+"I will wait upon you at your hotel."
+
+"Oh yes, I should like to learn French," Newman went on,
+with democratic confidingness.  "Hang me if I should ever
+have thought of it!  I took for granted it was impossible.
+But if you learned my language, why shouldn't I learn yours?"
+and his frank, friendly laugh drew the sting from the jest.
+"Only, if we are going to converse, you know, you must think
+of something cheerful to converse about."
+
+"You are very good, sir; I am overcome!" said M. Nioche, throwing out
+his hands.  "But you have cheerfulness and happiness for two!"
+
+"Oh no," said Newman more seriously.  "You must be bright and lively;
+that's part of the bargain."
+
+M. Nioche bowed, with his hand on his heart.  "Very well, sir;
+you have already made me lively."
+
+"Come and bring me my picture then; I will pay you for it,
+and we will talk about that.  That will be a cheerful subject!"
+
+Mademoiselle Noemie had collected her accessories, and she gave
+the precious Madonna in charge to her father, who retreated backwards
+out of sight, holding it at arm's-length and reiterating his obeisance.
+The young lady gathered her shawl about her like a perfect Parisienne,
+and it was with the smile of a Parisienne that she took leave
+of her patron.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+He wandered back to the divan and seated himself on
+the other side, in view of the great canvas on which Paul
+Veronese had depicted the marriage-feast of Cana.
+Wearied as he was he found the picture entertaining;
+it had an illusion for him; it satisfied his conception,
+which was ambitious, of what a splendid banquet should be.
+In the left-hand corner of the picture is a young woman
+with yellow tresses confined in a golden head-dress;
+she is bending forward and listening, with the smile
+of a charming woman at a dinner-party, to her neighbor.
+Newman detected her in the crowd, admired her, and perceived
+that she too had her votive copyist--a young man with his hair
+standing on end.  Suddenly he became conscious of the germ
+of the mania of the "collector;" he had taken the first step;
+why should he not go on?  It was only twenty minutes before
+that he had bought the first picture of his life, and now he was
+already thinking of art-patronage as a fascinating pursuit.
+His reflections quickened his good-humor, and he was on
+the point of approaching the young man with another "Combien?"
+Two or three facts in this relation are noticeable,
+although the logical chain which connects them may seem imperfect.
+He knew Mademoiselle Nioche had asked too much; he bore her no
+grudge for doing so, and he was determined to pay the young man
+exactly the proper sum.  At this moment, however, his attention
+was attracted by a gentleman who had come from another part of
+the room and whose manner was that of a stranger to the gallery,
+although he was equipped with neither guide-book nor opera-glass.
+He carried a white sun-umbrella, lined with blue silk, and he
+strolled in front of the Paul Veronese, vaguely looking at it,
+but much too near to see anything but the grain of the canvas.
+Opposite to Christopher Newman he paused and turned,
+and then our friend, who had been observing him, had a chance
+to verify a suspicion aroused by an imperfect view of his face.
+The result of this larger scrutiny was that he presently sprang
+to his feet, strode across the room, and, with an outstretched hand,
+arrested the gentleman with the blue-lined umbrella.
+The latter stared, but put out his hand at a venture.
+He was corpulent and rosy, and though his countenance,
+which was ornamented with a beautiful flaxen beard,
+carefully divided in the middle and brushed outward at the sides,
+was not remarkable for intensity of expression, he looked
+like a person who would willingly shake hands with any one.
+I know not what Newman thought of his face, but he found a want
+of response in his grasp.
+
+"Oh, come, come," he said, laughing; "don't say, now, you don't know me--
+if I have NOT got a white parasol!"
+
+The sound of his voice quickened the other's memory, his face expanded
+to its fullest capacity, and he also broke into a laugh.  "Why, Newman--
+I'll be blowed!  Where in the world--I declare--who would have thought?
+You know you have changed."
+
+"You haven't!" said Newman.
+
+"Not for the better, no doubt.  When did you get here?"
+
+"Three days ago."
+
+"Why didn't you let me know?"
+
+"I had no idea YOU were here."
+
+"I have been here these six years."
+
+"It must be eight or nine since we met."
+
+"Something of that sort.  We were very young."
+
+"It was in St. Louis, during the war.  You were in the army."
+
+"Oh no, not I!  But you were."
+
+"I believe I was."
+
+"You came out all right?"
+
+"I came out with my legs and arms--and with satisfaction. All
+that seems very far away."
+
+"And how long have you been in Europe?"
+
+"Seventeen days."
+
+"First time?"
+
+"Yes, very much so."
+
+"Made your everlasting fortune?"
+
+Christopher Newman was silent a moment, and then with a tranquil
+smile he answered, "Yes."
+
+"And come to Paris to spend it, eh?"
+
+"Well, we shall see.  So they carry those parasols here--the menfolk?"
+
+"Of course they do.  They're great things.  They understand
+comfort out here."
+
+"Where do you buy them?"
+
+"Anywhere, everywhere."
+
+"Well, Tristram, I'm glad to get hold of you.  You can show me the ropes.
+I suppose you know Paris inside out."
+
+Mr. Tristram gave a mellow smile of self-gratulation. "Well,
+I guess there are not many men that can show me much.
+I'll take care of you."
+
+"It's a pity you were not here a few minutes ago.
+I have just bought a picture.  You might have put the thing
+through for me."
+
+"Bought a picture?" said Mr. Tristram, looking vaguely round at the walls.
+"Why, do they sell them?"
+
+"I mean a copy."
+
+"Oh, I see.  These," said Mr. Tristram, nodding at the Titians and Vandykes,
+"these, I suppose, are originals."
+
+"I hope so," cried Newman.  "I don't want a copy of a copy."
+
+"Ah," said Mr. Tristram, mysteriously, "you can never tell.
+They imitate, you know, so deucedly well.  It's like the jewelers,
+with their false stones.  Go into the Palais Royal, there; you see
+'Imitation' on half the windows.  The law obliges them to stick it on,
+you know; but you can't tell the things apart.  To tell the truth,"
+Mr. Tristram continued, with a wry face, "I don't do much in pictures.
+I leave that to my wife."
+
+"Ah, you have got a wife?"
+
+"Didn't I mention it?  She's a very nice woman; you must know her.
+She's up there in the Avenue d'Iena."
+
+"So you are regularly fixed--house and children and all."
+
+"Yes, a tip-top house and a couple of youngsters."
+
+"Well," said Christopher Newman, stretching his arms a little,
+with a sigh, "I envy you."
+
+"Oh no! you don't!" answered Mr. Tristram, giving him a little
+poke with his parasol.
+
+"I beg your pardon; I do!"
+
+"Well, you won't, then, when--when--"
+
+"You don't certainly mean when I have seen your establishment?"
+
+"When you have seen Paris, my boy.  You want to be your own master here."
+
+"Oh, I have been my own master all my life, and I'm tired of it."
+
+"Well, try Paris.  How old are you?"
+
+"Thirty-six."
+
+"C'est le bel age, as they say here."
+
+"What does that mean?"
+
+"It means that a man shouldn't send away his plate till he has
+eaten his fill."
+
+"All that?  I have just made arrangements to take French lessons."
+
+"Oh, you don't want any lessons.  You'll pick it up.
+I never took any."
+
+"I suppose you speak French as well as English?"
+
+"Better!" said Mr. Tristram, roundly.  "It's a splendid language.
+You can say all sorts of bright things in it."
+
+"But I suppose," said Christopher Newman, with an earnest desire
+for information, "that you must be bright to begin with."
+
+"Not a bit; that's just the beauty of it."
+
+The two friends, as they exchanged these remarks, had remained standing
+where they met, and leaning against the rail which protected the pictures.
+Mr. Tristram at last declared that he was overcome with fatigue and should
+be happy to sit down.  Newman recommended in the highest terms the great
+divan on which he had been lounging, and they prepared to seat themselves.
+"This is a great place; isn't it?" said Newman, with ardor.
+
+"Great place, great place.  Finest thing in the world."
+And then, suddenly, Mr. Tristram hesitated and looked about him.
+"I suppose they won't let you smoke here."
+
+Newman stared.  "Smoke?  I'm sure I don't know.
+You know the regulations better than I."
+
+"I?  I never was here before!"
+
+"Never! in six years?"
+
+"I believe my wife dragged me here once when we first came to Paris,
+but I never found my way back."
+
+"But you say you know Paris so well!"
+
+"I don't call this Paris!" cried Mr. Tristram, with assurance.
+"Come; let's go over to the Palais Royal and have a smoke."
+
+"I don't smoke," said Newman.
+
+"A drink, then."
+
+And Mr. Tristram led his companion away.  They passed through
+the glorious halls of the Louvre, down the staircases, along the cool,
+dim galleries of sculpture, and out into the enormous court.
+Newman looked about him as he went, but he made no comments,
+and it was only when they at last emerged into the open air
+that he said to his friend, "It seems to me that in your place
+I should have come here once a week."
+
+"Oh, no you wouldn't!" said Mr. Tristram.  "You think so, but you
+wouldn't. You wouldn't have had time.  You would always mean to go,
+but you never would go.  There's better fun than that, here in Paris.
+Italy's the place to see pictures; wait till you get there.
+There you have to go; you can't do anything else.
+It's an awful country; you can't get a decent cigar.
+I don't know why I went in there, to-day; I was strolling along,
+rather hard up for amusement.  I sort of noticed the Louvre as
+I passed, and I thought I would go in and see what was going on.
+But if I hadn't found you there I should have felt rather sold.
+Hang it, I don't care for pictures; I prefer the reality!"
+And Mr. Tristram tossed off this happy formula with an assurance
+which the numerous class of persons suffering from an overdose
+of "culture" might have envied him.
+
+The two gentlemen proceeded along the Rue de Rivoli and into the Palais Royal,
+where they seated themselves at one of the little tables stationed
+at the door of the cafe which projects into the great open quadrangle.
+The place was filled with people, the fountains were spouting,
+a band was playing, clusters of chairs were gathered beneath all
+the lime-trees, and buxom, white-capped nurses, seated along the benches,
+were offering to their infant charges the amplest facilities for nutrition.
+There was an easy, homely gayety in the whole scene, and Christopher
+Newman felt that it was most characteristically Parisian.
+
+"And now," began Mr. Tristram, when they had tested the decoction which
+he had caused to be served to them, "now just give an account of yourself.
+What are your ideas, what are your plans, where have you come from and
+where are you going?  In the first place, where are you staying?"
+
+"At the Grand Hotel," said Newman.
+
+Mr. Tristram puckered his plump visage.  "That won't do!
+You must change."
+
+"Change?" demanded Newman.  "Why, it's the finest hotel I ever was in."
+
+"You don't want a 'fine' hotel; you want something small
+and quiet and elegant, where your bell is answered and you--
+your person is recognized."
+
+"They keep running to see if I have rung before I have touched the bell,"
+said Newman "and as for my person they are always bowing and scraping to it."
+
+"I suppose you are always tipping them.  That's very bad style."
+
+"Always?  By no means.  A man brought me something yesterday,
+and then stood loafing in a beggarly manner.
+I offered him a chair and asked him if he wouldn't sit down.
+Was that bad style?"
+
+"Very!"
+
+"But he bolted, instantly.  At any rate, the place amuses me.
+Hang your elegance, if it bores me.  I sat in the court of
+the Grand Hotel last night until two o'clock in the morning,
+watching the coming and going, and the people knocking about."
+
+"You're easily pleased.  But you can do as you choose--a man in your shoes.
+You have made a pile of money, eh?"
+
+"I have made enough"
+
+"Happy the man who can say that?  Enough for what?"
+
+"Enough to rest awhile, to forget the confounded thing,
+to look about me, to see the world, to have a good time,
+to improve my mind, and, if the fancy takes me, to marry a wife."
+Newman spoke slowly, with a certain dryness of accent and with
+frequent pauses.  This was his habitual mode of utterance,
+but it was especially marked in the words I have just quoted.
+
+"Jupiter!  There's a programme!" cried Mr. Tristram.
+"Certainly, all that takes money, especially the wife;
+unless indeed she gives it, as mine did.  And what's the story?
+How have you done it?"
+
+Newman had pushed his hat back from his forehead, folded his arms,
+and stretched his legs.  He listened to the music, he looked about him at
+the bustling crowd, at the plashing fountains, at the nurses and the babies.
+"I have worked!" he answered at last.
+
+Tristram looked at him for some moments, and allowed his placid eyes
+to measure his friend's generous longitude and rest upon his comfortably
+contemplative face.  "What have you worked at?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, at several things."
+
+"I suppose you're a smart fellow, eh?"
+
+Newman continued to look at the nurses and babies; they imparted to the scene
+a kind of primordial, pastoral simplicity.  "Yes," he said at last,
+"I suppose I am."  And then, in answer to his companion's inquiries,
+he related briefly his history since their last meeting.
+It was an intensely Western story, and it dealt with enterprises
+which it will be needless to introduce to the reader in detail.
+Newman had come out of the war with a brevet of brigadier-general,
+an honor which in this case--without invidious comparisons--
+had lighted upon shoulders amply competent to bear it.  But though
+he could manage a fight, when need was, Newman heartily disliked
+the business; his four years in the army had left him with an angry,
+bitter sense of the waste of precious things--life and time and money
+and "smartness" and the early freshness of purpose; and he had addressed
+himself to the pursuits of peace with passionate zest and energy.
+He was of course as penniless when he plucked off his shoulder-straps
+as when he put them on, and the only capital at his disposal was
+his dogged resolution and his lively perception of ends and means.
+Exertion and action were as natural to him as respiration; a more
+completely healthy mortal had never trod the elastic soil of the West.
+His experience, moreover, was as wide as his capacity; when he was
+fourteen years old, necessity had taken him by his slim young shoulders
+and pushed him into the street, to earn that night's supper.
+He had not earned it but he had earned the next night's, and afterwards,
+whenever he had had none, it was because he had gone without it to use
+the money for something else, a keener pleasure or a finer profit.
+He had turned his hand, with his brain in it, to many things;
+he had been enterprising, in an eminent sense of the term; he had
+been adventurous and even reckless, and he had known bitter failure
+as well as brilliant success; but he was a born experimentalist,
+and he had always found something to enjoy in the pressure of necessity,
+even when it was as irritating as the haircloth shirt of the mediaeval monk.
+At one time failure seemed inexorably his portion; ill-luck became his
+bed-fellow, and whatever he touched he turned, not to gold, but to ashes.
+His most vivid conception of a supernatural element in the world's affairs
+had come to him once when this pertinacity of misfortune was at its climax;
+there seemed to him something stronger in life than his own will.
+But the mysterious something could only be the devil, and he was accordingly
+seized with an intense personal enmity to this impertinent force.
+He had known what it was to have utterly exhausted his credit,
+to be unable to raise a dollar, and to find himself at nightfall
+in a strange city, without a penny to mitigate its strangeness.
+It was under these circumstances that he made his entrance into
+San Francisco, the scene, subsequently, of his happiest strokes
+of fortune.  If he did not, like Dr. Franklin in Philadelphia,
+march along the street munching a penny-loaf, it was only
+because he had not the penny-loaf necessary to the performance.
+In his darkest days he had had but one simple, practical impulse--
+the desire, as he would have phrased it, to see the thing through.
+He did so at last, buffeted his way into smooth waters,
+and made money largely.  It must be admitted, rather nakedly,
+that Christopher Newman's sole aim in life had been to make money;
+what he had been placed in the world for was, to his own perception,
+simply to wrest a fortune, the bigger the better, from defiant opportunity.
+This idea completely filled his horizon and satisfied his imagination.
+Upon the uses of money, upon what one might do with a life
+into which one had succeeded in injecting the golden stream,
+he had up to his thirty-fifth year very scantily reflected.
+Life had been for him an open game, and he had played for high stakes.
+He had won at last and carried off his winnings; and now what was
+he to do with them?  He was a man to whom, sooner or later, the question
+was sure to present itself, and the answer to it belongs to our story.
+A vague sense that more answers were possible than his philosophy
+had hitherto dreamt of had already taken possession of him, and it
+seemed softly and agreeably to deepen as he lounged in this brilliant
+corner of Paris with his friend.
+
+"I must confess," he presently went on, "that here I don't feel at all smart.
+My remarkable talents seem of no use.  I feel as simple as a little child,
+and a little child might take me by the hand and lead me about."
+
+"Oh, I'll be your little child," said Tristram, jovially; "I'll take
+you by the hand.  Trust yourself to me"
+
+"I am a good worker," Newman continued, "but I rather think
+I am a poor loafer.  I have come abroad to amuse myself,
+but I doubt whether I know how."
+
+"Oh, that's easily learned."
+
+"Well, I may perhaps learn it, but I am afraid I shall never do it by rote.
+I have the best will in the world about it, but my genius doesn't lie
+in that direction.  As a loafer I shall never be original, as I take it
+that you are."
+
+"Yes," said Tristram, "I suppose I am original; like all those immoral
+pictures in the Louvre."
+
+"Besides," Newman continued, "I don't want to work at pleasure,
+any more than I played at work.  I want to take it easily.
+I feel deliciously lazy, and I should like to spend six months
+as I am now, sitting under a tree and listening to a band.
+There's only one thing; I want to hear some good music."
+
+"Music and pictures!  Lord, what refined tastes!
+You are what my wife calls intellectual.  I ain't, a bit.
+But we can find something better for you to do than to sit
+under a tree.  To begin with, you must come to the club."
+
+"What club?"
+
+"The Occidental.  You will see all the Americans there;
+all the best of them, at least.  Of course you play poker?"
+
+"Oh, I say," cried Newman, with energy, "you are not going to lock
+me up in a club and stick me down at a card-table! I haven't come
+all this way for that."
+
+"What the deuce HAVE you come for!  You were glad enough to play
+poker in St. Louis, I recollect, when you cleaned me out."
+
+"I have come to see Europe, to get the best out of it I can.
+I want to see all the great things, and do what the clever people do."
+
+"The clever people?  Much obliged.  You set me down as a blockhead, then?"
+
+Newman was sitting sidewise in his chair, with his elbow
+on the back and his head leaning on his hand.  Without moving
+he looked a while at his companion with his dry, guarded,
+half-inscrutable, and yet altogether good-natured smile.
+"Introduce me to your wife!" he said at last.
+
+Tristram bounced about in his chair.  "Upon my word,
+I won't. She doesn't want any help to turn up her nose at me,
+nor do you, either!"
+
+"I don't turn up my nose at you, my dear fellow; nor at any one,
+or anything.  I'm not proud, I assure you I'm not proud.
+That's why I am willing to take example by the clever people."
+
+"Well, if I'm not the rose, as they say here, I have lived near it.
+I can show you some clever people, too.  Do you know General Packard?
+Do you know C. P. Hatch?  Do you know Miss Kitty Upjohn?"
+
+"I shall be happy to make their acquaintance; I want to cultivate society."
+
+Tristram seemed restless and suspicious; he eyed his friend askance,
+and then, "What are you up to, any way?" he demanded.
+"Are you going to write a book?"
+
+Christopher Newman twisted one end of his mustache a while,
+in silence, and at last he made answer.  "One day, a couple
+of months ago, something very curious happened to me.
+I had come on to New York on some important business; it was rather
+a long story--a question of getting ahead of another party,
+in a certain particular way, in the stock-market. This other party
+had once played me a very mean trick.  I owed him a grudge, I felt
+awfully savage at the time, and I vowed that, when I got a chance,
+I would, figuratively speaking, put his nose out of joint.
+There was a matter of some sixty thousand dollars at stake.
+If I put it out of his way, it was a blow the fellow would feel,
+and he really deserved no quarter.  I jumped into a hack and went
+about my business, and it was in this hack--this immortal,
+historical hack--that the curious thing I speak of occurred.
+It was a hack like any other, only a trifle dirtier,
+with a greasy line along the top of the drab cushions,
+as if it had been used for a great many Irish funerals.
+It is possible I took a nap; I had been traveling all night,
+and though I was excited with my errand, I felt the want of sleep.
+At all events I woke up suddenly, from a sleep or from a kind
+of a reverie, with the most extraordinary feeling in the world--
+a mortal disgust for the thing I was going to do.  It came upon
+me like THAT!" and he snapped his fingers--"as abruptly as an old
+wound that begins to ache.  I couldn't tell the meaning of it;
+I only felt that I loathed the whole business and wanted to wash
+my hands of it.  The idea of losing that sixty thousand dollars,
+of letting it utterly slide and scuttle and never hearing
+of it again, seemed the sweetest thing in the world.
+And all this took place quite independently of my will,
+and I sat watching it as if it were a play at the theatre.
+I could feel it going on inside of me.  You may depend upon it
+that there are things going on inside of us that we understand
+mighty little about."
+
+"Jupiter! you make my flesh creep!" cried Tristram.
+"And while you sat in your hack, watching the play, as you call it,
+the other man marched in and bagged your sixty thousand dollars?"
+
+"I have not the least idea.  I hope so, poor devil! but I never found out.
+We pulled up in front of the place I was going to in Wall Street,
+but I sat still in the carriage, and at last the driver scrambled down
+off his seat to see whether his carriage had not turned into a hearse.
+I couldn't have got out, any more than if I had been a corpse.
+What was the matter with me?  Momentary idiocy, you'll say.
+What I wanted to get out of was Wall Street.  I told the man
+to drive down to the Brooklyn ferry and to cross over.
+When we were over, I told him to drive me out into the country.
+As I had told him originally to drive for dear life down town, I suppose
+he thought me insane.  Perhaps I was, but in that case I am insane still.
+I spent the morning looking at the first green leaves on Long Island.
+I was sick of business; I wanted to throw it all up and break
+off short; I had money enough, or if I hadn't I ought to have.
+I seemed to feel a new man inside my old skin, and I longed for a
+new world.  When you want a thing so very badly you had better treat
+yourself to it.  I didn't understand the matter, not in the least;
+but I gave the old horse the bridle and let him find his way.
+As soon as I could get out of the game I sailed for Europe.
+That is how I come to be sitting here."
+
+"You ought to have bought up that hack," said Tristram;
+"it isn't a safe vehicle to have about.  And you have really
+sold out, then; you have retired from business?"
+
+"I have made over my hand to a friend; when I feel disposed,
+I can take up the cards again.  I dare say that a twelvemonth hence
+the operation will be reversed.  The pendulum will swing back again.
+I shall be sitting in a gondola or on a dromedary, and all of a sudden
+I shall want to clear out.  But for the present I am perfectly free.
+I have even bargained that I am to receive no business letters."
+
+"Oh, it's a real caprice de prince," said Tristram.  "I back out; a poor
+devil like me can't help you to spend such very magnificent leisure as that.
+You should get introduced to the crowned heads."
+
+39 Newman looked at him a moment, and then, with his easy smile,
+"How does one do it?" he asked.
+
+"Come, I like that!" cried Tristram.  "It shows you are in earnest."
+
+"Of course I am in earnest.  Didn't I say I wanted the best?
+I know the best can't be had for mere money, but I rather think
+money will do a good deal.  In addition, I am willing to take
+a good deal of trouble."
+
+"You are not bashful, eh?"
+
+"I haven't the least idea.  I want the biggest kind of entertainment
+a man can get.  People, places, art, nature, everything!  I want
+to see the tallest mountains, and the bluest lakes, and the finest
+pictures and the handsomest churches,. and the most celebrated men,
+and the most beautiful women."
+
+"Settle down in Paris, then.  There are no mountains that I
+know of, and the only lake is in the Bois du Boulogne,
+and not particularly blue.  But there is everything else:
+plenty of pictures and churches, no end of celebrated men,
+and several beautiful women."
+
+"But I can't settle down in Paris at this season, just as summer
+is coming on."
+
+"Oh, for the summer go up to Trouville."
+
+"What is Trouville?"
+
+"The French Newport.  Half the Americans go."
+
+"Is it anywhere near the Alps?"
+
+"About as near as Newport is to the Rocky Mountains."
+
+"Oh, I want to see Mont Blanc," said Newman, "and Amsterdam,
+and the Rhine, and a lot of places.  Venice in particular.
+I have great ideas about Venice."
+
+"Ah," said Mr. Tristram, rising, "I see I shall have to introduce
+you to my wife!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+He performed this ceremony on the following day, when, by appointment,
+Christopher Newman went to dine with him.  Mr. and Mrs. Tristram
+lived behind one of those chalk-colored facades which decorate
+with their pompous sameness the broad avenues manufactured
+by Baron Haussmann in the neighborhood of the Arc de Triomphe.
+Their apartment was rich in the modern conveniences, and Tristram
+lost no time in calling his visitor's attention to their principal
+household treasures, the gas-lamps and the furnace-holes.
+"Whenever you feel homesick," he said, "you must come up here.
+We'll stick you down before a register, under a good big burner, and--"
+
+"And you will soon get over your homesickness," said Mrs. Tristram.
+
+Her husband stared; his wife often had a tone which he found
+inscrutable he could not tell for his life whether she was in jest
+or in earnest.  The truth is that circumstances had done much
+to cultivate in Mrs. Tristram a marked tendency to irony.
+Her taste on many points differed from that of her husband,
+and though she made frequent concessions it must be
+confessed that her concessions were not always graceful.
+They were founded upon a vague project she had of some day
+doing something very positive, something a trifle passionate.
+What she meant to do she could by no means have told you;
+but meanwhile, nevertheless, she was buying a good conscience,
+by installments.
+
+It should be added, without delay, to anticipate misconception,
+that her little scheme of independence did not definitely
+involve the assistance of another person, of the opposite sex;
+she was not saving up virtue to cover the expenses of a flirtation.
+For this there were various reasons.  To begin with, she had
+a very plain face and she was entirely without illusions as to
+her appearance.  She had taken its measure to a hair's breadth,
+she knew the worst and the best, she had accepted herself.
+It had not been, indeed, without a struggle.  As a young girl she
+had spent hours with her back to her mirror, crying her eyes out;
+and later she had from desperation and bravado adopted
+the habit of proclaiming herself the most ill-favored of women,
+in order that she might--as in common politeness was inevitable--
+be contradicted and reassured.  It was since she had come to live
+in Europe that she had begun to take the matter philosophically.
+Her observation, acutely exercised here, had suggested to her that
+a woman's first duty is not to be beautiful, but to be pleasing,
+and she encountered so many women who pleased without beauty
+that she began to feel that she had discovered her mission.
+She had once heard an enthusiastic musician, out of patience
+with a gifted bungler, declare that a fine voice is really
+an obstacle to singing properly; and it occurred to her
+that it might perhaps be equally true that a beautiful face
+is an obstacle to the acquisition of charming manners.
+Mrs. Tristram, then, undertook to be exquisitely agreeable,
+and she brought to the task a really touching devotion.
+How well she would have succeeded I am unable to say;
+unfortunately she broke off in the middle.  Her own excuse
+was the want of encouragement in her immediate circle.
+But I am inclined to think that she had not a real genius for
+the matter, or she would have pursued the charming art for itself.
+The poor lady was very incomplete.  She fell back upon the harmonies
+of the toilet, which she thoroughly understood, and contented
+herself with dressing in perfection.  She lived in Paris,
+which she pretended to detest, because it was only in Paris
+that one could find things to exactly suit one's complexion.
+Besides out of Paris it was always more or less of a trouble to get
+ten-button gloves.  When she railed at this serviceable city
+and you asked her where she would prefer to reside, she returned
+some very unexpected answer.  She would say in Copenhagen,
+or in Barcelona; having, while making the tour of Europe,
+spent a couple of days at each of these places.  On the whole,
+with her poetic furbelows and her misshapen, intelligent little face,
+she was, when you knew her, a decidedly interesting woman.
+She was naturally shy, and if she had been born a beauty,
+she would (having no vanity) probably have remained shy.
+Now, she was both diffident and importunate; extremely reserved
+sometimes with her friends, and strangely expansive with strangers.
+She despised her husband; despised him too much, for she had been
+perfectly at liberty not to marry him.  She had been in love
+with a clever man who had slighted her, and she had married
+a fool in the hope that this thankless wit, reflecting on it,
+would conclude that she had no appreciation of merit, and that
+he had flattered himself in supposing that she cared for his own.
+Restless, discontented, visionary, without personal ambitions,
+but with a certain avidity of imagination, she was,
+as I have said before, eminently incomplete.  She was full--
+both for good and for ill--of beginnings that came to nothing;
+but she had nevertheless, morally, a spark of the sacred fire.
+
+Newman was fond, under all circumstances, of the society of women,
+and now that he was out of his native element and deprived
+of his habitual interests, he turned to it for compensation.
+He took a great fancy to Mrs. Tristram; she frankly repaid it,
+and after their first meeting he passed a great many hours in her
+drawing-room. After two or three talks they were fast friends.
+Newman's manner with women was peculiar, and it required some
+ingenuity on a lady's part to discover that he admired her.
+He had no gallantry, in the usual sense of the term; no compliments,
+no graces, no speeches.  Very fond of what is called chaffing,
+in his dealings with men, he never found himself on a sofa beside
+a member of the softer sex without feeling extremely serious.
+He was not shy, and so far as awkwardness proceeds from a struggle
+with shyness, he was not awkward; grave, attentive, submissive,
+often silent, he was simply swimming in a sort of rapture of respect.
+This emotion was not at all theoretic, it was not even in a high
+degree sentimental; he had thought very little about the "position"
+of women, and he was not familiar either sympathetically
+or otherwise, with the image of a President in petticoats.
+His attitude was simply the flower of his general good-nature,
+and a part of his instinctive and genuinely democratic
+assumption of every one's right to lead an easy life.
+If a shaggy pauper had a right to bed and board and wages and
+a vote, women, of course, who were weaker than paupers, and whose
+physical tissue was in itself an appeal, should be maintained,
+sentimentally, at the public expense.  Newman was willing to be
+taxed for this purpose, largely, in proportion to his means.
+Moreover, many of the common traditions with regard to women were
+with him fresh personal impressions; he had never read a novel!
+He had been struck with their acuteness, their subtlety, their tact,
+their felicity of judgment.  They seemed to him exquisitely organized.
+If it is true that one must always have in one's work here below
+a religion, or at least an ideal, of some sort, Newman found
+his metaphysical inspiration in a vague acceptance of final
+responsibility to some illumined feminine brow.
+
+He spent a great deal of time in listening to advice from
+Mrs. Tristram; advice, it must be added, for which he had
+never asked.  He would have been incapable of asking for it,
+for he had no perception of difficulties, and consequently
+no curiosity about remedies.  The complex Parisian world
+about him seemed a very simple affair; it was an immense,
+amazing spectacle, but it neither inflamed his imagination nor
+irritated his curiosity.  He kept his hands in his pockets,
+looked on good-humoredly, desired to miss nothing important,
+observed a great many things narrowly, and never reverted to himself.
+Mrs. Tristram's "advice" was a part of the show, and a more
+entertaining element, in her abundant gossip, than the others.
+He enjoyed her talking about himself; it seemed a part of her
+beautiful ingenuity; but he never made an application of
+anything she said, or remembered it when he was away from her.
+For herself, she appropriated him; he was the most interesting
+thing she had had to think about in many a month.
+She wished to do something with him--she hardly knew what.
+There was so much of him; he was so rich and robust, so easy,
+friendly, well-disposed, that he kept her fancy constantly
+on the alert.  For the present, the only thing she could do
+was to like him.  She told him that he was "horribly Western,"
+but in this compliment the adverb was tinged with insincerity.
+She led him about with her, introduced him to fifty people,
+and took extreme satisfaction in her conquest.  Newman accepted
+every proposal, shook hands universally and promiscuously,
+and seemed equally unfamiliar with trepidation or with elation.
+Tom Tristram complained of his wife's avidity, and declared
+that he could never have a clear five minutes with his friend.
+If he had known how things were going to turn out,
+he never would have brought him to the Avenue d'Iena. The
+two men, formerly, had not been intimate, but Newman remembered
+his earlier impression of his host, and did Mrs. Tristram,
+who had by no means taken him into her confidence,
+but whose secret he presently discovered, the justice
+to admit that her husband was a rather degenerate mortal.
+At twenty-five he had been a good fellow, and in this
+respect he was unchanged; but of a man of his age one
+expected something more.  People said he was sociable,
+but this was as much a matter of course as for a dipped sponge
+to expand; and it was not a high order of sociability.
+He was a great gossip and tattler, and to produce a laugh
+would hardly have spared the reputation of his aged mother.
+Newman had a kindness for old memories, but he found it impossible
+not to perceive that Tristram was nowadays a very light weight.
+His only aspirations were to hold out at poker, at his club,
+to know the names of all the cocottes, to shake hands all round,
+to ply his rosy gullet with truffles and champagne,
+and to create uncomfortable eddies and obstructions
+among the constituent atoms of the American colony.
+He was shamefully idle, spiritless, sensual, snobbish.
+He irritated our friend by the tone of his allusions to their
+native country, and Newman was at a loss to understand why
+the United States were not good enough for Mr. Tristram.
+He had never been a very conscious patriot, but it vexed
+him to see them treated as little better than a vulgar
+smell in his friend's nostrils, and he finally broke out
+and swore that they were the greatest country in the world,
+that they could put all Europe into their breeches'
+pockets, and that an American who spoke ill of them ought
+to be carried home in irons and compelled to live in Boston.
+(This, for Newman was putting it very vindictively.)
+Tristram was a comfortable man to snub, he bore no malice,
+and he continued to insist on Newman's finishing his evening
+at the Occidental Club.
+
+Christopher Newman dined several times in the Avenue d'Iena, and his
+host always proposed an early adjournment to this institution.
+Mrs. Tristram protested, and declared that her husband exhausted
+his ingenuity in trying to displease her.
+
+"Oh no, I never try, my love," he answered.  "I know you loathe
+me quite enough when I take my chance."
+
+Newman hated to see a husband and wife on these terms,
+and he was sure one or other of them must be very unhappy.
+He knew it was not Tristram.  Mrs. Tristram had a balcony
+before her windows, upon which, during the June evenings,
+she was fond of sitting, and Newman used frankly
+to say that he preferred the balcony to the club.
+It had a fringe of perfumed plants in tubs, and enabled you
+to look up the broad street and see the Arch of Triumph vaguely
+massing its heroic sculptures in the summer starlight.
+Sometimes Newman kept his promise of following Mr. Tristram,
+in half an hour, to the Occidental, and sometimes he forgot it.
+His hostess asked him a great many questions about himself,
+but on this subject he was an indifferent talker.
+He was not what is called subjective, though when he felt that her
+interest was sincere, he made an almost heroic attempt to be.
+He told her a great many things he had done, and regaled her
+with anecdotes of Western life; she was from Philadelphia,
+and with her eight years in Paris, talked of herself
+as a languid Oriental.  But some other person was always
+the hero of the tale, by no means always to his advantage;
+and Newman's own emotions were but scantily chronicled.
+She had an especial wish to know whether he had ever been
+in love--seriously, passionately--and, failing to gather any
+satisfaction from his allusions, she at last directly inquired.
+He hesitated a while, and at last he said, "No!"  She declared
+that she was delighted to hear it, as it confirmed her private
+conviction that he was a man of no feeling.
+
+"Really?" he asked, very gravely.  "Do you think so?
+How do you recognize a man of feeling?"
+
+"I can't make out," said Mrs. Tristram, "whether you are very simple
+or very deep."
+
+"I'm very deep.  That's a fact."
+
+"I believe that if I were to tell you with a certain air that you
+have no feeling, you would implicitly believe me."
+
+"A certain air?" said Newman.  "Try it and see."
+
+"You would believe me, but you would not care," said Mrs. Tristram.
+
+"You have got it all wrong.  I should care immensely, but I shouldn't
+believe you.  The fact is I have never had time to feel things.
+I have had to DO them, to make myself felt."
+
+"I can imagine that you may have done that tremendously, sometimes."
+
+"Yes, there's no mistake about that."
+
+"When you are in a fury it can't be pleasant."
+
+"I am never in a fury."
+
+"Angry, then, or displeased."
+
+"I am never angry, and it is so long since I have been displeased
+that I have quite forgotten it."
+
+"I don't believe," said Mrs. Tristram, "that you are never angry.
+A man ought to be angry sometimes, and you are neither good enough
+nor bad enough always to keep your temper."
+
+"I lose it perhaps once in five years."
+
+"The time is coming round, then," said his hostess.
+"Before I have known you six months I shall see you in
+a fine fury."
+
+"Do you mean to put me into one?"
+
+"I should not be sorry.  You take things too coolly.
+It exasperates me.  And then you are too happy.  You have what must
+be the most agreeable thing in the world, the consciousness
+of having bought your pleasure beforehand and paid for it.
+You have not a day of reckoning staring you in the face.
+Your reckonings are over."
+
+"Well, I suppose I am happy," said Newman, meditatively.
+
+"You have been odiously successful."
+
+"Successful in copper," said Newman, "only so-so in railroads,
+and a hopeless fizzle in oil."
+
+"It is very disagreeable to know how Americans have made their money.
+Now you have the world before you.  You have only to enjoy."
+
+"Oh, I suppose I am very well off," said Newman.  "Only I am tired
+of having it thrown up at me.  Besides, there are several drawbacks.
+I am not intellectual."
+
+"One doesn't expect it of you," Mrs. Tristram answered.
+Then in a moment, "Besides, you are!"
+
+"Well, I mean to have a good time, whether or no," said Newman.
+"I am not cultivated, I am not even educated; I know nothing
+about history, or art, or foreign tongues, or any other learned matters.
+But I am not a fool, either, and I shall undertake to know
+something about Europe by the time I have done with it.
+I feel something under my ribs here," he added in a moment,
+"that I can't explain--a sort of a mighty hankering, a desire
+to stretch out and haul in."
+
+"Bravo!" said Mrs. Tristram, "that is very fine.
+You are the great Western Barbarian, stepping forth in his
+innocence and might, gazing a while at this poor effete Old
+World and then swooping down on it."
+
+"Oh, come," said Newman.  "I am not a barbarian, by a good deal.
+I am very much the reverse.  I have seen barbarians;
+I know what they are."
+
+"I don't mean that you are a Comanche chief, or that you wear
+a blanket and feathers.  There are different shades."
+
+"I am a highly civilized man," said Newman.  "I stick to that.
+If you don't believe it, I should like to prove it to you."
+
+Mrs. Tristram was silent a while.  "I should like to make you prove it,"
+she said, at last.  "I should like to put you in a difficult place."
+
+"Pray do," said Newman.
+
+"That has a little conceited sound!" his companion rejoined.
+
+"Oh," said Newman, "I have a very good opinion of myself."
+
+"I wish I could put it to the test.  Give me time and I will."
+And Mrs. Tristram remained silent for some time afterwards,
+as if she was trying to keep her pledge.  It did not appear that
+evening that she succeeded; but as he was rising to take his leave
+she passed suddenly, as she was very apt to do, from the tone
+of unsparing persiflage to that of almost tremulous sympathy.
+"Speaking seriously," she said, "I believe in you, Mr. Newman.
+You flatter my patriotism."
+
+"Your patriotism?"  Christopher demanded.
+
+"Even so.  It would take too long to explain, and you probably would
+not understand.  Besides, you might take it--really, you might take
+it for a declaration.  But it has nothing to do with you personally;
+it's what you represent.  Fortunately you don't know all that,
+or your conceit would increase insufferably."
+
+Newman stood staring and wondering what under the sun he "represented."
+
+"Forgive all my meddlesome chatter and forget my advice.
+It is very silly in me to undertake to tell you what to do.
+When you are embarrassed, do as you think best, and you will do very well.
+When you are in a difficulty, judge for yourself."
+
+"I shall remember everything you have told me," said Newman.
+"There are so many forms and ceremonies over here--"
+
+"Forms and ceremonies are what I mean, of course."
+
+"Ah, but I want to observe them," said Newman.
+"Haven't I as good a right as another?  They don't
+scare me, and you needn't give me leave to violate them.
+I won't take it."
+
+"That is not what I mean.  I mean, observe them in your own way.
+Settle nice questions for yourself.  Cut the knot or untie it,
+as you choose."
+
+"Oh, I am sure I shall never fumble over it!" said Newman.
+
+The next time that he dined in the Avenue d'Iena was a Sunday,
+a day on which Mr. Tristram left the cards unshuffled,
+so that there was a trio in the evening on the balcony.
+The talk was of many things, and at last Mrs. Tristram suddenly
+observed to Christopher Newman that it was high time he should
+take a wife.
+
+"Listen to her; she has the audacity!" said Tristram, who on Sunday
+evenings was always rather acrimonious.
+
+"I don't suppose you have made up your mind not to marry?"
+Mrs. Tristram continued.
+
+"Heaven forbid!" cried Newman.  "I am sternly resolved on it."
+
+"It's very easy," said Tristram; "fatally easy!"
+
+"Well, then, I suppose you do not mean to wait till you are fifty."
+
+"On the contrary, I am in a great hurry."
+
+"One would never suppose it.  Do you expect a lady to come
+and propose to you?"
+
+"No; I am willing to propose.  I think a great deal about it."
+
+"Tell me some of your thoughts."
+
+"Well," said Newman, slowly, "I want to marry very well."
+
+"Marry a woman of sixty, then," said Tristram.
+
+" 'Well' in what sense?"
+
+"In every sense.  I shall be hard to please."
+
+"You must remember that, as the French proverb says, the most beautiful
+girl in the world can give but what she has."
+
+"Since you ask me," said Newman, "I will say frankly that I want extremely
+to marry.  It is time, to begin with:  before I know it I shall be forty.
+And then I'm lonely and helpless and dull.  But if I marry now, so long as I
+didn't do it in hot haste when I was twenty, I must do it with my eyes open.
+I want to do the thing in handsome style.  I do not only want to make
+no mistakes, but I want to make a great hit.  I want to take my pick.
+My wife must be a magnificent woman."
+
+"Voila ce qui s'appelle parler!" cried Mrs. Tristram.
+
+"Oh, I have thought an immense deal about it."
+
+"Perhaps you think too much.  The best thing is simply to fall in love."
+
+"When I find the woman who pleases me, I shall love her enough.
+My wife shall be very comfortable."
+
+"You are superb!  There's a chance for the magnificent women."
+
+"You are not fair."  Newman rejoined.  "You draw a fellow out and put
+him off guard, and then you laugh at him."
+
+"I assure you," said Mrs. Tristram, "that I am very serious.
+To prove it, I will make you a proposal.  Should you like me,
+as they say here, to marry you?"
+
+"To hunt up a wife for me?"
+
+"She is already found.  I will bring you together."
+
+"Oh, come," said Tristram, "we don't keep a matrimonial bureau.
+He will think you want your commission."
+
+"Present me to a woman who comes up to my notions," said Newman,
+"and I will marry her tomorrow."
+
+"You have a strange tone about it, and I don't quite understand you.
+I didn't suppose you would be so coldblooded and calculating."
+
+Newman was silent a while.  "Well," he said, at last,
+"I want a great woman.  I stick to that.  That's one thing I
+CAN treat myself to, and if it is to be had I mean to have it.
+What else have I toiled and struggled for, all these years?
+I have succeeded, and now what am I to do with my success?
+To make it perfect, as I see it, there must be a beautiful
+woman perched on the pile, like a statue on a monument.
+She must be as good as she is beautiful, and as clever as she is good.
+I can give my wife a good deal, so I am not afraid to ask a good
+deal myself.  She shall have everything a woman can desire;
+I shall not even object to her being too good for me;
+she may be cleverer and wiser than I can understand, and I shall
+only be the better pleased.  I want to possess, in a word,
+the best article in the market."
+
+"Why didn't you tell a fellow all this at the outset?"  Tristram demanded.
+"I have been trying so to make you fond of ME!"
+
+"This is very interesting," said Mrs. Tristram.
+"I like to see a man know his own mind."
+
+"I have known mine for a long time," Newman went on.
+"I made up my mind tolerably early in life that a beautiful
+wife was the thing best worth having, here below.
+It is the greatest victory over circumstances.  When I say beautiful,
+I mean beautiful in mind and in manners, as well as in person.
+It is a thing every man has an equal right to; he may get it if he can.
+He doesn't have to be born with certain faculties, on purpose;
+he needs only to be a man.  Then he needs only to use his will,
+and such wits as he has, and to try."
+
+"It strikes me that your marriage is to be rather a matter of vanity."
+
+"Well, it is certain," said Newman, "that if people notice my wife
+and admire her, I shall be mightily tickled."
+
+"After this," cried Mrs. Tristram, "call any man modest!"
+
+"But none of them will admire her so much as I."
+
+"I see you have a taste for splendor."
+
+Newman hesitated a little; and then, "I honestly believe I have!" he said.
+
+"And I suppose you have already looked about you a good deal."
+
+"A good deal, according to opportunity."
+
+"And you have seen nothing that satisfied you?"
+
+"No," said Newman, half reluctantly, "I am bound to say in honesty
+that I have seen nothing that really satisfied me."
+
+"You remind me of the heroes of the French romantic poets,
+Rolla and Fortunio and all those other insatiable gentlemen
+for whom nothing in this world was handsome enough.
+But I see you are in earnest, and I should like to help you."
+
+"Who the deuce is it, darling, that you are going to put upon him?"
+Tristram cried.  "We know a good many pretty girls, thank Heaven,
+but magnificent women are not so common."
+
+"Have you any objections to a foreigner?" his wife continued,
+addressing Newman, who had tilted back his chair.  and, with his
+feet on a bar of the balcony railing and his hands in his pockets,
+was looking at the stars.
+
+"No Irish need apply," said Tristram.
+
+Newman meditated a while.  "As a foreigner, no," he said at last;
+"I have no prejudices."
+
+"My dear fellow, you have no suspicions!" cried Tristram.
+"You don't know what terrible customers these foreign women are;
+especially the 'magnificent' ones.  How should you like a
+fair Circassian, with a dagger in her belt?"
+
+Newman administered a vigorous slap to his knee.  "I would marry a Japanese,
+if she pleased me," he affirmed.
+
+"We had better confine ourselves to Europe," said Mrs. Tristram.
+"The only thing is, then, that the person be in herself to your taste?"
+
+"She is going to offer you an unappreciated governess!"  Tristram groaned.
+
+"Assuredly.  I won't deny that, other things being equal,
+I should prefer one of my own countrywomen.  We should
+speak the same language, and that would be a comfort.
+But I am not afraid of a foreigner.  Besides, I rather like the idea
+of taking in Europe, too.  It enlarges the field of selection.
+When you choose from a greater number, you can bring your choice
+to a finer point!"
+
+"You talk like Sardanapalus!" exclaimed Tristram.
+
+"You say all this to the right person," said Newman's hostess.
+"I happen to number among my friends the loveliest woman in the world.
+Neither more nor less.  I don't say a very charming person or a very
+estimable woman or a very great beauty; I say simply the loveliest
+woman in the world."
+
+"The deuce!" cried Tristram, "you have kept very quiet about her.
+Were you afraid of me?"
+
+"You have seen her," said his wife, "but you have no perception
+of such merit as Claire's."
+
+"Ah, her name is Claire?  I give it up."
+
+"Does your friend wish to marry?" asked Newman.
+
+"Not in the least.  It is for you to make her change her mind.
+It will not be easy; she has had one husband, and he gave her a low
+opinion of the species."
+
+"Oh, she is a widow, then?" said Newman.
+
+"Are you already afraid?  She was married at eighteen,
+by her parents, in the French fashion, to a disagreeable old man.
+But he had the good taste to die a couple of years afterward,
+and she is now twenty-five."
+
+"So she is French?"
+
+"French by her father, English by her mother.  She is really more
+English than French, and she speaks English as well as you or I--
+or rather much better.  She belongs to the very top of the basket,
+as they say here.  Her family, on each side, is of fabulous antiquity;
+her mother is the daughter of an English Catholic earl.  Her father is dead,
+and since her widowhood she has lived with her mother and a married brother.
+There is another brother, younger, who I believe is wild.
+They have an old hotel in the Rue de l'Universite, but their fortune
+is small, and they make a common household, for economy's sake.
+When I was a girl I was put into a convent here for my education,
+while my father made the tour of Europe.  It was a silly thing to do
+with me, but it had the advantage that it made me acquainted with Claire
+de Bellegarde.  She was younger than I but we became fast friends.
+I took a tremendous fancy to her, and she returned my passion as far
+as she could.  They kept such a tight rein on her that she could
+do very little, and when I left the convent she had to give me up.
+I was not of her monde; I am not now, either, but we sometimes meet.
+They are terrible people--her monde; all mounted upon stilts a mile high,
+and with pedigrees long in proportion.  It is the skim of the milk of
+the old noblesse.  Do you know what a Legitimist is, or an Ultramontane?
+Go into Madame de Cintre's drawing-room some afternoon, at five
+o'clock, and you will see the best preserved specimens.  I say go,
+but no one is admitted who can't show his fifty quarterings."
+
+"And this is the lady you propose to me to marry?" asked Newman.
+"A lady I can't even approach?"
+
+"But you said just now that you recognized no obstacles."
+
+Newman looked at Mrs. Tristram a while, stroking his mustache.
+"Is she a beauty?" he demanded.
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh, then it's no use--"
+
+"She is not a beauty, but she is beautiful, two very different things.
+A beauty has no faults in her face, the face of a beautiful woman may
+have faults that only deepen its charm."
+
+"I remember Madame de Cintre, now," said Tristram.
+"She is as plain as a pike-staff. A man wouldn't look
+at her twice."
+
+"In saying that HE would not look at her twice, my husband sufficiently
+describes her," Mrs. Tristram rejoined.
+
+"Is she good; is she clever?"  Newman asked.
+
+"She is perfect!  I won't say more than that.
+When you are praising a person to another who is to know her,
+it is bad policy to go into details.  I won't exaggerate.
+I simply recommend her.  Among all women I have known she
+stands alone; she is of a different clay."
+
+"I should like to see her," said Newman, simply.
+
+"I will try to manage it.  The only way will be to invite her to dinner.
+I have never invited her before, and I don't know that she will come.
+Her old feudal countess of a mother rules the family with an iron hand,
+and allows her to have no friends but of her own choosing, and to visit
+only in a certain sacred circle.  But I can at least ask her."
+
+At this moment Mrs. Tristram was interrupted; a servant stepped out upon
+the balcony and announced that there were visitors in the drawing-room.
+When Newman's hostess had gone in to receive her friends, Tom Tristram
+approached his guest.
+
+"Don't put your foot into THIS, my boy," he said, puffing the last whiffs
+of his cigar.  "There's nothing in it!"
+
+Newman looked askance at him, inquisitive.  "You tell another story, eh?"
+
+"I say simply that Madame de Cintre is a great white doll of a woman,
+who cultivates quiet haughtiness."
+
+"Ah, she's haughty, eh?"
+
+"She looks at you as if you were so much thin air, and cares
+for you about as much."
+
+"She is very proud, eh?"
+
+"Proud?  As proud as I'm humble."
+
+"And not good-looking?"
+
+Tristram shrugged his shoulders:  "It's a kind of beauty you must be
+INTELLECTUAL to understand.  But I must go in and amuse the company."
+
+Some time elapsed before Newman followed his friends into
+the drawing-room. When he at last made his appearance there
+he remained but a short time, and during this period sat
+perfectly silent, listening to a lady to whom Mrs. Tristram had
+straightway introduced him and who chattered, without a pause,
+with the full force of an extraordinarily high-pitched voice.
+Newman gazed and attended.  Presently he came to bid good-night
+to Mrs. Tristram.
+
+"Who is that lady?" he asked.
+
+"Miss Dora Finch.  How do you like her?"
+
+"She's too noisy."
+
+"She is thought so bright!  Certainly, you are fastidious,"
+said Mrs. Tristram.
+
+Newman stood a moment, hesitating.  Then at last "Don't forget about
+your friend," he said, "Madame What's-her-name? the proud beauty.
+Ask her to dinner, and give me a good notice."  And with this he departed.
+
+Some days later he came back; it was in the afternoon.
+He found Mrs. Tristram in her drawing-room; with her was a visitor,
+a woman young and pretty, dressed in white.  The two ladies
+had risen and the visitor was apparently taking her leave.
+As Newman approached, he received from Mrs. Tristram a glance
+of the most vivid significance, which he was not immediately
+able to interpret.
+
+"This is a good friend of ours," she said, turning to her companion,
+"Mr. Christopher Newman.  I have spoken of you to him
+and he has an extreme desire to make your acquaintance.
+If you had consented to come and dine, I should have offered
+him an opportunity."
+
+The stranger turned her face toward Newman, with a smile.
+He was not embarrassed, for his unconscious sang-froid
+was boundless; but as he became aware that this was the proud
+and beautiful Madame de Cintre, the loveliest woman
+in the world, the promised perfection, the proposed ideal,
+he made an instinctive movement to gather his wits together.
+Through the slight preoccupation that it produced he had
+a sense of a long, fair face, and of two eyes that were both
+brilliant and mild.
+
+"I should have been most happy," said Madame de Cintre.
+"Unfortunately, as I have been telling Mrs. Tristram,
+I go on Monday to the country."
+
+Newman had made a solemn bow.  "I am very sorry," he said.
+
+"Paris is getting too warm," Madame de Cintre added, taking her friend's
+hand again in farewell.
+
+Mrs. Tristram seemed to have formed a sudden and somewhat
+venturesome resolution, and she smiled more intensely, as women
+do when they take such resolution.  "I want Mr. Newman to know you,"
+she said, dropping her head on one side and looking at Madame de
+Cintre's bonnet ribbons.
+
+Christopher Newman stood gravely silent, while his native
+penetration admonished him.  Mrs. Tristram was determined
+to force her friend to address him a word of encouragement which
+should be more than one of the common formulas of politeness;
+and if she was prompted by charity, it was by the charity
+that begins at home.  Madame de Cintre was her dearest Claire,
+and her especial admiration but Madame de Cintre had found it
+impossible to dine with her and Madame de Cintre should for once
+be forced gently to render tribute to Mrs. Tristram.
+
+"It would give me great pleasure," she said, looking at Mrs. Tristram.
+
+"That's a great deal," cried the latter, "for Madame de Cintre to say!"
+
+"I am very much obliged to you," said Newman.  "Mrs. Tristram
+can speak better for me than I can speak for myself."
+
+Madame de Cintre looked at him again, with the same soft brightness.
+"Are you to be long in Paris?" she asked.
+
+"We shall keep him," said Mrs. Tristram.
+
+"But you are keeping ME!" and Madame de Cintre shook her friend's hand.
+
+"A moment longer," said Mrs. Tristram.
+
+Madame de Cintre looked at Newman again; this time without her smile.
+Her eyes lingered a moment.  "Will you come and see me?" she asked.
+
+Mrs. Tristram kissed her.  Newman expressed his thanks,
+and she took her leave.  Her hostess went with her to the door,
+and left Newman alone a moment.  Presently she returned,
+rubbing her hands.  "It was a fortunate chance," she said.
+"She had come to decline my invitation.  You triumphed on
+the spot, making her ask you, at the end of three minutes,
+to her house."
+
+"It was you who triumphed," said Newman.  "You must not be too
+hard upon her."
+
+Mrs. Tristram stared.  "What do you mean?"
+
+"She did not strike me as so proud.  I should say she was shy."
+
+"You are very discriminating.  And what do you think of her face?"
+
+"It's handsome!" said Newman.
+
+"I should think it was!  Of course you will go and see her."
+
+"To-morrow!" cried Newman.
+
+"No, not to-morrow; the next day.  That will be Sunday; she leaves Paris
+on Monday.  If you don't see her; it will at least be a beginning."
+And she gave him Madame de Cintre's address.
+
+He walked across the Seine, late in the summer afternoon,
+and made his way through those gray and silent streets
+of the Faubourg St. Germain whose houses present to the outer
+world a face as impassive and as suggestive of the concentration
+of privacy within as the blank walls of Eastern seraglios.
+Newman thought it a queer way for rich people to live;
+his ideal of grandeur was a splendid facade diffusing
+its brilliancy outward too, irradiating hospitality.
+The house to which he had been directed had a dark, dusty,
+painted portal, which swung open in answer to his ring.
+It admitted him into a wide, graveled court, surrounded on three
+sides with closed windows, and with a doorway facing the street,
+approached by three steps and surmounted by a tin canopy.
+The place was all in the shade; it answered to Newman's conception
+of a convent.  The portress could not tell him whether Madame de
+Cintre was visible; he would please to apply at the farther door.
+He crossed the court; a gentleman was sitting, bareheaded,
+on the steps of the portico, playing with a beautiful pointer.
+He rose as Newman approached, and, as he laid his hand upon
+the bell, said with a smile, in English, that he was afraid Newman
+would be kept waiting; the servants were scattered, he himself
+had been ringing, he didn't know what the deuce was in them.
+He was a young man, his English was excellent, and his smile
+very frank.  Newman pronounced the name of Madame de Cintre.
+
+"I think," said the young man, "that my sister is visible.
+Come in, and if you will give me your card I will carry it
+to her myself."
+
+Newman had been accompanied on his present errand by a slight sentiment,
+I will not say of defiance--a readiness for aggression or defense,
+as they might prove needful--but of reflection, good-humored suspicion.
+He took from his pocket, while he stood on the portico, a card
+upon which, under his name, he had written the words "San Francisco,"
+and while he presented it he looked warily at his interlocutor.
+His glance was singularly reassuring; he liked the young man's face;
+it strongly resembled that of Madame de Cintre.  He was evidently
+her brother.  The young man, on his side, had made a rapid inspection
+of Newman's person.  He had taken the card and was about to enter
+the house with it when another figure appeared on the threshold--
+an older man, of a fine presence, wearing evening dress.
+He looked hard at Newman, and Newman looked at him.  "Madame de Cintre,"
+the younger man repeated, as an introduction of the visitor.
+The other took the card from his hand, read it in a rapid glance,
+looked again at Newman from head to foot, hesitated a moment,
+and then said, gravely but urbanely, "Madame de Cintre is not at home."
+
+The younger man made a gesture, and then, turning to Newman,
+"I am very sorry, sir," he said.
+
+Newman gave him a friendly nod, to show that he bore him no malice,
+and retraced his steps.  At the porter's lodge he stopped;
+the two men were still standing on the portico.
+
+"Who is the gentleman with the dog?" he asked of the old woman
+who reappeared.  He had begun to learn French.
+
+"That is Monsieur le Comte."
+
+"And the other?"
+
+"That is Monsieur le Marquis."
+
+"A marquis?" said Christopher in English, which the old woman fortunately
+did not understand.  "Oh, then he's not the butler!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Early one morning, before Christopher Newman was dressed, a little old
+man was ushered into his apartment, followed by a youth in a blouse,
+bearing a picture in a brilliant frame.  Newman, among the distractions
+of Paris, had forgotten M. Nioche and his accomplished daughter;
+but this was an effective reminder.
+
+"I am afraid you had given me up, sir," said the old man, after many
+apologies and salutations.  "We have made you wait so many days.
+You accused us, perhaps, of inconstancy of bad faith.
+But behold me at last!  And behold also the pretty Madonna.
+Place it on a chair, my friend, in a good light, so that monsieur
+may admire it."  And M. Nioche, addressing his companion,
+helped him to dispose the work of art.
+
+It had been endued with a layer of varnish an inch thick and
+its frame, of an elaborate pattern, was at least a foot wide.
+It glittered and twinkled in the morning light, and looked,
+to Newman's eyes, wonderfully splendid and precious.  It seemed to him
+a very happy purchase, and he felt rich in the possession of it.
+He stood looking at it complacently, while he proceeded with his toilet,
+and M. Nioche, who had dismissed his own attendant, hovered near,
+smiling and rubbing his hands.
+
+"It has wonderful finesse," he murmured, caressingly.  "And here
+and there are marvelous touches, you probably perceive them, sir.
+It attracted great attention on the Boulevard, as we came along.
+And then a gradation of tones!  That's what it is to know how to paint.
+I don't say it because I am her father, sir; but as one man of taste
+addressing another I cannot help observing that you have there an
+exquisite work.  It is hard to produce such things and to have to part
+with them.  If our means only allowed us the luxury of keeping it!
+I really may say, sir--" and M. Nioche gave a little feebly
+insinuating laugh--"I really may say that I envy you!  You see,"
+he added in a moment, "we have taken the liberty of offering you a frame.
+It increases by a trifle the value of the work, and it will save
+you the annoyance--so great for a person of your delicacy--
+of going about to bargain at the shops."
+
+The language spoken by M. Nioche was a singular compound, which I shrink
+from the attempt to reproduce in its integrity.  He had apparently once
+possessed a certain knowledge of English, and his accent was oddly tinged
+with the cockneyism of the British metropolis.  But his learning had grown
+rusty with disuse, and his vocabulary was defective and capricious.
+He had repaired it with large patches of French, with words anglicized
+by a process of his own, and with native idioms literally translated.
+The result, in the form in which he in all humility presented it,
+would be scarcely comprehensible to the reader, so that I have ventured
+to trim and sift it.  Newman only half understood it, but it amused him,
+and the old man's decent forlornness appealed to his democratic instincts.
+The assumption of a fatality in misery always irritated his strong
+good nature--it was almost the only thing that did so; and he felt the impulse
+to wipe it out, as it were, with the sponge of his own prosperity.
+The papa of Mademoiselle Noemie, however, had apparently on this occasion
+been vigorously indoctrinated, and he showed a certain tremulous eagerness
+to cultivate unexpected opportunities.
+
+"How much do I owe you, then, with the frame?" asked Newman.
+
+"It will make in all three thousand francs," said the old man,
+smiling agreeably, but folding his hands in instinctive suppliance.
+
+"Can you give me a receipt?"
+
+"I have brought one," said M. Nioche.  "I took the liberty of drawing
+it up, in case monsieur should happen to desire to discharge his debt."
+And he drew a paper from his pocket-book and presented it to his patron.
+The document was written in a minute, fantastic hand, and couched
+in the choicest language.
+
+Newman laid down the money, and M. Nioche dropped the napoleons one by one,
+solemnly and lovingly, into an old leathern purse.
+
+"And how is your young lady?" asked Newman.  "She made a great
+impression on me."
+
+"An impression?  Monsieur is very good.  Monsieur admires her appearance?"
+
+"She is very pretty, certainly."
+
+"Alas, yes, she is very pretty!"
+
+"And what is the harm in her being pretty?"
+
+M. Nioche fixed his eyes upon a spot on the carpet and shook his head.
+Then looking up at Newman with a gaze that seemed to brighten and expand,
+"Monsieur knows what Paris is.  She is dangerous to beauty, when beauty
+hasn't the sou."
+
+"Ah, but that is not the case with your daughter.
+She is rich, now."
+
+"Very true; we are rich for six months.  But if my daughter were a plain
+girl I should sleep better all the same."
+
+"You are afraid of the young men?"
+
+"The young and the old!"
+
+"She ought to get a husband."
+
+"Ah, monsieur, one doesn't get a husband for nothing.
+Her husband must take her as she is:  I can't give her a sou.
+But the young men don't see with that eye."
+
+"Oh," said Newman, "her talent is in itself a dowry."
+
+"Ah, sir, it needs first to be converted into specie!"
+and M. Nioche slapped his purse tenderly before he stowed it away.
+"The operation doesn't take place every day."
+
+"Well, your young men are very shabby, said Newman; "that's all I can say.
+They ought to pay for your daughter, and not ask money themselves."
+
+"Those are very noble ideas, monsieur; but what will you have?
+They are not the ideas of this country.  We want to know what we
+are about when we marry."
+
+"How big a portion does your daughter want?"
+
+M. Nioche stared, as if he wondered what was coming next;
+but he promptly recovered himself, at a venture, and replied that
+he knew a very nice young man, employed by an insurance company,
+who would content himself with fifteen thousand francs.
+
+"Let your daughter paint half a dozen pictures for me,
+and she shall have her dowry."
+
+"Half a dozen pictures--her dowry!  Monsieur is not speaking inconsiderately?"
+
+"If she will make me six or eight copies in the Louvre as pretty
+as that Madonna, I will pay her the same price," said Newman.
+
+Poor M. Nioche was speechless a moment, with amazement
+and gratitude, and then he seized Newman's hand, pressed it
+between his own ten fingers, and gazed at him with watery eyes.
+"As pretty as that?  They shall be a thousand times prettier--
+they shall be magnificent, sublime.  Ah, if I only knew
+how to paint, myself, sir, so that I might lend a hand!
+What can I do to thank you?  Voyons!"  And he pressed his
+forehead while he tried to think of something.
+
+"Oh, you have thanked me enough," said Newman.
+
+"Ah, here it is, sir!" cried M. Nioche.  "To express my gratitude,
+I will charge you nothing for the lessons in French conversation."
+
+"The lessons?  I had quite forgotten them.  Listening to your English,"
+added Newman, laughing, "is almost a lesson in French."
+
+"Ah, I don't profess to teach English, certainly," said M. Nioche.
+"But for my own admirable tongue I am still at your service."
+
+"Since you are here, then," said Newman, "we will begin.
+This is a very good hour.  I am going to have my coffee;
+come every morning at half-past nine and have yours with me."
+
+"Monsieur offers me my coffee, also?" cried M. Nioche.
+"Truly, my beaux jours are coming back."
+
+"Come," said Newman, "let us begin.  The coffee is almighty hot.
+How do you say that in French?"
+
+Every day, then, for the following three weeks, the minutely respectable
+figure of M. Nioche made its appearance, with a series of little inquiring and
+apologetic obeisances, among the aromatic fumes of Newman's morning beverage.
+I don't know how much French our friend learned, but, as he himself said,
+if the attempt did him no good, it could at any rate do him no harm.
+And it amused him; it gratified that irregularly sociable side of his nature
+which had always expressed itself in a relish for ungrammatical conversation,
+and which often, even in his busy and preoccupied days, had made him sit
+on rail fences in young Western towns, in the twilight, in gossip hardly
+less than fraternal with humorous loafers and obscure fortune-seekers.
+He had notions, wherever he went, about talking with the natives; he had
+been assured, and his judgment approved the advice, that in traveling abroad
+it was an excellent thing to look into the life of the country.  M. Nioche
+was very much of a native and, though his life might not be particularly worth
+looking into, he was a palpable and smoothly-rounded unit in that picturesque
+Parisian civilization which offered our hero so much easy entertainment
+and propounded so many curious problems to his inquiring and practical mind.
+Newman was fond of statistics; he liked to know how things were done;
+it gratified him to learn what taxes were paid, what profits were gathered,
+what commercial habits prevailed, how the battle of life was fought.
+M. Nioche, as a reduced capitalist, was familiar with these considerations,
+and he formulated his information, which he was proud to be able to impart,
+in the neatest possible terms and with a pinch of snuff between finger
+and thumb.  As a Frenchman--quite apart from Newman's napoleons--M. Nioche
+loved conversation, and even in his decay his urbanity had not grown rusty.
+As a Frenchman, too, he could give a clear account of things, and--still as
+a Frenchman--when his knowledge was at fault he could supply its lapses
+with the most convenient and ingenious hypotheses.  The little shrunken
+financier was intensely delighted to have questions asked him, and he scraped
+together information, by frugal processes, and took notes, in his little
+greasy pocket-book, of incidents which might interest his munificent friend.
+He read old almanacs at the book-stalls on the quays, and he began to
+frequent another cafe, where more newspapers were taken and his postprandial
+demitasse cost him a penny extra, and where he used to con the tattered
+sheets for curious anecdotes, freaks of nature, and strange coincidences.
+He would relate with solemnity the next morning that a child of five years
+of age had lately died at Bordeaux, whose brain had been found to weigh
+sixty ounces--the brain of a Napoleon or a Washington! or that Madame
+P--, charcutiere in the Rue de Clichy, had found in the wadding of an old
+petticoat the sum of three hundred and sixty francs, which she had lost five
+years before.  He pronounced his words with great distinctness and sonority,
+and Newman assured him that his way of dealing with the French tongue was
+very superior to the bewildering chatter that he heard in other mouths.
+Upon this M. Nioche's accent became more finely trenchant than ever,
+he offered to read extracts from Lamartine, and he protested that,
+although he did endeavor according to his feeble lights to cultivate
+refinement of diction, monsieur, if he wanted the real thing, should go
+to the Theatre Francais.
+
+Newman took an interest in French thriftiness and conceived a lively
+admiration for Parisian economies.  His own economic genius was so
+entirely for operations on a larger scale, and, to move at his ease,
+he needed so imperatively the sense of great risks and great prizes,
+that he found an ungrudging entertainment in the spectacle of
+fortunes made by the aggregation of copper coins, and in the minute
+subdivision of labor and profit.  He questioned M. Nioche about
+his own manner of life, and felt a friendly mixture of compassion
+and respect over the recital of his delicate frugalities.
+The worthy man told him how, at one period, he and his daughter had
+supported existence, comfortably upon the sum of fifteen sous per diem;
+recently, having succeeded in hauling ashore the last floating fragments
+of the wreck of his fortune, his budget had been a trifle more ample.
+But they still had to count their sous very narrowly, and M. Nioche
+intimated with a sigh that Mademoiselle Noemie did not bring to this
+task that zealous cooperation which might have been desired.
+
+"But what will you have?"' he asked, philosophically.  "One is young,
+one is pretty, one needs new dresses and fresh gloves; one can't wear
+shabby gowns among the splendors of the Louvre."
+
+"But your daughter earns enough to pay for her own clothes," said Newman.
+
+M. Nioche looked at him with weak, uncertain eyes.
+He would have liked to be able to say that his daughter's talents
+were appreciated, and that her crooked little daubs commanded
+a market; but it seemed a scandal to abuse the credulity
+of this free-handed stranger, who, without a suspicion
+or a question, had admitted him to equal social rights.
+He compromised, and declared that while it was obvious
+that Mademoiselle Noemie's reproductions of the old masters
+had only to be seen to be coveted, the prices which,
+in consideration of their altogether peculiar degree of finish,
+she felt obliged to ask for them had kept purchasers at
+a respectful distance.  "Poor little one!" said M. Nioche,
+with a sigh; "it is almost a pity that her work is so perfect!
+It would be in her interest to paint less well."
+
+"But if Mademoiselle Noemie has this devotion to her art,"
+Newman once observed, "why should you have those fears for her
+that you spoke of the other day?"
+
+M. Nioche meditated:  there was an inconsistency in his position;
+it made him chronically uncomfortable.  Though he had no desire to
+destroy the goose with the golden eggs--Newman's benevolent confidence--
+he felt a tremulous impulse to speak out all his trouble.
+"Ah, she is an artist, my dear sir, most assuredly," he declared.
+"But, to tell you the truth, she is also a franche coquette.
+I am sorry to say," he added in a moment, shaking his head
+with a world
+
+of harmless bitterness, "that she comes honestly by it.
+Her mother was one before her!"
+
+"You were not happy with your wife?"  Newman asked.
+
+M. Nioche gave half a dozen little backward jerks of his head.
+"She was my purgatory, monsieur!"
+
+"She deceived you?"
+
+"Under my nose, year after year.  I was too stupid,
+and the temptation was too great.  But I found her out at last.
+I have only been once in my life a man to be afraid of;
+I know it very well; it was in that hour!  Nevertheless I don't
+like to think of it.  I loved her--I can't tell you how much.
+She was a bad woman."
+
+"She is not living?"
+
+"She has gone to her account."
+
+"Her influence on your daughter, then," said Newman encouragingly,
+"is not to be feared."
+
+"She cared no more for her daughter than for the sole of her shoe!
+But Noemie has no need of influence.  She is sufficient to herself.
+She is stronger than I."
+
+"She doesn't obey you, eh?"
+
+"She can't obey, monsieur, since I don't command.  What would be the use?
+It would only irritate her and drive her to some coup de tete.
+She is very clever, like her mother; she would waste no time about it.
+As a child--when I was happy, or supposed I was--she studied drawing and
+painting with first-class professors, and they assured me she had a talent.
+I was delighted to believe it, and when I went into society I used to carry
+her pictures with me in a portfolio and hand them round to the company.
+I remember, once, a lady thought I was offering them for sale,
+and I took it very ill.  We don't know what we may come to!
+Then came my dark days, and my explosion with Madame Nioche.  Noemie had no
+more twenty-franc lessons; but in the course of time, when she grew older,
+and it became highly expedient that she should do something that would
+help to keep us alive, she bethought herself of her palette and brushes.
+Some of our friends in the quartier pronounced the idea fantastic:
+they recommended her to try bonnet making, to get a situation in a shop, or--
+if she was more ambitious--to advertise for a place of dame de compagnie.
+She did advertise, and an old lady wrote her a letter and bade her come
+and see her.  The old lady liked her, and offered her her living and six
+hundred francs a year; but Noemie discovered that she passed her life
+in her arm-chair and had only two visitors, her confessor and her nephew:
+the confessor very strict, and the nephew a man of fifty, with a
+broken nose and a government clerkship of two thousand francs.
+She threw her old lady over, bought a paint-box, a canvas, and a new dress,
+and went and set up her easel in the Louvre.  There in one place and another,
+she has passed the last two years; I can't say it has made us millionaires.
+But Noemie tells me that Rome was not built in a day, that she is
+making great progress, that I must leave her to her own devices.
+The fact is, without prejudice to her genius, that she has no idea
+of burying herself alive.  She likes to see the world, and to be seen.
+She says, herself, that she can't work in the dark.  With her appearance
+it is very natural.  Only, I can't help worrying and trembling
+and wondering what may happen to her there all alone, day after day,
+amid all that coming and going of strangers.  I can't be always at her side.
+I go with her in the morning, and I come to fetch her away, but she
+won't have me near her in the interval; she says I make her nervous.
+As if it didn't make me nervous to wander about all day without her!
+Ah, if anything were to happen to her!" cried M. Nioche, clenching his
+two fists and jerking back his head again, portentously.
+
+"Oh, I guess nothing will happen," said Newman.
+
+"I believe I should shoot her!" said the old man, solemnly.
+
+"Oh, we'll marry her," said Newman, "since that's how you manage it;
+and I will go and see her tomorrow at the Louvre and pick out the pictures
+she is to copy for me."
+
+M. Nioche had brought Newman a message from his daughter,
+in acceptance of his magnificent commission, the young
+lady declaring herself his most devoted servant,
+promising her most zealous endeavor, and regretting that
+the proprieties forbade her coming to thank him in person.
+The morning after the conversation just narrated, Newman reverted
+to his intention of meeting Mademoiselle Noemie at the Louvre.
+M. Nioche appeared preoccupied, and left his budget of
+anecdotes unopened; he took a great deal of snuff, and sent
+certain oblique, appealing glances toward his stalwart pupil.
+At last, when he was taking his leave, he stood a moment,
+after he had polished his hat with his calico pocket-handkerchief,
+with his small, pale eyes fixed strangely upon Newman.
+
+"What's the matter?" our hero demanded.
+
+"Excuse the solicitude of a father's heart!" said M. Nioche.
+"You inspire me with boundless confidence, but I can't help giving you
+a warning.  After all, you are a man, you are young and at liberty.
+Let me beseech you, then, to respect the innocence of Mademoiselle Nioche!"
+
+Newman had wondered what was coming, and at this he broke into a laugh.
+He was on the point of declaring that his own innocence struck
+him as the more exposed, but he contented himself with promising
+to treat the young girl with nothing less than veneration.  He found
+her waiting for him, seated upon the great divan in the Salon Carre.
+She was not in her working-day costume, but wore her bonnet and gloves
+and carried her parasol, in honor of the occasion.  These articles
+had been selected with unerring taste, and a fresher, prettier image
+of youthful alertness and blooming discretion was not to be conceived.
+She made Newman a most respectful curtsey and expressed her gratitude
+for his liberality in a wonderfully graceful little speech.
+It annoyed him to have a charming young girl stand there thanking him,
+and it made him feel uncomfortable to think that this perfect young lady,
+with her excellent manners and her finished intonation, was literally
+in his pay.  He assured her, in such French as he could muster,
+that the thing was not worth mentioning, and that he considered her
+services a great favor.
+
+"Whenever you please, then," said Mademoiselle Noemie,
+"we will pass the review."
+
+They walked slowly round the room, then passed into the others and strolled
+about for half an hour.  Mademoiselle Noemie evidently relished her situation,
+and had no desire to bring her public interview with her striking-looking
+patron to a close.  Newman perceived that prosperity agreed with her.
+The little thin-lipped, peremptory air with which she had addressed her father
+on the occasion of their former meeting had given place to the most lingering
+and caressing tones.
+
+"What sort of pictures do you desire?" she asked.
+"Sacred, or profane?"
+
+"Oh, a few of each," said Newman.  "But I want something bright and gay."
+
+"Something gay?  There is nothing very gay in this solemn old Louvre.
+But we will see what we can find.  You speak French to-day like a charm.
+My father has done wonders."
+
+"Oh, I am a bad subject," said Newman.  "I am too old to learn a language."
+
+"Too old?  Quelle folie!" cried Mademoiselle Noemie,
+with a clear, shrill laugh.  "You are a very young man.
+And how do you like my father?"
+
+"He is a very nice old gentleman.  He never laughs at my blunders."
+
+"He is very comme il faut, my papa," said Mademoiselle Noemie,
+"and as honest as the day.  Oh, an exceptional probity!
+You could trust him with millions."
+
+"Do you always obey him?" asked Newman.
+
+"Obey him?"
+
+"Do you do what he bids you?"
+
+The young girl stopped and looked at him; she had a spot of color
+in either cheek, and in her expressive French eye, which projected
+too much for perfect beauty, there was a slight gleam of audacity.
+"Why do you ask me that?" she demanded.
+
+"Because I want to know."
+
+"You think me a bad girl?"  And she gave a strange smile.
+
+Newman looked at her a moment; he saw that she was pretty,
+but he was not in the least dazzled.  He remembered poor M. Nioche's
+solicitude for her "innocence," and he laughed as his eyes met hers.
+Her face was the oddest mixture of youth and maturity, and beneath
+her candid brow her searching little smile seemed to contain a world
+of ambiguous intentions.  She was pretty enough, certainly to make her
+father nervous; but, as regards her innocence, Newman felt ready on the spot
+to affirm that she had never parted with it.  She had simply never had any;
+she had been looking at the world since she was ten years old,
+and he would have been a wise man who could tell her any secrets.
+In her long mornings at the Louvre she had not only studied Madonnas
+and St. Johns; she had kept an eye upon all the variously embodied
+human nature around her, and she had formed her conclusions.
+In a certain sense, it seemed to Newman, M. Nioche might be at rest;
+his daughter might do something very audacious, but she would never
+do anything foolish.  Newman, with his long-drawn, leisurely smile,
+and his even, unhurried utterance, was always, mentally, taking his time;
+and he asked himself, now, what she was looking at him in that way for.
+He had an idea that she would like him to confess that he did think
+her a bad girl.
+
+"Oh, no," he said at last; "it would be very bad manners in me
+to judge you that way.  I don't know you."
+
+"But my father has complained to you," said Mademoiselle Noemie.
+
+"He says you are a coquette."
+
+"He shouldn't go about saying such things to gentlemen!
+But you don't believe it."
+
+"No," said Newman gravely, "I don't believe it."
+
+She looked at him again, gave a shrug and a smile, and then
+pointed to a small Italian picture, a Marriage of St. Catherine.
+"How should you like that?" she asked.
+
+"It doesn't please me," said Newman.  "The young lady in the yellow
+dress is not pretty."
+
+"Ah, you are a great connoisseur," murmured Mademoiselle Noemie.
+
+"In pictures?  Oh, no; I know very little about them."
+
+"In pretty women, then."
+
+"In that I am hardly better."
+
+"What do you say to that, then?" the young girl asked,
+indicating a superb Italian portrait of a lady.
+"I will do it for you on a smaller scale."
+
+"On a smaller scale?  Why not as large as the original?"
+
+Mademoiselle Noemie glanced at the glowing splendor of the Venetian
+masterpiece and gave a little toss of her head.  "I don't like that woman.
+She looks stupid."
+
+"I do like her," said Newman.  "Decidedly, I must have her, as large as life.
+And just as stupid as she is there."
+
+The young girl fixed her eyes on him again, and with her mocking smile,
+"It certainly ought to be easy for me to make her look stupid!" she said.
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Newman, puzzled.
+
+She gave another little shrug.  "Seriously, then, you want
+that portrait--the golden hair, the purple satin, the pearl necklace,
+the two magnificent arms?"
+
+"Everything--just as it is."
+
+"Would nothing else do, instead?"
+
+"Oh, I want some other things, but I want that too."
+
+Mademoiselle Noemie turned away a moment, walked to the other side of
+the hall, and stood there, looking vaguely about her.  At last she came back.
+"It must be charming to be able to order pictures at such a rate.
+Venetian portraits, as large as life!  You go at it en prince.
+And you are going to travel about Europe that way?"
+
+"Yes, I intend to travel," said Newman.
+
+"Ordering, buying, spending money?"
+
+"Of course I shall spend some money."
+
+"You are very happy to have it.  And you are perfectly free?"
+
+"How do you mean, free?"
+
+"You have nothing to bother you--no family, no wife, no fiancee?"
+
+"Yes, I am tolerably free."
+
+"You are very happy," said Mademoiselle Noemie, gravely.
+
+"Je le veux bien!" said Newman, proving that he had learned more French
+than he admitted.
+
+"And how long shall you stay in Paris?" the young girl went on.
+
+"Only a few days more."
+
+"Why do you go away?"
+
+"It is getting hot, and I must go to Switzerland."
+
+"To Switzerland?  That's a fine country.  I would give my new parasol
+to see it!  Lakes and mountains, romantic valleys and icy peaks!
+Oh, I congratulate you.  Meanwhile, I shall sit here through all
+the hot summer, daubing at your pictures."
+
+"Oh, take your time about it," said Newman.  "Do them at your convenience."
+
+They walked farther and looked at a dozen other things.
+Newman pointed out what pleased him, and Mademoiselle Noemie
+generally criticised it, and proposed something else.
+Then suddenly she diverged and began to talk about
+some personal matter.
+
+"What made you speak to me the other day in the Salon Carre?"
+she abruptly asked.
+
+"I admired your picture."
+
+"But you hesitated a long time."
+
+"Oh, I do nothing rashly," said Newman.
+
+"Yes, I saw you watching me.  But I never supposed you were going to speak
+to me.  I never dreamed I should be walking about here with you to-day.
+It's very curious."
+
+"It is very natural," observed Newman.
+
+"Oh, I beg your pardon; not to me.  Coquette as you think me,
+I have never walked about in public with a gentleman before.
+What was my father thinking of, when he consented to our interview?"
+
+"He was repenting of his unjust accusations," replied Newman.
+
+Mademoiselle Noemie remained silent; at last she dropped into
+a seat.  "Well then, for those five it is fixed," she said.
+"Five copies as brilliant and beautiful as I can make them.
+We have one more to choose.  Shouldn't you like one of
+those great Rubenses--the marriage of Marie de Medicis?
+Just look at it and see how handsome it is."
+
+"Oh, yes; I should like that," said Newman.  "Finish off with that."
+
+"Finish off with that--good!"  And she laughed.  She sat a moment,
+looking at him, and then she suddenly rose and stood before him,
+with her hands hanging and clasped in front of her.
+"I don't understand you," she said with a smile.
+"I don't understand how a man can be so ignorant."
+
+"Oh, I am ignorant, certainly," said Newman, putting his hands
+into his pockets.
+
+"It's ridiculous!  I don't know how to paint."
+
+"You don't know how?"
+
+"I paint like a cat; I can't draw a straight line.
+I never sold a picture until you bought that thing the other day."
+And as she offered this surprising information she continued to smile.
+
+Newman burst into a laugh.  "Why do you tell me this?" he asked.
+
+"Because it irritates me to see a clever man blunder so.
+My pictures are grotesque."
+
+"And the one I possess--"
+
+"That one is rather worse than usual."
+
+"Well," said Newman, "I like it all the same!"
+
+She looked at him askance.  "That is a very pretty thing to say,"
+she answered; "but it is my duty to warn you before you go farther.
+This order of yours is impossible, you know.  What do you take me for?
+It is work for ten men.  You pick out the six most difficult
+pictures in the Louvre, and you expect me to go to work as if I
+were sitting down to hem a dozen pocket handkerchiefs.
+I wanted to see how far you would go."
+
+Newman looked at the young girl in some perplexity.
+In spite of the ridiculous blunder of which he stood convicted,
+he was very far from being a simpleton, and he had a lively suspicion
+that Mademoiselle Noemie's sudden frankness was not essentially
+more honest than her leaving him in error would have been.
+She was playing a game; she was not simply taking pity on
+his aesthetic verdancy.  What was it she expected to win?
+The stakes were high and the risk was great; the prize
+therefore must have been commensurate.  But even granting
+that the prize might be great, Newman could not resist
+a movement of admiration for his companion's intrepidity.
+She was throwing away with one hand, whatever she might intend
+to do with the other, a very handsome sum of money.
+
+"Are you joking," he said, "or are you serious?"
+
+"Oh, serious!" cried Mademoiselle Noemie, but with her extraordinary smile.
+
+"I know very little about pictures or now they are painted.
+If you can't do all that, of course you can't. Do what you can, then."
+
+"It will be very bad," said Mademoiselle Noemie.
+
+"Oh," said Newman, laughing, "if you are determined it shall be bad,
+of course it will.  But why do you go on painting badly?"
+
+"I can do nothing else; I have no real talent."
+
+"You are deceiving your father, then."
+
+The young girl hesitated a moment.  "He knows very well!"
+
+"No," Newman declared; "I am sure he believes in you."
+
+"He is afraid of me.  I go on painting badly, as you say,
+because I want to learn.  I like it, at any rate.
+And I like being here; it is a place to come to, every day;
+it is better than sitting in a little dark, damp room, on a court,
+or selling buttons and whalebones over a counter."
+
+"Of course it is much more amusing," said Newman.
+"But for a poor girl isn't it rather an expensive amusement?"
+
+"Oh, I am very wrong, there is no doubt about that,"
+said Mademoiselle Noemie.  "But rather than earn my living
+as same girls do--toiling with a needle, in little black holes,
+out of the world--I would throw myself into the Seine."
+
+"There is no need of that," Newman answered; "your father told
+you my offer?"
+
+"Your offer?"
+
+"He wants you to marry, and I told him I would give you a chance
+to earn your dot."
+
+"He told me all about it, and you see the account I make of it!
+Why should you take such an interest in my marriage?"
+
+"My interest was in your father.  I hold to my offer; do what you can,
+and I will buy what you paint."
+
+She stood for some time, meditating, with her eyes on the ground.
+At last, looking up, "What sort of a husband can you get for twelve
+thousand francs?" she asked.
+
+"Your father tells me he knows some very good young men."
+
+"Grocers and butchers and little maitres de cafes!
+I will not marry at all if I can't marry well."
+
+"I would advise you not to be too fastidious," said Newman.
+"That's all the advice I can give you."
+
+"I am very much vexed at what I have said!" cried the young girl.
+"It has done me no good.  But I couldn't help it."
+
+"What good did you expect it to do you?"
+
+"I couldn't help it, simply."
+
+Newman looked at her a moment.  "Well, your pictures may be bad,"
+he said, "but you are too clever for me, nevertheless.
+I don't understand you.  Good-by!" And he put out his hand.
+
+She made no response, and offered him no farewell.  She turned away
+and seated herself sidewise on a bench, leaning her head on the back
+of her hand, which clasped the rail in front of the pictures.
+Newman stood a moment and then turned on his heel and retreated.
+He had understood her better than he confessed; this singular scene
+was a practical commentary upon her father's statement that she
+was a frank coquette.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+When Newman related to Mrs. Tristram his fruitless visit
+to Madame de Cintre, she urged him not to be discouraged,
+but to carry out his plan of "seeing Europe" during the summer,
+and return to Paris in the autumn and settle down comfortably
+for the winter.  "Madame de Cintre will keep," she said;
+"she is not a woman who will marry from one day to another."
+Newman made no distinct affirmation that he would come back to Paris;
+he even talked about Rome and the Nile, and abstained from professing
+any especial interest in Madame de Cintre's continued widowhood.
+This circumstance was at variance with his habitual frankness,
+and may perhaps be regarded as characteristic of the incipient stage
+of that passion which is more particularly known as the mysterious one.
+The truth is that the expression of a pair of eyes that were at
+once brilliant and mild had become very familiar to his memory,
+and he would not easily have resigned himself to the prospect
+of never looking into them again.  He communicated to Mrs. Tristram
+a number of other facts, of greater or less importance, as you choose;
+but on this particular point he kept his own counsel.
+He took a kindly leave of M. Nioche, having assured him that,
+so far as he was concerned, the blue-cloaked Madonna herself
+might have been present at his interview with Mademoiselle Noemie;
+and left the old man nursing his breast-pocket, in an ecstasy
+which the acutest misfortune might have been defied to dissipate.
+Newman then started on his travels, with all his usual appearance
+of slow-strolling leisure, and all his essential directness
+and intensity of aim.  No man seemed less in a hurry, and yet
+no man achieved more in brief periods.  He had certain practical
+instincts which served him excellently in his trade of tourist.
+He found his way in foreign cities by divination, his memory
+was excellent when once his attention had been at all
+cordially given, and he emerged from dialogues in foreign tongues,
+of which he had, formally, not understood a word, in full
+possession of the particular fact he had desired to ascertain.
+His appetite for facts was capacious, and although many of those
+which he noted would have seemed woefully dry and colorless to
+the ordinary sentimental traveler, a careful inspection of the list
+would have shown that he had a soft spot in his imagination.
+In the charming city of Brussels--his first stopping-place after
+leaving Paris--he asked a great many questions about the street-cars,
+and took extreme satisfaction in the reappearance of this
+familiar symbol of American civilization; but he was also greatly
+struck with the beautiful Gothic tower of the Hotel de Ville,
+and wondered whether it would not be possible to "get up"
+something like it in San Francisco.  He stood for half an hour
+in the crowded square before this edifice, in imminent danger
+from carriage-wheels, listening to a toothless old cicerone mumble
+in broken English the touching history of Counts Egmont and Horn;
+and he wrote the names of these gentlemen--for reasons best known
+to himself--on the back of an old letter.
+
+At the outset, on his leaving Paris, his curiosity had not been intense;
+passive entertainment, in the Champs Elysees and at the theatres,
+seemed about as much as he need expect of himself, and although,
+as he had said to Tristram, he wanted to see the mysterious,
+satisfying BEST, he had not the Grand Tour in the least on his conscience,
+and was not given to cross-questioning the amusement of the hour.
+He believed that Europe was made for him, and not he for Europe.
+He had said that he wanted to improve his mind, but he would have felt
+a certain embarrassment, a certain shame, even--a false shame, possibly--
+if he had caught himself looking intellectually into the mirror.
+Neither in this nor in any other respect had Newman a high sense
+of responsibility; it was his prime conviction that a man's life
+should be easy, and that he should be able to resolve privilege into
+a matter of course.  The world, to his sense, was a great bazaar,
+where one might stroll about and purchase handsome things;
+but he was no more conscious, individually, of social pressure than
+he admitted the existence of such a thing as an obligatory purchase.
+He had not only a dislike, but a sort of moral mistrust,
+of uncomfortable thoughts, and it was both uncomfortable and slightly
+contemptible to feel obliged to square one's self with a standard.
+One's standard was the ideal of one's own good-humored prosperity,
+the prosperity which enabled one to give as well as take.
+To expand, without bothering about it--without shiftless timidity
+on one side, or loquacious eagerness on the other--to the full
+compass of what he would have called a "pleasant" experience,
+was Newman's most definite programme of life.  He had always hated
+to hurry to catch railroad trains, and yet he had always caught them;
+and just so an undue solicitude for "culture" seemed a sort of silly
+dawdling at the station, a proceeding properly confined to women,
+foreigners, and other unpractical persons.  All this admitted,
+Newman enjoyed his journey, when once he had fairly entered the current,
+as profoundly as the most zealous dilettante.  One's theories,
+after all, matter little; it is one's humor that is the great thing.
+Our friend was intelligent, and he could not help that.  He lounged
+through Belgium and Holland and the Rhineland, through Switzerland
+and Northern Italy, planning about nothing, but seeing everything.
+The guides and valets de place found him an excellent subject.
+He was always approachable, for he was much addicted to standing
+about in the vestibules and porticos of inns, and he availed himself
+little of the opportunities for impressive seclusion which are so
+liberally offered in Europe to gentlemen who travel with long purses.
+When an excursion, a church, a gallery, a ruin, was proposed
+to him, the first thing Newman usually did, after surveying
+his postulant in silence, from head to foot, was to sit down
+at a little table and order something to drink.  The cicerone,
+during this process, usually retreated to a respectful distance;
+otherwise I am not sure that Newman would not have bidden him
+sit down and have a glass also, and tell him as an honest fellow
+whether his church or his gallery was really worth a man's trouble.
+At last he rose and stretched his long legs, beckoned to the man
+of monuments, looked at his watch, and fixed his eye on his adversary.
+"What is it?" he asked.  "How far?"  And whatever the answer was,
+although he sometimes seemed to hesitate, he never declined.
+He stepped into an open cab, made his conductor sit beside him
+to answer questions, bade the driver go fast (he had a particular
+aversion to slow driving) and rolled, in all probability
+through a dusty suburb, to the goal of his pilgrimage.
+If the goal was a disappointment, if the church was meagre, or the ruin
+a heap of rubbish, Newman never protested or berated his cicerone;
+he looked with an impartial eye upon great monuments and small,
+made the guide recite his lesson, listened to it religiously,
+asked if there was nothing else to be seen in the neighborhood,
+and drove back again at a rattling pace.  It is to be feared
+that his perception of the difference between good architecture
+and bad was not acute, and that he might sometimes have been
+seen gazing with culpable serenity at inferior productions.
+Ugly churches were a part of his pastime in Europe, as well
+as beautiful ones, and his tour was altogether a pastime.
+But there is sometimes nothing like the imagination of these people
+who have none, and Newman, now and then, in an unguided stroll
+in a foreign city, before some lonely, sad-towered church,
+or some angular image of one who had rendered civic service
+in an unknown past, had felt a singular inward tremor.
+It was not an excitement or a perplexity; it was a placid,
+fathomless sense of diversion.
+
+He encountered by chance in Holland a young American, with whom,
+for a time, he formed a sort of traveler's partnership.
+They were men of a very different cast, but each, in his way,
+was so good a fellow that, for a few weeks at least, it seemed
+something of a pleasure to share the chances of the road.
+Newman's comrade, whose name was Babcock, was a young
+Unitarian minister, a small, spare neatly-attired man,
+with a strikingly candid physiognomy.  He was a native
+of Dorchester, Massachusetts, and had spiritual charge of a small
+congregation in another suburb of the New England metropolis.
+His digestion was weak and he lived chiefly on Graham bread
+and hominy--a regimen to which he was so much attached
+that his tour seemed to him destined to be blighted when,
+on landing on the Continent, he found that these delicacies did
+not flourish under the table d'hote system.  In Paris he had
+purchased a bag of hominy at an establishment which called itself
+an American Agency, and at which the New York illustrated papers
+were also to be procured, and he had carried it about with him,
+and shown extreme serenity and fortitude in the somewhat delicate
+position of having his hominy prepared for him and served
+at anomalous hours, at the hotels he successively visited.
+Newman had once spent a morning, in the course of business,
+at Mr. Babcock's birthplace, and, for reasons too recondite to unfold,
+his visit there always assumed in his mind a jocular cast.
+To carry out his joke, which certainly seems poor so long
+as it is not explained, he used often to address his companion
+as "Dorchester."  Fellow-travelers very soon grow intimate but it
+is highly improbable that at home these extremely dissimilar
+characters would have found any very convenient points of contact.
+They were, indeed, as different as possible.  Newman, who never
+reflected on such matters, accepted the situation with
+great equanimity, but Babcock used to meditate over it privately;
+used often, indeed, to retire to his room early in the evening
+for the express purpose of considering it conscientiously
+and impartially.  He was not sure that it was a good thing
+for him to associate with our hero, whose way of taking life
+was so little his own.  Newman was an excellent, generous fellow;
+Mr. Babcock sometimes said to himself that he was a NOBLE
+fellow, and, certainly, it was impossible not to like him.
+But would it not be desirable to try to exert an influence upon him,
+to try to quicken his moral life and sharpen his sense of duty?
+He liked everything, he accepted everything, he found amusement
+in everything; he was not discriminating, he had not a high tone.
+The young man from Dorchester accused Newman of a fault which
+he considered very grave, and which he did his best to avoid:
+what he would have called a want of "moral reaction."
+Poor Mr. Babcock was extremely fond of pictures and churches,
+and carried Mrs. Jameson's works about in his trunk;
+he delighted in aesthetic analysis, and received peculiar
+impressions from everything he saw.  But nevertheless in his
+secret soul he detested Europe, and he felt an irritating need
+to protest against Newman's gross intellectual hospitality.
+Mr. Babcock's moral malaise, I am afraid, lay deeper
+than where any definition of mine can reach it.
+He mistrusted the European temperament, he suffered from
+the European climate, he hated the European dinner-hour;
+European life seemed to him unscrupulous and impure.
+And yet he had an exquisite sense of beauty; and as beauty was often
+inextricably associated with the above displeasing conditions,
+as he wished, above all, to be just and dispassionate,
+and as he was, furthermore, extremely devoted to "culture,"
+he could not bring himself to decide that Europe was utterly bad.
+But he thought it was very bad indeed, and his quarrel
+with Newman was that this unregulated epicure had a sadly
+insufficient perception of the bad.  Babcock himself really
+knew as little about the bad, in any quarter of the world,
+as a nursing infant, his most vivid realization of evil
+had been the discovery that one of his college classmates,
+who was studying architecture in Paris had a love affair
+with a young woman who did not expect him to marry her.
+Babcock had related this incident to Newman, and our hero had
+applied an epithet of an unflattering sort to the young girl.
+The next day his companion asked him whether he was very
+sure he had used exactly the right word to characterize
+the young architect's mistress.  Newman stared and laughed.
+"There are a great many words to express that idea," he said;
+"you can take your choice!"
+
+"Oh, I mean," said Babcock, "was she possibly not to be considered
+in a different light?  Don't you think she really expected him
+to marry her?"
+
+"I am sure I don't know," said Newman.  "Very likely she did;
+I have no doubt she is a grand woman."  And he began to laugh again.
+
+"I didn't mean that either," said Babcock, "I was only afraid that I might
+have seemed yesterday not to remember--not to consider; well, I think I
+will write to Percival about it."
+
+And he had written to Percival (who answered him in a really
+impudent fashion), and he had reflected that it was somehow,
+raw and reckless in Newman to assume in that off-hand manner
+that the young woman in Paris might be "grand."  The brevity
+of Newman's judgments very often shocked and discomposed him.
+He had a way of damning people without farther appeal,
+or of pronouncing them capital company in the face of
+uncomfortable symptoms, which seemed unworthy of a man whose
+conscience had been properly cultivated.  And yet poor Babcock
+liked him, and remembered that even if he was sometimes
+perplexing and painful, this was not a reason for giving him up.
+Goethe recommended seeing human nature in the most various forms,
+and Mr. Babcock thought Goethe perfectly splendid.
+He often tried, in odd half-hours of conversation to infuse
+into Newman a little of his own spiritual starch, but Newman's
+personal texture was too loose to admit of stiffening.
+His mind could no more hold principles than a sieve can
+hold water.  He admired principles extremely, and thought
+Babcock a mighty fine little fellow for having so many.
+He accepted all that his high-strung companion offered him,
+and put them away in what he supposed to be a very safe place;
+but poor Babcock never afterwards recognized his gifts among
+the articles that Newman had in daily use.
+
+They traveled together through Germany and into Switzerland, where for
+three or four weeks they trudged over passes and lounged upon blue lakes.
+At last they crossed the Simplon and made their way to Venice.
+Mr. Babcock had become gloomy and even a trifle irritable;
+he seemed moody, absent, preoccupied; he got his plans into a tangle,
+and talked one moment of doing one thing and the next of doing another.
+Newman led his usual life, made acquaintances, took his ease in the galleries
+and churches, spent an unconscionable amount of time in strolling
+in the Piazza San Marco, bought a great many bad pictures, and for a
+fortnight enjoyed Venice grossly.  One evening, coming back to his inn,
+he found Babcock waiting for him in the little garden beside it.
+The young man walked up to him, looking very dismal, thrust out his hand,
+and said with solemnity that he was afraid they must part.  Newman expressed
+his surprise and regret, and asked why a parting had became necessary.
+"Don't be afraid I'm tired of you," he said.
+
+"You are not tired of me?" demanded Babcock, fixing him with his
+clear gray eye.
+
+"Why the deuce should I be?  You are a very plucky fellow.
+Besides, I don't grow tired of things."
+
+"We don't understand each other," said the young minister.
+
+"Don't I understand you?" cried Newman.  "Why, I hoped I did.
+But what if I don't; where's the harm?"
+
+"I don't understand YOU," said Babcock.  And he sat down and rested his head
+on his hand, and looked up mournfully at his immeasurable friend.
+
+"Oh Lord, I don't mind that!" cried Newman, with a laugh.
+
+"But it's very distressing to me.  It keeps me in a state of unrest.
+It irritates me; I can't settle anything.  I don't think it's good for me."
+
+"You worry too much; that's what's the matter with you," said Newman.
+
+"Of course it must seem so to you.  You think I take
+things too hard, and I think you take things too easily.
+We can never agree."
+
+"But we have agreed very well all along."
+
+"No, I haven't agreed," said Babcock, shaking his head.
+"I am very uncomfortable.  I ought to have separated from you
+a month ago."
+
+"Oh, horrors!  I'll agree to anything!" cried Newman.
+
+Mr. Babcock buried his head in both hands.  At last looking up,
+"I don't think you appreciate my position," he said.
+"I try to arrive at the truth about everything.  And then you
+go too fast.  For me, you are too passionate, too extravagant.
+I feel as if I ought to go over all this ground we have
+traversed again, by myself, alone.  I am afraid I have made
+a great many mistakes."
+
+"Oh, you needn't give so many reasons," said Newman.
+"You are simply tired of my company.  You have a good right to be."
+
+"No, no, I am not tired!" cried the pestered young divine.
+"It is very wrong to be tired."
+
+"I give it up!" laughed Newman.  "But of course it will never
+do to go on making mistakes.  Go your way, by all means.
+I shall miss you; but you have seen I make friends very easily.
+You will be lonely, yourself; but drop me a line, when you feel
+like it, and I will wait for you anywhere."
+
+"I think I will go back to Milan.  I am afraid I didn't do justice to Luini."
+
+"Poor Luini!" said Newman.
+
+"I mean that I am afraid I overestimated him.  I don't think
+that he is a painter of the first rank."
+
+"Luini?"  Newman exclaimed; "why, he's enchanting--he's magnificent!
+There is something in his genius that is like a beautiful woman.
+It gives one the same feeling."
+
+Mr. Babcock frowned and winced.  And it must be added that this was,
+for Newman, an unusually metaphysical flight; but in passing
+through Milan he had taken a great fancy to the painter.
+"There you are again!" said Mr. Babcock.  "Yes, we had better separate."
+And on the morrow he retraced his steps and proceeded to tone
+down his impressions of the great Lombard artist.
+
+A few days afterwards Newman received a note from his late companion
+which ran as follows:--
+
+My Dear Mr. Newman,--I am afraid that my conduct at Venice,
+a week ago, seemed to you strange and ungrateful, and I
+wish to explain my position, which, as I said at the time,
+I do not think you appreciate.  I had long had it on my mind
+to propose that we should part company, and this step was not
+really so abrupt as it seemed.  In the first place, you know,
+I am traveling in Europe on funds supplied by my congregation,
+who kindly offered me a vacation and an opportunity to enrich
+my mind with the treasures of nature and art in the Old World.
+I feel, therefore, as if I ought to use my time to the very
+best advantage.  I have a high sense of responsibility.
+You appear to care only for the pleasure of the hour,
+and you give yourself up to it with a violence which I
+confess I am not able to emulate.  I feel as if I must arrive
+at some conclusion and fix my belief on certain points.
+Art and life seem to me intensely serious things, and in our
+travels in Europe we should especially remember the immense
+seriousness of Art.  You seem to hold that if a thing amuses
+you for the moment, that is all you need ask for it, and your
+relish for mere amusement is also much higher than mine.
+You put, however, a kind of reckless confidence into your pleasure
+which at times, I confess, has seemed to me--shall I say it?--
+almost cynical.  Your way at any rate is not my way, and it
+is unwise that we should attempt any longer to pull together.
+And yet, let me add that I know there is a great deal to be said
+for your way; I have felt its attraction, in your society,
+very strongly.  But for this I should have left you long ago.
+But I was so perplexed.  I hope I have not done wrong.
+I feel as if I had a great deal of lost time to make up.
+I beg you take all this as I mean it, which, Heaven knows,
+is not invidiously.  I have a great personal esteem for you
+and hope that some day, when I have recovered my balance, we shall
+meet again.  I hope you will continue to enjoy your travels,
+only DO remember that Life and Art ARE extremely serious.
+Believe me your sincere friend and well-wisher,
+
+BENJAMIN BABCOCK
+
+P. S. I am greatly perplexed by Luini.
+
+
+This letter produced in Newman's mind a singular mixture
+of exhilaration and awe.  At first, Mr. Babcock's tender
+conscience seemed to him a capital farce, and his traveling
+back to Milan only to get into a deeper muddle appeared,
+as the reward of his pedantry, exquisitely and ludicrously just.
+Then Newman reflected that these are mighty mysteries, that possibly
+he himself was indeed that baleful and barely mentionable thing,
+a cynic, and that his manner of considering the treasures of art
+and the privileges of life was probably very base and immoral.
+Newman had a great contempt for immorality, and that evening,
+for a good half hour, as he sat watching the star-sheen on
+the warm Adriatic, he felt rebuked and depressed.  He was at a loss
+how to answer Babcock's letter.  His good nature checked his
+resenting the young minister's lofty admonitions, and his tough,
+inelastic sense of humor forbade his taking them seriously.
+He wrote no answer at all but a day or two afterward he found
+in a curiosity shop a grotesque little statuette in ivory,
+of the sixteenth century, which he sent off to Babcock without
+a commentary.  It represented a gaunt, ascetic-looking monk,
+in a tattered gown and cowl, kneeling with clasped hands and
+pulling a portentously long face.  It was a wonderfully delicate
+piece of carving, and in a moment, through one of the rents
+of his gown, you espied a fat capon hung round the monk's waist.
+In Newman's intention what did the figure symbolize?
+Did it mean that he was going to try to be as "high-toned" as the monk
+looked at first, but that he feared he should succeed no better
+than the friar, on a closer inspection, proved to have done?
+It is not supposable that he intended a satire upon Babcock's
+own asceticism, for this would have been a truly cynical stroke.
+He made his late companion, at any rate, a very valuable little present.
+
+Newman, on leaving Venice, went through the Tyrol to Vienna,
+and then returned westward, through Southern Germany.
+The autumn found him at Baden-Baden, where he spent several weeks.
+The place was charming, and he was in no hurry to depart;
+besides, he was looking about him and deciding what to do
+for the winter.  His summer had been very full, and he sat
+under the great trees beside the miniature river that trickles
+past the Baden flower-beds, he slowly rummaged it over.
+He had seen and done a great deal, enjoyed and observed
+a great deal; he felt older, and yet he felt younger too.
+He remembered Mr. Babcock and his desire to form conclusions,
+and he remembered also that he had profited very little by his
+friend's exhortation to cultivate the same respectable habit.
+Could he not scrape together a few conclusions?  Baden-Baden was
+the prettiest place he had seen yet, and orchestral music in
+the evening, under the stars, was decidedly a great institution.
+This was one of his conclusions!  But he went on to reflect
+that he had done very wisely to pull up stakes and come abroad;
+this seeing of the world was a very interesting thing.
+He had learned a great deal; he couldn't say just what,
+but he had it there under his hat-band. He had done what he wanted;
+he had seen the great things, and he had given his mind a chance
+to "improve," if it would.  He cheerfully believed that it
+had improved.  Yes, this seeing of the world was very pleasant,
+and he would willingly do a little more of it.  Thirty-six years
+old as he was, he had a handsome stretch of life before him yet,
+and he need not begin to count his weeks.  Where should he take
+the world next?  I have said he remembered the eyes of the lady
+whom he had found standing in Mrs. Tristram's drawing-room;
+four months had elapsed, and he had not forgotten them yet.
+He had looked--he had made a point of looking--into a great
+many other eyes in the interval, but the only ones he thought
+of now were Madame de Cintre's. If he wanted to see more
+of the world, should he find it in Madame de Cintre's eyes?
+He would certainly find something there, call it this world
+or the next.  Throughout these rather formless meditations
+he sometimes thought of his past life and the long array of years
+(they had begun so early) during which he had had nothing in his
+head but "enterprise."  They seemed far away now, for his present
+attitude was more than a holiday, it was almost a rupture.
+He had told Tristram that the pendulum was swinging back
+and it appeared that the backward swing had not yet ended.
+Still "enterprise," which was over in the other quarter wore
+to his mind a different aspect at different hours.  In its train
+a thousand forgotten episodes came trooping back into his memory.
+Some of them he looked complacently enough in the face;
+from some he averted his head.  They were old efforts,
+old exploits, antiquated examples of "smartness" and sharpness.
+Some of them, as he looked at them, he felt decidedly proud of;
+he admired himself as if he had been looking at another man.
+And, in fact, many of the qualities that make a great deed were there:
+the decision, the resolution, the courage, the celerity,
+the clear eye, and the strong hand.  Of certain other
+achievements it would be going too far to say that he was ashamed
+of them for Newman had never had a stomach for dirty work.
+He was blessed with a natural impulse to disfigure with a direct,
+unreasoning blow the comely visage of temptation.  And certainly,
+in no man could a want of integrity have been less excusable.
+Newman knew the crooked from the straight at a glance, and the former
+had cost him, first and last, a great many moments of lively disgust.
+But none the less some of his memories seemed to wear at
+present a rather graceless and sordid mien, and it struck him
+that if he had never done anything very ugly, he had never,
+on the other hand, done anything particularly beautiful.
+He had spent his years in the unremitting effort to add thousands
+to thousands, and, now that he stood well outside of it,
+the business of money-getting appeared tolerably dry and sterile.
+It is very well to sneer at money-getting after you have filled
+your pockets, and Newman, it may be said, should have begun
+somewhat earlier to moralize thus delicately.  To this it may be
+answered that he might have made another fortune, if he chose;
+and we ought to add that he was not exactly moralizing.
+It had come back to him simply that what he had been looking
+at all summer was a very rich and beautiful world, and that it
+had not all been made by sharp railroad men and stock-brokers.
+
+During his stay at Baden-Baden he received a letter from Mrs. Tristram,
+scolding him for the scanty tidings he had sent to his friends of the Avenue
+d'Iena, and begging to be definitely informed that he had not concocted
+any horrid scheme for wintering in outlying regions, but was coming
+back sanely and promptly to the most comfortable city in the world.
+Newman's answer ran as follows:--
+
+"I supposed you knew I was a miserable letter-writer, and didn't expect
+anything of me.  I don't think I have written twenty letters of pure
+friendship in my whole life; in America I conducted my correspondence
+altogether by telegrams.  This is a letter of pure friendship;
+you have got hold of a curiosity, and I hope you will value it.
+You want to know everything that has happened to me these three months.
+The best way to tell you, I think, would be to send you my half dozen
+guide-books, with my pencil-marks in the margin.  Wherever you find
+a scratch or a cross, or a 'Beautiful!' or a 'So true!' or a 'Too thin!'
+you may know that I have had a sensation of some sort or other.
+That has been about my history, ever since I left you.  Belgium, Holland,
+Switzerland, Germany, Italy, I have been through the whole list,
+and I don't think I am any the worse for it.  I know more about Madonnas
+and church-steeples than I supposed any man could.  I have seen some
+very pretty things, and shall perhaps talk them over this winter,
+by your fireside.  You see, my face is not altogether set against Paris.
+I have had all kinds of plans and visions, but your letter has blown most
+of them away.  'L'appetit vient en mangeant,' says the French proverb,
+and I find that the more I see of the world the more I want to see.
+Now that I am in the shafts, why shouldn't I trot to the end of the course?
+Sometimes I think of the far East, and keep rolling the names of Eastern
+cities under my tongue:  Damascus and Bagdad, Medina and Mecca.
+I spent a week last month in the company of a returned missionary,
+who told me I ought to be ashamed to be loafing about Europe when there
+are such big things to be seen out there.  I do want to explore,
+but I think I would rather explore over in the Rue de l'Universite. Do
+you ever hear from that pretty lady?  If you can get her to promise she
+will be at home the next time I call, I will go back to Paris straight.
+I am more than ever in the state of mind I told you about that evening;
+I want a first-class wife.  I have kept an eye on all the pretty girls
+I have come across this summer, but none of them came up to my notion,
+or anywhere near it.  I should have enjoyed all this a thousand times
+more if I had had the lady just mentioned by my side.  The nearest
+approach to her was a Unitarian minister from Boston, who very soon
+demanded a separation, for incompatibility of temper.  He told me I
+was low-minded, immoral, a devotee of 'art for art'--whatever that is:
+all of which greatly afflicted me, for he was really a sweet little fellow.
+But shortly afterwards I met an Englishman, with whom I struck up an
+acquaintance which at first seemed to promise well--a very bright man,
+who writes in the London papers and knows Paris nearly as well as Tristram.
+We knocked about for a week together, but he very soon gave me up
+in disgust.  I was too virtuous by half; I was too stern a moralist.
+He told me, in a friendly way, that I was cursed with a conscience;
+that I judged things like a Methodist and talked about them like an old lady.
+This was rather bewildering.  Which of my two critics was I to believe?
+I didn't worry about it and very soon made up my mind they were both idiots.
+But there is one thing in which no one will ever have the impudence
+to pretend I am wrong, that is, in being your faithful friend,
+
+                                       C. N."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Newman gave up Damascus and Bagdad and returned to Paris before
+the autumn was over.  He established himself in some rooms selected
+for him by Tom Tristram, in accordance with the latter's estimate
+of what he called his social position.  When Newman learned that his
+social position was to be taken into account, he professed himself
+utterly incompetent, and begged Tristram to relieve him of the care.
+"I didn't know I had a social position," he said, "and if I have,
+I haven't the smallest idea what it is.  Isn't a social position
+knowing some two or three thousand people and inviting them to dinner?
+I know you and your wife and little old Mr. Nioche, who gave me French
+lessons last spring.  Can I invite you to dinner to meet each other?
+If I can, you must come to-morrow."
+
+"That is not very grateful to me," said Mrs. Tristram,
+"who introduced you last year to every creature I know."
+
+"So you did; I had quite forgotten.  But I thought you wanted me to forget,"
+said Newman, with that tone of simple deliberateness which frequently marked
+his utterance, and which an observer would not have known whether to pronounce
+a somewhat mysteriously humorous affection of ignorance or a modest aspiration
+to knowledge; "you told me you disliked them all."
+
+"Ah, the way you remember what I say is at least very flattering.
+But in future," added Mrs. Tristram, "pray forget all
+the wicked things and remember only the good ones.
+It will be easily done, and it will not fatigue your memory.
+But I forewarn you that if you trust my husband to pick out
+your rooms, you are in for something hideous."
+
+"Hideous, darling?" cried Tristram.
+
+"To-day I must say nothing wicked; otherwise I should use stronger language."
+
+"What do you think she would say, Newman?" asked Tristram.
+"If she really tried, now?  She can express displeasure,
+volubly, in two or three languages; that's what it is to
+be intellectual.  It gives her the start of me completely,
+for I can't swear, for the life of me, except in English.
+When I get mad I have to fall back on our dear old mother tongue.
+There's nothing like it, after all."
+
+Newman declared that he knew nothing about tables and chairs,
+and that he would accept, in the way of a lodging, with his eyes shut,
+anything that Tristram should offer him.  This was partly
+veracity on our hero's part, but it was also partly charity.
+He knew that to pry about and look at rooms, and make people open windows,
+and poke into sofas with his cane, and gossip with landladies, and ask
+who lived above and who below--he knew that this was of all pastimes
+the dearest to Tristram's heart, and he felt the more disposed to put
+it in his way as he was conscious that, as regards his obliging friend,
+he had suffered the warmth of ancient good-fellowship somewhat to abate.
+Besides, he had no taste for upholstery; he had even no very exquisite
+sense of comfort or convenience.  He had a relish for luxury
+and splendor, but it was satisfied by rather gross contrivances.
+He scarcely knew a hard chair from a soft one, and he possessed a talent
+for stretching his legs which quite dispensed with adventitious facilities.
+His idea of comfort was to inhabit very large rooms, have a great many
+of them, and be conscious of their possessing a number of patented
+mechanical devices--half of which he should never have occasion to use.
+The apartments should be light and brilliant and lofty; he had once
+said that he liked rooms in which you wanted to keep your hat on.
+For the rest, he was satisfied with the assurance of any respectable
+person that everything was "handsome."  Tristram accordingly secured
+for him an apartment to which this epithet might be lavishly applied.
+It was situated on the Boulevard Haussmann, on the first floor,
+and consisted of a series of rooms, gilded from floor to ceiling
+a foot thick, draped in various light shades of satin, and chiefly
+furnished with mirrors and clocks.  Newman thought them magnificent,
+thanked Tristram heartily, immediately took possession, and had one
+of his trunks standing for three months in his drawing-room.
+
+One day Mrs. Tristram told him that her beautiful friend, Madame de Cintre,
+had returned from the country; that she had met her three days before,
+coming out of the Church of St. Sulpice; she herself having journeyed
+to that distant quarter in quest of an obscure lace-mender, of whose skill
+she had heard high praise.
+
+"And how were those eyes?"  Newman asked.
+
+"Those eyes were red with weeping, if you please!" said Mrs. Tristram.
+"She had been to confession."
+
+"It doesn't tally with your account of her," said Newman,
+"that she should have sins to confess."
+
+"They were not sins; they were sufferings."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"She asked me to come and see her; I went this morning."
+
+"And what does she suffer from?"
+
+"I didn't ask her.  With her, somehow, one is very discreet.
+But I guessed, easily enough.  She suffers from her wicked old
+mother and her Grand Turk of a brother.  They persecute her.
+But I can almost forgive them, because, as I told you,
+she is a saint, and a persecution is all that she needs to bring
+out her saintliness and make her perfect."
+
+"That's a comfortable theory for her.  I hope you will never
+impart it to the old folks.  Why does she let them bully her?
+Is she not her own mistress?"
+
+"Legally, yes, I suppose; but morally, no.  In France you must
+never say nay to your mother, whatever she requires of you.
+She may be the most abominable old woman in the world,
+and make your life a purgatory; but, after all, she is ma mere,
+and you have no right to judge her.  You have simply to obey.
+The thing has a fine side to it.  Madame de Cintre bows her head
+and folds her wings."
+
+"Can't she at least make her brother leave off?"
+
+"Her brother is the chef de la famille, as they say; he is the head
+of the clan.  With those people the family is everything; you must act,
+not for your own pleasure, but for the advantage of the family."
+
+"I wonder what my family would like me to do!" exclaimed Tristram.
+
+"I wish you had one!" said his wife.
+
+"But what do they want to get out of that poor lady?"  Newman asked.
+
+"Another marriage.  They are not rich, and they want to bring
+more money into the family."
+
+"There's your chance, my boy!" said Tristram.
+
+"And Madame de Cintre objects," Newman continued.
+
+"She has been sold once; she naturally objects to being sold again.
+It appears that the first time they made rather a poor bargain;
+M. de Cintre left a scanty property."
+
+"And to whom do they want to marry her now?"
+
+"I thought it best not to ask; but you may be sure it is to some horrid
+old nabob, or to some dissipated little duke."
+
+"There's Mrs. Tristram, as large as life!" cried her husband.
+"Observe the richness of her imagination.  She has not a single question--
+it's vulgar to ask questions--and yet she knows everything.
+She has the history of Madame de Cintre's marriage at
+her fingers' ends.  She has seen the lovely Claire on her knees,
+with loosened tresses and streaming eyes, and the rest of them
+standing over her with spikes and goads and red-hot irons,
+ready to come down on her if she refuses the tipsy duke.
+The simple truth is that they made a fuss about her milliner's
+bill or refused her an opera-box."
+
+Newman looked from Tristram to his wife with a certain mistrust
+in each direction.  "Do you really mean," he asked of Mrs. Tristram,
+"that your friend is being forced into an unhappy marriage?"
+
+"I think it extremely probable.  Those people are very capable
+of that sort of thing."
+
+"It is like something in a play," said Newman; "that dark old
+house over there looks as if wicked things had been done in it,
+and might be done again."
+
+"They have a still darker old house in the country Madame de Cintre tells me,
+and there, during the summer this scheme must have been hatched."
+
+"MUST have been; mind that! said Tristram.
+
+"After all," suggested Newman, after a silence, "she may be in trouble
+about something else."
+
+"If it is something else, then it is something worse," said Mrs. Tristram,
+with rich decision.
+
+Newman was silent a while, and seemed lost in meditation.
+"Is it possible," he asked at last, "that they do that sort
+of thing over here? that helpless women are bullied into marrying
+men they hate?"
+
+"Helpless women, all over the world, have a hard time of it,"
+said Mrs. Tristram.  "There is plenty of bullying everywhere."
+
+"A great deal of that kind of thing goes on in New York,"
+said Tristram.  "Girls are bullied or coaxed or bribed,
+or all three together, into marrying nasty fellows.
+There is no end of that always going on in the Fifth Avenue,
+and other bad things besides.  The Mysteries of the Fifth Avenue!
+Some one ought to show them up."
+
+"I don't believe it!" said Newman, very gravely.  "I don't
+believe that, in America, girls are ever subjected to compulsion.
+I don't believe there have been a dozen cases of it since
+the country began."
+
+"Listen to the voice of the spread eagle!" cried Tristram.
+
+"The spread eagle ought to use his wings," said Mrs. Tristram.
+"Fly to the rescue of Madame de Cintre!"
+
+"To her rescue?"
+
+"Pounce down, seize her in your talons, and carry her off.
+Marry her yourself."
+
+Newman, for some moments, answered nothing; but presently,
+"I should suppose she had heard enough of marrying," he said.
+"The kindest way to treat her would be to admire her, and yet
+never to speak of it.  But that sort of thing is infamous,"
+he added; "it makes me feel savage to hear of it."
+
+He heard of it, however, more than once afterward.  Mrs. Tristram
+again saw Madame de Cintre, and again found her looking very sad.
+But on these occasions there had been no tears; her beautiful
+eyes were clear and still.  "She is cold, calm, and hopeless,"
+Mrs. Tristram declared, and she added that on her mentioning that her
+friend Mr. Newman was again in Paris and was faithful in his desire
+to make Madame de Cintre's acquaintance, this lovely woman had found
+a smile in her despair, and declared that she was sorry to have missed
+his visit in the spring and that she hoped he had not lost courage.
+"I told her something about you," said Mrs. Tristram.
+
+"That's a comfort," said Newman, placidly.  "I like people
+to know about me."
+
+A few days after this, one dusky autumn afternoon, he went again
+to the Rue de l'Universite. The early evening had closed in as he
+applied for admittance at the stoutly guarded Hotel de Bellegarde.
+He was told that Madame de Cintre was at home; he crossed
+the court, entered the farther door, and was conducted through
+a vestibule, vast, dim, and cold, up a broad stone staircase with
+an ancient iron balustrade, to an apartment on the second floor.
+Announced and ushered in, he found himself in a sort of paneled boudoir,
+at one end of which a lady and gentleman were seated before the fire.
+The gentleman was smoking a cigarette; there was no light in the room
+save that of a couple of candles and the glow from the hearth.
+Both persons rose to welcome Newman, who, in the firelight,
+recognized Madame de Cintre.  She gave him her hand with a smile
+which seemed in itself an illumination, and, pointing to her companion,
+said softly, "My brother."  The gentleman offered Newman a frank,
+friendly greeting, and our hero then perceived him to be the young
+man who had spoken to him in the court of the hotel on his former
+visit and who had struck him as a good fellow.
+
+"Mrs. Tristram has spoken to me a great deal of you,"
+said Madame de Cintre gently, as she resumed her former place.
+
+Newman, after he had seated himself, began to consider what,
+in truth, was his errand.  He had an unusual, unexpected sense
+of having wandered into a strange corner of the world.
+He was not given, as a general thing, to anticipating danger,
+or forecasting disaster, and he had had no social tremors on this
+particular occasion.  He was not timid and he was not impudent.
+He felt too kindly toward himself to be the one, and too
+good-naturedly toward the rest of the world to be the other.
+But his native shrewdness sometimes placed his ease of temper
+at its mercy; with every disposition to take things simply,
+it was obliged to perceive that some things were not so simple
+as others.  He felt as one does in missing a step, in an ascent,
+where one expected to find it.  This strange, pretty woman,
+sitting in fire-side talk with her brother, in the gray depths
+of her inhospitable-looking house--what had he to say to her?
+She seemed enveloped in a sort of fantastic privacy; on what
+grounds had he pulled away the curtain?  For a moment he felt
+as if he had plunged into some medium as deep as the ocean,
+and as if he must exert himself to keep from sinking.
+Meanwhile he was looking at Madame de Cintre, and she was settling
+herself in her chair and drawing in her long dress and turning
+her face towards him.  Their eyes met; a moment afterwards she
+looked away and motioned to her brother to put a log on the fire.
+But the moment, and the glance which traversed it,
+had been sufficient to relieve Newman of the first and
+the last fit of personal embarrassment he was ever to know.
+He performed the movement which was so frequent with him,
+and which was always a sort of symbol of his taking mental
+possession of a scene--he extended his legs.  The impression
+Madame de Cintre had made upon him on their first meeting
+came back in an instant; it had been deeper than he knew.
+She was pleasing, she was interesting; he had opened a book
+and the first lines held his attention.
+
+She asked him several questions:  how lately he had seen Mrs. Tristram,
+how long he had been in Paris, how long he expected to remain there,
+how he liked it.  She spoke English without an accent, or rather
+with that distinctively British accent which, on his arrival in Europe,
+had struck Newman as an altogether foreign tongue, but which, in women,
+he had come to like extremely.  Here and there Madame de Cintre's
+utterance had a faint shade of strangeness but at the end of ten
+minutes Newman found himself waiting for these soft roughnesses.
+He enjoyed them, and he marveled to see that gross thing, error,
+brought down to so fine a point.
+
+"You have a beautiful country," said Madame de Cintre, presently.
+
+"Oh, magnificent!" said Newman.  "You ought to see it."
+
+"I shall never see it," said Madame de Cintre with a smile.
+
+"Why not?" asked Newman.
+
+"I don't travel; especially so far."
+
+"But you go away sometimes; you are not always here?"
+
+"I go away in summer, a little way, to the country."
+
+Newman wanted to ask her something more, something personal, he hardly
+knew what.  "Don't you find it rather--rather quiet here?" he said;
+"so far from the street?"  Rather "gloomy," he was going to say,
+but he reflected that that would be impolite.
+
+"Yes, it is very quiet," said Madame de Cintre; "but we like that."
+
+"Ah, you like that," repeated Newman, slowly.
+
+"Besides, I have lived here all my life."
+
+"Lived here all your life," said Newman, in the same way.
+
+"I was born here, and my father was born here before me, and my grandfather,
+and my great-grandfathers. Were they not, Valentin?" and she appealed
+to her brother.
+
+"Yes, it's a family habit to be born here!" the young man said with a laugh,
+and rose and threw the remnant of his cigarette into the fire, and then
+remained leaning against the chimney-piece. An observer would have perceived
+that he wished to take a better look at Newman, whom he covertly examined,
+while he stood stroking his mustache.
+
+"Your house is tremendously old, then," said Newman.
+
+"How old is it, brother?" asked Madame de Cintre.
+
+The young man took the two candles from the mantel-shelf, lifted
+one high in each hand, and looked up toward the cornice of the room,
+above the chimney-piece. This latter feature of the apartment
+was of white marble, and in the familiar rococo style of the
+last century; but above it was a paneling of an earlier date,
+quaintly carved, painted white, and gilded here and there.
+The white had turned to yellow, and the gilding was tarnished.
+On the top, the figures ranged themselves into a sort of shield,
+on which an armorial device was cut.  Above it, in relief,
+was a date--1627.  "There you have it,' said the young man.
+"That is old or new, according to your point of view."
+
+"Well, over here," said Newman, "one's point of view gets shifted
+round considerably."  And he threw back his head and looked about the room.
+"Your house is of a very curious style of architecture," he said.
+
+"Are you interested in architecture?" asked the young man
+at the chimney-piece.
+
+"Well, I took the trouble, this summer," said Newman, "to examine--
+as well as I can calculate--some four hundred and seventy churches.
+Do you call that interested?"
+
+"Perhaps you are interested in theology," said the young man.
+
+"Not particularly.  Are you a Roman Catholic, madam?"
+And he turned to Madame de Cintre.
+
+"Yes, sir," she answered, gravely.
+
+Newman was struck with the gravity of her tone; he threw
+back his head and began to look round the room again.
+"Had you never noticed that number up there?" he presently asked.
+
+She hesitated a moment, and then, "In former years," she said.
+
+Her brother had been watching Newman's movement.
+"Perhaps you would like to examine the house," he said.
+
+Newman slowly brought down his eyes and looked at him; he had a vague
+impression that the young man at the chimney-piece was inclined to irony.
+He was a handsome fellow, his face wore a smile, his mustaches were
+curled up at the ends, and there was a little dancing gleam in his eye.
+"Damn his French impudence!"  Newman was on the point of saying
+to himself.  "What the deuce is he grinning at?"  He glanced at
+Madame de Cintre; she was sitting with her eyes fixed on the floor.
+She raised them, they met his, and she looked at her brother.
+Newman turned again to this young man and observed that he strikingly
+resembled his sister.  This was in his favor, and our hero's first
+impression of the Count Valentin, moreover, had been agreeable.
+His mistrust expired, and he said he would be very glad to see the house.
+
+The young man gave a frank laugh, and laid his hand on one of
+the candlesticks.  "Good, good!" he exclaimed.  "Come, then."
+
+But Madame de Cintre rose quickly and grasped his arm, "Ah, Valentin!"
+she said.  "What do you mean to do?"
+
+"To show Mr. Newman the house.  It will be very amusing."
+
+She kept her hand on his arm, and turned to Newman with a smile.
+"Don't let him take you," she said; "you will not find it amusing.
+It is a musty old house, like any other."
+
+"It is full of curious things," said the count, resisting.
+"Besides, I want to do it; it is a rare chance."
+
+"You are very wicked, brother," Madame de Cintre answered.
+
+"Nothing venture, nothing have!" cried the young man.
+"Will you come?"
+
+Madame de Cintre stepped toward Newman, gently clasping her hands
+and smiling softly.  "Would you not prefer my society, here, by my fire,
+to stumbling about dark passages after my brother?"
+
+"A hundred times!" said Newman.  "We will see the house some other day."
+
+The young man put down his candlestick with mock solemnity, and,
+shaking his head, "Ah, you have defeated a great scheme, sir!" he said.
+
+"A scheme?  I don't understand," said Newman.
+
+"You would have played your part in it all the better.
+Perhaps some day I shall have a chance to explain it."
+
+"Be quiet, and ring for the tea," said Madame de Cintre.
+
+The young man obeyed, and presently a servant brought
+in the tea, placed the tray on a small table, and departed.
+Madame de Cintre, from her place, busied herself with making it.
+She had but just begun when the door was thrown open and a lady
+rushed in, making a loud rustling sound.  She stared at Newman,
+gave a little nod and a "Monsieur!" and then quickly approached
+Madame de Cintre and presented her forehead to be kissed.
+Madame de Cintre saluted her, and continued to make tea.
+The new-comer was young and pretty, it seemed to Newman;
+she wore her bonnet and cloak, and a train of royal proportions.
+She began to talk rapidly in French.  "Oh, give me some tea,
+my beautiful one, for the love of God!  I'm exhausted,
+mangled, massacred."  Newman found himself quite unable to follow her;
+she spoke much less distinctly than M. Nioche.
+
+"That is my sister-in-law," said the Count Valentin, leaning towards him.
+
+"She is very pretty," said Newman.
+
+"Exquisite," answered the young man, and this time, again, Newman suspected
+him of irony.
+
+His sister-in-law came round to the other side of the fire with her
+cup of tea in her hand, holding it out at arm's-length, so that she
+might not spill it on her dress, and uttering little cries of alarm.
+She placed the cup on the mantel-shelf and begun to unpin her veil
+and pull off her gloves, looking meanwhile at Newman.
+
+"Is there any thing I can do for you, my dear lady?" the Count Valentin asked,
+in a sort of mock-caressing tone.
+
+"Present monsieur," said his sister-in-law.
+
+The young man answered, "Mr. Newman!"
+
+"I can't courtesy to you, monsieur, or I shall spill my tea," said the lady.
+"So Claire receives strangers, like that?" she added, in a low voice,
+in French, to her brother-in-law.
+
+"Apparently!" he answered with a smile.  Newman stood
+a moment, and then he approached Madame de Cintre.
+She looked up at him as if she were thinking of something to say.
+But she seemed to think of nothing; so she simply smiled.
+He sat down near her and she handed him a cup of tea.  For a few
+moments they talked about that, and meanwhile he looked at her.
+He remembered what Mrs. Tristram had told him of her "perfection"
+and of her having, in combination, all the brilliant things
+that he dreamed of finding.  This made him observe her not only
+without mistrust, but without uneasy conjectures; the presumption,
+from the first moment he looked at her, had been in her favor.
+And yet, if she was beautiful, it was not a dazzling beauty.
+She was tall and moulded in long lines; she had thick fair hair,
+a wide forehead, and features with a sort of harmonious irregularity.
+Her clear gray eyes were strikingly expressive; they were
+both gentle and intelligent, and Newman liked them immensely;
+but they had not those depths of splendor--those many-colored rays--
+which illumine the brows of famous beauties.  Madame de Cintre
+was rather thin, and she looked younger than probably she was.
+In her whole person there was something both youthful and subdued,
+slender and yet ample, tranquil yet shy; a mixture of immaturity
+and repose, of innocence and dignity.  What had Tristram meant,
+Newman wondered, by calling her proud?  She was certainly not proud now,
+to him; or if she was, it was of no use, it was lost upon him;
+she must pile it up higher if she expected him to mind it.
+She was a beautiful woman, and it was very easy to get on with her.
+Was she a countess, a marquise, a kind of historical formation?
+Newman, who had rarely heard these words used, had never been
+at pains to attach any particular image to them; but they occurred
+to him now and seemed charged with a sort of melodious meaning.
+They signified something fair and softly bright, that had easy
+motions and spoke very agreeably.
+
+"Have you many friends in Paris; do you go out?" asked Madame de Cintre,
+who had at last thought of something to say.
+
+"Do you mean do I dance, and all that?"
+
+"Do you go dans le monde, as we say?"
+
+"I have seen a good many people.  Mrs. Tristram has taken me about.
+I do whatever she tells me."
+
+"By yourself, you are not fond of amusements?"
+
+"Oh yes, of some sorts.  I am not fond of dancing, and that sort of thing;
+I am too old and sober.  But I want to be amused; I came to Europe for that."
+
+"But you can be amused in America, too."
+
+"I couldn't; I was always at work.  But after all, that was my amusement."
+
+At this moment Madame de Bellegarde came back for another cup of tea,
+accompanied by the Count Valentin.  Madame de Cintre, when she had served her,
+began to talk again with Newman, and recalling what he had last said,
+"In your own country you were very much occupied?" she asked.
+
+"l was in business.  I have been in business since I was fifteen years old."
+
+"And what was your business?" asked Madame de Bellegarde,
+who was decidedly not so pretty as Madame de Cintre.
+
+"I have been in everything," said Newman.  "At one time I sold leather;
+at one time I manufactured wash-tubs."
+
+Madame de Bellegarde made a little grimace.  "Leather?  I don't like that.
+Wash-tubs are better.  I prefer the smell of soap.  I hope at least
+they made your fortune."  She rattled this off with the air of a woman
+who had the reputation of saying everything that came into her head,
+and with a strong French accent.
+
+Newman had spoken with cheerful seriousness, but Madame de
+Bellegarde's tone made him go on, after a meditative pause,
+with a certain light grimness of jocularity.  "No, I lost money
+on wash-tubs, but I came out pretty square on leather."
+
+"I have made up my mind, after all," said Madame de Bellegarde,
+"that the great point is--how do you call it?--to come out square.
+I am on my knees to money; I don't deny it.  If you have it, I ask
+no questions.  For that I am a real democrat--like you, monsieur.
+Madame de Cintre is very proud; but I find that one gets much more
+pleasure in this sad life if one doesn't look too close."
+
+"Just Heaven, dear madam, how you go at it," said the Count Valentin,
+lowering his voice.
+
+"He's a man one can speak to, I suppose, since my sister receives him,"
+the lady answered.  "Besides, it's very true; those are my ideas."
+
+"Ah, you call them ideas," murmured the young man.
+
+"But Mrs. Tristram told me you had been in the army--in your war,"
+said Madame de Cintre.
+
+"Yes, but that is not business!" said Newman.
+
+"Very true!" said M. de Bellegarde.  "Otherwise perhaps I
+should not be penniless."
+
+"Is it true," asked Newman in a moment, "that you are so proud?
+I had already heard it."
+
+Madame de Cintre smiled.  "Do you find me so?"
+
+"Oh," said Newman, "I am no judge.  If you are proud with me,
+you will have to tell me.  Otherwise I shall not know it."
+
+Madame de Cintre began to laugh.  "That would be pride in a
+sad position!" she said.
+
+"It would be partly," Newman went on, "because I shouldn't want to know it.
+I want you to treat me well."
+
+Madame de Cintre, whose laugh had ceased, looked at him with her head
+half averted, as if she feared what he was going to say.
+
+"Mrs. Tristram told you the literal truth," he went on; "I want
+very much to know you.  I didn't come here simply to call to-day;
+I came in the hope that you might ask me to come again."
+
+"Oh, pray come often," said Madame de Cintre.
+
+"But will you be at home?"  Newman insisted.  Even to himself he seemed
+a trifle "pushing," but he was, in truth, a trifle excited.
+
+"I hope so!" said Madame de Cintre.
+
+Newman got up.  "Well, we shall see," he said smoothing his hat
+with his coat-cuff.
+
+"Brother," said Madame de Cintre, "invite Mr. Newman to come again."
+
+The Count Valentin looked at our hero from head to foot with his peculiar
+smile, in which impudence and urbanity seemed perplexingly commingled.
+"Are you a brave man?" he asked, eying him askance.
+
+"Well, I hope so," said Newman.
+
+"I rather suspect so.  In that case, come again."
+
+"Ah, what an invitation!" murmured Madame de Cintre, with something
+painful in her smile.
+
+"Oh, I want Mr. Newman to come--particularly," said the young man.
+"It will give me great pleasure.  I shall be desolate if I
+miss one of his visits.  But I maintain he must be brave.
+A stout heart, sir!"  And he offered Newman his hand.
+
+"I shall not come to see you; I shall come to see Madame
+de Cintre," said Newman.
+
+"You will need all the more courage."
+
+"Ah, Valentin!" said Madame de Cintre, appealingly.
+
+"Decidedly," cried Madame de Bellegarde, "I am the only person
+here capable of saying something polite!  Come to see me;
+you will need no courage," she said.
+
+Newman gave a laugh which was not altogether an assent, and took his leave.
+Madame de Cintre did not take up her sister's challenge to be gracious,
+but she looked with a certain troubled air at the retreating guest.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+One evening very late, about a week after his visit
+to Madame de Cintre, Newman's servant brought him a card.
+It was that of young M. de Bellegarde.  When, a few moments later,
+he went to receive his visitor, he found him standing in the middle
+of his great gilded parlor and eying it from cornice to carpet.
+M. de Bellegarde's face, it seemed to Newman, expressed a sense
+of lively entertainment.  "What the devil is he laughing at now?"
+our hero asked himself.  But he put the question without acrimony,
+for he felt that Madame de Cintre's brother was a good fellow,
+and he had a presentiment that on this basis of good fellowship
+they were destined to understand each other.  Only, if there
+was anything to laugh at, he wished to have a glimpse of it too.
+
+"To begin with," said the young man, as he extended his hand,
+"have I come too late?"
+
+"Too late for what?" asked Newman.
+
+"To smoke a cigar with you."
+
+"You would have to come early to do that," said Newman.
+"I don't smoke."
+
+"Ah, you are a strong man!"
+
+"But I keep cigars," Newman added.  "Sit down."
+
+"Surely, I may not smoke here," said M. de Bellegarde.
+
+"What is the matter?  Is the room too small?"
+
+"It is too large.  It is like smoking in a ball-room, or a church."
+
+"That is what you were laughing at just now?"  Newman asked;
+"the size of my room?"
+
+"It is not size only," replied M. de Bellegarde, "but splendor, and harmony,
+and beauty of detail.  It was the smile of admiration."
+
+Newman looked at him a moment, and then, "So it IS very ugly?" he inquired.
+
+"Ugly, my dear sir?  It is magnificent."
+
+"That is the same thing, I suppose," said Newman.
+"Make yourself comfortable.  Your coming to see me, I take it,
+is an act of friendship.  You were not obliged to.
+Therefore, if anything around here amuses you, it will be all
+in a pleasant way.  Laugh as loud as you please; I like to see
+my visitors cheerful.  Only, I must make this request:
+that you explain the joke to me as soon as you can speak.
+I don't want to lose anything, myself."
+
+M. de Bellegarde stared, with a look of unresentful perplexity.
+He laid his hand on Newman's sleeve and seemed on the point
+of saying something, but he suddenly checked himself,
+leaned back in his chair, and puffed at his cigar.
+At last, however, breaking silence,--"Certainly," he said,
+"my coming to see you is an act of friendship.  Nevertheless I
+was in a measure obliged to do so.  My sister asked me to come,
+and a request from my sister is, for me, a law.  I was near you,
+and I observed lights in what I supposed were your rooms.
+It was not a ceremonious hour for making a call, but I was not
+sorry to do something that would show I was not performing
+a mere ceremony."
+
+"Well, here I am as large as life," said Newman, extending his legs.
+
+"I don't know what you mean," the young man went on "by giving
+me unlimited leave to laugh.  Certainly I am a great laugher,
+and it is better to laugh too much than too little.
+But it is not in order that we may laugh together--or separately--
+that I have, I may say, sought your acquaintance.
+To speak with almost impudent frankness, you interest me!"
+All this was uttered by M. de Bellegarde with the modulated smoothness
+of the man of the world, and in spite of his excellent English,
+of the Frenchman; but Newman, at the same time that he sat noting its
+harmonious flow, perceived that it was not mere mechanical urbanity.
+Decidedly, there was something in his visitor that he liked.
+M. de Bellegarde was a foreigner to his finger-tips, and if Newman
+had met him on a Western prairie he would have felt it proper
+to address him with a "How-d'ye-do, Mosseer?"  But there was
+something in his physiognomy which seemed to cast a sort of aerial
+bridge over the impassable gulf produced by difference of race.
+He was below the middle height, and robust and agile in figure.
+Valentin de Bellegarde, Newman afterwards learned, had a mortal
+dread of the robustness overtaking the agility; he was afraid
+of growing stout; he was too short, as he said, to afford a belly.
+He rode and fenced and practiced gymnastics with unremitting zeal,
+and if you greeted him with a "How well you are looking" he started
+and turned pale.  In your WELL he read a grosser monosyllable.
+He had a round head, high above the ears, a crop of hair at once
+dense and silky, a broad, low forehead, a short nose, of the ironical
+and inquiring rather than of the dogmatic or sensitive cast,
+and a mustache as delicate as that of a page in a romance.
+He resembled his sister not in feature, but in the expression of his clear,
+bright eye, completely void of introspection, and in the way he smiled.
+The great point in his face was that it was intensely alive--
+frankly, ardently, gallantly alive.  The look of it was like a bell,
+of which the handle might have been in the young man's soul:
+at a touch of the handle it rang with a loud, silver sound.
+There was something in his quick, light brown eye which assured
+you that he was not economizing his consciousness.  He was not
+living in a corner of it to spare the furniture of the rest.
+He was squarely encamped in the centre and he was keeping open house.
+When he smiled, it was like the movement of a person who in emptying
+a cup turns it upside down:  he gave you the last drop of his jollity.
+He inspired Newman with something of the same kindness that our
+hero used to feel in his earlier years for those of his companions
+who could perform strange and clever tricks--make their joints
+crack in queer places or whistle at the back of their mouths.
+
+"My sister told me," M. de Bellegarde continued, "that I ought
+to come and remove the impression that I had taken such great
+pains to produce upon you; the impression that I am a lunatic.
+Did it strike you that I behaved very oddly the other day?"
+
+"Rather so," said Newman.
+
+"So my sister tells me."  And M. de Bellegarde watched
+his host for a moment through his smoke-wreaths. "If
+that is the case, I think we had better let it stand.
+I didn't try to make you think I was a lunatic, at all;
+on the contrary, I wanted to produce a favorable impression.
+But if, after all, I made a fool of myself, it was the intention
+of Providence.  I should injure myself by protesting too much,
+for I should seem to set up a claim for wisdom which,
+in the sequel of our acquaintance, I could by no means justify.
+Set me down as a lunatic with intervals of sanity."
+
+"Oh, I guess you know what you are about," said Newman.
+
+"When I am sane, I am very sane; that I admit," M. de Bellegarde answered.
+"But I didn't come here to talk about myself.  I should like to ask you
+a few questions.  You allow me?"
+
+"Give me a specimen," said Newman.
+
+"You live here all alone?"
+
+"Absolutely.  With whom should I live?"
+
+"For the moment," said M. de Bellegarde with a smile "I am asking questions,
+not answering them.  You have come to Paris for your pleasure?"
+
+Newman was silent a while.  Then, at last, "Every one asks me that!"
+he said with his mild slowness.  "It sounds so awfully foolish."
+
+"But at any rate you had a reason."
+
+"Oh, I came for my pleasure!" said Newman.  "Though it is foolish,
+it is true."
+
+"And you are enjoying it?"
+
+Like any other good American, Newman thought it as well not to truckle
+to the foreigner.  "Oh, so-so," he answered.
+
+M. de Bellegarde puffed his cigar again in silence.
+"For myself," he said at last, "I am entirely at your service.
+Anything I can do for you I shall be very happy to do.
+Call upon me at your convenience.  Is there any one you desire
+to know--anything you wish to see?  It is a pity you should
+not enjoy Paris."
+
+"Oh, I do enjoy it!" said Newman, good-naturedly. "I'm much
+obligated to you."
+
+"Honestly speaking," M. de Bellegarde went on, "there is
+something absurd to me in hearing myself make you these offers.
+They represent a great deal of goodwill, but they represent
+little else.  You are a successful man and I am a failure,
+and it's a turning of the tables to talk as if I could lend
+you a hand."
+
+"In what way are you a failure?" asked Newman.
+
+"Oh, I'm not a tragical failure!" cried the young man with a laugh.
+"I have fallen from a height, and my fiasco has made no noise.
+You, evidently, are a success.  You have made a fortune,
+you have built up an edifice, you are a financial, commercial power,
+you can travel about the world until you have found a soft spot,
+and lie down in it with the consciousness of having earned your rest.
+Is not that true?  Well, imagine the exact reverse of all that,
+and you have me.  I have done nothing--I can do nothing!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"It's a long story.  Some day I will tell you.  Meanwhile, I'm right, eh?
+You are a success?  You have made a fortune?  It's none of my business, but,
+in short, you are rich?"
+
+"That's another thing that it sounds foolish to say," said Newman.
+"Hang it, no man is rich!"
+
+"I have heard philosophers affirm," laughed M. de Bellegarde,
+"that no man was poor; but your formula strikes me as an improvement.
+As a general thing, I confess, I don't like successful people,
+and I find clever men who have made great fortunes very offensive.
+They tread on my toes; they make me uncomfortable.  But as soon as I
+saw you, I said to myself.  'Ah, there is a man with whom I shall get on.
+He has the good-nature of success and none of the morgue;
+he has not our confoundedly irritable French vanity.'
+In short, I took a fancy to you.  We are very different, I'm sure;
+I don't believe there is a subject on which we think or feel alike.
+But I rather think we shall get on, for there is such a thing,
+you know, as being too different to quarrel."
+
+"Oh, I never quarrel," said Newman.
+
+"Never!  Sometimes it's a duty--or at least it's a pleasure.
+Oh, I have had two or three delicious quarrels in my day!"
+and M. de Bellegarde's handsome smile assumed, at the memory
+of these incidents, an almost voluptuous intensity.
+
+With the preamble embodied in his share of the foregoing fragment
+of dialogue, he paid our hero a long visit; as the two men sat
+with their heels on Newman's glowing hearth, they heard the small
+hours of the morning striking larger from a far-off belfry.
+Valentin de Bellegarde was, by his own confession, at all times
+a great chatterer, and on this occasion he was evidently in a
+particularly loquacious mood.  It was a tradition of his race
+that people of its blood always conferred a favor by their smiles,
+and as his enthusiasms were as rare as his civility was constant,
+he had a double reason for not suspecting that his friendship
+could ever be importunate.  Moreover, the flower of an ancient
+stem as he was, tradition (since I have used the word)
+had in his temperament nothing of disagreeable rigidity.
+It was muffled in sociability and urbanity, as an old dowager
+in her laces and strings of pearls.  Valentin was what is called
+in France a gentilhomme, of the purest source, and his rule of life,
+so far as it was definite, was to play the part of a gentilhomme.
+This, it seemed to him, was enough to occupy comfortably
+a young man of ordinary good parts.  But all that he was he was
+by instinct and not by theory, and the amiability of his
+character was so great that certain of the aristocratic virtues,
+which in some aspects seem rather brittle and trenchant,
+acquired in his application of them an extreme geniality.
+In his younger years he had been suspected of low tastes,
+and his mother had greatly feared he would make a slip
+in the mud of the highway and bespatter the family shield.
+He had been treated, therefore, to more than his share of schooling
+and drilling, but his instructors had not succeeded in mounting
+him upon stilts.  They could not spoil his safe spontaneity,
+and he remained the least cautious and the most lucky of young nobles.
+He had been tied with so short a rope in his youth that
+he had now a mortal grudge against family discipline.
+He had been known to say, within the limits of the family,
+that, light-headed as he was, the honor of the name was safer
+in his hands than in those of some of it's other members,
+and that if a day ever came to try it, they should see.
+His talk was an odd mixture of almost boyish garrulity and of
+the reserve and discretion of the man of the world, and he seemed
+to Newman, as afterwards young members of the Latin races often
+seemed to him, now amusingly juvenile and now appallingly mature.
+In America, Newman reflected, lads of twenty-five and thirty
+have old heads and young hearts, or at least young morals;
+here they have young heads and very aged hearts, morals the most
+grizzled and wrinkled.
+
+"What I envy you is your liberty," observed M. de Bellegarde,
+"your wide range, your freedom to come and go, your not having
+a lot of people, who take themselves awfully seriously,
+expecting something of you.  I live," he added with a sigh,
+"beneath the eyes of my admirable mother."
+
+"It is your own fault; what is to hinder your ranging?" said Newman.
+
+"There is a delightful simplicity in that remark!
+Everything is to hinder me.  To begin with, I have not a penny."
+
+"I had not a penny when I began to range."
+
+"Ah, but your poverty was your capital.  Being an American, it was
+impossible you should remain what you were born, and being born poor--
+do I understand it?--it was therefore inevitable that you should
+become rich.  You were in a position that makes one's mouth water;
+you looked round you and saw a world full of things you had only
+to step up to and take hold of.  When I was twenty, I looked
+around me and saw a world with everything ticketed 'Hands off!'
+and the deuce of it was that the ticket seemed meant only for me.
+I couldn't go into business, I couldn't make money, because I
+was a Bellegarde.  I couldn't go into politics, because I was
+a Bellegarde--the Bellegardes don't recognize the Bonapartes.
+I couldn't go into literature, because I was a dunce.
+I couldn't marry a rich girl, because no Bellegarde had ever
+married a roturiere, and it was not proper that I should begin.
+We shall have to come to it, yet.  Marriageable heiresses,
+de notre bord, are not to be had for nothing; it must be name
+for name, and fortune for fortune.  The only thing I could do
+was to go and fight for the Pope.  That I did, punctiliously,
+and received an apostolic flesh-wound at Castlefidardo.
+It did neither the Holy Father nor me any good, that I could see.
+Rome was doubtless a very amusing place in the days of Caligula,
+but it has sadly fallen off since.  I passed three years in
+the Castle of St. Angelo, and then came back to secular life."
+
+"So you have no profession--you do nothing," said Newman.
+
+"I do nothing!  I am supposed to amuse myself, and, to tell
+the truth, I have amused myself.  One can, if one knows how.
+But you can't keep it up forever.  I am good for another five years,
+perhaps, but I foresee that after that I shall lose my appetite.
+Then what shall I do?  I think I shall turn monk.  Seriously, I think
+I shall tie a rope round my waist and go into a monastery.
+It was an old custom, and the old customs were very good.
+People understood life quite as well as we do.
+They kept the pot boiling till it cracked, and then they put
+it on the shelf altogether."
+
+"Are you very religious?" asked Newman, in a tone which gave
+the inquiry a grotesque effect.
+
+M. de Bellegarde evidently appreciated the comical element in the question,
+but he looked at Newman a moment with extreme soberness.  "I am a very
+good Catholic.  I respect the Church.  I adore the blessed Virgin.
+I fear the Devil."
+
+"Well, then," said Newman, "you are very well fixed.
+You have got pleasure in the present and religion in the future;
+what do you complain of?"
+
+"It's a part of one's pleasure to complain.  There is something
+in your own circumstances that irritates me.  You are the first
+man I have ever envied.  It's singular, but so it is.
+I have known many men who, besides any factitious advantages
+that I may possess, had money and brains into the bargain;
+but somehow they have never disturbed my good-humor. But
+you have got something that I should have liked to have.
+It is not money, it is not even brains--though no doubt yours
+are excellent.  It is not your six feet of height, though I
+should have rather liked to be a couple of inches taller.
+It's a sort of air you have of being thoroughly at home
+in the world.  When I was a boy, my father told me that it was
+by such an air as that that people recognized a Bellegarde.
+He called my attention to it.  He didn't advise me to cultivate it;
+he said that as we grew up it always came of itself.
+I supposed it had come to me, because I think I have always
+had the feeling.  My place in life was made for me, and it
+seemed easy to occupy it.  But you who, as I understand it,
+have made your own place, you who, as you told us the other day,
+have manufactured wash-tubs--you strike me, somehow, as a man
+who stands at his ease, who looks at things from a height.
+I fancy you going about the world like a man traveling
+on a railroad in which he owns a large amount of stock.
+You make me feel as if I had missed something.  What is it?"
+
+"It is the proud consciousness of honest toil--of having manufactured
+a few wash-tubs," said Newman, at once jocose and serious.
+
+"Oh no; I have seen men who had done even more, men who had made not
+only wash-tubs, but soap--strong-smelling yellow soap, in great bars;
+and they never made me the least uncomfortable."
+
+"Then it's the privilege of being an American citizen," said Newman.
+"That sets a man up."
+
+"Possibly," rejoined M. de Bellegarde.  "But I am forced to say that I
+have seen a great many American citizens who didn't seem at all set
+up or in the least like large stock-holders. I never envied them.
+I rather think the thing is an accomplishment of your own."
+
+"Oh, come," said Newman, "you will make me proud!"
+
+"No, I shall not.  You have nothing to do with pride,
+or with humility--that is a part of this easy manner of yours.
+People are proud only when they have something to lose,
+and humble when they have something to gain."
+
+"I don't know what I have to lose," said Newman, "but I certainly
+have something to gain."
+
+"What is it?" asked his visitor.
+
+Newman hesitated a while.  "I will tell you when I know you better."
+
+"I hope that will be soon!  Then, if I can help you to gain it,
+I shall be happy."
+
+"Perhaps you may," said Newman.
+
+"Don't forget, then, that I am your servant," M. de Bellegarde answered;
+and shortly afterwards he took his departure.
+
+During the next three weeks Newman saw Bellegarde
+several times, and without formally swearing an eternal
+friendship the two men established a sort of comradeship.
+To Newman, Bellegarde was the ideal Frenchman, the Frenchman
+of tradition and romance, so far as our hero was concerned
+with these mystical influences.  Gallant, expansive, amusing,
+more pleased himself with the effect he produced than those
+(even when they were well pleased) for whom he produced it;
+a master of all the distinctively social virtues and a votary
+of all agreeable sensations; a devotee of something mysterious
+and sacred to which he occasionally alluded in terms more ecstatic
+even than those in which he spoke of the last pretty woman,
+and which was simply the beautiful though somewhat superannuated
+image of HONOR; he was irresistibly entertaining and enlivening,
+and he formed a character to which Newman was as capable of
+doing justice when he had once been placed in contact with it,
+as he was unlikely, in musing upon the possible mixtures
+of our human ingredients, mentally to have foreshadowed it.
+Bellegarde did not in the least cause him to modify his
+needful premise that all Frenchmen are of a frothy and
+imponderable substance; he simply reminded him that light
+materials may be beaten up into a most agreeable compound.
+No two companions could be more different, but their differences
+made a capital basis for a friendship of which the distinctive
+characteristic was that it was extremely amusing to each.
+
+Valentin de Bellegarde lived in the basement of an old house
+in the Rue d'Anjou St. Honore, and his small apartments lay
+between the court of the house and an old garden which spread
+itself behind it--one of those large, sunless humid gardens
+into which you look unexpectingly in Paris from back windows,
+wondering how among the grudging habitations they find their space.
+When Newman returned Bellegarde's visit, he hinted that HIS
+lodging was at least as much a laughing matter as his own.
+But its oddities were of a different cast from those of
+our hero's gilded saloons on the Boulevard Haussmann:
+the place was low, dusky, contracted, and crowded with curious
+bric-a-brac. Bellegarde, penniless patrician as he was,
+was an insatiable collector, and his walls were covered with
+rusty arms and ancient panels and platters, his doorways draped
+in faded tapestries, his floors muffled in the skins of beasts.
+Here and there was one of those uncomfortable tributes to elegance
+in which the upholsterer's art, in France, is so prolific;
+a curtain recess with a sheet of looking-glass in which,
+among the shadows, you could see nothing; a divan on which,
+for its festoons and furbelows, you could not sit; a fireplace
+draped, flounced, and frilled to the complete exclusion of fire.
+The young man's possessions were in picturesque disorder,
+and his apartment was pervaded by the odor of cigars,
+mingled with perfumes more inscrutable.  Newman thought it a damp,
+gloomy place to live in, and was puzzled by the obstructive
+and fragmentary character of the furniture.
+
+Bellegarde, according to the custom of his country talked very
+generously about himself, and unveiled the mysteries of his private
+history with an unsparing hand.  Inevitably, he had a vast deal
+to say about women, and he used frequently to indulge in sentimental
+and ironical apostrophes to these authors of his joys and woes.
+"Oh, the women, the women, and the things they have made me do!"
+he would exclaim with a lustrous eye.  "C'est egal, of all the follies
+and stupidities I have committed for them I would not have missed one!"
+On this subject Newman maintained an habitual reserve; to expatiate
+largely upon it had always seemed to him a proceeding vaguely
+analogous to the cooing of pigeons and the chattering of monkeys,
+and even inconsistent with a fully developed human character.
+But Bellegarde's confidences greatly amused him, and rarely
+displeased him, for the generous young Frenchman was not a cynic.
+"I really think," he had once said, "that I am not more depraved
+than most of my contemporaries.  They are tolerably depraved,
+my contemporaries!"  He said wonderfully pretty things about
+his female friends, and, numerous and various as they had been,
+declared that on the whole there was more good in them than harm.
+"But you are not to take that as advice," he added.  "As an
+authority I am very untrustworthy.  I'm prejudiced in their favor;
+I'm an IDEALIST!"  Newman listened to him with his impartial smile,
+and was glad, for his own sake, that he had fine feelings;
+but he mentally repudiated the idea of a Frenchman having discovered
+any merit in the amiable sex which he himself did not suspect.
+M. de Bellegarde, however, did not confine his conversation
+to the autobiographical channel; he questioned our hero largely
+as to the events of his own life, and Newman told him some better
+stories than any that Bellegarde carried in his budget.  He narrated
+his career, in fact, from the beginning, through all its variations,
+and whenever his companion's credulity, or his habits of gentility,
+appeared to protest, it amused him to heighten the color of the episode.
+Newman had sat with Western humorists in knots, round cast-iron stoves,
+and seen "tall" stories grow taller without toppling over, and his own
+imagination had learned the trick of piling up consistent wonders.
+Bellegarde's regular attitude at last became that of laughing self-defense;
+to maintain his reputation as an all-knowing Frenchman, he doubted
+of everything, wholesale.  The result of this was that Newman found
+it impossible to convince him of certain time-honored verities.
+
+"But the details don't matter," said M. de Bellegarde.
+"You have evidently had some surprising adventures; you have
+seen some strange sides of life, you have revolved to and fro
+over a whole continent as I walked up and down the Boulevard.
+You are a man of the world with a vengeance!  You have spent some deadly
+dull hours, and you have done some extremely disagreeable things:
+you have shoveled sand, as a boy, for supper, and you have
+eaten roast dog in a gold-diggers' camp.  You have stood
+casting up figures for ten hours at a time, and you have sat
+through Methodist sermons for the sake of looking at a pretty
+girl in another pew.  All that is rather stiff, as we say.
+But at any rate you have done something and you are something;
+you have used your will and you have made your fortune.
+You have not stupified yourself with debauchery and you
+have not mortgaged your fortune to social conveniences.
+You take things easily, and you have fewer prejudices even than I,
+who pretend to have none, but who in reality have three or four.
+Happy man, you are strong and you are free.  But what the deuce,"
+demanded the young man in conclusion, "do you propose to do with
+such advantages?  Really to use them you need a better world than this.
+There is nothing worth your while here."
+
+"Oh, I think there is something," said Newman.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Well," murmured Newman, "I will tell you some other time!"
+
+In this way our hero delayed from day to day broaching a subject
+which he had very much at heart.  Meanwhile, however, he was growing
+practically familiar with it; in other words, he had called again,
+three times, on Madame de Cintre.  On only two of these occasions
+had he found her at home, and on each of them she had other visitors.
+Her visitors were numerous and extremely loquacious,
+and they exacted much of their hostess's attention.
+She found time, however, to bestow a little of it on Newman,
+in an occasional vague smile, the very vagueness of which pleased him,
+allowing him as it did to fill it out mentally, both at the time
+and afterwards, with such meanings as most pleased him.
+He sat by without speaking, looking at the entrances and exits,
+the greetings and chatterings, of Madame de Cintre's visitors.
+He felt as if he were at the play, and as if his own speaking
+would be an interruption; sometimes he wished he had a book,
+to follow the dialogue; he half expected to see a woman in a white
+cap and pink ribbons come and offer him one for two francs.
+Some of the ladies looked at him very hard--or very soft,
+as you please; others seemed profoundly unconscious of his presence.
+The men looked only at Madame de Cintre.  This was inevitable;
+for whether one called her beautiful or not she entirely occupied
+and filled one's vision, just as an agreeable sound fills one's ear.
+Newman had but twenty distinct words with her, but he carried
+away an impression to which solemn promises could not have given
+a higher value.  She was part of the play that he was seeing acted,
+quite as much as her companions; but how she filled the stage
+and how much better she did it!  Whether she rose or seated herself;
+whether she went with her departing friends to the door and lifted
+up the heavy curtain as they passed out, and stood an instant
+looking after them and giving them the last nod; or whether she
+leaned back in her chair with her arms crossed and her eyes resting,
+listening and smiling; she gave Newman the feeling that he should
+like to have her always before him, moving slowly to and fro along
+the whole scale of expressive hospitality.  If it might be TO him,
+it would be well; if it might be FOR him, it would be still better!
+She was so tall and yet so light, so active and yet so still,
+so elegant and yet so simple, so frank and yet so mysterious!
+It was the mystery--it was what she was off the stage, as it were--
+that interested Newman most of all.  He could not have told you
+what warrant he had for talking about mysteries; if it had been
+his habit to express himself in poetic figures he might have said
+that in observing Madame de Cintre he seemed to see the vague circle
+which sometimes accompanies the partly-filled disk of the moon.
+It was not that she was reserved; on the contrary, she was as frank
+as flowing water.  But he was sure she had qualities which she
+herself did not suspect.
+
+He had abstained for several reasons from saying some of these things
+to Bellegarde.  One reason was that before proceeding to any act he was
+always circumspect, conjectural, contemplative; he had little eagerness,
+as became a man who felt that whenever he really began to move he walked
+with long steps.  And then, it simply pleased him not to speak--
+it occupied him, it excited him.  But one day Bellegarde had been dining
+with him, at a restaurant, and they had sat long over their dinner.
+On rising from it, Bellegarde proposed that, to help them through
+the rest of the evening, they should go and see Madame Dandelard.
+Madame Dandelard was a little Italian lady who had married a Frenchman
+who proved to be a rake and a brute and the torment of her life.
+Her husband had spent all her money, and then, lacking the means of obtaining
+more expensive pleasures, had taken, in his duller hours, to beating her.
+She had a blue spot somewhere, which she showed to several persons,
+including Bellegarde.  She had obtained a separation from her husband,
+collected the scraps of her fortune (they were very meagre)
+and come to live in Paris, where she was staying at a hotel garni.
+She was always looking for an apartment, and visiting, inquiringly,
+those of other people.  She was very pretty, very childlike, and she
+made very extraordinary remarks.  Bellegarde had made her acquaintance,
+and the source of his interest in her was, according to his own declaration,
+a curiosity as to what would become of her.  "She is poor, she is pretty,
+and she is silly," he said, "it seems to me she can go only one way.
+It's a pity, but it can't be helped.  I will give her six months.
+She has nothing to fear from me, but I am watching the process.
+I am curious to see just how things will go.  Yes, I know what you are
+going to say:  this horrible Paris hardens one's heart.  But it quickens
+one's wits, and it ends by teaching one a refinement of observation!
+To see this little woman's little drama play itself out, now, is, for me,
+an intellectual pleasure."
+
+"If she is going to throw herself away," Newman had said,
+"you ought to stop her."
+
+"Stop her?  How stop her?"
+
+"Talk to her; give her some good advice."
+
+Bellegarde laughed.  "Heaven deliver us both!  Imagine the situation!
+Go and advise her yourself."
+
+It was after this that Newman had gone with Bellegarde to see
+Madame Dandelard.  When they came away, Bellegarde reproached
+his companion.  "Where was your famous advice?" he asked.
+"I didn't hear a word of it."
+
+"Oh, I give it up," said Newman, simply.
+
+"Then you are as bad as I!" said Bellegarde.
+
+"No, because I don't take an 'intellectual pleasure'
+in her prospective adventures.  I don't in the least want
+to see her going down hill.  I had rather look the other way.
+But why," he asked, in a moment, "don't you get your sister
+to go and see her?"
+
+Bellegarde stared.  "Go and see Madame Dandelard--my sister?"
+
+"She might talk to her to very good purpose."
+
+Bellegarde shook his head with sudden gravity.  "My sister can't
+see that sort of person.  Madame Dandelard is nothing at all;
+they would never meet."
+
+"I should think," said Newman, "that your sister might see whom she pleased."
+And he privately resolved that after he knew her a little better he would
+ask Madame de Cintre to go and talk to the foolish little Italian lady.
+
+After his dinner with Bellegarde, on the occasion I have mentioned,
+he demurred to his companion's proposal that they should go again
+and listen to Madame Dandelard describe her sorrows and her bruises.
+
+"I have something better in mind," he said; "come home with me
+and finish the evening before my fire."
+
+Bellegarde always welcomed the prospect of a long stretch of conversation,
+and before long the two men sat watching the great blaze which scattered
+its scintillations over the high adornments of Newman's ball-room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+"Tell me something about your sister," Newman began abruptly.
+
+Bellegarde turned and gave him a quick look.  "Now that I think of it,
+you have never yet asked me a question about her."
+
+"I know that very well."
+
+"If it is because you don't trust me, you are very right," said Bellegarde.
+"I can't talk of her rationally.  I admire her too much."
+
+"Talk of her as you can," rejoined Newman.  "Let yourself go."
+
+"Well, we are very good friends; we are such a brother and sister
+as have not been seen since Orestes and Electra.  You have seen her;
+you know what she is:  tall, thin, light, imposing, and gentle,
+half a grande dame and half an angel; a mixture of pride and humility,
+of the eagle and the dove.  She looks like a statue which had failed
+as stone, resigned itself to its grave defects, and come to life as flesh
+and blood, to wear white capes and long trains.  All I can say is that
+she really possesses every merit that her face, her glance, her smile,
+the tone of her voice, lead you to expect; it is saying a great deal.
+As a general thing, when a woman seems very charming, I should say 'Beware!'
+But in proportion as Claire seems charming you may fold your arms
+and let yourself float with the current; you are safe.  She is so good!
+I have never seen a woman half so perfect or so complete.  She has everything;
+that is all I can say about her.  There!"  Bellegarde concluded;
+"I told you I should rhapsodize."
+
+Newman was silent a while, as if he were turning over his companion's words.
+"She is very good, eh?" he repeated at last.
+
+"Divinely good!"
+
+"Kind, charitable, gentle, generous?"
+
+"Generosity itself; kindness double-distilled!"
+
+"Is she clever?"
+
+"She is the most intelligent woman I know.  Try her, some day,
+with something difficult, and you will see."
+
+"Is she fond of admiration?"
+
+"Parbleu!" cried Bellegarde; "what woman is not?"
+
+"Ah, when they are too fond of admiration they commit all kinds
+of follies to get it."
+
+"I did not say she was too fond!"  Bellegarde exclaimed.
+"Heaven forbid I should say anything so idiotic.  She is not too anything!
+If I were to say she was ugly, I should not mean she was too ugly.
+She is fond of pleasing, and if you are pleased she is grateful.
+If you are not pleased, she lets it pass and thinks the worst neither
+of you nor of herself.  I imagine, though, she hopes the saints
+in heaven are, for I am sure she is incapable of trying to please
+by any means of which they would disapprove."
+
+"Is she grave or gay?" asked Newman.
+
+"She is both; not alternately, for she is always the same.
+There is gravity in her gayety, and gayety in her gravity.
+But there is no reason why she should be particularly gay."
+
+"Is she unhappy?"
+
+"I won't say that, for unhappiness is according as one takes things,
+and Claire takes them according to some receipt communicated
+to her by the Blessed Virgin in a vision.  To be unhappy is
+to be disagreeable, which, for her, is out of the question.
+So she has arranged her circumstances so as to be happy in them."
+
+"She is a philosopher," said Newman.
+
+"No, she is simply a very nice woman."
+
+"Her circumstances, at any rate, have been disagreeable?"
+
+Bellegarde hesitated a moment--a thing he very rarely did.
+"Oh, my dear fellow, if I go into the history of my family I
+shall give you more than you bargain for."
+
+"No, on the contrary, I bargain for that," said Newman.
+
+"We shall have to appoint a special seance, then, beginning early.
+Suffice it for the present that Claire has not slept on roses.
+She made at eighteen a marriage that was expected to be brilliant,
+but that turned out like a lamp that goes out; all smoke and bad smell.
+M. de Cintre was sixty years old, and an odious old gentleman.
+He lived, however, but a short time, and after his death his family
+pounced upon his money, brought a lawsuit against his widow,
+and pushed things very hard.  Their case was a good one,
+for M. de Cintre, who had been trustee for some of his relatives,
+appeared to have been guilty of some very irregular practices.
+In the course of the suit some revelations were made as to his
+private history which my sister found so displeasing that she
+ceased to defend herself and washed her hands of the property.
+This required some pluck, for she was between two fires,
+her husband's family opposing her and her own family forcing her.
+My mother and my brother wished her to cleave to what they regarded
+as her rights.  But she resisted firmly, and at last bought
+her freedom-obtained my mother's assent to dropping the suit
+at the price of a promise."
+
+"What was the promise?"
+
+"To do anything else, for the next ten years, that was asked
+of her--anything, that is, but marry."
+
+"She had disliked her husband very much?"
+
+"No one knows how much!"
+
+"The marriage had been made in your horrible French way," Newman continued,
+"made by the two families, without her having any voice?"
+
+"It was a chapter for a novel.  She saw M. de Cintre for the first time
+a month before the wedding, after everything, to the minutest detail,
+had been arranged.  She turned white when she looked at him,
+and white remained till her wedding-day. The evening before the
+ceremony she swooned away, and she spent the whole night in sobs.
+My mother sat holding her two hands, and my brother walked up
+and down the room.  I declared it was revolting and told my sister
+publicly that if she would refuse, downright, I would stand by her.
+I was told to go about my business, and she became Comtesse de Cintre."
+
+"Your brother," said Newman, reflectively, "must be a very nice young man."
+
+"He is very nice, though he is not young.  He is upward of fifty,
+fifteen years my senior.  He has been a father to my sister and me.
+He is a very remarkable man; he has the best manners in France.
+He is extremely clever; indeed he is very learned.  He is writing
+a history of The Princesses of France Who Never Married."
+This was said by Bellegarde with extreme gravity, looking straight
+at Newman, and with an eye that betokened no mental reservation;
+or that, at least, almost betokened none.
+
+Newman perhaps discovered there what little there was, for he presently said,
+"You don't love your brother."
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Bellegarde, ceremoniously; "well-bred people
+always love their brothers."
+
+"Well, I don't love him, then!"  Newman answered.
+
+"Wait till you know him!" rejoined Bellegarde, and this time he smiled.
+
+"Is your mother also very remarkable?"  Newman asked, after a pause.
+
+"For my mother," said Bellegarde, now with intense gravity,
+"I have the highest admiration.  She is a very extraordinary woman.
+You cannot approach her without perceiving it."
+
+"She is the daughter, I believe, of an English nobleman."
+
+"Of the Earl of St. Dunstan's."
+
+"Is the Earl of St. Dunstan's a very old family?"
+
+"So-so; the sixteenth century.  It is on my father's side that we
+go back--back, back, back.  The family antiquaries themselves
+lose breath.  At last they stop, panting and fanning themselves,
+somewhere in the ninth century, under Charlemagne.
+That is where we begin."
+
+"There is no mistake about it?" said Newman.
+
+"I'm sure I hope not.  We have been mistaken at least for several centuries."
+
+"And you have always married into old families?"
+
+"As a rule; though in so long a stretch of time there have been
+some exceptions.  Three or four Bellegardes, in the seventeenth
+and eighteenth centuries, took wives out of the bourgoisie--
+married lawyers' daughters."
+
+"A lawyer's daughter; that's very bad, is it?" asked Newman.
+
+"Horrible! one of us, in the middle ages, did better:
+he married a beggar-maid, like King Cophetua.  That was really better;
+it was like marrying a bird or a monkey; one didn't have to think
+about her family at all.  Our women have always done well;
+they have never even gone into the petite noblesse.
+There is, I believe, not a case on record of a misalliance
+among the women."
+
+Newman turned this over for a while, and, then at last he said, "You offered,
+the first time you came to see me to render me any service you could.
+I told you that some time I would mention something you might do.
+Do you remember?"
+
+"Remember?  I have been counting the hours."
+
+"Very well; here's your chance.  Do what you can to make your sister
+think well of me."
+
+Bellegarde stared, with a smile.  "Why, I'm sure she thinks as well of you
+as possible, already."
+
+"An opinion founded on seeing me three or four times?
+That is putting me off with very little.  l want something more.
+I have been thinking of it a good deal, and at last I have decided
+to tell you.  I should like very much to marry Madame de Cintre."
+
+Bellegarde had been looking at him with quickened expectancy,
+and with the smile with which he had greeted Newman's allusion
+to his promised request.  At this last announcement he continued
+to gaze; but his smile went through two or three curious phases.
+It felt, apparently, a momentary impulse to broaden;
+but this it immediately checked.  Then it remained for some
+instants taking counsel with itself, at the end of which it
+decreed a retreat.  It slowly effaced itself and left a look
+of seriousness modified by the desire not to be rude.
+Extreme surprise had come into the Count Valentin's face;
+but he had reflected that it would be uncivil to leave it there.
+And yet, what the deuce was he to do with it?  He got up,
+in his agitation, and stood before the chimney-piece, still
+looking at Newman.  He was a longer time thinking what to say
+than one would have expected.
+
+"If you can't render me the service I ask," said Newman,
+"say it out!"
+
+"Let me hear it again, distinctly," said Bellegarde.
+"It's very important, you know.  I shall plead your cause
+with my sister, because you want--you want to marry her?
+That's it, eh?"
+
+"Oh, I don't say plead my cause, exactly; I shall try and do that myself.
+But say a good word for me, now and then--let her know that you think
+well of me."
+
+At this, Bellegarde gave a little light laugh.
+
+"What I want chiefly, after all," Newman went on, "is just to let you
+know what I have in mind.  I suppose that is what you expect, isn't it?
+I want to do what is customary over here.  If there is any thing
+particular to be done, let me know and l will do it.  I wouldn't
+for the world approach Madame de Cintre without all the proper forms.
+If I ought to go and tell your mother, why I will go and tell her.
+I will go and tell your brother, even.  I will go and tell any one
+you please.  As I don't know any one else, I begin by telling you.
+But that, if it is a social obligation, is a pleasure as well."
+
+"Yes, I see--I see," said Bellegarde, lightly stroking his chin.
+"You have a very right feeling about it, but I'm glad
+you have begun with me."  He paused, hesitated, and then
+turned away and walked slowly the length of the room.
+Newman got up and stood leaning against the mantel-shelf,
+with his hands in his pockets, watching Bellegarde's promenade.
+The young Frenchman came back and stopped in front of him.
+"I give it up," he said; "I will not pretend I am not surprised.
+I am--hugely!  Ouf!  It's a relief."
+
+"That sort of news is always a surprise," said Newman.
+"No matter what you have done, people are never prepared.
+But if you are so surprised, I hope at least you are pleased."
+
+"Come!" said Bellegarde.  "I am going to be tremendously frank.
+I don't know whether I am pleased or horrified."
+
+"If you are pleased, I shall be glad," said Newman, "and I
+shall be--encouraged.  If you are horrified, I shall be sorry,
+but I shall not be discouraged.  You must make the best of it."
+
+"That is quite right--that is your only possible attitude.
+You are perfectly serious?"
+
+"Am I a Frenchman, that I should not be?" asked Newman.
+"But why is it, by the bye, that you should be horrified?"
+
+Bellegarde raised his hand to the back of his head and rubbed his hair
+quickly up and down, thrusting out the tip of his tongue as he did so.
+"Why, you are not noble, for instance," he said.
+
+"The devil I am not!" exclaimed Newman.
+
+"Oh," said Bellegarde a little more seriously, "I did not know
+you had a title."
+
+"A title?  What do you mean by a title?" asked Newman.
+"A count, a duke, a marquis?  I don't know anything about that,
+I don't know who is and who is not.  But I say I am noble.
+I don't exactly know what you mean by it, but it's a fine word
+and a fine idea; I put in a claim to it."
+
+"But what have you to show, my dear fellow, what proofs?"
+
+"Anything you please!  But you don't suppose I am going to undertake
+to prove that I am noble.  It is for you to prove the contrary."
+
+"That's easily done.  You have manufactured wash-tubs."
+
+Newman stared a moment.  "Therefore I am not noble?  I don't see it.
+Tell me something I have NOT done--something I cannot do."
+
+"You cannot marry a woman like Madame de Cintre for the asking."
+
+"I believe you mean," said Newman slowly, "that I am not good enough."
+
+"Brutally speaking--yes!"
+
+Bellegarde had hesitated a moment, and while he hesitated
+Newman's attentive glance had grown somewhat eager.
+In answer to these last words he for a moment said nothing.
+He simply blushed a little.  Then he raised his eyes to the ceiling
+and stood looking at one of the rosy cherubs that was painted upon it.
+"Of course I don't expect to marry any woman for the asking,"
+he said at last; "I expect first to make myself acceptable to her.
+She must like me, to begin with.  But that I am not good enough
+to make a trial is rather a surprise."
+
+Bellegarde wore a look of mingled perplexity, sympathy, and amusement.
+"You should not hesitate, then, to go up to-morrow and ask a duchess
+to marry you?"
+
+"Not if I thought she would suit me.  But I am very fastidious;
+she might not at all."
+
+Bellegarde's amusement began to prevail.  "And you should be surprised
+if she refused you?"
+
+Newman hesitated a moment.  "It sounds conceited to say yes,
+but nevertheless I think I should.  For I should make
+a very handsome offer."
+
+"What would it be?"
+
+"Everything she wishes.  If I get hold of a woman that comes
+up to my standard, I shall think nothing too good for her.
+I have been a long time looking, and I find such women are rare.
+To combine the qualities I require seems to be difficult,
+but when the difficulty is vanquished it deserves a reward.
+My wife shall have a good position, and I'm not afraid to say
+that I shall be a good husband."
+
+"And these qualities that you require--what are they?"
+
+"Goodness, beauty, intelligence, a fine education, personal elegance--
+everything, in a word, that makes a splendid woman."
+
+"And noble birth, evidently," said Bellegarde.
+
+"Oh, throw that in, by all means, if it's there.
+The more the better!"
+
+"And my sister seems to you to have all these things?"
+
+"She is exactly what I have been looking for.  She is my dream realized."
+
+"And you would make her a very good husband?"
+
+"That is what I wanted you to tell her."
+
+Bellegarde laid his hand on his companion's arm a moment, looked at him
+with his head on one side, from head to foot, and then, with a loud laugh,
+and shaking the other hand in the air, turned away.  He walked again
+the length of the room, and again he came back and stationed himself
+in front of Newman.  "All this is very interesting--it is very curious.
+In what I said just now I was speaking, not for myself, but for my tradition,
+my superstitions.  For myself, really, your proposal tickles me.
+It startled me at first, but the more I think of it the more I see in it.
+It's no use attempting to explain anything; you won't understand me.
+After all, I don't see why you need; it's no great loss."
+
+"Oh, if there is anything more to explain, try it!  I want to proceed
+with my eyes open.  I will do my best to understand."
+
+"No," said Bellegarde, "it's disagreeable to me; I give it up.
+I liked you the first time I saw you, and I will abide by that.
+It would be quite odious for me to come talking to you as if I could
+patronize you.  I have told you before that I envy you; vous m'imposez,
+as we say.  I didn't know you much until within five minutes.
+So we will let things go, and I will say nothing to you that,
+if our positions were reversed, you would not say to me."
+
+I do not know whether in renouncing the mysterious opportunity to which
+he alluded, Bellegarde felt that he was doing something very generous.
+If so, he was not rewarded; his generosity was not appreciated.
+Newman quite failed to recognize the young Frenchman's power to wound
+his feelings, and he had now no sense of escaping or coming off easily.
+He did not thank his companion even with a glance.  "My eyes
+are open, though," he said, "so far as that you have practically told
+me that your family and your friends will turn up their noses at me.
+I have never thought much about the reasons that make it proper for
+people to turn up their noses, and so I can only decide the question
+off-hand. Looking at it in that way I can't see anything in it.
+I simply think, if you want to know, that I'm as good as the best.
+Who the best are, I don't pretend to say.  I have never thought much
+about that either.  To tell the truth, I have always had rather
+a good opinion of myself; a man who is successful can't help it.
+But I will admit that I was conceited.  What I don't say yes to is that I
+don't stand high--as high as any one else.  This is a line of speculation
+I should not have chosen, but you must remember you began it yourself.
+I should never have dreamed that I was on the defensive, or that I
+had to justify myself; but if your people will have it so, I will
+do my best."
+
+"But you offered, a while ago, to make your court as we say,
+to my mother and my brother."
+
+"Damn it!" cried Newman, "I want to be polite."
+
+"Good!" rejoined Bellegarde; "this will go far, it will be very entertaining.
+Excuse my speaking of it in that cold-blooded fashion, but the matter must,
+of necessity, be for me something of a spectacle.  It's positively exciting.
+But apart from that I sympathize with you, and I shall be actor,
+so far as I can, as well as spectator.  You are a capital fellow;
+I believe in you and I back you.  The simple fact that you appreciate
+my sister will serve as the proof I was asking for.  All men are equal--
+especially men of taste!"
+
+"Do you think," asked Newman presently, "that Madame de Cintre
+is determined not to marry?"
+
+"That is my impression.  But that is not against you;
+it's for you to make her change her mind."
+
+"I am afraid it will be hard," said Newman, gravely.
+
+"I don't think it will be easy.  In a general way I don't see why a widow
+should ever marry again.  She has gained the benefits of matrimony--
+freedom and consideration--and she has got rid of the drawbacks.
+Why should she put her head into the noose again?  Her usual motive
+is ambition:  if a man can offer her a great position, make her a princess
+or an ambassadress she may think the compensation sufficient."
+
+"And--in that way--is Madame de Cintre ambitious?"
+
+"Who knows?" said Bellegarde, with a profound shrug.
+"I don't pretend to say all that she is or all that she is not.
+I think she might be touched by the prospect of becoming
+the wife of a great man.  But in a certain way, I believe,
+whatever she does will be the IMPROBABLE.  Don't be too confident,
+but don't absolutely doubt.  Your best chance for success will be
+precisely in being, to her mind, unusual, unexpected, original.
+Don't try to be any one else; be simply yourself, out and out.
+Something or other can't fail to come of it; I am very curious
+to see what."
+
+"I am much obliged to you for your advice," said Newman.
+"And," he added with a smile, "I am glad, for your sake,
+I am going to be so amusing."
+
+"It will be more than amusing," said Bellegarde;
+"it will be inspiring.  I look at it from my point of view,
+and you from yours.  After all, anything for a change!
+And only yesterday I was yawning so as to dislocate my jaw,
+and declaring that there was nothing new under the sun!
+If it isn't new to see you come into the family as a suitor,
+I am very much mistaken.  Let me say that, my dear fellow;
+I won't call it anything else, bad or good; I will simply call it NEW"
+And overcome with a sense of the novelty thus foreshadowed,
+Valentin de Bellegarde threw himself into a deep arm-chair before
+the fire, and, with a fixed, intense smile, seemed to read a vision
+of it in the flame of the logs.  After a while he looked up.
+"Go ahead, my boy; you have my good wishes," he said.
+"But it is really a pity you don't understand me, that you
+don't know just what I am doing."
+
+"Oh," said Newman, laughing, "don't do anything wrong.
+Leave me to myself, rather, or defy me, out and out.
+I wouldn't lay any load on your conscience."
+
+Bellegarde sprang up again; he was evidently excited;
+there was a warmer spark even than usual in his eye.
+"You never will understand--you never will know," he said;
+"and if you succeed, and I turn out to have helped you,
+you will never be grateful, not as I shall deserve you should be.
+You will be an excellent fellow always, but you will not be grateful.
+But it doesn't matter, for I shall get my own fun out of it."
+And he broke into an extravagant laugh.  "You look puzzled,"
+he added; "you look almost frightened."
+
+"It IS a pity," said Newman, "that I don't understand you.
+I shall lose some very good jokes."
+
+"I told you, you remember, that we were very strange people,"
+Bellegarde went on.  "I give you warning again.  We are!
+My mother is strange, my brother is strange, and I verily
+believe that I am stranger than either.  You will even find
+my sister a little strange.  Old trees have crooked branches,
+old houses have queer cracks, old races have odd secrets.
+Remember that we are eight hundred years old!"
+
+"Very good," said Newman; "that's the sort of thing I came to Europe for.
+You come into my programme."
+
+"Touchez-la, then," said Bellegarde, putting out his hand.
+"It's a bargain:  I accept you; I espouse your cause.  It's because I
+like you, in a great measure; but that is not the only reason!"
+And he stood holding Newman's hand and looking at him askance.
+
+"What is the other one?"
+
+"I am in the Opposition.  I dislike some one else."
+
+"Your brother?" asked Newman, in his unmodulated voice.
+
+Bellegarde laid his fingers upon his lips with a whispered HUSH!
+"Old races have strange secrets!" he said.  "Put yourself into motion,
+come and see my sister, and be assured of my sympathy!"
+And on this he took his leave.
+
+Newman dropped into a chair before his fire, and sat a long time
+staring into the blaze.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+He went to see Madame de Cintre the next day, and was informed
+by the servant that she was at home.  He passed as usual up
+the large, cold staircase and through a spacious vestibule above,
+where the walls seemed all composed of small door panels,
+touched with long-faded gilding; whence he was ushered into
+the sitting-room in which he had already been received.
+It was empty, and the servant told him that Madame la Comtesse
+would presently appear.  He had time, while he waited, to wonder
+whether Bellegarde had seen his sister since the evening before,
+and whether in this case he had spoken to her of their talk.
+In this case Madame de Cintre's receiving him was an encouragement.
+He felt a certain trepidation as he reflected that she might come
+in with the knowledge of his supreme admiration and of the project
+he had built upon it in her eyes; but the feeling was not disagreeable.
+Her face could wear no look that would make it less beautiful,
+and he was sure beforehand that however she might take the proposal
+he had in reserve, she would not take it in scorn or in irony.
+He had a feeling that if she could only read the bottom of his
+heart and measure the extent of his good will toward her,
+she would be entirely kind.
+
+She came in at last, after so long an interval that he wondered whether
+she had been hesitating.  She smiled with her usual frankness, and held
+out her hand; she looked at him straight with her soft and luminous eyes,
+and said, without a tremor in her voice, that she was glad to see him
+and that she hoped he was well.  He found in her what he had found before--
+that faint perfume of a personal shyness worn away by contact with the world,
+but the more perceptible the more closely you approached her.  This lingering
+diffidence seemed to give a peculiar value to what was definite and assured
+in her manner; it made it seem like an accomplishment, a beautiful talent,
+something that one might compare to an exquisite touch in a pianist.
+It was, in fact, Madame de Cintre's "authority," as they say of artists,
+that especially impressed and fascinated Newman; he always came back
+to the feeling that when he should complete himself by taking a wife,
+that was the way he should like his wife to interpret him to the world.
+The only trouble, indeed, was that when the instrument was so perfect it
+seemed to interpose too much between you and the genius that used it.
+Madame de Cintre gave Newman the sense of an elaborate education,
+of her having passed through mysterious ceremonies and processes of culture
+in her youth, of her having been fashioned and made flexible to certain
+exalted social needs.  All this, as I have affirmed, made her seem
+rare and precious--a very expensive article, as he would have said,
+and one which a man with an ambition to have everything about him
+of the best would find it highly agreeable to possess.  But looking
+at the matter with an eye to private felicity, Newman wondered where,
+in so exquisite a compound, nature and art showed their dividing line.
+Where did the special intention separate from the habit of good manners?
+Where did urbanity end and sincerity begin?  Newman asked himself
+these questions even while he stood ready to accept the admired object
+in all its complexity; he felt that he could do so in profound security,
+and examine its mechanism afterwards, at leisure.
+
+"I am very glad to find you alone," he said.  "You know I
+have never had such good luck before."
+
+"But you have seemed before very well contented with your luck,"
+said Madame de Cintre.  "You have sat and watched my visitors
+with an air of quiet amusement.  What have you thought of them?"
+
+"Oh, I have thought the ladies were very elegant and very graceful,
+and wonderfully quick at repartee.  But what I have chiefly
+thought has been that they only helped me to admire you."
+This was not gallantry on Newman's part--an art in which he was
+quite unversed.  It was simply the instinct of the practical man,
+who had made up his mind what he wanted, and was now beginning
+to take active steps to obtain it.
+
+Madame de Cintre started slightly, and raised her eyebrows; she had
+evidently not expected so fervid a compliment.  "Oh, in that case,"
+she said with a laugh, "your finding me alone is not good luck for me.
+I hope some one will come in quickly."
+
+"I hope not," said Newman.  "I have something particular to say to you.
+Have you seen your brother?"
+
+"Yes, I saw him an hour ago."
+
+"Did he tell you that he had seen me last night?"
+
+"He said so."
+
+"And did he tell you what we had talked about?"
+
+Madame de Cintre hesitated a moment.  As Newman asked
+these questions she had grown a little pale, as if she
+regarded what was coming as necessary, but not as agreeable.
+"Did you give him a message to me?" she asked.
+
+"It was not exactly a message--I asked him to render me a service."
+
+"The service was to sing your praises, was it not?"
+And she accompanied this question with a little smile,
+as if to make it easier to herself.
+
+"Yes, that is what it really amounts to," said Newman.
+"Did he sing my praises?"
+
+"He spoke very well of you.  But when I know that it was
+by your special request, of course I must take his eulogy
+with a grain of salt."
+
+"Oh, that makes no difference," said Newman.  "Your brother would
+not have spoken well of me unless he believed what he was saying.
+He is too honest for that."
+
+"Are you very deep?" said Madame de Cintre.  "Are you trying to please
+me by praising my brother?  I confess it is a good way."
+
+"For me, any way that succeeds will be good.  I will praise your
+brother all day, if that will help me.  He is a noble little fellow.
+He has made me feel, in promising to do what he can to help me,
+that I can depend upon him."
+
+"Don't make too much of that," said Madame de Cintre.
+"He can help you very little."
+
+"Of course I must work my way myself.  I know that very well;
+I only want a chance to.  In consenting to see me, after what
+he told you, you almost seem to be giving me a chance."
+
+"I am seeing you," said Madame de Cintre, slowly and gravely,
+"because I promised my brother I would."
+
+"Blessings on your brother's head!" cried Newman.  "What I told him
+last evening was this:  that I admired you more than any woman I had
+ever seen, and that I should like immensely to make you my wife."
+He uttered these words with great directness and firmness,
+and without any sense of confusion.  He was full of his idea,
+he had completely mastered it, and he seemed to look down on Madame
+de Cintre, with all her gathered elegance, from the height of his
+bracing good conscience.  It is probable that this particular
+tone and manner were the very best he could have hit upon.
+Yet the light, just visibly forced smile with which his companion
+had listened to him died away, and she sat looking at him
+with her lips parted and her face as solemn as a tragic mask.
+There was evidently something very painful to her in the scene
+to which he was subjecting her, and yet her impatience of it found
+no angry voice.  Newman wondered whether he was hurting her;
+he could not imagine why the liberal devotion he meant to express
+should be disagreeable.  He got up and stood before her,
+leaning one hand on the chimney-piece. "I know I have seen you
+very little to say this," he said, "so little that it may make
+what I say seem disrespectful.  That is my misfortune!  I could have
+said it the first time I saw you.  Really, I had seen you before;
+I had seen you in imagination; you seemed almost an old friend.
+So what I say is not mere gallantry and compliments and nonsense--
+I can't talk that way, I don't know how, and I wouldn't, to you,
+if I could.  It's as serious as such words can be.  I feel as if I
+knew you and knew what a beautiful, admirable woman you are.
+I shall know better, perhaps, some day, but I have a general notion now.
+You are just the woman I have been looking for, except that you
+are far more perfect.  I won't make any protestations and vows,
+but you can trust me.  It is very soon, I know, to say all this;
+it is almost offensive.  But why not gain time if one can?
+And if you want time to reflect--of course you do--the sooner
+you begin, the better for me.  I don't know what you think of me;
+but there is no great mystery about me; you see what I am.
+Your brother told me that my antecedents and occupations were against me;
+that your family stands, somehow, on a higher level than I do.
+That is an idea which of course I don't understand and don't accept.
+But you don't care anything about that.  I can assure you
+that I am a very solid fellow, and that if I give my mind
+to it I can arrange things so that in a very few years I shall
+not need to waste time in explaining who I am and what I am.
+You will decide for yourself whether you like me or not.
+What there is you see before you.  I honestly believe I have
+no hidden vices or nasty tricks.  I am kind, kind, kind!
+Everything that a man can give a woman I will give you.
+I have a large fortune, a very large fortune; some day, if you
+will allow me, I will go into details.  If you want brilliancy,
+everything in the way of brilliancy that money can give you,
+you shall have.  And as regards anything you may give up,
+don't take for granted too much that its place cannot be filled.
+Leave that to me; I'll take care of you; I shall know what you need.
+Energy and ingenuity can arrange everything.  I'm a strong man!
+There, I have said what I had on my heart!  It was better
+to get it off.  I am very sorry if it's disagreeable to you;
+but think how much better it is that things should be clear.
+Don't answer me now, if you don't wish it.  Think about it,
+think about it as slowly as you please.  Of course I haven't said,
+I can't say, half I mean, especially about my admiration for you.
+But take a favorable view of me; it will only be just."
+
+During this speech, the longest that Newman had ever made,
+Madame de Cintre kept her gaze fixed upon him, and it
+expanded at the last into a sort of fascinated stare.
+When he ceased speaking she lowered her eyes and sat
+for some moments looking down and straight before her.
+Then she slowly rose to her feet, and a pair of exceptionally
+keen eyes would have perceived that she was trembling a little
+in the movement.  She still looked extremely serious.
+"I am very much obliged to you for your offer," she said.
+"It seems very strange, but I am glad you spoke without waiting
+any longer.  It is better the subject should be dismissed.
+I appreciate all you say; you do me great honor.
+But I have decided not to marry."
+
+"Oh, don't say that!" cried Newman, in a tone absolutely naif
+from its pleading and caressing cadence.  She had turned away,
+and it made her stop a moment with her back to him.
+"Think better of that.  You are too young, too beautiful, too much
+made to be happy and to make others happy.  If you are afraid
+of losing your freedom, I can assure you that this freedom here,
+this life you now lead, is a dreary bondage to what I will offer you.
+You shall do things that I don't think you have ever thought of.
+I will take you anywhere in the wide world that you propose.
+Are you unhappy?  You give me a feeling that you are unhappy.
+You have no right to be, or to be made so.  Let me come in and put
+an end to it."
+
+Madame de Cintre stood there a moment longer, looking away from him.
+If she was touched by the way he spoke, the thing was conceivable.
+His voice, always very mild and interrogative, gradually became as soft and
+as tenderly argumentative as if he had been talking to a much-loved child.
+He stood watching her, and she presently turned round again, but this
+time she did not look at him, and she spoke in a quietness in which there
+was a visible trace of effort.
+
+"There are a great many reasons why I should not marry," she said,
+"more than I can explain to you.  As for my happiness, I am very happy.
+Your offer seems strange to me, for more reasons also than I can say.
+Of course you have a perfect right to make it.  But I cannot accept it--
+it is impossible.  Please never speak of this matter again.
+If you cannot promise me this, I must ask you not to come back."
+
+"Why is it impossible?"  Newman demanded.  "You may think it is,
+at first, without its really being so.  I didn't expect you to be pleased
+at first, but I do believe that if you will think of it a good while,
+you may be satisfied."
+
+"I don't know you," said Madame de Cintre.  "Think how little
+I know you."
+
+"Very little, of course, and therefore I don't ask for your ultimatum
+on the spot.  I only ask you not to say no, and to let me hope.
+I will wait as long as you desire.  Meanwhile you can see more of me
+and know me better, look at me as a possible husband--as a candidate--
+and make up your mind."
+
+Something was going on, rapidly, in Madame de Cintre's thoughts;
+she was weighing a question there, beneath Newman's eyes, weighing it
+and deciding it.  "From the moment I don't very respectfully beg you
+to leave the house and never return," she said, "I listen to you,
+I seem to give you hope.  I HAVE listened to you--against my judgment.
+It is because you are eloquent.  If I had been told this morning that I
+should consent to consider you as a possible husband, I should have
+thought my informant a little crazy.  I AM listening to you, you see!"
+And she threw her hands out for a moment and let them drop with a gesture
+in which there was just the slightest expression of appealing weakness.
+
+"Well, as far as saying goes, I have said everything," said Newman.
+"I believe in you, without restriction, and I think all the good
+of you that it is possible to think of a human creature.
+I firmly believe that in marrying me you will be SAFE.
+As I said just now," he went on with a smile, "I have no bad ways.
+I can DO so much for you.  And if you are afraid that I am
+not what you have been accustomed to, not refined and delicate
+and punctilious, you may easily carry that too far.  I AM delicate!
+You shall see!"
+
+Madame de Cintre walked some distance away, and paused before a great plant,
+an azalea, which was flourishing in a porcelain tub before her window.
+She plucked off one of the flowers and, twisting it in her fingers,
+retraced her steps.  Then she sat down in silence, and her attitude seemed
+to be a consent that Newman should say more.
+
+"Why should you say it is impossible you should marry?" he continued.
+"The only thing that could make it really impossible would be your being
+already married.  Is it because you have been unhappy in marriage?
+That is all the more reason!  Is it because your family exert a pressure
+upon you, interfere with you, annoy you?  That is still another reason;
+you ought to be perfectly free, and marriage will make you so.
+I don't say anything against your family--understand that!" added Newman,
+with an eagerness which might have made a perspicacious observer smile.
+"Whatever way you feel toward them is the right way, and anything that you
+should wish me to do to make myself agreeable to them I will do as well
+as I know how.  Depend upon that!"
+
+Madame de Cintre rose again and came toward the fireplace, near which
+Newman was standing.  The expression of pain and embarrassment had
+passed out of her face, and it was illuminated with something which,
+this time at least, Newman need not have been perplexed whether
+to attribute to habit or to intention, to art or to nature.
+She had the air of a woman who has stepped across the frontier
+of friendship and, looking around her, finds the region vast.
+A certain checked and controlled exaltation seemed mingled with the usual
+level radiance of her glance.  "I will not refuse to see you again,"
+she said, "because much of what you have said has given me pleasure.
+But I will see you only on this condition:  that you say nothing
+more in the same way for a long time."
+
+"For how long?"
+
+"For six months.  It must be a solemn promise."
+
+"Very well, I promise."
+
+"Good-by, then," she said, and extended her hand.
+
+He held it a moment, as if he were going to say something more.
+But he only looked at her; then he took his departure.
+
+That evening, on the Boulevard, he met Valentin de Bellegarde.
+After they had exchanged greetings, Newman told him that he had seen
+Madame de Cintre a few hours before.
+
+"I know it," said Bellegarde.  "I dined in the Rue de l'Universite."
+And then, for some moments, both men were silent.
+Newman wished to ask Bellegarde what visible impression his visit
+had made and the Count Valentin had a question of his own.
+Bellegarde spoke first.
+
+"It's none of my business, but what the deuce did you say to my sister?"
+
+"I am willing to tell you," said Newman, "that I made her
+an offer of marriage."
+
+"Already!"  And the young man gave a whistle.  "'Time is money!'
+Is that what you say in America?  And Madame de Cintre?" he added,
+with an interrogative inflection.
+
+"She did not accept my offer."
+
+"She couldn't, you know, in that way."
+
+"But I'm to see her again," said Newman.
+
+"Oh, the strangeness of woman!" exclaimed Bellegarde.  Then he stopped,
+and held Newman off at arms'-length. "I look at you with respect!"
+he exclaimed.  "You have achieved what we call a personal success!
+Immediately, now, I must present you to my brother."
+
+"Whenever you please!" said Newman.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Newman continued to see his friends the Tristrams with a good deal
+of frequency, though if you had listened to Mrs. Tristram's account
+of the matter you would have supposed that they had been cynically
+repudiated for the sake of grander acquaintance.  "We were all
+very well so long as we had no rivals--we were better than nothing.
+But now that you have become the fashion, and have your pick every
+day of three invitations to dinner, we are tossed into the corner.
+I am sure it is very good of you to come and see us once a month;
+I wonder you don't send us your cards in an envelope.  When you do, pray have
+them with black edges; it will be for the death of my last illusion."
+It was in this incisive strain that Mrs. Tristram moralized over Newman's
+so-called neglect, which was in reality a most exemplary constancy.
+Of course she was joking, but there was always something ironical
+in her jokes, as there was always something jocular in her gravity.
+
+"I know no better proof that I have treated you very well,"
+Newman had said, "than the fact that you make so free with my character.
+Familiarity breeds contempt; I have made myself too cheap.
+If I had a little proper pride I would stay away a while,
+and when you asked me to dinner say I was going to the Princess
+Borealska's. But I have not any pride where my pleasure is concerned,
+and to keep you in the humor to see me--if you must see me
+only to call me bad names--I will agree to anything you choose;
+I will admit that I am the biggest snob in Paris."  Newman, in fact,
+had declined an invitation personally given by the Princess Borealska,
+an inquiring Polish lady to whom he had been presented, on the ground
+that on that particular day he always dined at Mrs. Tristram's;
+and it was only a tenderly perverse theory of his hostess of
+the Avenue d'Iena that he was faithless to his early friendships.
+She needed the theory to explain a certain moral irritation
+by which she was often visited; though, if this explanation
+was unsound, a deeper analyst than I must give the right one.
+Having launched our hero upon the current which was bearing him
+so rapidly along, she appeared but half-pleased at its swiftness.
+She had succeeded too well; she had played her game too cleverly
+and she wished to mix up the cards.  Newman had told her,
+in due season, that her friend was "satisfactory."
+The epithet was not romantic, but Mrs. Tristram had no difficulty in
+perceiving that, in essentials, the feeling which lay beneath it was.
+Indeed, the mild, expansive brevity with which it was uttered,
+and a certain look, at once appealing and inscrutable, that issued
+from Newman's half-closed eyes as he leaned his head against
+the back of his chair, seemed to her the most eloquent attestation
+of a mature sentiment that she had ever encountered.  Newman was,
+according to the French phrase, only abounding in her own sense,
+but his temperate raptures exerted a singular effect upon the ardor
+which she herself had so freely manifested a few months before.
+She now seemed inclined to take a purely critical view of Madame
+de Cintre, and wished to have it understood that she did not in
+the least answer for her being a compendium of all the virtues.
+"No woman was ever so good as that woman seems," she said.
+"Remember what Shakespeare calls Desdemona; 'a supersubtle Venetian.'
+Madame de Cintre is a supersubtle Parisian.  She is a charming woman,
+and she has five hundred merits; but you had better keep that in mind."
+Was Mrs. Tristram simply finding out that she was jealous of her
+dear friend on the other side of the Seine, and that in undertaking
+to provide Newman with an ideal wife she had counted too much
+on her own disinterestedness?  We may be permitted to doubt it.
+The inconsistent little lady of the Avenue d'Iena had an
+insuperable need of changing her place, intellectually.
+She had a lively imagination, and she was capable, at certain times,
+of imagining the direct reverse of her most cherished beliefs,
+with a vividness more intense than that of conviction.
+She got tired of thinking aright; but there was no serious harm in it,
+as she got equally tired of thinking wrong.  In the midst of her
+mysterious perversities she had admirable flashes of justice.
+One of these occurred when Newman related to her that he had made
+a formal proposal to Madame de Cintre.  He repeated in a few words
+what he had said, and in a great many what she had answered.
+Mrs. Tristram listened with extreme interest.
+
+"But after all," said Newman, "there is nothing to congratulate me upon.
+It is not a triumph."
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Mrs. Tristram; "it is a great triumph.
+It is a great triumph that she did not silence you at the first word,
+and request you never to speak to her again."
+
+"I don't see that," observed Newman.
+
+"Of course you don't; Heaven forbid you should!
+When I told you to go on your own way and do what came into
+your head, I had no idea you would go over the ground so fast.
+I never dreamed you would offer yourself after five or six
+morning-calls. As yet, what had you done to make her like you?
+You had simply sat--not very straight--and stared at her.
+But she does like you."
+
+"That remains to be seen."
+
+"No, that is proved.  What will come of it remains to be seen.
+That you should propose to marry her, without more ado, could never
+have come into her head.  You can form very little idea of what passed
+through her mind as you spoke; if she ever really marries you,
+the affair will be characterized by the usual justice of all human
+beings towards women.  You will think you take generous views of her;
+but you will never begin to know through what a strange sea of feeling
+she passed before she accepted you.  As she stood there in front
+of you the other day, she plunged into it.  She said 'Why not?'
+to something which, a few hours earlier, had been inconceivable.
+She turned about on a thousand gathered prejudices and traditions
+as on a pivot, and looked where she had never looked hitherto.
+When I think of it--when I think of Claire de Cintre and all
+that she represents, there seems to me something very fine in it.
+When I recommended you to try your fortune with her I of course
+thought well of you, and in spite of your sins I think so still.
+But I confess I don't see quite what you are and what you have done,
+to make such a woman do this sort of thing for you."
+
+"Oh, there is something very fine in it!" said Newman
+with a laugh, repeating her words.  He took an extreme
+satisfaction in hearing that there was something fine in it.
+He had not the least doubt of it himself, but he had already
+begun to value the world's admiration of Madame de Cintre,
+as adding to the prospective glory of possession.
+
+It was immediately after this conversation that Valentin de
+Bellegarde came to conduct his friend to the Rue de l'Universite
+to present him to the other members of his family.  "You are
+already introduced," he said, "and you have begun to be talked about.
+My sister has mentioned your successive visits to my mother,
+and it was an accident that my mother was present at none of them.
+I have spoken of you as an American of immense wealth, and the best
+fellow in the world, who is looking for something very superior
+in the way of a wife."
+
+"Do you suppose," asked Newman, "that Madame de Cintre has related
+to your mother the last conversation I had with her?"
+
+"I am very certain that she has not; she will keep her own counsel.
+Meanwhile you must make your way with the rest of the family.
+Thus much is known about you:  you have made a great fortune in trade,
+you are a little eccentric, and you frankly admire our dear Claire.
+My sister-in-law, whom you remember seeing in Madame de Cintre's
+sitting-room, took, it appears, a fancy to you; she has described
+you as having beaucoup de cachet.  My mother, therefore, is curious
+to see you."
+
+"She expects to laugh at me, eh?" said Newman.
+
+"She never laughs.  If she does not like you, don't hope to purchase
+favor by being amusing.  Take warning by me!"
+
+This conversation took place in the evening, and half an hour later
+Valentin ushered his companion into an apartment of the house
+of the Rue de l'Universite into which he had not yet penetrated,
+the salon of the dowager Marquise de Bellegarde.  It was a vast,
+high room, with elaborate and ponderous mouldings, painted a
+whitish gray, along the upper portion of the walls and the ceiling;
+with a great deal of faded and carefully repaired tapestry
+in the doorways and chair-backs; a Turkey carpet in light colors,
+still soft and deep, in spite of great antiquity, on the floor,
+and portraits of each of Madame de Bellegarde's children,
+at the age of ten, suspended against an old screen of red silk.
+The room was illumined, exactly enough for conversation, by half
+a dozen candles, placed in odd corners, at a great distance apart.
+In a deep armchair, near the fire, sat an old lady in black;
+at the other end of the room another person was seated at the piano,
+playing a very expressive waltz.  In this latter person Newman
+recognized the young Marquise de Bellegarde.
+
+Valentin presented his friend, and Newman walked up
+to the old lady by the fire and shook hands with her.
+He received a rapid impression of a white, delicate, aged face,
+with a high forehead, a small mouth, and a pair of cold
+blue eyes which had kept much of the freshness of youth.
+Madame de Bellegarde looked hard at him, and returned his
+hand-shake with a sort of British positiveness which reminded
+him that she was the daughter of the Earl of St. Dunstan's. Her
+daughter-in-law stopped playing and gave him an agreeable smile.
+Newman sat down and looked about him, while Valentin went
+and kissed the hand of the young marquise.
+
+"I ought to have seen you before," said Madame de Bellegarde.
+"You have paid several visits to my daughter."
+
+"Oh, yes," said Newman, smiling; "Madame de Cintre and I are old
+friends by this time."
+
+"You have gone fast," said Madame de Bellegarde.
+
+"Not so fast as I should like," said Newman, bravely.
+
+"Oh, you are very ambitious," answered the old lady.
+
+"Yes, I confess I am," said Newman, smiling.
+
+Madame de Bellegarde looked at him with her cold fine eyes,
+and he returned her gaze, reflecting that she was
+a possible adversary and trying to take her measure.
+Their eyes remained in contact for some moments.
+Then Madame de Bellegarde looked away, and without smiling,
+"I am very ambitious, too," she said.
+
+Newman felt that taking her measure was not easy; she was a formidable,
+inscrutable little woman.  She resembled her daughter, and yet she
+was utterly unlike her.  The coloring in Madame de Cintre was the same,
+and the high delicacy of her brow and nose was hereditary.
+But her face was a larger and freer copy, and her mouth
+in especial a happy divergence from that conservative orifice,
+a little pair of lips at once plump and pinched, that looked,
+when closed, as if they could not open wider than to swallow
+a gooseberry or to emit an "Oh, dear, no!" which probably had been
+thought to give the finishing touch to the aristocratic prettiness
+of the Lady Emmeline Atheling as represented, forty years before,
+in several Books of Beauty.  Madame de Cintre's face had,
+to Newman's eye, a range of expression as delightfully vast as
+the wind-streaked, cloud-flecked distance on a Western prairie.
+But her mother's white, intense, respectable countenance, with its
+formal gaze, and its circumscribed smile, suggested a document
+signed and sealed; a thing of parchment, ink, and ruled lines.
+"She is a woman of conventions and proprieties," he said to himself
+as he looked at her; "her world is the world of things immutably decreed.
+But how she is at home in it, and what a paradise she finds it.
+She walks about in it as if it were a blooming park, a Garden of Eden;
+and when she sees 'This is genteel,' or 'This is improper,'
+written on a mile-stone she stops ecstatically, as if she
+were listening to a nightingale or smelling a rose."  Madame de
+Bellegarde wore a little black velvet hood tied under her chin,
+and she was wrapped in an old black cashmere shawl.
+
+"You are an American?" she said presently.  "I have seen several Americans."
+
+"There are several in Paris," said Newman jocosely.
+
+"Oh, really?" said Madame de Bellegarde.  "It was in England I saw these,
+or somewhere else; not in Paris.  I think it must have been in
+the Pyrenees, many years ago.  I am told your ladies are very pretty.
+One of these ladies was very pretty! such a wonderful complexion!
+She presented me a note of introduction from some one--I forgot whom--
+and she sent with it a note of her own.  I kept her letter a long
+time afterwards, it was so strangely expressed.  I used to know
+some of the phrases by heart.  But I have forgotten them now,
+it is so many years ago.  Since then I have seen no more Americans.
+I think my daughter-in-law has; she is a great gad-about, she
+sees every one."
+
+At this the younger lady came rustling forward, pinching in a
+very slender waist, and casting idly preoccupied glances over
+the front of her dress, which was apparently designed for a ball.
+She was, in a singular way, at once ugly and pretty;
+she had protuberant eyes, and lips strangely red.
+She reminded Newman of his friend, Mademoiselle Nioche; this was
+what that much-obstructed young lady would have liked to be.
+Valentin de Bellegarde walked behind her at a distance,
+hopping about to keep off the far-spreading train of her dress.
+
+"You ought to show more of your shoulders behind," he said very gravely.
+"You might as well wear a standing ruff as such a dress as that."
+
+The young woman turned her back to the mirror over the chimney-piece,
+and glanced behind her, to verify Valentin's assertion.
+The mirror descended low, and yet it reflected nothing but a
+large unclad flesh surface.  The young marquise put her hands
+behind her and gave a downward pull to the waist of her dress.
+"Like that, you mean?" she asked.
+
+"That is a little better," said Bellegarde in the same tone,
+"but it leaves a good deal to be desired."
+
+"Oh, I never go to extremes, said his sister-in-law. And then,
+turning to Madame de Bellegarde, "What were you calling me
+just now, madame?"
+
+"I called you a gad-about," said the old lady.  "But I might call
+you something else, too."
+
+"A gad-about? What an ugly word!  What does it mean?"
+
+"A very beautiful person," Newman ventured to say, seeing that it
+was in French.
+
+"That is a pretty compliment but a bad translation," said the young marquise.
+And then, looking at him a moment, "Do you dance?"
+
+"Not a step."
+
+"You are very wrong," she said, simply.  And with another look
+at her back in the mirror she turned away.
+
+"Do you like Paris?" asked the old lady, who was apparently wondering
+what was the proper way to talk to an American.
+
+"Yes, rather," said Newman.  And then he added with a
+friendly intonation, "Don't you?"
+
+"I can't say I know it.  I know my house--I know my friends--
+I don't know Paris."
+
+"Oh, you lose a great deal," said Newman, sympathetically.
+
+Madame de Bellegarde stared; it was presumably the first time
+she had been condoled with on her losses.
+
+"I am content with what I have," she said with dignity.
+
+Newman's eyes, at this moment, were wandering round the room,
+which struck him as rather sad and shabby; passing from the high casements,
+with their small, thickly-framed panes, to the sallow tints of two or
+three portraits in pastel, of the last century, which hung between them.
+He ought, obviously, to have answered that the contentment of his hostess
+was quite natural--she had a great deal; but the idea did not occur
+to him during the pause of some moments which followed.
+
+"Well, my dear mother," said Valentin, coming and leaning against
+the chimney-piece, "what do you think of my dear friend Newman?
+Is he not the excellent fellow I told you?"
+
+"My acquaintance with Mr. Newman has not gone very far,"
+said Madame de Bellegarde.  "I can as yet only appreciate
+his great politeness."
+
+"My mother is a great judge of these matters," said Valentin to Newman.
+"If you have satisfied her, it is a triumph."
+
+"I hope I shall satisfy you, some day," said Newman, looking at the old lady.
+"I have done nothing yet."
+
+"You must not listen to my son; he will bring you into trouble.
+He is a sad scatterbrain."
+
+"Oh, I like him--I like him," said Newman, genially.
+
+"He amuses you, eh?"
+
+"Yes, perfectly."
+
+"Do you hear that, Valentin?" said Madame de Bellegarde.
+"You amuse Mr. Newman."
+
+"Perhaps we shall all come to that!"  Valentin exclaimed.
+
+"You must see my other son," said Madame de Bellegarde.
+"He is much better than this one.  But he will not amuse you."
+
+"I don't know--I don't know!" murmured Valentin, reflectively.
+"But we shall very soon see.  Here comes Monsieur mon frere."
+
+The door had just opened to give ingress to a gentleman who stepped forward
+and whose face Newman remembered.  He had been the author of our hero's
+discomfiture the first time he tried to present himself to Madame de Cintre.
+Valentin de Bellegarde went to meet his brother, looked at him a moment,
+and then, taking him by the arm, led him up to Newman.
+
+"This is my excellent friend Mr. Newman," he said very blandly.
+"You must know him."
+
+"I am delighted to know Mr. Newman," said the marquis with a low bow,
+but without offering his hand.
+
+"He is the old woman at second-hand," Newman said to himself,
+as he returned M. de Bellegarde's greeting.  And this was
+the starting-point of a speculative theory, in his mind,
+that the late marquis had been a very amiable foreigner, with an
+inclination to take life easily and a sense that it was difficult
+for the husband of the stilted little lady by the fire to do so.
+But if he had taken little comfort in his wife he had taken
+much in his two younger children, who were after his own heart,
+while Madame de Bellegarde had paired with her eldest-born.
+
+"My brother has spoken to me of you," said M. de Bellegarde; "and as you
+are also acquainted with my sister, it was time we should meet."
+He turned to his mother and gallantly bent over her hand,
+touching it with his lips, and then he assumed an attitude before
+the chimney-piece. With his long, lean face, his high-bridged nose
+and his small, opaque eye he looked much like an Englishman.
+His whiskers were fair and glossy, and he had a large dimple,
+of unmistakably British origin, in the middle of his handsome chin.
+He was "distinguished" to the tips of his polished nails, and there
+was not a movement of his fine, perpendicular person that was
+not noble and majestic.  Newman had never yet been confronted
+with such an incarnation of the art of taking one's self seriously;
+he felt a sort of impulse to step backward, as you do to get a view
+of a great facade.
+
+"Urbain," said young Madame de Bellegarde, who had apparently
+been waiting for her husband to take her to her ball, "I call
+your attention to the fact that I am dressed."
+
+"That is a good idea," murmured Valentin.
+
+"I am at your orders, my dear friend," said M. de Bellegarde.
+"Only, you must allow me first the pleasure of a little conversation
+with Mr. Newman."
+
+"Oh, if you are going to a party, don't let me keep you,"
+objected Newman.  "I am very sure we shall meet again.  Indeed, if you
+would like to converse with me I will gladly name an hour."
+He was eager to make it known that he would readily answer
+all questions and satisfy all exactions.
+
+M. de Bellegarde stood in a well-balanced position before the fire,
+caressing one of his fair whiskers with one of his white hands,
+and looking at Newman, half askance, with eyes from which a particular
+ray of observation made its way through a general meaningless smile.
+"It is very kind of you to make such an offer," he said.  "If I am
+not mistaken, your occupations are such as to make your time precious.
+You are in--a-- as we say, dans les affaires."
+
+"In business, you mean?  Oh no, I have thrown business
+overboard for the present.  I am 'loafing,' as WE say.
+My time is quite my own."
+
+"Ah, you are taking a holiday," rejoined M. de Bellegarde.
+"'Loafing.'  Yes, I have heard that expression."
+
+"Mr. Newman is American," said Madame de Bellegarde.
+
+"My brother is a great ethnologist," said Valentin.
+
+"An ethnologist?" said Newman.  "Ah, you collect negroes'
+skulls, and that sort of thing."
+
+The marquis looked hard at his brother, and began to caress his
+other whisker.  Then, turning to Newman, with sustained urbanity,
+"You are traveling for your pleasure?" he asked.'
+
+"Oh, I am knocking about to pick up one thing and another.
+Of course I get a good deal of pleasure out of it."
+
+"What especially interests you?" inquired the marquis.
+
+"Well, everything interests me," said Newman.  "I am not particular.
+Manufactures are what I care most about."
+
+"That has been your specialty?"
+
+"I can't say I have any specialty.  My specialty has been to make
+the largest possible fortune in the shortest possible time."
+Newman made this last remark very deliberately; he wished to open
+the way, if it were necessary, to an authoritative statement
+of his means.
+
+M. de Bellegarde laughed agreeably.  "I hope you have succeeded," he said.
+
+"Yes, I have made a fortune in a reasonable time.
+I am not so old, you see."
+
+"Paris is a very good place to spend a fortune.
+I wish you great enjoyment of yours."  And M. de Bellegarde
+drew forth his gloves and began to put them on.
+
+Newman for a few moments watched him sliding his white hands into
+the white kid, and as he did so his feelings took a singular turn.
+M. de Bellegarde's good wishes seemed to descend out of the white
+expanse of his sublime serenity with the soft, scattered movement
+of a shower of snow-flakes. Yet Newman was not irritated;
+he did not feel that he was being patronized; he was conscious of no
+especial impulse to introduce a discord into so noble a harmony.
+Only he felt himself suddenly in personal contact with the forces
+with which his friend Valentin had told him that he would
+have to contend, and he became sensible of their intensity.
+He wished to make some answering manifestation, to stretch himself out
+at his own length, to sound a note at the uttermost end of HIS scale.
+It must be added that if this impulse was not vicious or malicious,
+it was by no means void of humorous expectancy.  Newman was quite
+as ready to give play to that loosely-adjusted smile of his,
+if his hosts should happen to be shocked, as he was far from
+deliberately planning to shock them.
+
+"Paris is a very good place for idle people," he said,
+"or it is a very good place if your family has been settled
+here for a long time, and you have made acquaintances and got
+your relations round you; or if you have got a good big house
+like this, and a wife and children and mother and sister,
+and everything comfortable.  I don't like that way of living
+all in rooms next door to each other.  But I am not an idler.
+I try to be, but I can't manage it; it goes against the grain.
+My business habits are too deep-seated. Then, I haven't any
+house to call my own, or anything in the way of a family.
+My sisters are five thousand miles away, my mother died when I
+was a youngster, and I haven't any wife; I wish I had!
+So, you see, I don't exactly know what to do with myself.
+I am not fond of books, as you are, sir, and I get tired of dining
+out and going to the opera.  I miss my business activity.
+You see, I began to earn my living when I was almost a baby,
+and until a few months ago I have never had my hand off the plow.
+Elegant leisure comes hard."
+
+This speech was followed by a profound silence of some moments,
+on the part of Newman's entertainers.  Valentin stood looking
+at him fixedly, with his hands in his pockets, and then
+he slowly, with a half-sidling motion, went out of the door.
+The marquis continued to draw on his gloves and to smile benignantly.
+
+"You began to earn your living when you were a mere baby?"
+said the marquise.
+
+"Hardly more--a small boy."
+
+"You say you are not fond of books," said M. de Bellegarde;
+"but you must do yourself the justice to remember that your
+studies were interrupted early."
+
+"That is very true; on my tenth birthday I stopped going to school.
+I thought it was a grand way to keep it.  But I picked up some
+information afterwards," said Newman, reassuringly.
+
+"You have some sisters?" asked old Madame de Bellegarde.
+
+"Yes, two sisters.  Splendid women!"
+
+"I hope that for them the hardships of life commenced less early."
+
+"They married very early, if you call that a hardship,
+as girls do in our Western country.  One of them is married
+to the owner of the largest india-rubber house in the West."
+
+"Ah, you make houses also of india-rubber?" inquired the marquise.
+
+"You can stretch them as your family increases," said young Madame
+de Bellegarde, who was muffling herself in a long white shawl.
+
+Newman indulged in a burst of hilarity, and explained that the house
+in which his brother-in-law lived was a large wooden structure,
+but that he manufactured and sold india-rubber on a colossal scale.
+
+"My children have some little india-rubber shoes which they put on when they
+go to play in the Tuileries in damp weather," said the young marquise.
+"I wonder whether your brother-in-law made them."
+
+"Very likely," said Newman; "if he did, you may be very sure
+they are well made."
+
+"Well, you must not be discouraged," said M. de Bellegarde,
+with vague urbanity.
+
+"Oh, I don't mean to be.  I have a project which gives me
+plenty to think about, and that is an occupation."  And then
+Newman was silent a moment, hesitating, yet thinking rapidly;
+he wished to make his point, and yet to do so forced him
+to speak out in a way that was disagreeable to him.
+Nevertheless he continued, addressing himself to old Madame
+de Bellegarde, "I will tell you my project; perhaps you can help me.
+I want to take a wife."
+
+"It is a very good project, but I am no matchmaker,"
+said the old lady.
+
+Newman looked at her an instant, and then, with perfect sincerity,
+"I should have thought you were," he declared.
+
+Madame de Bellegarde appeared to think him too sincere.
+She murmured something sharply in French, and fixed her eyes
+on her son.  At this moment the door of the room was thrown open,
+and with a rapid step Valentin reappeared.
+
+"I have a message for you," he said to his sister-in-law.
+"Claire bids me to request you not to start for your ball.
+She will go with you."
+
+"Claire will go with us!" cried the young marquise.
+"En voila, du nouveau!"
+
+"She has changed her mind; she decided half an hour ago, and she
+is sticking the last diamond into her hair," said Valentin.
+
+"What has taken possession of my daughter?" demanded Madame
+de Bellegarde, sternly.  "She has not been into the world these
+three years.  Does she take such a step at half an hour's notice,
+and without consulting me?"
+
+"She consulted me, dear mother, five minutes since," said Valentin,
+"and I told her that such a beautiful woman--she is beautiful, you will see--
+had no right to bury herself alive."
+
+"You should have referred Claire to her mother, my brother,"
+said M. de Bellegarde, in French.  "This is very strange."
+
+"I refer her to the whole company!" said Valentin.  "Here she comes!"
+And he went to the open door, met Madame de Cintre on
+the threshold, took her by the hand, and led her into the room.
+She was dressed in white; but a long blue cloak, which hung almost
+to her feet, was fastened across her shoulders by a silver clasp.
+She had tossed it back, however, and her long white arms were uncovered.
+In her dense, fair hair there glittered a dozen diamonds.
+She looked serious and, Newman thought, rather pale; but she glanced
+round her, and, when she saw him, smiled and put out her hand.
+He thought her tremendously handsome.  He had a chance to look
+at her full in the face, for she stood a moment in the centre of
+the room, hesitating, apparently, what she should do, without meeting
+his eyes.  Then she went up to her mother, who sat in her deep
+chair by the fire, looking at Madame de Cintre almost fiercely.
+With her back turned to the others, Madame de Cintre held her cloak
+apart to show her dress.
+
+"What do you think of me?" she asked.
+
+"I think you are audacious," said the marquise.
+"It was but three days ago, when I asked you, as a particular
+favor to myself, to go to the Duchess de Lusignan's, that you
+told me you were going nowhere and that one must be consistent.
+Is this your consistency?  Why should you distinguish Madame Robineau?
+Who is it you wish to please to-night?"
+
+"I wish to please myself, dear mother," said Madame de Cintre
+And she bent over and kissed the old lady.
+
+"I don't like surprises, my sister," said Urbain de Bellegarde;
+"especially when one is on the point of entering a drawing-room."
+
+Newman at this juncture felt inspired to speak.
+"Oh, if you are going into a room with Madame de Cintre,
+you needn't be afraid of being noticed yourself!"
+
+M. de Bellegarde turned to his sister with a smile too intense to be easy.
+"I hope you appreciate a compliment that is paid you at your
+brother's expense," he said.  "Come, come, madame."  And offering
+Madame de Cintre his arm he led her rapidly out of the room.
+Valentin rendered the same service to young Madame de Bellegarde,
+who had apparently been reflecting on the fact that the ball
+dress of her sister-in-law was much less brilliant than her own,
+and yet had failed to derive absolute comfort from the reflection.
+With a farewell smile she sought the complement of her consolation
+in the eyes of the American visitor, and perceiving in them
+a certain mysterious brilliancy, it is not improbable that she
+may have flattered herself she had found it.
+
+Newman, left alone with old Madame de Bellegarde, stood before
+her a few moments in silence.  "Your daughter is very beautiful,"
+he said at last.
+
+"She is very strange," said Madame de Bellegarde.
+
+"I am glad to hear it," Newman rejoined, smiling.  "It makes me hope."
+
+"Hope what?"
+
+"That she will consent, some day, to marry me."
+
+The old lady slowly rose to her feet.  "That really is your project, then?"
+
+"Yes; will you favor it?"
+
+"Favor it?"  Madame de Bellegarde looked at him a moment and then
+shook her head.  "No!" she said, softly.
+
+"Will you suffer it, then?  Will you let it pass?"
+
+"You don't know what you ask.  I am a very proud and meddlesome old woman."
+
+"Well, I am very rich," said Newman.
+
+Madame de Bellegarde fixed her eyes on the floor, and Newman
+thought it probable she was weighing the reasons in favor
+of resenting the brutality of this remark.  But at last,
+looking up, she said simply, "How rich?"
+
+Newman expressed his income in a round number which had the magnificent
+sound that large aggregations of dollars put on when they are translated
+into francs.  He added a few remarks of a financial character,
+which completed a sufficiently striking presentment of his resources.
+
+Madame de Bellegarde listened in silence.  "You are
+very frank," she said finally.  "I will be the same.
+I would rather favor you, on the whole, than suffer you.
+It will be easier."
+
+"I am thankful for any terms," said Newman.  "But, for
+the present, you have suffered me long enough.  Good night!"
+And he took his leave.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Newman, on his return to Paris, had not resumed the study
+of French conversation with M. Nioche; he found that he had
+too many other uses for his time.  M. Nioche, however, came to
+see him very promptly, having learned his whereabouts by a
+mysterious process to which his patron never obtained the key.
+The shrunken little capitalist repeated his visit more than once.
+He seemed oppressed by a humiliating sense of having been overpaid,
+and wished apparently to redeem his debt by the offer of
+grammatical and statistical information in small installments.
+He wore the same decently melancholy aspect as a few months before;
+a few months more or less of brushing could make little
+difference in the antique lustre of his coat and hat.
+But the poor old man's spirit was a trifle more threadbare;
+it seemed to have received some hard rubs during the summer
+Newman inquired with interest about Mademoiselle Noemie;
+and M. Nioche, at first, for answer, simply looked at him
+in lachrymose silence.
+
+"Don't ask me, sir," he said at last.  "I sit and watch her,
+but I can do nothing."
+
+"Do you mean that she misconducts herself?"
+
+"I don't know, I am sure.  I can't follow her.  I don't understand her.
+She has something in her head; I don't know what she is trying to do.
+She is too deep for me."
+
+"Does she continue to go to the Louvre?  Has she made any
+of those copies for me?"
+
+"She goes to the Louvre, but I see nothing of the copies.  She has
+something on her easel; I suppose it is one of the pictures you ordered.
+Such a magnificent order ought to give her fairy-fingers. But she
+is not in earnest.  I can't say anything to her; I am afraid of her.
+One evening, last summer, when I took her to walk in the Champs Elysees,
+she said some things to me that frightened me."
+
+"What were they?"
+
+"Excuse an unhappy father from telling you," said M. Nioche,
+unfolding his calico pocket-handkerchief.
+
+Newman promised himself to pay Mademoiselle Noemie another visit
+at the Louvre.  He was curious about the progress of his copies,
+but it must be added that he was still more curious about the progress
+of the young lady herself.  He went one afternoon to the great museum,
+and wandered through several of the rooms in fruitless quest of her.
+He was bending his steps to the long hall of the Italian masters,
+when suddenly he found himself face to face with Valentin de Bellegarde.
+The young Frenchman greeted him with ardor, and assured him that he was
+a godsend.  He himself was in the worst of humors and he wanted some
+one to contradict.
+
+"In a bad humor among all these beautiful things?" said Newman.
+"I thought you were so fond of pictures, especially the old black ones.
+There are two or three here that ought to keep you in spirits."
+
+"Oh, to-day," answered Valentin, "I am not in a mood for pictures,
+and the more beautiful they are the less I like them.
+Their great staring eyes and fixed positions irritate me.
+I feel as if I were at some big, dull party, in a room full
+of people I shouldn't wish to speak to.  What should I care for
+their beauty?  It's a bore, and, worse still, it's a reproach.
+I have a great many ennuis; I feel vicious."
+
+"If the Louvre has so little comfort for you, why in the world
+did you come here?"  Newman asked.
+
+"That is one of my ennuis.  I came to meet my cousin--
+a dreadful English cousin, a member of my mother's family--
+who is in Paris for a week for her husband, and who wishes
+me to point out the 'principal beauties.'  Imagine a woman
+who wears a green crape bonnet in December and has straps
+sticking out of the ankles of her interminable boots!
+My mother begged I would do something to oblige them.
+I have undertaken to play valet de place this afternoon.
+They were to have met me here at two o'clock, and I have been
+waiting for them twenty minutes.  Why doesn't she arrive?
+She has at least a pair of feet to carry her.
+I don't know whether to be furious at their playing me false,
+or delighted to have escaped them."
+
+"I think in your place I would be furious," said Newman, "because they
+may arrive yet, and then your fury will still be of use to you.
+Whereas if you were delighted and they were afterwards to turn up,
+you might not know what to do with your delight."
+
+"You give me excellent advice, and I already feel better.
+I will be furious; I will let them go to the deuce and I myself
+will go with you--unless by chance you too have a rendezvous."
+
+"It is not exactly a rendezvous," said Newman.  "But I have in fact
+come to see a person, not a picture."
+
+"A woman, presumably?"
+
+"A young lady."
+
+"Well," said Valentin, "I hope for you with all my heart that she
+is not clothed in green tulle and that her feet are not too much
+out of focus."
+
+"I don't know much about her feet, but she has very pretty hands."
+
+Valentin gave a sigh.  "And on that assurance I must part with you?"
+
+"I am not certain of finding my young lady," said Newman,
+"and I am not quite prepared to lose your company on the chance.
+It does not strike me as particularly desirable to introduce you
+to her, and yet I should rather like to have your opinion of her."
+
+"Is she pretty?"
+
+"I guess you will think so."
+
+Bellegarde passed his arm into that of his companion.
+"Conduct me to her on the instant!  I should be ashamed to make
+a pretty woman wait for my verdict."
+
+Newman suffered himself to be gently propelled in the direction
+in which he had been walking, but his step was not rapid.
+He was turning something over in his mind.  The two men passed
+into the long gallery of the Italian masters, and Newman,
+after having scanned for a moment its brilliant vista,
+turned aside into the smaller apartment devoted to the same school,
+on the left.  It contained very few persons, but at the farther
+end of it sat Mademoiselle Nioche, before her easel.
+She was not at work; her palette and brushes had been
+laid down beside her, her hands were folded in her lap,
+and she was leaning back in her chair and looking intently
+at two ladies on the other side of the hall, who, with their
+backs turned to her, had stopped before one of the pictures.
+These ladies were apparently persons of high fashion;
+they were dressed with great splendor, and their long silken
+trains and furbelows were spread over the polished floor.
+It was at their dresses Mademoiselle Noemie was looking,
+though what she was thinking of I am unable to say.
+I hazard the supposition that she was saying to herself
+that to be able to drag such a train over a polished floor
+was a felicity worth any price.  Her reflections, at any rate,
+were disturbed by the advent of Newman and his companion.
+She glanced at them quickly, and then, coloring a little,
+rose and stood before her easel.
+
+"I came here on purpose to see you," said Newman in his bad French,
+offering to shake hands.  And then, like a good American, he introduced
+Valentin formally:  "Allow me to make you acquainted with the Comte
+Valentin de Bellegarde."
+
+Valentin made a bow which must have seemed to Mademoiselle Noemie quite
+in harmony with the impressiveness of his title, but the graceful
+brevity of her own response made no concession to underbred surprise.
+She turned to Newman, putting up her hands to her hair and smoothing its
+delicately-felt roughness.  Then, rapidly, she turned the canvas that was
+on her easel over upon its face.  "You have not forgotten me?" she asked.
+
+"I shall never forget you," said Newman.  "You may be sure of that."
+
+"Oh," said the young girl, "there are a great many different
+ways of remembering a person."  And she looked straight at
+Valentin de Bellegarde, who was looking at her as a gentleman
+may when a "verdict" is expected of him.
+
+"Have you painted anything for me?" said Newman.
+"Have you been industrious?"
+
+"No, I have done nothing."  And taking up her palette,
+she began to mix her colors at hazard.
+
+"But your father tells me you have come here constantly."
+
+"I have nowhere else to go!  Here, all summer, it was cool, at least."
+
+"Being here, then," said Newman, "you might have tried something."
+
+"I told you before," she answered, softly, "that I don't know
+how to paint."
+
+"But you have something charming on your easel, now," said Valentin,
+"if you would only let me see it."
+
+She spread out her two hands, with the fingers expanded, over the back
+of the canvas--those hands which Newman had called pretty, and which,
+in spite of several paint-stains, Valentin could now admire.
+"My painting is not charming," she said.
+
+"It is the only thing about you that is not, then, mademoiselle,"
+quoth Valentin, gallantly.
+
+She took up her little canvas and silently passed it to him.
+He looked at it, and in a moment she said, "I am sure you
+are a judge."
+
+"Yes," he answered, "I am."
+
+"You know, then, that that is very bad."
+
+"Mon Dieu," said Valentin, shrugging his shoulders "let us distinguish."
+
+"You know that I ought not to attempt to paint," the young girl continued.
+
+"Frankly, then, mademoiselle, I think you ought not."
+
+She began to look at the dresses of the two splendid ladies again--
+a point on which, having risked one conjecture, I think I may risk another.
+While she was looking at the ladies she was seeing Valentin de Bellegarde.
+He, at all events, was seeing her.  He put down the roughly-besmeared canvas
+and addressed a little click with his tongue, accompanied by an elevation
+of the eyebrows, to Newman.
+
+"Where have you been all these months?" asked Mademoiselle
+Noemie of our hero.  "You took those great journeys,
+you amused yourself well?"
+
+"Oh, yes," said Newman.  "I amused myself well enough."
+
+"I am very glad," said Mademoiselle Noemie with extreme gentleness,
+and she began to dabble in her colors again.  She was singularly pretty,
+with the look of serious sympathy that she threw into her face.
+
+Valentin took advantage of her downcast eyes to telegraph again to
+his companion.  He renewed his mysterious physiognomical play, making at
+the same time a rapid tremulous movement in the air with his fingers.
+He was evidently finding Mademoiselle Noemie extremely interesting;
+the blue devils had departed, leaving the field clear.
+
+"Tell me something about your travels," murmured the young girl.
+
+"Oh, I went to Switzerland,--to Geneva and Zermatt and Zurich and all
+those places you know; and down to Venice, and all through Germany,
+and down the Rhine, and into Holland and Belgium--the regular round.
+How do you say that, in French--the regular round?"
+Newman asked of Valentin.
+
+Mademoiselle Nioche fixed her eyes an instant on Bellegarde,
+and then with a little smile, "I don't understand monsieur,"
+she said, "when he says so much at once.  Would you be so good
+as to translate?"
+
+"I would rather talk to you out of my own head," Valentin declared.
+
+"No," said Newman, gravely, still in his bad French, "you must not
+talk to Mademoiselle Nioche, because you say discouraging things.
+You ought to tell her to work, to persevere."
+
+"And we French, mademoiselle," said Valentin, "are accused
+of being false flatterers!"
+
+"I don't want any flattery, I want only the truth.
+But I know the truth."
+
+"All I say is that I suspect there are some things that you can
+do better than paint," said Valentin.
+
+"I know the truth--I know the truth," Mademoiselle Noemie repeated.
+And, dipping a brush into a clot of red paint, she drew a great horizontal
+daub across her unfinished picture.
+
+"What is that?" asked Newman.
+
+Without answering, she drew another long crimson daub,
+in a vertical direction, down the middle of her canvas, and so,
+in a moment, completed the rough indication of a cross.
+"It is the sign of the truth," she said at last.
+
+The two men looked at each other, and Valentin indulged in another flash
+of physiognomical eloquence.  "You have spoiled your picture," said Newman.
+
+"I know that very well.  It was the only thing to do with it.
+I had sat looking at it all day without touching it.
+I had begun to hate it.  It seemed to me something was
+going to happen."
+
+"I like it better that way than as it was before," said Valentin.
+"Now it is more interesting.  It tells a story.  Is it for sale?"
+
+"Everything I have is for sale," said Mademoiselle Noemie.
+
+"How much is this thing?"
+
+"Ten thousand francs," said the young girl, without a smile.
+
+"Everything that Mademoiselle Nioche may do at present is mine in advance,"
+said Newman.  "It makes part of an order I gave her some months ago.
+So you can't have this."
+
+"Monsieur will lose nothing by it," said the young girl, looking at Valentin.
+And she began to put up her utensils.
+
+"I shall have gained a charming memory," said Valentin.
+"You are going away? your day is over?"
+
+"My father is coming to fetch me," said Mademoiselle Noemie.
+
+She had hardly spoken when, through the door behind her,
+which opens on one of the great white stone staircases of the Louvre,
+M. Nioche made his appearance.  He came in with his usual even,
+patient shuffle, and he made a low salute to the two
+gentlemen who were standing before his daughter's easel.
+Newman shook his hands with muscular friendliness, and Valentin
+returned his greeting with extreme deference.  While the old man
+stood waiting for Noemie to make a parcel of her implements,
+he let his mild, oblique gaze hover toward Bellegarde, who was
+watching Mademoiselle Noemie put on her bonnet and mantle.
+Valentin was at no pains to disguise his scrutiny.
+He looked at a pretty girl as he would have listened to a piece
+of music.  Attention, in each case, was simple good manners.
+M. Nioche at last took his daughter's paint-box in one
+hand and the bedaubed canvas, after giving it a solemn,
+puzzled stare, in the other, and led the way to the door.
+Mademoiselle Noemie made the young men the salute of a duchess,
+and followed her father.
+
+"Well," said Newman, "what do you think of her?"
+
+"She is very remarkable.  Diable, diable, diable!" repeated M. de
+Bellegarde, reflectively; "she is very remarkable."
+
+"I am afraid she is a sad little adventuress," said Newman.
+
+"Not a little one--a great one.  She has the material."
+And Valentin began to walk away slowly, looking vaguely at the
+pictures on the walls, with a thoughtful illumination in his eye.
+Nothing could have appealed to his imagination more than the
+possible adventures of a young lady endowed with the "material"
+of Mademoiselle Nioche.  "She is very interesting," he went on.
+"She is a beautiful type."
+
+"A beautiful type?  What the deuce do you mean?" asked Newman.
+
+"I mean from the artistic point of view.  She is an artist,--
+outside of her painting, which obviously is execrable."
+
+"But she is not beautiful.  I don't even think her very pretty."
+
+"She is quite pretty enough for her purposes, and it is a face and figure on
+which everything tells.  If she were prettier she would be less intelligent,
+and her intelligence is half of her charm."
+
+"In what way," asked Newman, who was much amused at his
+companion's immediate philosophization of Mademoiselle Nioche,
+"does her intelligence strike you as so remarkable?"
+
+"She has taken the measure of life, and she has determined
+to BE something--to succeed at any cost.  Her painting,
+of course, is a mere trick to gain time.  She is waiting for
+her chance; she wishes to launch herself, and to do it well.
+She knows her Paris.  She is one of fifty thousand, so far
+as the mere ambition goes; but I am very sure that in the way
+of resolution and capacity she is a rarity.  And in one gift--
+perfect heartlessness--I will warrant she is unsurpassed.
+She has not as much heart as will go on the point of a needle.
+That is an immense virtue.  Yes, she is one of the celebrities
+of the future."
+
+"Heaven help us!" said Newman, "how far the artistic point
+of view may take a man!  But in this case I must request that you
+don't let it take you too far.  You have learned a wonderful
+deal about Mademoiselle Noemie in a quarter of an hour.
+Let that suffice; don't follow up your researches."
+
+"My dear fellow," cried Bellegarde with warmth, "I hope I
+have too good manners to intrude."
+
+"You are not intruding.  The girl is nothing to me.
+In fact, I rather dislike her.  But I like her poor old father,
+and for his sake I beg you to abstain from any attempt
+to verify your theories."
+
+"For the sake of that seedy old gentleman who came to fetch her?"
+demanded Valentin, stopping short.  And on Newman's assenting, "Ah no,
+ah no," he went on with a smile.  "You are quite wrong, my dear fellow;
+you needn't mind him."
+
+"I verily believe that you are accusing the poor gentleman of being
+capable of rejoicing in his daughter's dishonor."
+
+"Voyons," said Valentin; "who is he? what is he?"
+
+"He is what he looks like:  as poor as a rat, but very high-toned."
+
+"Exactly.  I noticed him perfectly; be sure I do him justice.
+He has had losses, des malheurs, as we say.
+He is very low-spirited, and his daughter is too much for him.
+He is the pink of respectability, and he has sixty years
+of honesty on his back.  All this I perfectly appreciate.
+But I know my fellow-men and my fellow-Parisians, and I will make
+a bargain with you."  Newman gave ear to his bargain and he went on.
+"He would rather his daughter were a good girl than a bad one,
+but if the worst comes to the worst, the old man will not
+do what Virginius did.  Success justifies everything.
+If Mademoiselle Noemie makes a figure, her papa will feel--
+well, we will call it relieved.  And she will make a figure.
+The old gentleman's future is assured."
+
+"I don't know what Virginius did, but M. Nioche will shoot Miss Noemie,"
+said Newman.  "After that, I suppose his future will be assured
+in some snug prison."
+
+"I am not a cynic; I am simply an observer," Valentin rejoined.
+"Mademoiselle Noemie interests me; she is extremely remarkable.
+If there is a good reason, in honor or decency, for dismissing
+her from my thoughts forever, I am perfectly willing to do it.
+Your estimate of the papa's sensibilities is a good reason until it
+is invalidated.  I promise you not to look at the young girl again
+until you tell me that you have changed your mind about the papa.
+When he has given distinct proof of being a philosopher, you will
+raise your interdict.  Do you agree to that?"
+
+"Do you mean to bribe him?"
+
+"Oh, you admit, then, that he is bribable?  No, he would ask too much,
+and it would not be exactly fair.  I mean simply to wait.
+You will continue, I suppose, to see this interesting couple,
+and you will give me the news yourself."
+
+"Well," said Newman, "if the old man turns out a humbug,
+you may do what you please.  I wash my hands of the matter.
+For the girl herself, you may be at rest.  I don't know
+what harm she may do to me, but I certainly can't hurt her.
+It seems to me," said Newman, "that you are very well matched.
+You are both hard cases, and M. Nioche and I, I believe,
+are the only virtuous men to be found in Paris."
+
+Soon after this M. de Bellegarde, in punishment for his levity,
+received a stern poke in the back from a pointed instrument.
+Turning quickly round he found the weapon to be a parasol wielded
+by a lady in green gauze bonnet.  Valentin's English cousins had been
+drifting about unpiloted, and evidently deemed that they had a grievance.
+Newman left him to their mercies, but with a boundless faith in his
+power to plead his cause.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Three days after his introduction to the family of Madame
+de Cintre, Newman, coming in toward evening, found upon his table
+the card of the Marquis de Bellegarde.  On the following day
+he received a note informing him that the Marquise de Bellegarde
+would be grateful for the honor of his company at dinner.
+
+He went, of course, though he had to break another engagement
+to do it.  He was ushered into the room in which Madame
+de Bellegarde had received him before, and here he found
+his venerable hostess, surrounded by her entire family.
+The room was lighted only by the crackling fire,
+which illuminated the very small pink slippers of a lady who,
+seated in a low chair, was stretching out her toes before it.
+This lady was the younger Madame de Bellegarde.  Madame de
+Cintre was seated at the other end of the room, holding a little
+girl against her knee, the child of her brother Urbain,
+to whom she was apparently relating a wonderful story.
+Valentin was sitting on a puff, close to his sister-in-law,
+into whose ear he was certainly distilling the finest nonsense.
+The marquis was stationed before the fire, with his head erect
+and his hands behind him, in an attitude of formal expectancy.
+
+Old Madame de Bellegarde stood up to give Newman her greeting,
+and there was that in the way she did so which seemed
+to measure narrowly the extent of her condescension.
+"We are all alone, you see, we have asked no one else,"
+she said, austerely.
+
+"I am very glad you didn't; this is much more sociable," said Newman.
+"Good evening, sir," and he offered his hand to the marquis.
+
+M. de Bellegarde was affable, but in spite of his dignity he was restless.
+He began to pace up and down the room, he looked out of the long windows,
+he took up books and laid them down again.  Young Madame de Bellegarde gave
+Newman her hand without moving and without looking at him.
+
+"You may think that is coldness," exclaimed Valentin; "but it is not,
+it is warmth.  It shows she is treating you as an intimate.
+Now she detests me, and yet she is always looking at me."
+
+"No wonder I detest you if I am always looking at you!" cried the lady.
+"If Mr. Newman does not like my way of shaking hands, I will do it again."
+
+But this charming privilege was lost upon our hero, who was
+already making his way across the room to Madame de Cintre.
+She looked at him as she shook hands, but she went on with
+the story she was telling her little niece.  She had only two or
+three phrases to add, but they were apparently of great moment.
+She deepened her voice, smiling as she did so, and the little
+girl gazed at her with round eyes.
+
+"But in the end the young prince married the beautiful Florabella,"
+said Madame de Cintre, "and carried her off to live with him in the Land
+of the Pink Sky.  There she was so happy that she forgot all her troubles,
+and went out to drive every day of her life in an ivory coach drawn
+by five hundred white mice.  Poor Florabella," she exclaimed to Newman,
+"had suffered terribly."
+
+"She had had nothing to eat for six months," said little Blanche.
+
+"Yes, but when the six months were over, she had a
+plum-cake as big as that ottoman," said Madame de Cintre.
+"That quite set her up again."
+
+"What a checkered career!" said Newman.  "Are you very fond of children?"
+He was certain that she was, but he wished to make her say it.
+
+"I like to talk with them," she answered; "we can talk
+with them so much more seriously than with grown persons.
+That is great nonsense that I have been telling Blanche,
+but it is a great deal more serious than most of what we
+say in society."
+
+"I wish you would talk to me, then, as if I were Blanche's age,"
+said Newman, laughing.  "Were you happy at your ball,
+the other night?"
+
+"Ecstatically!"
+
+"Now you are talking the nonsense that we talk in society," said Newman.
+"I don't believe that."
+
+"It was my own fault if I was not happy.  The ball was very pretty,
+and every one very amiable."
+
+"It was on your conscience," said Newman, "that you had annoyed
+your mother and your brother."
+
+Madame de Cintre looked at him a moment without answering.
+"That is true," she replied at last.  "I had undertaken
+more than I could carry out.  I have very little courage;
+I am not a heroine."  She said this with a certain soft emphasis;
+but then, changing her tone, "I could never have gone through
+the sufferings of the beautiful Florabella," she added,
+not even for her prospective rewards.
+
+Dinner was announced, and Newman betook himself to the side
+of the old Madame de Bellegarde.  The dining-room, at the end
+of a cold corridor, was vast and sombre; the dinner was
+simple and delicately excellent.  Newman wondered whether
+Madame de Cintre had had something to do with ordering
+the repast and greatly hoped she had.  Once seated at table,
+with the various members of the ancient house of Bellegarde
+around him, he asked himself the meaning of his position.
+Was the old lady responding to his advances?  Did the fact
+that he was a solitary guest augment his credit or diminish it?
+Were they ashamed to show him to other people, or did they wish to
+give him a sign of sudden adoption into their last reserve of favor?
+Newman was on his guard; he was watchful and conjectural;
+and yet at the same time he was vaguely indifferent.
+Whether they gave him a long rope or a short one he was
+there now, and Madame de Cintre was opposite to him.
+She had a tall candlestick on each side of her;
+she would sit there for the next hour, and that was enough.
+The dinner was extremely solemn and measured; he wondered
+whether this was always the state of things in "old families."
+Madame de Bellegarde held her head very high, and fixed her eyes,
+which looked peculiarly sharp in her little, finely-wrinkled
+white face, very intently upon the table-service. The marquis
+appeared to have decided that the fine arts offered a safe subject
+of conversation, as not leading to startling personal revelations.
+Every now and then, having learned from Newman that he had been
+through the museums of Europe, he uttered some polished aphorism
+upon the flesh-tints of Rubens and the good taste of Sansovino.
+His manners seemed to indicate a fine, nervous dread that
+something disagreeable might happen if the atmosphere were
+not purified by allusions of a thoroughly superior cast.
+"What under the sun is the man afraid of?"  Newman asked himself.
+"Does he think I am going to offer to swap jack-knives with him?"
+It was useless to shut his eyes to the fact that the marquis
+was profoundly disagreeable to him.  He had never been
+a man of strong personal aversions; his nerves had not been
+at the mercy of the mystical qualities of his neighbors.
+But here was a man towards whom he was irresistibly in opposition;
+a man of forms and phrases and postures; a man full of possible
+impertinences and treacheries.  M. de Bellegarde made him feel
+as if he were standing bare-footed on a marble floor; and yet,
+to gain his desire, Newman felt perfectly able to stand.
+He wondered what Madame de Cintre thought of his being accepted,
+if accepted it was.  There was no judging from her face,
+which expressed simply the desire to be gracious in a manner
+which should require as little explicit recognition as possible.
+Young Madame de Bellegarde had always the same manners;
+she was always preoccupied, distracted, listening to everything
+and hearing nothing, looking at her dress, her rings,
+her finger-nails, seeming rather bored, and yet puzzling
+you to decide what was her ideal of social diversion.
+Newman was enlightened on this point later.  Even Valentin did
+not quite seem master of his wits; his vivacity was fitful
+and forced, yet Newman observed that in the lapses of his talk
+he appeared excited.  His eyes had an intenser spark than usual.
+The effect of all this was that Newman, for the first time
+in his life, was not himself; that he measured his movements,
+and counted his words, and resolved that if the occasion
+demanded that he should appear to have swallowed a ramrod,
+he would meet the emergency.
+
+After dinner M. de Bellegarde proposed to his guest that they
+should go into the smoking-room, and he led the way toward a small,
+somewhat musty apartment, the walls of which were ornamented
+with old hangings of stamped leather and trophies of rusty arms.
+Newman refused a cigar, but he established himself upon one
+of the divans, while the marquis puffed his own weed before
+the fire-place, and Valentin sat looking through the light fumes
+of a cigarette from one to the other.
+
+"I can't keep quiet any longer," said Valentin, at last.
+"I must tell you the news and congratulate you.
+My brother seems unable to come to the point; he revolves
+around his announcement like the priest around the altar.
+You are accepted as a candidate for the hand of our sister."
+
+"Valentin, be a little proper!" murmured the marquis, with a look of the most
+delicate irritation contracting the bridge of his high nose.
+
+"There has been a family council," the young man continued;
+"my mother and Urbain have put their heads together,
+and even my testimony has not been altogether excluded.
+My mother and the marquis sat at a table covered with green cloth;
+my sister-in-law and I were on a bench against the wall.
+It was like a committee at the Corps Legislatif.
+We were called up, one after the other, to testify.
+We spoke of you very handsomely.  Madame de Bellegarde said
+that if she had not been told who you were, she would have taken
+you for a duke--an American duke, the Duke of California.
+I said that I could warrant you grateful for the smallest favors--
+modest, humble, unassuming.  I was sure that you would know
+your own place, always, and never give us occasion to remind
+you of certain differences.  After all, you couldn't help it
+if you were not a duke.  There were none in your country;
+but if there had been, it was certain that, smart and active
+as you are, you would have got the pick of the titles.
+At this point I was ordered to sit down, but I think I made
+an impression in your favor."
+
+M. de Bellegarde looked at his brother with dangerous coldness,
+and gave a smile as thin as the edge of a knife.  Then he removed
+a spark of cigar-ash from the sleeve of his coat; he fixed his eyes
+for a while on the cornice of the room, and at last he inserted
+one of his white hands into the breast of his waistcoat.
+"I must apologize to you for the deplorable levity of my brother,"
+he said, "and I must notify you that this is probably not the last
+time that his want of tact will cause you serious embarrassment."
+
+"No, I confess I have no tact," said Valentin.  "Is your embarrassment
+really painful, Newman?  The marquis will put you right again;
+his own touch is deliciously delicate."
+
+"Valentin, I am sorry to say," the marquis continued,
+"has never possessed the tone, the manner, that belongs to a
+young man in his position.  It has been a great affliction
+to his mother, who is very fond of the old traditions.
+But you must remember that he speaks for no one but himself."
+
+"Oh, I don't mind him, sir," said Newman, good-humoredly. "I
+know what he amounts to."
+
+"In the good old times," said Valentin, "marquises and counts used to have
+their appointed fools and jesters, to crack jokes for them.  Nowadays we
+see a great strapping democrat keeping a count about him to play the fool.
+It's a good situation, but I certainly am very degenerate."
+
+M. de Bellegarde fixed his eyes for some time on the floor.
+"My mother informed me," he said presently, "of the announcement
+that you made to her the other evening."
+
+"That I desired to marry your sister?" said Newman.
+
+"That you wished to arrange a marriage," said the marquis, slowly,
+"with my sister, the Comtesse de Cintre.  The proposal was serious,
+and required, on my mother's part, a great deal of reflection.
+She naturally took me into her counsels, and I gave my most zealous
+attention to the subject.  There was a great deal to be considered;
+more than you appear to imagine.  We have viewed the question
+on all its faces, we have weighed one thing against another.
+Our conclusion has been that we favor your suit.
+My mother has desired me to inform you of our decision.
+She will have the honor of saying a few words to you on
+the subject, herself.  Meanwhile, by us, the heads of the family,
+you are accepted."
+
+Newman got up and came nearer to the marquis.  "You will do nothing
+to hinder me, and all you can to help me, eh?"
+
+"I will recommend my sister to accept you."
+
+Newman passed his hand over his face, and pressed it for
+a moment upon his eyes.  This promise had a great sound,
+and yet the pleasure he took in it was embittered by his having
+to stand there so and receive his passport from M. de Bellegarde.
+The idea of having this gentleman mixed up with his wooing
+and wedding was more and more disagreeable to him.
+But Newman had resolved to go through the mill, as he imagined it,
+and he would not cry out at the first turn of the wheel.
+He was silent a while, and then he said, with a certain dryness
+which Valentin told him afterwards had a very grand air,
+"I am much obliged to you."
+
+"I take note of the promise," said Valentin, "I register the vow."
+
+M. de Bellegarde began to gaze at the cornice again; he apparently
+had something more to say.  "I must do my mother the justice,"
+he resumed, "I must do myself the justice, to say that our decision
+was not easy.  Such an arrangement was not what we had expected.
+The idea that my sister should marry a gentleman--ah--in business
+was something of a novelty."
+
+"So I told you, you know," said Valentin raising his finger at Newman.
+
+"The novelty has not quite worn away, I confess," the marquis went on;
+"perhaps it never will, entirely.  But possibly that is not altogether
+to be regretted," and he gave his thin smile again.  "It may be that
+the time has come when we should make some concession to novelty.
+There had been no novelties in our house for a great many years.
+I made the observation to my mother, and she did me the honor to admit
+that it was worthy of attention."
+
+"My dear brother," interrupted Valentin, "is not your memory just
+here leading you the least bit astray?  Our mother is, I may say,
+distinguished for her small respect of abstract reasoning.  Are you
+very sure that she replied to your striking proposition in the gracious
+manner you describe?  You know how terribly incisive she is sometimes.
+Didn't she, rather, do you the honor to say, 'A fiddlestick for your phrases!
+There are better reasons than that'?"
+
+"Other reasons were discussed," said the marquis, without looking at Valentin,
+but with an audible tremor in his voice; "some of them possibly were better.
+We are conservative, Mr. Newman, but we are not also bigots.  We judged
+the matter liberally.  We have no doubt that everything will be comfortable."
+
+Newman had stood listening to these remarks with his arms folded and his
+eyes fastened upon M. de Bellegarde, "Comfortable?" he said, with a sort
+of grim flatness of intonation.  "Why shouldn't we be comfortable?
+If you are not, it will be your own fault; I have everything to make ME so."
+
+"My brother means that with the lapse of time you may get used to the change"--
+and Valentin paused, to light another cigarette.
+
+"What change?" asked Newman in the same tone.
+
+"Urbain," said Valentin, very gravely, "I am afraid that Mr. Newman does
+not quite realize the change.  We ought to insist upon that."
+
+"My brother goes too far," said M. de Bellegarde.
+"It is his fatal want of tact again.  It is my mother's wish,
+and mine, that no such allusions should be made.
+Pray never make them yourself.  We prefer to assume that
+the person accepted as the possible husband of my sister is one
+of ourselves, and that he should have no explanations to make.
+With a little discretion on both sides, everything, I think,
+will be easy.  That is exactly what I wished to say--
+that we quite understand what we have undertaken, and that you
+may depend upon our adhering to our resolution."
+
+Valentin shook his hands in the air and then buried his face in them.
+"I have less tact than I might have, no doubt; but oh,
+my brother, if you knew what you yourself were saying!"
+And he went off into a long laugh.
+
+M. de Bellegarde's face flushed a little, but he held his head higher,
+as if to repudiate this concession to vulgar perturbability.
+"I am sure you understand me," he said to Newman.
+
+"Oh no, I don't understand you at all," said Newman.
+"But you needn't mind that.  I don't care.  In fact, I think
+I had better not understand you.  I might not like it.
+That wouldn't suit me at all, you know.  I want to marry
+your sister, that's all; to do it as quickly as possible,
+and to find fault with nothing.  I don't care how I do it.
+I am not marrying you, you know, sir.  I have got my leave,
+and that is all I want."
+
+"You had better receive the last word from my mother,"
+said the marquis.
+
+"Very good; I will go and get it," said Newman; and he prepared
+to return to the drawing-room.
+
+M. de Bellegarde made a motion for him to pass first, and when
+Newman had gone out he shut himself into the room with Valentin.
+Newman had been a trifle bewildered by the audacious irony
+of the younger brother, and he had not needed its aid to point
+the moral of M. de Bellegarde's transcendent patronage.
+He had wit enough to appreciate the force of that civility
+which consists in calling your attention to the impertinences
+it spares you.  But he had felt warmly the delicate sympathy
+with himself that underlay Valentin's fraternal irreverence,
+and he was most unwilling that his friend should pay a tax upon it.
+He paused a moment in the corridor, after he had gone a few steps,
+expecting to hear the resonance of M. de Bellegarde's displeasure;
+but he detected only a perfect stillness.  The stillness
+itself seemed a trifle portentous; he reflected however that
+he had no right to stand listening, and he made his way back
+to the salon.  In his absence several persons had come in.
+They were scattered about the room in groups, two or three of them
+having passed into a small boudoir, next to the drawing-room,
+which had now been lighted and opened.  Old Madame de Bellegarde
+was in her place by the fire, talking to a very old gentleman
+in a wig and a profuse white neck cloth of the fashion of 1820.
+Madame de Cintre was bending a listening head to the historic
+confidences of an old lady who was presumably the wife
+of the old gentleman in the neckcloth, an old lady in a red
+satin dress and an ermine cape, who wore across her forehead
+a band with a topaz set in it.  Young Madame de Bellegarde,
+when Newman came in, left some people among whom she was sitting,
+and took the place that she had occupied before dinner.
+Then she gave a little push to the puff that stood near her,
+and by a glance at Newman seemed to indicate that she had placed
+it in position for him.  He went and took possession of it;
+the marquis's wife amused and puzzled him.
+
+"I know your secret," she said, in her bad but charming English;
+"you need make no mystery of it.  You wish to marry my sister-in-law.
+C'est un beau choix.  A man like you ought to marry a tall, thin woman.
+You must know that I have spoken in your favor; you owe me a famous taper!"
+
+"You have spoken to Madame de Cintre?" said Newman.
+
+"Oh no, not that.  You may think it strange, but my sister-in-law and I are
+not so intimate as that.  No; I spoke to my husband and my mother-in-law;
+I said I was sure we could do what we chose with you."
+
+"I am much, obliged to you," said Newman, laughing; "but you can't."
+
+"I know that very well; I didn't believe a word of it.
+But I wanted you to come into the house; I thought we
+should be friends."
+
+"I am very sure of it," said Newman.
+
+"Don't be too sure.  If you like Madame de Cintre so much,
+perhaps you will not like me.  We are as different as blue and pink.
+But you and I have something in common.  I have come into this
+family by marriage; you want to come into it in the same way."
+
+"Oh no, I don't!" interrupted Newman.  "I only want to take Madame
+de Cintre out of it."
+
+"Well, to cast your nets you have to go into the water.
+Our positions are alike; we shall be able to compare notes.
+What do you think of my husband?  It's a strange question, isn't it?
+But I shall ask you some stranger ones yet."
+
+"Perhaps a stranger one will be easier to answer," said Newman.
+"You might try me."
+
+"Oh, you get off very well; the old Comte de la Rochefidele,
+yonder, couldn't do it better.  I told them that if we only
+gave you a chance you would be a perfect talon rouge.  I know
+something about men.  Besides, you and I belong to the same camp.
+I am a ferocious democrat.  By birth I am vieille roche; a good
+little bit of the history of France is the history of my family.
+Oh, you never heard of us, of course!  Ce que c'est que la gloire!
+We are much better than the Bellegardes, at any rate.
+But I don't care a pin for my pedigree; I want to belong to my time.
+I'm a revolutionist, a radical, a child of the age!
+I am sure I go beyond you.  I like clever people, wherever they
+come from, and I take my amusement wherever I find it.
+I don't pout at the Empire; here all the world pouts at the Empire.
+Of course I have to mind what I say; but I expect to take my
+revenge with you."  Madame de Bellegarde discoursed for some
+time longer in this sympathetic strain, with an eager abundance
+which seemed to indicate that her opportunities for revealing
+her esoteric philosophy were indeed rare.  She hoped that Newman
+would never be afraid of her, however he might be with the others,
+for, really, she went very far indeed.  "Strong people"--
+le gens forts--were in her opinion equal, all the world over.
+Newman listened to her with an attention at once beguiled and irritated.
+He wondered what the deuce she, too, was driving at, with her hope
+that he would not be afraid of her and her protestations of equality.
+In so far as he could understand her, she was wrong; a silly,
+rattling woman was certainly not the equal of a sensible man,
+preoccupied with an ambitious passion.  Madame de Bellegarde
+stopped suddenly, and looked at him sharply, shaking her fan.
+"I see you don't believe me," she said, "you are too much on your guard.
+You will not form an alliance, offensive or defensive?
+You are very wrong; I could help you."
+
+Newman answered that he was very grateful and that he would certainly ask
+for help; she should see.  "But first of all," he said, "I must help myself."
+And he went to join Madame de Cintre.
+
+"I have been telling Madame de la Rochefidele that you are
+an American," she said, as he came up.  "It interests her greatly.
+Her father went over with the French troops to help you
+in your battles in the last century, and she has always,
+in consequence, wanted greatly to see an American.
+But she has never succeeded till to-night. You are the first--
+to her knowledge--that she has ever looked at."
+
+Madame de la Rochefidele had an aged, cadaverous face,
+with a falling of the lower jaw which prevented her from
+bringing her lips together, and reduced her conversations
+to a series of impressive but inarticulate gutturals.
+She raised an antique eyeglass, elaborately mounted
+in chased silver, and looked at Newman from head to foot.
+Then she said something to which he listened deferentially,
+but which he completely failed to understand.
+
+"Madame de la Rochefidele says that she is convinced that she must
+have seen Americans without knowing it," Madame de Cintre explained.
+Newman thought it probable she had seen a great many things
+without knowing it; and the old lady, again addressing herself
+to utterance, declared--as interpreted by Madame de Cintre--
+that she wished she had known it.
+
+At this moment the old gentleman who had been talking to the elder
+Madame de Bellegarde drew near, leading the marquise on his arm.
+His wife pointed out Newman to him, apparently explaining his
+remarkable origin.  M. de la Rochefidele, whose old age was rosy
+and rotund, spoke very neatly and clearly, almost as prettily,
+Newman thought, as M. Nioche.  When he had been enlightened,
+he turned to Newman with an inimitable elderly grace.
+
+"Monsieur is by no means the first American that I have seen," he said.
+"Almost the first person I ever saw--to notice him--was an American."
+
+"Ah?" said Newman, sympathetically.
+
+"The great Dr. Franklin," said M. de la Rochefidele.
+"Of course I was very young.  He was received very well
+in our monde."
+
+"Not better than Mr. Newman," said Madame de Bellegarde.
+"I beg he will offer his arm into the other room.
+I could have offered no higher privilege to Dr. Franklin."
+
+Newman, complying with Madame de Bellegarde's request, perceived that
+her two sons had returned to the drawing-room. He scanned their
+faces an instant for traces of the scene that had followed his
+separation from them, but the marquise seemed neither more nor
+less frigidly grand than usual, and Valentin was kissing ladies'
+hands with at least his habitual air of self-abandonment to the act.
+Madame de Bellegarde gave a glance at her eldest son, and by the time
+she had crossed the threshold of her boudoir he was at her side.
+The room was now empty and offered a sufficient degree of privacy.
+The old lady disengaged herself from Newman's arm and rested her hand
+on the arm of the marquis; and in this position she stood a moment,
+holding her head high and biting her small under-lip. I am afraid
+the picture was lost upon Newman, but Madame de Bellegarde was,
+in fact, at this moment a striking image of the dignity which--
+even in the case of a little time-shrunken old lady--may reside
+in the habit of unquestioned authority and the absoluteness of a
+social theory favorable to yourself.
+
+"My son has spoken to you as I desired," she said, "and you understand
+that we shall not interfere.  The rest will lie with yourself."
+
+"M. de Bellegarde told me several things I didn't understand,"
+said Newman, "but I made out that.  You will leave me open field.
+I am much obliged."
+
+"I wish to add a word that my son probably did not feel at liberty to say,"
+the marquise rejoined.  "I must say it for my own peace of mind.
+We are stretching a point; we are doing you a great favor."
+
+"Oh, your son said it very well; didn't you?" said Newman.
+
+"Not so well as my mother," declared the marquis.
+
+"I can only repeat--I am much obliged."
+
+"It is proper I should tell you," Madame de Bellegarde went on,
+"that I am very proud, and that I hold my head very high.
+I may be wrong, but I am too old to change.
+At least I know it, and I don't pretend to anything else.
+Don't flatter yourself that my daughter is not proud.
+She is proud in her own way--a somewhat different way from mine.
+You will have to make your terms with that.  Even Valentin
+is proud, if you touch the right spot--or the wrong one.
+Urbain is proud; that you see for yourself.  Sometimes I
+think he is a little too proud; but I wouldn't change him.
+He is the best of my children; he cleaves to his old mother.
+But I have said enough to show you that we are all proud together.
+It is well that you should know the sort of people you
+have come among."
+
+"Well," said Newman, "I can only say, in return, that I am NOT proud;
+I shan't mind you!  But you speak as if you intended to be very disagreeable."
+
+"I shall not enjoy having my daughter marry you, and I shall not pretend
+to enjoy it.  If you don't mind that, so much the better."
+
+"If you stick to your own side of the contract we shall
+not quarrel; that is all I ask of you," said Newman.
+"Keep your hands off, and give me an open field.
+I am very much in earnest, and there is not the slightest
+danger of my getting discouraged or backing out.
+You will have me constantly before your eyes; if you don't
+like it, I am sorry for you.  I will do for your daughter,
+if she will accept me everything that a man can do for a woman.
+I am happy to tell you that, as a promise--a pledge.
+I consider that on your side you make me an equal pledge.
+You will not back out, eh?"
+
+"I don't know what you mean by 'backing out,' " said the marquise.
+"It suggests a movement of which I think no Bellegarde has
+ever been guilty."
+
+"Our word is our word," said Urbain.  "We have given it."
+
+"Well, now," said Newman, "I am very glad you are so proud.
+It makes me believe that you will keep it."
+
+The marquise was silent a moment, and then, suddenly, "I shall
+always be polite to you, Mr. Newman," she declared, "but, decidedly,
+I shall never like you."
+
+"Don't be too sure," said Newman, laughing.
+
+"I am so sure that I will ask you to take me back to my arm-chair without the
+least fear of having my sentiments modified by the service you render me."
+And Madame de Bellegarde took his arm, and returned to the salon and to
+her customary place.
+
+M. de la Rochefidele and his wife were preparing to take their leave,
+and Madame de Cintre's interview with the mumbling old lady was at an end.
+She stood looking about her, asking herself, apparently to whom she
+should next speak, when Newman came up to her.
+
+"Your mother has given me leave--very solemnly--to come here often," he said.
+"I mean to come often."
+
+"I shall be glad to see you," she answered, simply.  And then, in a moment.
+"You probably think it very strange that there should be such a solemnity--
+as you say--about your coming."
+
+"Well, yes; I do, rather."
+
+"Do you remember what my brother Valentin said, the first time
+you came to see me--that we were a strange, strange family?"
+
+"It was not the first time I came, but the second, said Newman.
+
+"Very true.  Valentin annoyed me at the time, but now I know you better,
+I may tell you he was right.  If you come often, you will see!"
+and Madame de Cintre turned away.
+
+Newman watched her a while, talking with other people,
+and then he took his leave.  He shook hands last with Valentin
+de Bellegarde, who came out with him to the top of the staircase.
+"Well, you have got your permit," said Valentin.
+"I hope you liked the process."
+
+"I like your sister, more than ever.  But don't worry your
+brother any more for my sake," Newman added.  "I don't mind him.
+I am afraid he came down on you in the smoking-room, after
+I went out."
+
+"When my brother comes down on me," said Valentin, "he falls hard.
+I have a peculiar way of receiving him.  I must say," he continued,
+"that they came up to the mark much sooner than I expected.
+I don't understand it, they must have had to turn the screw pretty tight.
+It's a tribute to your millions."
+
+"Well, it's the most precious one they have ever received," said Newman.
+
+He was turning away when Valentin stopped him, looking at him with
+a brilliant, softly-cynical glance.  "I should like to know whether,
+within a few days, you have seen your venerable friend M. Nioche."
+
+"He was yesterday at my rooms," Newman answered.
+
+"What did he tell you?"
+
+"Nothing particular."
+
+"You didn't see the muzzle of a pistol sticking out of his pocket?"
+
+"What are you driving at?"  Newman demanded.  "I thought he seemed
+rather cheerful for him."
+
+Valentin broke into a laugh.  "I am delighted to hear it!
+I win my bet.  Mademoiselle Noemie has thrown her cap over
+the mill, as we say.  She has left the paternal domicile.
+She is launched!  And M. Nioche is rather cheerful-FOR HIM!
+Don't brandish your tomahawk at that rate; I have not seen
+her nor communicated with her since that day at the Louvre.
+Andromeda has found another Perseus than I. My information is exact;
+on such matters it always is.  I suppose that now you will
+raise your protest."
+
+"My protest be hanged!" murmured Newman, disgustedly.
+
+But his tone found no echo in that in which Valentin,
+with his hand on the door, to return to his mother's apartment,
+exclaimed, "But I shall see her now!  She is very remarkable--
+she is very remarkable!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Newman kept his promise, or his menace, of going often to
+the Rue de l'Universite, and during the next six weeks he saw
+Madame de Cintre more times than he could have numbered.
+He flattered himself that he was not in love, but his biographer
+may be supposed to know better.  He claimed, at least,
+none of the exemptions and emoluments of the romantic passion.
+Love, he believed, made a fool of a man, and his present emotion
+was not folly but wisdom; wisdom sound, serene, well-directed.
+What he felt was an intense, all-consuming tenderness,
+which had for its object an extraordinarily graceful
+and delicate, and at the same time impressive, woman who
+lived in a large gray house on the left bank of the Seine.
+This tenderness turned very often into a positive heart-ache;
+a sign in which, certainly, Newman ought to have read
+the appellation which science has conferred upon his sentiment.
+When the heart has a heavy weight upon it, it hardly matters
+whether the weight be of gold or of lead; when, at any rate,
+happiness passes into that place in which it becomes identical
+with pain, a man may admit that the reign of wisdom is
+temporarily suspended.  Newman wished Madame de Cintre so well
+that nothing he could think of doing for her in the future rose
+to the high standard which his present mood had set itself.
+She seemed to him so felicitous a product of nature and circumstance
+that his invention, musing on future combinations, was constantly
+catching its breath with the fear of stumbling into some brutal
+compression or mutilation of her beautiful personal harmony.
+This is what I mean by Newman's tenderness:  Madame de Cintre
+pleased him so, exactly as she was, that his desire to interpose
+between her and the troubles of life had the quality of a young
+mother's eagerness to protect the sleep of her first-born child.
+Newman was simply charmed, and he handled his charm as if
+it were a music-box which would stop if one shook it.
+There can be no better proof of the hankering epicure that
+is hidden in every man's temperament, waiting for a signal
+from some divine confederate that he may safely peep out.
+Newman at last was enjoying, purely, freely, deeply.
+Certain of Madame de Cintre's personal qualities--the luminous
+sweetness of her eyes, the delicate mobility of her face,
+the deep liquidity of her voice--filled all his consciousness.
+A rose-crowned Greek of old, gazing at a marble goddess
+with his whole bright intellect resting satisfied in the act,
+could not have been a more complete embodiment of the wisdom
+that loses itself in the enjoyment of quiet harmonies.
+
+He made no violent love to her--no sentimental speeches.
+He never trespassed on what she had made him understand was for
+the present forbidden ground.  But he had, nevertheless, a comfortable
+sense that she knew better from day to day how much he admired her.
+Though in general he was no great talker, he talked much,
+and he succeeded perfectly in making her say many things.
+He was not afraid of boring her, either by his discourse
+or by his silence; and whether or no he did occasionally
+bore her, it is probable that on the whole she liked him
+only the better for his absense of embarrassed scruples.
+Her visitors, coming in often while Newman sat there,
+found a tall, lean, silent man in a half-lounging attitude,
+who laughed out sometimes when no one had meant to be droll,
+and remained grave in the presence of calculated witticisms,
+for appreciation of which he had apparently not the proper culture.
+
+It must be confessed that the number of subjects upon which Newman
+had no ideas was extremely large, and it must be added that as regards
+those subjects upon which he was without ideas he was also perfectly
+without words.  He had little of the small change of conversation,
+and his stock of ready-made formulas and phrases was the scantiest.
+On the other hand he had plenty of attention to bestow, and his
+estimate of the importance of a topic did not depend upon the number
+of clever things he could say about it.  He himself was almost
+never bored, and there was no man with whom it would have been
+a greater mistake to suppose that silence meant displeasure.
+What it was that entertained him during some of his speechless
+sessions I must, however, confess myself unable to determine.
+We know in a general way that a great many things which were old
+stories to a great many people had the charm of novelty to him,
+but a complete list of his new impressions would probably contain
+a number of surprises for us.  He told Madame de Cintre a hundred
+long stories; he explained to her, in talking of the United States,
+the working of various local institutions and mercantile customs.
+Judging by the sequel she was interested, but one would not have
+been sure of it beforehand.  As regards her own talk, Newman was
+very sure himself that she herself enjoyed it:  this was as a sort
+of amendment to the portrait that Mrs. Tristram had drawn of her.
+He discovered that she had naturally an abundance of gayety.
+He had been right at first in saying she was shy; her shyness,
+in a woman whose circumstances and tranquil beauty afforded every
+facility for well-mannered hardihood, was only a charm the more.
+For Newman it had lasted some time, and even when it went it left
+something behind it which for a while performed the same office.
+Was this the tearful secret of which Mrs. Tristram had had a glimpse,
+and of which, as of her friend's reserve, her high-breeding,
+and her profundity, she had given a sketch of which the
+outlines were, perhaps, rather too heavy?  Newman supposed so,
+but he found himself wondering less every day what Madame de
+Cintre's secrets might be, and more convinced that secrets were,
+in themselves, hateful things to her.  She was a woman for the light,
+not for the shade; and her natural line was not picturesque reserve
+and mysterious melancholy, but frank, joyous, brilliant action,
+with just so much meditation as was necessary, and not a grain more.
+To this, apparently, he had succeeded in bringing her back.
+He felt, himself, that he was an antidote to oppressive secrets;
+what he offered her was, in fact, above all things a vast,
+sunny immunity from the need of having any.
+
+He often passed his evenings, when Madame de Cintre had so appointed it,
+at the chilly fireside of Madame de Bellegarde, contenting himself
+with looking across the room, through narrowed eyelids, at his mistress,
+who always made a point, before her family, of talking to some one else.
+Madame de Bellegarde sat by the fire conversing neatly and coldly
+with whomsoever approached her, and glancing round the room with her
+slowly-restless eye, the effect of which, when it lighted upon him,
+was to Newman's sense identical with that of a sudden spurt of damp air.
+When he shook hands with her he always asked her with a laugh whether
+she could "stand him" another evening, and she replied, without a laugh,
+that thank God she had always been able to do her duty.  Newman, talking once
+of the marquise to Mrs. Tristram, said that after all it was very easy
+to get on with her; it always was easy to get on with out-and-out rascals.
+
+"And is it by that elegant term," said Mrs. Tristram, "that you
+designate the Marquise de Bellegarde?"
+
+"Well," said Newman, "she is wicked, she is an old sinner."
+
+"What is her crime?" asked Mrs. Tristram.
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if she had murdered some one--all from a sense
+of duty, of course."
+
+"How can you be so dreadful?" sighed Mrs. Tristram.
+
+"I am not dreadful.  I am speaking of her favorably."
+
+"Pray what will you say when you want to be severe?"
+
+"I shall keep my severity for some one else--for the marquis.
+There's a man I can't swallow, mix the drink as I will."
+
+"And what has HE done?"
+
+"I can't quite make out; it is something dreadfully bad,
+something mean and underhand, and not redeemed by audacity,
+as his mother's misdemeanors may have been.  If he has never
+committed murder, he has at least turned his back and looked
+the other way while some one else was committing it."
+
+In spite of this invidious hypothesis, which must be taken
+for nothing more than an example of the capricious play
+of "American humor," Newman did his best to maintain an easy
+and friendly style of communication with M. de Bellegarde.
+So long as he was in personal contact with people he disliked
+extremely to have anything to forgive them, and he was capable
+of a good deal of unsuspected imaginative effort (for the sake
+of his own personal comfort) to assume for the time that they
+were good fellows.  He did his best to treat the marquis
+as one; he believed honestly, moreover, that he could not,
+in reason, be such a confounded fool as he seemed.
+Newman's familiarity was never importunate; his sense of human
+equality was not an aggressive taste or an aesthetic theory,
+but something as natural and organic as a physical
+appetite which had never been put on a scanty allowance
+and consequently was innocent of ungraceful eagerness.
+His tranquil unsuspectingness of the relativity of his own place
+in the social scale was probably irritating to M. de Bellegarde,
+who saw himself reflected in the mind of his potential brother-in-law
+in a crude and colorless form, unpleasantly dissimilar to the
+impressive image projected upon his own intellectual mirror.
+He never forgot himself for an instant, and replied to what he must
+have considered Newman's "advances" with mechanical politeness.
+Newman, who was constantly forgetting himself, and indulging
+in an unlimited amount of irresponsible inquiry and conjecture,
+now and then found himself confronted by the conscious,
+ironical smile of his host.  What the deuce M. de
+Bellegarde was smiling at he was at a loss to divine.
+M. de Bellegarde's smile may be supposed to have been,
+for himself, a compromise between a great many emotions.
+So long as he smiled he was polite, and it was proper he should
+be polite.  A smile, moreover, committed him to nothing more
+than politeness, and left the degree of politeness agreeably vague.
+A smile, too, was neither dissent--which was too serious--
+nor agreement, which might have brought on terrible complications.
+And then a smile covered his own personal dignity, which in this
+critical situation he was resolved to keep immaculate; it was quite
+enough that the glory of his house should pass into eclipse.
+Between him and Newman, his whole manner seemed to declare
+there could be no interchange of opinion; he was holding
+his breath so as not to inhale the odor of democracy.
+Newman was far from being versed in European politics,
+but he liked to have a general idea of what was going
+on about him, and he accordingly asked M. de Bellegarde
+several times what he thought of public affairs.
+M. de Bellegarde answered with suave concision that he thought
+as ill of them as possible, that they were going from bad to worse,
+and that the age was rotten to its core.  This gave Newman,
+for the moment, an almost kindly feeling for the marquis;
+he pitied a man for whom the world was so cheerless a place,
+and the next time he saw M. de Bellegarde he attempted to call
+his attention to some of the brilliant features of the time.
+The marquis presently replied that he had but a single
+political conviction, which was enough for him:
+he believed in the divine right of Henry of Bourbon,
+Fifth of his name, to the throne of France.  Newman stared,
+and after this he ceased to talk politics with M. de Bellegarde.
+He was not horrified nor scandalized, he was not even amused;
+he felt as he should have felt if he had discovered
+in M. de Bellegarde a taste for certain oddities of diet;
+an appetite, for instance, for fishbones or nutshells.
+Under these circumstances, of course, he would never have
+broached dietary questions with him.
+
+One afternoon, on his calling on Madame de Cintre, Newman was
+requested by the servant to wait a few moments, as his hostess
+was not at liberty.  He walked about the room a while, taking up
+her books, smelling her flowers, and looking at her prints
+and photographs (which he thought prodigiously pretty), and at
+last he heard the opening of a door to which his back was turned.
+On the threshold stood an old woman whom he remembered
+to have met several times in entering and leaving the house.
+She was tall and straight and dressed in black, and she wore
+a cap which, if Newman had been initiated into such mysteries,
+would have been a sufficient assurance that she was not a Frenchwoman;
+a cap of pure British composition.  She had a pale, decent,
+depressed-looking face, and a clear, dull, English eye.
+She looked at Newman a moment, both intently and timidly,
+and then she dropped a short, straight English curtsey.
+
+"Madame de Cintre begs you will kindly wait," she said.
+"She has just come in; she will soon have finished dressing."
+
+"Oh, I will wait as long as she wants," said Newman.
+"Pray tell her not to hurry."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said the woman, softly; and then, instead of retiring
+with her message, she advanced into the room.  She looked about her
+for a moment, and presently went to a table and began to arrange certain
+books and knick-knacks. Newman was struck with the high respectability
+of her appearance; he was afraid to address her as a servant.
+She busied herself for some moments with putting the table in order
+and pulling the curtains straight, while Newman walked slowly to and fro.
+He perceived at last from her reflection in the mirror, as he was passing
+that her hands were idle and that she was looking at him intently.
+She evidently wished to say something, and Newman, perceiving it,
+helped her to begin.
+
+"You are English?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, sir, please," she answered, quickly and softly;
+"I was born in Wiltshire."
+
+"And what do you think of Paris?"
+
+"Oh, I don't think of Paris, sir," she said in the same tone.
+"It is so long since I have been here."
+
+"Ah, you have been here very long?"
+
+"It is more than forty years, sir.  I came over with Lady Emmeline."
+
+"You mean with old Madame de Bellegarde?"
+
+"Yes, sir.  I came with her when she was married.
+I was my lady's own woman."
+
+"And you have been with her ever since?"
+
+"I have been in the house ever since.  My lady has taken a younger person.
+You see I am very old.  I do nothing regular now.  But I keep about."
+
+"You look very strong and well," said Newman, observing the erectness
+of her figure, and a certain venerable rosiness in her cheek.
+
+"Thank God I am not ill, sir; I hope I know my duty
+too well to go panting and coughing about the house.
+But I am an old woman, sir, and it is as an old woman that I
+venture to speak to you."
+
+"Oh, speak out," said Newman, curiously.  "You needn't be afraid of me."
+
+"Yes, sir.  I think you are kind.  I have seen you before."
+
+"On the stairs, you mean?"
+
+"Yes, sir.  When you have been coming to see the countess.
+I have taken the liberty of noticing that you come often."
+
+"Oh yes; I come very often," said Newman, laughing.  "You need
+not have been wide-awake to notice that."
+
+"I have noticed it with pleasure, sir," said the ancient tire-woman, gravely.
+And she stood looking at Newman with a strange expression of face.
+The old instinct of deference and humility was there; the habit of decent
+self-effacement and knowledge of her "own place."  But there mingled
+with it a certain mild audacity, born of the occasion and of a sense,
+probably, of Newman's unprecedented approachableness, and, beyond this,
+a vague indifference to the old proprieties; as if my lady's own woman
+had at last begun to reflect that, since my lady had taken another person,
+she had a slight reversionary property in herself.
+
+"You take a great interest in the family?" said Newman.
+
+"A deep interest, sir.  Especially in the countess."
+
+"I am glad of that," said Newman.  And in a moment he added,
+smiling, "So do I!"
+
+"So I suppose, sir.  We can't help noticing these things and having our ideas;
+can we, sir?"
+
+"You mean as a servant?" said Newman.
+
+"Ah, there it is, sir.  I am afraid that when I let my
+thoughts meddle with such matters I am no longer a servant.
+But I am so devoted to the countess; if she were my own child I
+couldn't love her more.  That is how I come to be so bold, sir.
+They say you want to marry her."
+
+Newman eyed his interlocutress and satisfied himself that she was not
+a gossip, but a zealot; she looked anxious, appealing, discreet.
+"It is quite true," he said.  "I want to marry Madame de Cintre."
+
+"And to take her away to America?"
+
+"I will take her wherever she wants to go."
+
+"The farther away the better, sir!" exclaimed the old woman,
+with sudden intensity.  But she checked herself, and, taking up
+a paper-weight in mosaic, began to polish it with her black apron.
+"I don't mean anything against the house or the family, sir.
+But I think a great change would do the poor countess good.
+It is very sad here."
+
+"Yes, it's not very lively," said Newman.  "But Madame de Cintre
+is gay herself."
+
+"She is everything that is good.  You will not be vexed to hear
+that she has been gayer for a couple of months past than she
+had been in many a day before."
+
+Newman was delighted to gather this testimony to the prosperity
+of his suit, but he repressed all violent marks of elation.
+"Has Madame de Cintre been in bad spirits before this?" he asked.
+
+"Poor lady, she had good reason.  M. de Cintre was no husband for a sweet
+young lady like that.  And then, as I say, it has been a sad house.
+It is better, in my humble opinion, that she were out of it.  So, if you
+will excuse me for saying so, I hope she will marry you."
+
+"I hope she will!" said Newman.
+
+"But you must not lose courage, sir, if she doesn't
+make up her mind at once.  That is what I wanted to beg
+of you, sir.  Don't give it up, sir.  You will not take it
+ill if I say it's a great risk for any lady at any time;
+all the more when she has got rid of one bad bargain.
+But if she can marry a good, kind, respectable gentleman,
+I think she had better make up her mind to it.  They speak
+very well of you, sir, in the house, and, if you will allow me
+to say so, I like your face.  You have a very different appearance
+from the late count, he wasn't five feet high.  And they say
+your fortune is beyond everything.  There's no harm in that.
+So I beseech you to be patient, sir,, and bide your time.
+If I don't say this to you, sir, perhaps no one will.
+Of course it is not for me to make any promises.  I can answer
+for nothing.  But I think your chance is not so bad, sir.
+I am nothing but a weary old woman in my quiet corner, but one
+woman understands another, and I think I make out the countess.
+I received her in my arms when she came into the world
+and her first wedding day was the saddest of my life.
+She owes it to me to show me another and a brighter one.
+If you will hold firm, sir--and you look as if you would--
+I think we may see it."
+
+"I am much obliged to you for your encouragement," said Newman, heartily.
+"One can't have too much.  I mean to hold firm.  And if Madame de Cintre
+marries me you must come and live with her."
+
+The old woman looked at him strangely, with her soft, lifeless eyes.
+"It may seem a heartless thing to say, sir, when one has been forty years
+in a house, but I may tell you that I should like to leave this place."
+
+"Why, it's just the time to say it," said Newman, fervently.
+"After forty years one wants a change."
+
+"You are very kind, sir;" and this faithful servant
+dropped another curtsey and seemed disposed to retire.
+But she lingered a moment and gave a timid, joyless smile.
+Newman was disappointed, and his fingers stole half shyly half
+irritably into his waistcoat-pocket. His informant noticed
+the movement.  "Thank God I am not a Frenchwoman," she said.
+"If I were, I would tell you with a brazen simper, old as I am,
+that if you please, monsieur, my information is worth something.
+Let me tell you so in my own decent English way.
+It IS worth something."
+
+"How much, please?" said Newman.
+
+"Simply this:  a promise not to hint to the countess that I
+have said these things."
+
+"If that is all, you have it," said Newman.
+
+"That is all, sir.  Thank you, sir.  Good day, sir."  And having once more
+slid down telescope-wise into her scanty petticoats, the old woman departed.
+At the same moment Madame de Cintre came in by an opposite door.
+She noticed the movement of the other portiere and asked Newman who had
+been entertaining him.
+
+"The British female!" said Newman.  "An old lady in a black dress and a cap,
+who curtsies up and down, and expresses herself ever so well."
+
+"An old lady who curtsies and expresses herself?.... Ah,
+you mean poor Mrs. Bread.  I happen to know that you have made
+a conquest of her."
+
+"Mrs. Cake, she ought to be called," said Newman.  "She is very sweet.
+She is a delicious old woman."
+
+Madame de Cintre looked at him a moment.  "What can she have said to you?
+She is an excellent creature, but we think her rather dismal."
+
+"I suppose," Newman answered presently, "that I like her
+because she has lived near you so long.  Since your birth,
+she told me."
+
+"Yes," said Madame de Cintre, simply; "she is very faithful;
+I can trust her."
+
+Newman had never made any reflections to this lady upon her mother
+and her brother Urbain; had given no hint of the impression
+they made upon him.  But, as if she had guessed his thoughts,
+she seemed careful to avoid all occasion for making him speak
+of them.  She never alluded to her mother's domestic decrees;
+she never quoted the opinions of the marquis.
+They had talked, however, of Valentin, and she had made
+no secret of her extreme affection for her younger brother.
+Newman listened sometimes with a certain harmless jealousy;
+he would have liked to divert some of her tender allusions
+to his own credit.  Once Madame de Cintre told him with a
+little air of triumph about something that Valentin had done
+which she thought very much to his honor.  It was a service
+he had rendered to an old friend of the family; something more
+"serious" than Valentin was usually supposed capable of being.
+Newman said he was glad to hear of it, and then began
+to talk about something which lay upon his own heart.
+Madame de Cintre listened, but after a while she said,
+"I don't like the way you speak of my brother Valentin."
+Hereupon Newman, surprised, said that he had never spoken
+of him but kindly.
+
+"It is too kindly," said Madame de Cintre.  "It is a kindness
+that costs nothing; it is the kindness you show to a child.
+It is as if you didn't respect him."
+
+"Respect him?  Why I think I do."
+
+"You think?  If you are not sure, it is no respect."
+
+"Do you respect him?" said Newman.  "If you do, I do."
+
+"If one loves a person, that is a question one is not bound to answer,"
+said Madame de Cintre.
+
+"You should not have asked it of me, then.  I am very fond
+of your brother."
+
+"He amuses you.  But you would not like to resemble him."
+
+"I shouldn't like to resemble any one.  It is hard enough work
+resembling one's self."
+
+"What do you mean," asked Madame de Cintre, "by resembling one's self?"
+
+"Why, doing what is expected of one.  Doing one's duty."
+
+"But that is only when one is very good."
+
+"Well, a great many people are good," said Newman.
+"Valentin is quite good enough for me."
+
+Madame de Cintre was silent for a short time.  "He is not good enough for me,"
+she said at last.  "I wish he would do something."
+
+"What can he do?" asked Newman.
+
+"Nothing.  Yet he is very clever."
+
+"It is a proof of cleverness," said Newman, "to be happy
+without doing anything."
+
+"I don't think Valentin is happy, in reality.  He is clever, generous, brave;
+but what is there to show for it?  To me there is something sad
+in his life, and sometimes I have a sort of foreboding about him.
+I don't know why, but l fancy he will have some great trouble--
+perhaps an unhappy end."
+
+"Oh, leave him to me," said Newman, jovially.  "I will watch
+over him and keep harm away."
+
+One evening, in Madame de Bellegarde's salon, the conversation
+had flagged most sensibly.  The marquis walked up and down
+in silence, like a sentinel at the door of some smooth-fronted
+citadel of the proprieties; his mother sat staring at the fire;
+young Madame de Bellegarde worked at an enormous band of tapestry.
+Usually there were three or four visitors, but on this occasion
+a violent storm sufficiently accounted for the absence of even
+the most devoted habitues.  In the long silences the howling
+of the wind and the beating of the rain were distinctly audible.
+Newman sat perfectly still, watching the clock, determined to
+stay till the stroke of eleven, but not a moment longer.
+Madame de Cintre had turned her back to the circle, and had been
+standing for some time within the uplifted curtain of a window,
+with her forehead against the pane, gazing out into the deluged darkness.
+Suddenly she turned round toward her sister-in-law.
+
+"For Heaven's sake," she said, with peculiar eagerness,
+"go to the piano and play something."
+
+Madame de Bellegarde held up her tapestry and pointed
+to a little white flower.  "Don't ask me to leave this.
+I am in the midst of a masterpiece.  My flower is going
+to smell very sweet; I am putting in the smell with this
+gold-colored silk.  I am holding my breath; I can't leave off.
+Play something yourself."
+
+"It is absurd for me to play when you are present," said Madame de Cintre.
+But the next moment she went to the piano and began to strike the keys
+with vehemence.  She played for some time, rapidly and brilliantly;
+when she stopped, Newman went to the piano and asked her to begin again.
+She shook her head, and, on his insisting, she said, "I have not been playing
+for you; I have been playing for myself."  She went back to the window again
+and looked out, and shortly afterwards left the room.  When Newman took leave,
+Urbain de Bellegarde accompanied him, as he always did, just three steps
+down the staircase.  At the bottom stood a servant with his overcoat.
+He had just put it on when he saw Madame de Cintre coming towards him
+across the vestibule.
+
+"Shall you be at home on Friday?"  Newman asked.
+
+She looked at him a moment before answering his question.
+"You don't like my mother and my brother," she said.
+
+He hesitated a moment, and then he said softly, "No."
+
+She laid her hand on the balustrade and prepared to ascend the stairs,
+fixing her eyes on the first step.
+
+"Yes, I shall be at home on Friday," and she passed up
+the wide dusky staircase.
+
+On the Friday, as soon as he came in, she asked him to please
+to tell her why he disliked her family.
+
+"Dislike your family?" he exclaimed.  "That has a horrid sound.
+I didn't say so, did I?  I didn't mean it, if I did."
+
+"I wish you would tell me what you think of them," said Madame de Cintre.
+
+"I don't think of any of them but you."
+
+"That is because you dislike them.  Speak the truth;
+you can't offend me."
+
+"Well, I don't exactly love your brother," said Newman.
+"I remember now.  But what is the use of my saying so?
+I had forgotten it."
+
+"You are too good-natured," said Madame de Cintre gravely.
+Then, as if to avoid the appearance of inviting him to speak ill
+of the marquis, she turned away, motioning him to sit down.
+
+But he remained standing before her and said presently,
+"What is of much more importance is that they don't like me."
+
+"No--they don't," she said.
+
+"And don't you think they are wrong?"  Newman asked.
+"I don't believe I am a man to dislike."
+
+"I suppose that a man who may be liked may also be disliked.
+And my brother--my mother," she added, "have not made you angry?"
+
+"Yes, sometimes."
+
+"You have never shown it."
+
+"So much the better."
+
+"Yes, so much the better.  They think they have treated you very well."
+
+"I have no doubt they might have handled me much more roughly," said Newman.
+"I am much obliged to them.  Honestly."
+
+"You are generous," said Madame de Cintre.  "It's a disagreeable position."
+
+"For them, you mean.  Not for me."
+
+"For me," said Madame de Cintre.
+
+"Not when their sins are forgiven!" said Newman.
+"They don't think I am as good as they are.  I do.
+But we shan't quarrel about it."
+
+"I can't even agree with you without saying something that has
+a disagreeable sound.  The presumption was against you.
+That you probably don't understand."
+
+Newman sat down and looked at her for some time.
+"I don't think I really understand it.  But when you say it,
+I believe it."
+
+"That's a poor reason," said Madame de Cintre, smiling.
+
+"No, it's a very good one.  You have a high spirit, a high standard;
+but with you it's all natural and unaffected; you don't seem
+to have stuck your head into a vise, as if you were sitting for
+the photograph of propriety.  You think of me as a fellow who has
+had no idea in life but to make money and drive sharp bargains.
+That's a fair description of me, but it is not the whole story.
+A man ought to care for something else, though I don't know exactly what.
+I cared for money-making, but I never cared particularly for the money.
+There was nothing else to do, and it was impossible to be idle.
+I have been very easy to others, and to myself.  I have done
+most of the things that people asked me--I don't mean rascals.
+As regards your mother and your brother," Newman added, "there is
+only one point upon which I feel that I might quarrel with them.
+I don't ask them to sing my praises to you, but I ask them to let
+you alone.  If I thought they talked ill of me to you, I should come
+down upon them."
+
+"They have let me alone, as you say.  They have not talked ill of you."
+
+"In that case," cried Newman, "I declare they are only too good
+for this world!"
+
+Madame de Cintre appeared to find something startling in his exclamation.
+She would, perhaps, have replied, but at this moment the door was
+thrown open and Urbain de Bellegarde stepped across the threshold.
+He appeared surprised at finding Newman, but his surprise was but
+a momentary shadow across the surface of an unwonted joviality.
+Newman had never seen the marquis so exhilarated; his pale,
+unlighted countenance had a sort of thin transfiguration.
+He held open the door for some one else to enter, and presently
+appeared old Madame de Bellegarde, leaning on the arm of a
+gentleman whom Newman had not seen before.  He had already risen,
+and Madame de Cintre rose, as she always did before her mother.
+The marquis, who had greeted Newman almost genially, stood apart,
+slowly rubbing his hands.  His mother came forward with her companion.
+She gave a majestic little nod at Newman, and then she released
+the strange gentleman, that he might make his bow to her daughter.
+
+"My daughter," she said, "I have brought you an unknown relative,
+Lord Deepmere.  Lord Deepmere is our cousin, but he has
+done only to-day what he ought to have done long ago--
+come to make our acquaintance."
+
+Madame de Cintre smiled, and offered Lord Deepmere her hand.
+"It is very extraordinary," said this noble laggard, "but this
+is the first time that I have ever been in Paris for more than
+three or four weeks."
+
+"And how long have you been here now?" asked Madame de Cintre.
+
+"Oh, for the last two months," said Lord Deepmere.
+
+These two remarks might have constituted an impertinence; but a glance
+at Lord Deepmere's face would have satisfied you, as it apparently
+satisfied Madame de Cintre, that they constituted only a naivete.
+When his companions were seated, Newman, who was out of the conversation,
+occupied himself with observing the newcomer.  Observation, however,
+as regards Lord Deepmere's person; had no great range.
+He was a small, meagre man, of some three and thirty years of age,
+with a bald head, a short nose and no front teeth in the upper jaw;
+he had round, candid blue eyes, and several pimples on his chin.
+He was evidently very shy, and he laughed a great deal, catching his breath
+with an odd, startling sound, as the most convenient imitation of repose.
+His physiognomy denoted great simplicity, a certain amount of brutality,
+and probable failure in the past to profit by rare educational advantages.
+He remarked that Paris was awfully jolly, but that for real,
+thorough-paced entertainment it was nothing to Dublin.
+He even preferred Dublin to London.  Had Madame de Cintre
+ever been to Dublin?  They must all come over there some day,
+and he would show them some Irish sport.  He always went to Ireland
+for the fishing, and he came to Paris for the new Offenbach things.
+They always brought them out in Dublin, but he couldn't wait.
+He had been nine times to hear La Pomme de Paris.  Madame de Cintre,
+leaning back, with her arms folded, looked at Lord Deepmere with
+a more visibly puzzled face than she usually showed to society.
+Madame de Bellegarde, on the other hand, wore a fixed smile.
+The marquis said that among light operas his favorite was the Gazza Ladra.
+The marquise then began a series of inquiries about the duke and
+the cardinal, the old countess and Lady Barbara, after listening
+to which, and to Lord Deepmere's somewhat irreverent responses,
+for a quarter of an hour, Newman rose to take his leave.
+The marquis went with him three steps into the hall.
+
+"Is he Irish?" asked Newman, nodding in the direction of the visitor.
+
+"His mother was the daughter of Lord Finucane," said the marquis;
+"he has great Irish estates.  Lady Bridget, in the complete
+absence of male heirs, either direct or collateral--
+a most extraordinary circumstance--came in for everything.
+But Lord Deepmere's title is English and his English property
+is immense.  He is a charming young man."
+
+Newman answered nothing, but he detained the marquis as the latter was
+beginning gracefully to recede.  "It is a good time for me to thank you,"
+he said, "for sticking so punctiliously to our bargain, for doing so much
+to help me on with your sister."
+
+The marquis stared.  "Really, I have done nothing that I can
+boast of," he said.
+
+"Oh don't be modest," Newman answered, laughing.  "I can't
+flatter myself that I am doing so well simply by my own merit.
+And thank your mother for me, too!"  And he turned away,
+leaving M. de Bellegarde looking after him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The next time Newman came to the Rue de l'Universite
+he had the good fortune to find Madame de Cintre alone.
+He had come with a definite intention, and he lost no time
+in executing it.  She wore, moreover, a look which he eagerly
+interpreted as expectancy.
+
+"I have been coming to see you for six months, now," he said,
+"and I have never spoken to you a second time of marriage.
+That was what you asked me; I obeyed.  Could any man
+have done better?"
+
+"You have acted with great delicacy," said Madame de Cintre.
+
+"Well, I'm going to change, now," said Newman.  "I don't mean that I
+am going to be indelicate; but I'm going to go back to where I began.
+I AM back there.  I have been all round the circle.
+Or rather, I have never been away from here.  I have never ceased
+to want what I wanted then.  Only now I am more sure of it,
+if possible; I am more sure of myself, and more sure of you.
+I know you better, though I don't know anything I didn't believe
+three months ago.  You are everything--you are beyond everything--
+I can imagine or desire.  You know me now; you MUST know me.
+I won't say that you have seen the best--but you have seen the worst.
+I hope you have been thinking all this while.  You must have seen
+that I was only waiting; you can't suppose that I was changing.
+What will you say to me, now?  Say that everything is clear
+and reasonable, and that I have been very patient and considerate,
+and deserve my reward.  And then give me your hand.
+Madame de Cintre do that.  Do it."
+
+"I knew you were only waiting," she said; "and I was very sure
+this day would come.  I have thought about it a great deal.
+At first I was half afraid of it.  But I am not afraid of it now."
+She paused a moment, and then she added, "It's a relief."
+
+She was sitting on a low chair, and Newman was on an ottoman, near her.
+He leaned a little and took her hand, which for an instant she let
+him keep.  "That means that I have not waited for nothing," he said.
+She looked at him for a moment, and he saw her eyes fill with tears.
+"With me," he went on, "you will be as safe--as safe"--and even in his
+ardor he hesitated a moment for a comparison--"as safe," he said,
+with a kind of simple solemnity, "as in your father's arms."
+
+Still she looked at him and her tears increased.
+Then, abruptly, she buried her face on the cushioned arm
+of the sofa beside her chair, and broke into noiseless sobs.
+"I am weak--I am weak," he heard her say.
+
+"All the more reason why you should give yourself up to me,"
+he answered.  "Why are you troubled?  There is nothing but happiness.
+Is that so hard to believe?"
+
+"To you everything seems so simple," she said, raising her head.
+"But things are not so.  I like you extremely.  I liked you six
+months ago, and now I am sure of it, as you say you are sure.
+But it is not easy, simply for that, to decide to marry you.
+There are a great many things to think about."
+
+"There ought to be only one thing to think about--that we love each other,"
+said Newman.  And as she remained silent he quickly added, "Very good,
+if you can't accept that, don't tell me so."
+
+"I should be very glad to think of nothing," she said at last;
+"not to think at all; only to shut both my eyes and give myself up.
+But I can't. I'm cold, I'm old, I'm a coward; I never supposed
+I should marry again, and it seems to me very strange l should
+ever have listened to you.  When I used to think, as a girl,
+of what I should do if I were to marry freely, by my own choice,
+I thought of a very different man from you."
+
+"That's nothing against me," said Newman with an immense smile;
+"your taste was not formed."
+
+His smile made Madame de Cintre smile.  "Have you formed it?" she asked.
+And then she said, in a different tone, "Where do you wish to live?"
+
+"Anywhere in the wide world you like.  We can easily settle that."
+
+"I don't know why I ask you," she presently continued.
+"I care very little.  I think if I were to marry you I could
+live almost anywhere.  You have some false ideas about me;
+you think that I need a great many things--that I must
+have a brilliant, worldly life.  I am sure you are prepared
+to take a great deal of trouble to give me such things.
+But that is very arbitrary; I have done nothing to prove that."
+She paused again, looking at him, and her mingled sound and
+silence were so sweet to him that he had no wish to hurry her,
+any more than he would have had a wish to hurry a golden sunrise.
+"Your being so different, which at first seemed a difficulty,
+a trouble, began one day to seem to me a pleasure,
+a great pleasure.  I was glad you were different.
+And yet if I had said so, no one would have understood me;
+I don't mean simply to my family."
+
+"They would have said I was a queer monster, eh?" said Newman.
+
+"They would have said I could never be happy with you--
+you were too different; and I would have said it was just
+BECAUSE you were so different that I might be happy.
+But they would have given better reasons than I. My only reason"--
+and she paused again.
+
+But this time, in the midst of his golden sunrise, Newman felt the impulse
+to grasp at a rosy cloud.  "Your only reason is that you love me!"
+he murmured with an eloquent gesture, and for want of a better reason
+Madame de Cintre reconciled herself to this one.
+
+Newman came back the next day, and in the vestibule,
+as he entered the house, he encountered his friend Mrs. Bread.
+She was wandering about in honorable idleness, and when his eyes
+fell upon her she delivered him one of her curtsies.  Then turning
+to the servant who had admitted him, she said, with the combined
+majesty of her native superiority and of a rugged English accent,
+"You may retire; I will have the honor of conducting monsieur.
+In spite of this combination, however, it appeared to Newman
+that her voice had a slight quaver, as if the tone of command
+were not habitual to it.  The man gave her an impertinent stare,
+but he walked slowly away, and she led Newman up-stairs. At half
+its course the staircase gave a bend, forming a little platform.
+In the angle of the wall stood an indifferent statue of an
+eighteenth-century nymph, simpering, sallow, and cracked.
+Here Mrs. Bread stopped and looked with shy kindness at her companion.
+
+"I know the good news, sir," she murmured.
+
+"You have a good right to be first to know it," said Newman.
+"You have taken such a friendly interest."
+
+Mrs. Bread turned away and began to blow the dust off the statue,
+as if this might be mockery.
+
+"I suppose you want to congratulate me," said Newman.
+"I am greatly obliged."  And then he added, "You gave me much
+pleasure the other day."
+
+She turned around, apparently reassured.  "You are not to think
+that I have been told anything," she said; "I have only guessed.
+But when I looked at you, as you came in, I was sure I
+had guessed aright."
+
+"You are very sharp," said Newman.  "I am sure that in your quiet
+way you see everything."
+
+"I am not a fool, sir, thank God.  I have guessed something else beside,"
+said Mrs. Bread.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"I needn't tell you that, sir; I don't think you would believe it.
+At any rate it wouldn't please you."
+
+"Oh, tell me nothing but what will please me," laughed Newman.
+"That is the way you began."
+
+"Well, sir, I suppose you won't be vexed to hear that the sooner
+everything is over the better."
+
+"The sooner we are married, you mean?  The better for me, certainly."
+
+"The better for every one."
+
+"The better for you, perhaps.  You know you are coming to live
+with us," said Newman.
+
+"I'm extremely obliged to you, sir, but it is not of myself I was thinking.
+I only wanted, if I might take the liberty, to recommend you to lose no time."
+
+"Whom are you afraid of?"
+
+Mrs. Bread looked up the staircase and then down and then she looked
+at the undusted nymph, as if she possibly had sentient ears.
+"I am afraid of every one," she said.
+
+"What an uncomfortable state of mind!" said Newman.
+"Does 'every one' wish to prevent my marriage?"
+
+"I am afraid of already having said too much," Mrs. Bread replied.
+"I won't take it back, but I won't say any more."  And she took her way
+up the staircase again and led him into Madame de Cintre's salon.
+
+Newman indulged in a brief and silent imprecation when he found that Madame
+de Cintre was not alone.  With her sat her mother, and in the middle
+of the room stood young Madame de Bellegarde, in her bonnet and mantle.
+The old marquise, who was leaning back in her chair with a hand clasping
+the knob of each arm, looked at him fixedly without moving.  She seemed
+barely conscious of his greeting; she appeared to be musing intently.
+Newman said to himself that her daughter had been announcing her
+engagement and that the old lady found the morsel hard to swallow.
+But Madame de Cintre, as she gave him her hand gave him also a look
+by which she appeared to mean that he should understand something.
+Was it a warning or a request?  Did she wish to enjoin speech or silence?
+He was puzzled, and young Madame de Bellegarde's pretty grin gave
+him no information.
+
+"I have not told my mother," said Madame de Cintre abruptly,
+looking at him.
+
+"Told me what?" demanded the marquise.  "You tell me too little;
+you should tell me everything."
+
+"That is what I do," said Madame Urbain, with a little laugh.
+
+"Let ME tell your mother," said Newman.
+
+The old lady stared at him again, and then turned to her daughter.
+"You are going to marry him?" she cried, softly.
+
+"Oui ma mere," said Madame de Cintre.
+
+"Your daughter has consented, to my great happiness," said Newman.
+
+"And when was this arrangement made?" asked Madame de Bellegarde.
+"I seem to be picking up the news by chance!"
+
+"My suspense came to an end yesterday," said Newman.
+
+"And how long was mine to have lasted?" said the marquise to her daughter.
+She spoke without irritation; with a sort of cold, noble displeasure.
+
+Madame de Cintre stood silent, with her eyes on the ground.
+"It is over now," she said.
+
+"Where is my son--where is Urbain?" asked the marquise.
+"Send for your brother and inform him."
+
+Young Madame de Bellegarde laid her hand on the bell-rope. "He was
+to make some visits with me, and I was to go and knock--very softly,
+very softly--at the door of his study.  But he can come to me!"
+She pulled the bell, and in a few moments Mrs. Bread appeared,
+with a face of calm inquiry.
+
+"Send for your brother," said the old lady.
+
+But Newman felt an irresistible impulse to speak, and to speak in a
+certain way.  "Tell the marquis we want him," he said to Mrs. Bread,
+who quietly retired.
+
+Young Madame de Bellegarde went to her sister-in-law and embraced her.
+Then she turned to Newman, with an intense smile.  "She is charming.
+I congratulate you."
+
+"I congratulate you, sir," said Madame de Bellegarde, with extreme solemnity.
+"My daughter is an extraordinarily good woman.  She may have faults,
+but I don't know them."
+
+"My mother does not often make jokes," said Madame de Cintre;
+"but when she does they are terrible."
+
+"She is ravishing," the Marquise Urbain resumed,
+looking at her sister-in-law, with her head on one side.
+"Yes, I congratulate you."
+
+Madame de Cintre turned away, and, taking up a piece of tapestry,
+began to ply the needle.  Some minutes of silence elapsed,
+which were interrupted by the arrival of M. de Bellegarde.
+He came in with his hat in his hand, gloved, and was followed by his
+brother Valentin, who appeared to have just entered the house.
+M. de Bellegarde looked around the circle and greeted Newman
+with his usual finely-measured courtesy.  Valentin saluted
+his mother and his sisters, and, as he shook hands with Newman,
+gave him a glance of acute interrogation.
+
+"Arrivez donc, messieurs!" cried young Madame de Bellegarde.
+"We have great news for you."
+
+"Speak to your brother, my daughter," said the old lady.
+
+Madame de Cintre had been looking at her tapestry.
+She raised her eyes to her brother.  "I have accepted Mr. Newman."
+
+"Your sister has consented," said Newman.  "You see after all,
+I knew what I was about."
+
+"I am charmed!" said M. de Bellegarde, with superior benignity.
+
+"So am I," said Valentin to Newman.  "The marquis and I
+are charmed.  I can't marry, myself, but I can understand it.
+I can't stand on my head, but I can applaud a clever acrobat.
+My dear sister, I bless your union."
+
+The marquis stood looking for a while into the crown of his hat.
+"We have been prepared," he said at last "but it is inevitable
+that in face of the event one should experience a certain emotion."
+And he gave a most unhilarious smile.
+
+"I feel no emotion that I was not perfectly prepared for,"
+said his mother.
+
+"I can't say that for myself," said Newman, smiling but differently
+from the marquis.  "I am happier than I expected to be.
+I suppose it's the sight of your happiness!"
+
+"Don't exaggerate that," said Madame de Bellegarde,
+getting up and laying her hand upon her daughter's arm.
+"You can't expect an honest old woman to thank you for taking
+away her beautiful, only daughter."
+
+"You forgot me, dear madame," said the young marquise demurely.
+
+"Yes, she is very beautiful," said Newman.
+
+"And when is the wedding, pray?" asked young Madame de Bellegarde;
+"I must have a month to think over a dress."
+
+"That must be discussed," said the marquise.
+
+"Oh, we will discuss it, and let you know!"  Newman exclaimed.
+
+"I have no doubt we shall agree," said Urbain.
+
+"If you don't agree with Madame de Cintre, you will be very unreasonable."
+
+"Come, come, Urbain," said young Madame de Bellegarde,
+"I must go straight to my tailor's."
+
+The old lady had been standing with her hand on her daughter's arm,
+looking at her fixedly.  She gave a little sigh, and murmured,
+"No, I did NOT expect it!  You are a fortunate man," she added,
+turning to Newman, with an expressive nod.
+
+"Oh, I know that!" he answered.  "I feel tremendously proud.
+I feel like crying it on the housetops,--like stopping people
+in the street to tell them."
+
+Madame de Bellegarde narrowed her lips.  "Pray don't," she said.
+
+"The more people that know it, the better," Newman declared.
+"I haven't yet announced it here, but I telegraphed it this
+morning to America."
+
+"Telegraphed it to America?" the old lady murmured.
+
+"To New York, to St. Louis, and to San Francisco; those are
+the principal cities, you know.  To-morrow I shall tell
+my friends here."
+
+"Have you many?" asked Madame de Bellegarde, in a tone of which I
+am afraid that Newman but partly measured the impertinence.
+
+"Enough to bring me a great many hand-shakes and congratulations.
+To say nothing," he added, in a moment, "of those I shall receive
+from your friends."
+
+"They will not use the telegraph," said the marquise, taking her departure.
+
+M. de Bellegarde, whose wife, her imagination having apparently taken
+flight to the tailor's, was fluttering her silken wings in emulation,
+shook hands with Newman, and said with a more persuasive accent
+than the latter had ever heard him use, "You may count upon me."
+Then his wife led him away.
+
+Valentin stood looking from his sister to our hero.
+"I hope you both reflected seriously," he said.
+
+Madame de Cintre smiled.  "We have neither your powers of reflection
+nor your depth of seriousness; but we have done our best."
+
+"Well, I have a great regard for each of you," Valentin continued.
+"You are charming young people.  But I am not satisfied, on the whole,
+that you belong to that small and superior class--that exquisite
+group composed of persons who are worthy to remain unmarried.
+These are rare souls; they are the salt of the earth.  But I don't
+mean to be invidious; the marrying people are often very nice."
+
+"Valentin holds that women should marry, and that men should not,"
+said Madame de Cintre.  "I don't know how he arranges it."
+
+"I arrange it by adoring you, my sister," said Valentin ardently.
+"Good-by."
+
+"Adore some one whom you can marry," said Newman.
+"I will arrange that for you some day.  I foresee that I am
+going to turn apostle."
+
+Valentin was on the threshold; he looked back a moment with a face
+that had turned grave.  "I adore some one I can't marry!" he said.
+And he dropped the portiere and departed.
+
+"They don't like it," said Newman, standing alone before Madame de Cintre.
+
+"No," she said, after a moment; "they don't like it."
+
+"Well, now, do you mind that?" asked Newman.
+
+"Yes!" she said, after another interval.
+
+"That's a mistake."
+
+"I can't help it.  I should prefer that my mother were pleased."
+
+"Why the deuce," demanded Newman, "is she not pleased?
+She gave you leave to marry me."
+
+"Very true; I don't understand it.  And yet I do 'mind it,' as you say.
+You will call it superstitious."
+
+"That will depend upon how much you let it bother you.
+Then I shall call it an awful bore."
+
+"I will keep it to myself," said Madame de Cintre, "It shall not bother you."
+And then they talked of their marriage-day, and Madame de Cintre assented
+unreservedly to Newman's desire to have it fixed for an early date.
+
+Newman's telegrams were answered with interest.
+Having dispatched but three electric missives, he received
+no less than eight gratulatory bulletins in return.
+He put them into his pocket-book, and the next time he encountered
+old Madame de Bellegarde drew them forth and displayed them to her.
+This, it must be confessed, was a slightly malicious stroke;
+the reader must judge in what degree the offense was venial.
+Newman knew that the marquise disliked his telegrams, though he could
+see no sufficient reason for it.  Madame de Cintre, on the other hand,
+liked them, and, most of them being of a humorous cast,
+laughed at them immoderately, and inquired into the character
+of their authors.  Newman, now that his prize was gained,
+felt a peculiar desire that his triumph should be manifest.
+He more than suspected that the Bellegardes were keeping
+quiet about it, and allowing it, in their select circle,
+but a limited resonance; and it pleased him to think that
+if he were to take the trouble he might, as he phrased it,
+break all the windows.  No man likes being repudiated,
+and yet Newman, if he was not flattered, was not exactly offended.
+He had not this good excuse for his somewhat aggressive impulse
+to promulgate his felicity; his sentiment was of another quality.
+He wanted for once to make the heads of the house of Bellegarde
+FEEL him; he knew not when he should have another chance.
+He had had for the past six months a sense of the old lady
+and her son looking straight over his head, and he was now
+resolved that they should toe a mark which he would give
+himself the satisfaction of drawing.
+
+"It is like seeing a bottle emptied when the wine is poured too slowly,"
+he said to Mrs. Tristram.  "They make me want to joggle their elbows
+and force them to spill their wine."
+
+To this Mrs. Tristram answered that he had better leave them alone and let
+them do things in their own way.  "You must make allowances for them,"
+she said.  "It is natural enough that they should hang fire a little.
+They thought they accepted you when you made your application;
+but they are not people of imagination, they could not project
+themselves into the future, and now they will have to begin again.
+But they are people of honor, and they will do whatever is necessary."
+
+Newman spent a few moments in narrow-eyed meditation.
+"I am not hard on them," he presently said, "and to prove it
+I will invite them all to a festival."
+
+"To a festival?"
+
+"You have been laughing at my great gilded rooms all winter;
+I will show you that they are good for something.
+I will give a party.  What is the grandest thing one can do here?
+I will hire all the great singers from the opera, and all
+the first people from the Theatre Francais, and I will
+give an entertainment."
+
+"And whom will you invite?"
+
+"You, first of all.  And then the old lady and her son.
+And then every one among her friends whom I have met
+at her house or elsewhere, every one who has shown me
+the minimum of politeness, every duke of them and his wife.
+And then all my friends, without exception:  Miss Kitty Upjohn,
+Miss Dora Finch, General Packard, C. P Hatch, and all the rest.
+And every one shall know what it is about, that is,
+to celebrate my engagement to the Countess de Cintre.
+What do you think of the idea?"
+
+"I think it is odious!" said Mrs. Tristram.  And then in a moment:
+"I think it is delicious!"
+
+The very next evening Newman repaired to Madame de Bellegarde's salon.
+where he found her surrounded by her children, and invited her to honor
+his poor dwelling by her presence on a certain evening a fortnight distant.
+
+The marquise stared a moment.  "My dear sir," she cried,
+"what do you want to do to me?"
+
+"To make you acquainted with a few people, and then to place you in a very
+easy chair and ask you to listen to Madame Frezzolini's singing."
+
+"You mean to give a concert?"
+
+"Something of that sort."
+
+"And to have a crowd of people?"
+
+"All my friends, and I hope some of yours and your daughter's.
+I want to celebrate my engagement."
+
+It seemed to Newman that Madame de Bellegarde turned pale.
+She opened her fan, a fine old painted fan of the last century,
+and looked at the picture, which represented a fete champetre--
+a lady with a guitar, singing, and a group of dancers round
+a garlanded Hermes.
+
+"We go out so little, murmured the marquis, "since my poor father's death."
+
+"But MY dear father is still alive, my friend," said his wife.
+"I am only waiting for my invitation to accept it,"
+and she glanced with amiable confidence at Newman.
+"It will be magnificent; I am very sure of that."
+
+I am sorry to say, to the discredit of Newman's gallantry,
+that this lady's invitation was not then and there bestowed;
+he was giving all his attention to the old marquise.
+She looked up at last, smiling.  "I can't think of letting you
+offer me a fete," she said, "until I have offered you one.
+We want to present you to our friends; we will invite them all.
+We have it very much at heart.  We must do things in order.
+Come to me about the 25th; I will let you know the exact
+day immediately.  We shall not have any one so fine as
+Madame Frezzolini, but we shall have some very good people.
+After that you may talk of your own fete."  The old lady
+spoke with a certain quick eagerness, smiling more agreeably
+as she went on.
+
+It seemed to Newman a handsome proposal, and such proposals always
+touched the sources of his good-nature. He said to Madame de Bellegarde
+that he should be glad to come on the 25th or any other day, and that it
+mattered very little whether he met his friends at her house or at his own.
+I have said that Newman was observant, but it must be admitted that on
+this occasion he failed to notice a certain delicate glance which passed
+between Madame de Bellegarde and the marquis, and which we may presume
+to have been a commentary upon the innocence displayed in that latter
+clause of his speech.
+
+Valentin de Bellegarde walked away with Newman that evening,
+and when they had left the Rue de l'Universite some distance behind
+them he said reflectively, "My mother is very strong--very strong."
+Then in answer to an interrogative movement of Newman's he continued,
+"She was driven to the wall, but you would never have thought it.
+Her fete of the 25th was an invention of the moment.
+She had no idea whatever of giving a fete, but finding it the only
+issue from your proposal, she looked straight at the dose--
+excuse the expression--and bolted it, as you saw, without winking.
+She is very strong."
+
+"Dear me!" said Newman, divided between relish and compassion.
+"I don't care a straw for her fete, I am willing to take the will
+for the deed."
+
+"No, no," said Valentin, with a little inconsequent touch of family pride.
+"The thing will be done now, and done handsomely."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Valentin de Bellegarde's announcement of the secession of Mademoiselle
+Nioche from her father's domicile and his irreverent reflections
+upon the attitude of this anxious parent in so grave a catastrophe,
+received a practical commentary in the fact that M. Nioche was slow
+to seek another interview with his late pupil.  It had cost Newman
+some disgust to be forced to assent to Valentin's somewhat cynical
+interpretation of the old man's philosophy, and, though circumstances
+seemed to indicate that he had not given himself up to a noble despair,
+Newman thought it very possible he might be suffering more keenly
+than was apparent.  M. Nioche had been in the habit of paying him
+a respectful little visit every two or three weeks and his absence
+might be a proof quite as much of extreme depression as of a desire
+to conceal the success with which he had patched up his sorrow.
+Newman presently learned from Valentin several details touching this
+new phase of Mademoiselle Noemie's career.
+
+"I told you she was remarkable," this unshrinking observer declared,
+"and the way she has managed this performance proves it.  She has
+had other chances, but she was resolved to take none but the best.
+She did you the honor to think for a while that you might be such a chance.
+You were not; so she gathered up her patience and waited a while longer.
+At last her occasion came along, and she made her move with her eyes
+wide open.  I am very sure she had no innocence to lose, but she had
+all her respectability.  Dubious little damsel as you thought her,
+she had kept a firm hold of that; nothing could be proved against her,
+and she was determined not to let her reputation go till she had
+got her equivalent.  About her equivalent she had high ideas.
+Apparently her ideal has been satisfied.  It is fifty years old,
+bald-headed, and deaf, but it is very easy about money."
+
+"And where in the world," asked Newman, "did you pick up
+this valuable information?"
+
+"In conversation.  Remember my frivolous habits.
+In conversation with a young woman engaged in the humble trade
+of glove-cleaner, who keeps a small shop in the Rue St. Roch.
+M. Nioche lives in the same house, up six pair of stairs,
+across the court, in and out of whose ill-swept doorway
+Miss Noemie has been flitting for the last five years.
+The little glove-cleaner was an old acquaintance;
+she used to be the friend of a friend of mine, who has married
+and dropped such friends.  I often saw her in his society.
+As soon as I espied her behind her clear little window-pane, I
+recollected her.  I had on a spotlessly fresh pair of gloves,
+but I went in and held up my hands, and said to her,
+'Dear mademoiselle, what will you ask me for cleaning these?'
+'Dear count,' she answered immediately, 'I will clean them
+for you for nothing.'  She had instantly recognized me,
+and I had to hear her history for the last six years.
+But after that, I put her upon that of her neighbors.
+She knows and admires Noemie, and she told me what I
+have just repeated."
+
+A month elapsed without M. Nioche reappearing, and Newman,
+who every morning read two or three suicides in the "Figaro,"
+began to suspect that, mortification proving stubborn, he had
+sought a balm for his wounded pride in the waters of the Seine.
+He had a note of M. Nioche's address in his pocket-book,
+and finding himself one day in the quartier, he determined
+in so far as he might to clear up his doubts.  He repaired
+to the house in the Rue St. Roch which bore the recorded number,
+and observed in a neighboring basement, behind a dangling
+row of neatly inflated gloves, the attentive physiognomy
+of Bellegarde's informant--a sallow person in a dressing-gown--
+peering into the street as if she were expecting that amiable
+nobleman to pass again.  But it was not to her that Newman applied;
+he simply asked of the portress if M. Nioche were at home.
+The portress replied, as the portress invariably replies,
+that her lodger had gone out barely three minutes before;
+but then, through the little square hole of her lodge-window
+taking the measure of Newman's fortunes, and seeing them,
+by an unspecified process, refresh the dry places
+of servitude to occupants of fifth floors on courts,
+she added that M. Nioche would have had just time to reach
+the Cafe de la Patrie, round the second corner to the left,
+at which establishment he regularly spent his afternoons.
+Newman thanked her for the information, took the second
+turning to the left, and arrived at the Cafe de la Patrie.
+He felt a momentary hesitation to go in; was it not rather
+mean to "follow up" poor old Nioche at that rate?
+But there passed across his vision an image of a haggard little
+septuagenarian taking measured sips of a glass of sugar and water
+and finding them quite impotent to sweeten his desolation.
+He opened the door and entered, perceiving nothing at first
+but a dense cloud of tobacco smoke.  Across this, however,
+in a corner, he presently descried the figure of M. Nioche,
+stirring the contents of a deep glass, with a lady seated
+in front of him.  The lady's back was turned to Newman,
+but M. Nioche very soon perceived and recognized his visitor.
+Newman had gone toward him, and the old man rose slowly,
+gazing at him with a more blighted expression even than usual.
+
+"If you are drinking hot punch," said Newman, "I suppose you are not dead.
+That's all right.  Don't move."
+
+M. Nioche stood staring, with a fallen jaw, not daring to put out his hand.
+The lady, who sat facing him, turned round in her place and glanced upward
+with a spirited toss of her head, displaying the agreeable features
+of his daughter.  She looked at Newman sharply, to see how he was looking
+at her, then--I don't know what she discovered--she said graciously, "How d'
+ye do, monsieur? won't you come into our little corner?"
+
+"Did you come--did you come after ME? asked M. Nioche very softly.
+
+"I went to your house to see what had become of you.
+I thought you might be sick," said Newman.
+
+"It is very good of you, as always," said the old man.
+"No, I am not well.  Yes, I am SEEK."
+
+"Ask monsieur to sit down," said Mademoiselle Nioche.
+"Garcon, bring a chair."
+
+"Will you do us the honor to SEAT?" said M. Nioche, timorously, and with
+a double foreignness of accent.
+
+Newman said to himself that he had better see the thing out and he took
+a chair at the end of the table, with Mademoiselle Nioche on his
+left and her father on the other side.  "You will take something,
+of course," said Miss Noemie, who was sipping a glass of madeira.
+Newman said that he believed not, and then she turned to her papa
+with a smile.  "What an honor, eh? he has come only for us."
+M. Nioche drained his pungent glass at a long draught,
+and looked out from eyes more lachrymose in consequence.
+"But you didn't come for me, eh?"  Mademoiselle Noemie went on.
+"You didn't expect to find me here?"
+
+Newman observed the change in her appearance.  She was very elegant
+and prettier than before; she looked a year or two older, and it was
+noticeable that, to the eye, she had only gained in respectability.
+She looked "lady-like." She was dressed in quiet colors, and wore her
+expensively unobtrusive toilet with a grace that might have come from
+years of practice.  Her present self-possession and aplomb struck Newman
+as really infernal, and he inclined to agree with Valentin de Bellegarde
+that the young lady was very remarkable.  "No, to tell the truth,
+I didn't come for you," he said, "and I didn't expect to find you.
+I was told," he added in a moment "that you had left your father."
+
+"Quelle horreur!" cried Mademoiselle Nioche with a smile.
+"Does one leave one's father?  You have the proof of the contrary."
+
+"Yes, convincing proof," said Newman glancing at M. Nioche.
+The old man caught his glance obliquely, with his faded,
+deprecating eye, and then, lifting his empty glass,
+pretended to drink again.
+
+"Who told you that?"  Noemie demanded.  "I know very well.
+It was M. de Bellegarde.  Why don't you say yes?
+You are not polite."
+
+"I am embarrassed," said Newman.
+
+"I set you a better example.  I know M. de Bellegarde told you.
+He knows a great deal about me--or he thinks he does.  He has taken
+a great deal of trouble to find out, but half of it isn't true.
+In the first place, I haven't left my father; I am much too fond of him.
+Isn't it so, little father?  M. de Bellegarde is a charming young man;
+it is impossible to be cleverer.  I know a good deal about him too;
+you can tell him that when you next see him."
+
+"No," said Newman, with a sturdy grin; "I won't carry any messages for you."
+
+"Just as you please," said Mademoiselle Nioche, "I don't
+depend upon you, nor does M. de Bellegarde either.
+He is very much interested in me; he can be left to his own devices.
+He is a contrast to you."
+
+"Oh, he is a great contrast to me, I have no doubt" said Newman.
+"But I don't exactly know how you mean it."
+
+"I mean it in this way.  First of all, he never offered to help me
+to a dot and a husband."  And Mademoiselle Nioche paused, smiling.
+"I won't say that is in his favor, for I do you justice.
+What led you, by the way, to make me such a queer offer?
+You didn't care for me."
+
+"Oh yes, I did," said Newman.
+
+"How so?"
+
+"It would have given me real pleasure to see you married
+to a respectable young fellow."
+
+"With six thousand francs of income!" cried Mademoiselle Nioche.
+"Do you call that caring for me?  I'm afraid you know little about women.
+You were not galant; you were not what you might have been."
+
+Newman flushed a trifle fiercely.  "Come!" he exclaimed "that's
+rather strong.  I had no idea I had been so shabby."
+
+Mademoiselle Nioche smiled as she took up her muff.
+"It is something, at any rate, to have made you angry."
+
+Her father had leaned both his elbows on the table,
+and his head, bent forward, was supported in his hands,
+the thin white fingers of which were pressed over his ears.
+In his position he was staring fixedly at the bottom of
+his empty glass, and Newman supposed he was not hearing.
+Mademoiselle Noemie buttoned her furred jacket and pushed back
+her chair, casting a glance charged with the consciousness
+of an expensive appearance first down over her flounces and then
+up at Newman.
+
+"You had better have remained an honest girl," Newman said, quietly.
+
+M. Nioche continued to stare at the bottom of his glass,
+and his daughter got up, still bravely smiling.
+"You mean that I look so much like one?  That's more than most
+women do nowadays.  Don't judge me yet a while," she added.
+"I mean to succeed; that's what I mean to do.  I leave you;
+I don't mean to be seen in cafes, for one thing.  I can't think
+what you want of my poor father; he's very comfortable now.
+It isn't his fault, either.  Au revoir, little father."
+And she tapped the old man on the head with her muff.
+Then she stopped a minute, looking at Newman.  "Tell M. de Bellegarde,
+when he wants news of me, to come and get it from ME!"
+And she turned and departed, the white-aproned waiter,
+with a bow, holding the door wide open for her.
+
+M. Nioche sat motionless, and Newman hardly knew what to say to him.
+The old man looked dismally foolish.  "So you determined not to shoot her,
+after all," Newman said, presently.
+
+M. Nioche, without moving, raised his eyes and gave him a long,
+peculiar look.  It seemed to confess everything, and yet not to ask for pity,
+nor to pretend, on the other hand, to a rugged ability to do without it.
+It might have expressed the state of mind of an innocuous insect,
+flat in shape and conscious of the impending pressure of a boot-sole,
+and reflecting that he was perhaps too flat to be crushed.  M. Nioche's
+gaze was a profession of moral flatness.  "You despise me terribly,"
+he said, in the weakest possible voice.
+
+"Oh no," said Newman, "it is none of my business.
+It's a good plan to take things easily."
+
+"I made you too many fine speeches," M. Nioche added.
+"I meant them at the time."
+
+"I am sure I am very glad you didn't shoot her," said Newman.
+"I was afraid you might have shot yourself.  That is why I came
+to look you up."  And he began to button his coat.
+
+"Neither," said M. Nioche.  "You despise me, and I can't explain to you.
+I hoped I shouldn't see you again."
+
+"Why, that's rather shabby," said Newman.  "You shouldn't drop
+your friends that way.  Besides, the last time you came to see
+me I thought you particularly jolly."
+
+"Yes, I remember," said M. Nioche, musingly; "I was in a fever.
+I didn't know what I said, what I did.  It was delirium."
+
+"Ah, well, you are quieter now."
+
+M. Nioche was silent a moment.  "As quiet as the grave,"
+he whispered softly.
+
+"Are you very unhappy?"
+
+M. Nioche rubbed his forehead slowly, and even pushed back his
+wig a little, looking askance at his empty glass.  "Yes--yes.
+But that's an old story.  I have always been unhappy.  My daughter
+does what she will with me.  I take what she gives me, good or bad.
+I have no spirit, and when you have no spirit you must keep quiet.
+I shan't trouble you any more."
+
+"Well," said Newman, rather disgusted at the smooth operation
+of the old man's philosophy, "that's as you please."
+
+M. Nioche seemed to have been prepared to be despised but nevertheless
+he made a feeble movement of appeal from Newman's faint praise.
+"After all," he said, "she is my daughter, and I can still look after her.
+If she will do wrong, why she will.  But there are many different paths,
+there are degrees.  I can give her the benefit--give her the benefit"--
+and M. Nioche paused, staring vaguely at Newman, who began to suspect
+that his brain had softened--"the benefit of my experience,"
+M. Nioche added.
+
+"Your experience?" inquired Newman, both amused and amazed.
+
+"My experience of business," said M. Nioche, gravely.
+
+"Ah, yes," said Newman, laughing, "that will be a great advantage to her!"
+And then he said good-by, and offered the poor, foolish old man his hand.
+
+M. Nioche took it and leaned back against the wall, holding it a moment
+and looking up at him.  "I suppose you think my wits are going,"
+he said.  "Very likely; I have always a pain in my head.
+That's why I can't explain, I can't tell you.  And she's so strong,
+she makes me walk as she will, anywhere!  But there's this--
+there's this."  And he stopped, still staring up at Newman.
+His little white eyes expanded and glittered for a moment
+like those of a cat in the dark.  "It's not as it seems.
+I haven't forgiven her.  Oh, no!"
+
+"That's right; don't," said Newman.  "She's a bad case."
+
+"It's horrible, it's horrible," said M. Nioche; "but do you
+want to know the truth?  I hate her!  I take what she gives me,
+and I hate her more.  To-day she brought me three hundred francs;
+they are here in my waistcoat pocket.  Now I hate her almost cruelly.
+No, I haven't forgiven her."
+
+"Why did you accept the money?"  Newman asked.
+
+"If I hadn't," said M. Nioche, "I should have hated her still more.
+That's what misery is.  No, I haven't forgiven her."
+
+"Take care you don't hurt her!" said Newman, laughing again.
+And with this he took his leave.  As he passed along
+the glazed side of the cafe, on reaching the street, he saw
+the old man motioning the waiter, with a melancholy gesture,
+to replenish his glass.
+
+One day, a week after his visit to the Cafe de la Patrie, he called
+upon Valentin de Bellegarde, and by good fortune found him at home.
+Newman spoke of his interview with M. Nioche and his daughter,
+and said he was afraid Valentin had judged the old man correctly.
+He had found the couple hobnobbing together in all amity;
+the old gentleman's rigor was purely theoretic.  Newman confessed
+that he was disappointed; he should have expected to see M. Nioche
+take high ground.
+
+"High ground, my dear fellow," said Valentin, laughing; "there is
+no high ground for him to take.  The only perceptible eminence in
+M. Nioche's horizon is Montmartre, which is not an edifying quarter.
+You can't go mountaineering in a flat country."
+
+"He remarked, indeed," said Newman, "that he has not forgiven her.
+But she'll never find it out."
+
+"We must do him the justice to suppose he doesn't like the thing,"
+Valentin rejoined.  "Mademoiselle Nioche is like the great artists
+whose biographies we read, who at the beginning of their career have
+suffered opposition in the domestic circle.  Their vocation has not
+been recognized by their families, but the world has done it justice.
+Mademoiselle Nioche has a vocation."
+
+"Oh, come," said Newman, impatiently, "you take the little
+baggage too seriously."
+
+"I know I do; but when one has nothing to think about,
+one must think of little baggages.  I suppose it is better
+to be serious about light things than not to be serious at all.
+This little baggage entertains me."
+
+"Oh, she has discovered that.  She knows you have been hunting her up
+and asking questions about her.  She is very much tickled by it.
+That's rather annoying."
+
+"Annoying, my dear fellow," laughed Valentin; "not the least!"
+
+"Hanged if I should want to have a greedy little adventuress like that know
+I was giving myself such pains about her!" said Newman.
+
+"A pretty woman is always worth one's pains," objected Valentin.
+"Mademoiselle Nioche is welcome to be tickled by my curiosity,
+and to know that I am tickled that she is tickled.
+She is not so much tickled, by the way."
+
+"You had better go and tell her," Newman rejoined.
+"She gave me a message for you of some such drift."
+
+"Bless your quiet imagination," said Valentin, "I have been to see her--
+three times in five days.  She is a charming hostess; we talk
+of Shakespeare and the musical glasses.  She is extremely clever
+and a very curious type; not at all coarse or wanting to be coarse;
+determined not to be.  She means to take very good care of herself.
+She is extremely perfect; she is as hard and clear-cut as some little
+figure of a sea-nymph in an antique intaglio, and I will warrant that she
+has not a grain more of sentiment or heart than if she was scooped
+out of a big amethyst.  You can't scratch her even with a diamond.
+Extremely pretty,--really, when you know her, she is wonderfully pretty,--
+intelligent, determined, ambitious, unscrupulous, capable of
+looking at a man strangled without changing color, she is upon
+my honor, extremely entertaining."
+
+"It's a fine list of attractions," said Newman; "they would serve
+as a police-detective's description of a favorite criminal.
+I should sum them up by another word than 'entertaining.'  "
+
+"Why, that is just the word to use.  I don't say she is laudable
+or lovable.  I don't want her as my wife or my sister.
+But she is a very curious and ingenious piece of machinery;
+I like to see it in operation."
+
+"Well, I have seen some very curious machines too," said Newman;
+"and once, in a needle factory, I saw a gentleman from the city,
+who had stopped too near one of them, picked up as neatly
+as if he had been prodded by a fork, swallowed down straight,
+and ground into small pieces."
+
+Reentering his domicile, late in the evening, three days
+after Madame de Bellegarde had made her bargain with him--
+the expression is sufficiently correct--touching the entertainment
+at which she was to present him to the world, he found on his table
+a card of goodly dimensions bearing an announcement that this
+lady would be at home on the 27th of the month, at ten o'clock
+in the evening.  He stuck it into the frame of his mirror
+and eyed it with some complacency; it seemed an agreeable emblem
+of triumph, documentary evidence that his prize was gained.
+Stretched out in a chair, he was looking at it lovingly,
+when Valentin de Bellegarde was shown into the room.
+Valentin's glance presently followed the direction of Newman's,
+and he perceived his mother's invitation.
+
+"And what have they put into the corner?" he asked.
+"Not the customary 'music,' 'dancing,' or 'tableaux vivants'?
+They ought at least to put 'An American.'"
+
+"Oh, there are to be several of us," said Newman.
+"Mrs. Tristram told me to-day that she had received a card
+and sent an acceptance."
+
+"Ah, then, with Mrs. Tristram and her husband you will have support.
+My mother might have put on her card 'Three Americans.'  But I suspect you
+will not lack amusement.  You will see a great many of the best people
+in France.  I mean the long pedigrees and the high noses, and all that.
+Some of them are awful idiots; I advise you to take them up cautiously."
+
+"Oh, I guess I shall like them," said Newman.
+"I am prepared to like every one and everything in these days;
+I am in high good-humor."
+
+Valentin looked at him a moment in silence and then dropped himself
+into a chair with an unwonted air of weariness.
+
+"Happy man!" he said with a sigh.  "Take care you don't become offensive."
+
+"If any one chooses to take offense, he may.  I have a
+good conscience," said Newman.
+
+"So you are really in love with my sister."
+
+"Yes, sir!" said Newman, after a pause.
+
+"And she also?"
+
+"I guess she likes me," said Newman.
+
+"What is the witchcraft you have used?"  Valentin asked.
+"How do YOU make love?"
+
+"Oh, I haven't any general rules," said Newman.
+"In any way that seems acceptable."
+
+"I suspect that, if one knew it," said Valentin, laughing, "you are
+a terrible customer.  You walk in seven-league boots."
+
+"There is something the matter with you to-night,"
+Newman said in response to this.  "You are vicious.
+Spare me all discordant sounds until after my marriage.
+Then, when I have settled down for life, I shall be better
+able to take things as they come."
+
+"And when does your marriage take place?"
+
+"About six weeks hence."
+
+Valentin was silent a while, and then he said, "And you feel
+very confident about the future?"
+
+"Confident.  I knew what I wanted, exactly, and I know what I have got."
+
+"You are sure you are going to be happy?"
+
+"Sure?" said Newman.  "So foolish a question deserves a foolish answer.  Yes!"
+
+"You are not afraid of anything?"
+
+"What should I be afraid of?  You can't hurt me unless you
+kill me by some violent means.  That I should indeed consider
+a tremendous sell.  I want to live and I mean to live.
+I can't die of illness, I am too ridiculously tough;
+and the time for dying of old age won't come round yet a while.
+I can't lose my wife, I shall take too good care of her.
+I may lose my money, or a large part of it; but that
+won't matter, for I shall make twice as much again.
+So what have I to be afraid of?"
+
+"You are not afraid it may be rather a mistake for an American
+man of business to marry a French countess?"
+
+"For the countess, possibly; but not for the man of business, if you mean me!
+But my countess shall not be disappointed; I answer for her happiness!"
+And as if he felt the impulse to celebrate his happy certitude by a bonfire,
+he got up to throw a couple of logs upon the already blazing hearth.
+Valentin watched for a few moments the quickened flame, and then,
+with his head leaning on his hand, gave a melancholy sigh.
+"Got a headache?"  Newman asked.
+
+"Je suis triste," said Valentin, with Gallic simplicity.
+
+"You are sad, eh?  It is about the lady you said the other night
+that you adored and that you couldn't marry?"
+
+"Did I really say that?  It seemed to me afterwards that
+the words had escaped me.  Before Claire it was bad taste.
+But I felt gloomy as I spoke, and I feel gloomy still.
+Why did you ever introduce me to that girl?"
+
+"Oh, it's Noemie, is it?  Lord deliver us!  You don't mean to say
+you are lovesick about her?"
+
+"Lovesick, no; it's not a grand passion.  But the cold-blooded little
+demon sticks in my thoughts; she has bitten me with those even little
+teeth of hers; I feel as if I might turn rabid and do something
+crazy in consequence.  It's very low, it's disgustingly low.
+She's the most mercenary little jade in Europe.  Yet she really
+affects my peace of mind; she is always running in my head.
+It's a striking contrast to your noble and virtuous attachment--
+a vile contrast!  It is rather pitiful that it should be the best
+I am able to do for myself at my present respectable age.
+I am a nice young man, eh, en somme?  You can't warrant my future,
+as you do your own."
+
+"Drop that girl, short," said Newman; "don't go near her again,
+and your future will do.  Come over to America and I will get
+you a place in a bank."
+
+"It is easy to say drop her," said Valentin, with a light laugh.
+"You can't drop a pretty woman like that.  One must be polite,
+even with Noemie.  Besides, I'll not have her suppose I am
+afraid of her."
+
+"So, between politeness and vanity, you will get deeper into the mud?
+Keep them both for something better.  Remember, too, that I didn't
+want to introduce you to her:  you insisted.  I had a sort of uneasy
+feeling about it."
+
+"Oh, I don't reproach you," said Valentin.  "Heaven forbid!
+I wouldn't for the world have missed knowing her.
+She is really extraordinary.  The way she has already spread her
+wings is amazing.  I don't know when a woman has amused me more.
+But excuse me," he added in an instant; "she doesn't amuse you,
+at second hand, and the subject is an impure one.
+Let us talk of something else."  Valentin introduced another topic,
+but within five minutes Newman observed that, by a bold transition,
+he had reverted to Mademoiselle Nioche, and was giving
+pictures of her manners and quoting specimens of her mots.
+These were very witty, and, for a young woman who six months before
+had been painting the most artless madonnas, startlingly cynical.
+But at last, abruptly, he stopped, became thoughtful, and for some
+time afterwards said nothing.  When he rose to go it was evident
+that his thoughts were still running upon Mademoiselle Nioche.
+"Yes, she's a frightful little monster!" he said.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+The next ten days were the happiest that Newman had ever known.
+He saw Madame de Cintre every day, and never saw either old Madame
+de Bellegarde or the elder of his prospective brothers-in-law.
+Madame de Cintre at last seemed to think it becoming to apologize
+for their never being present.  "They are much taken up,"
+she said, "with doing the honors of Paris to Lord Deepmere."
+There was a smile in her gravity as she made this declaration,
+and it deepened as she added, "He is our seventh cousin, you know,
+and blood is thicker than water.  And then, he is so interesting!"
+And with this she laughed.
+
+Newman met young Madame de Bellegarde two or three times,
+always roaming about with graceful vagueness, as if in search
+of an unattainable ideal of amusement.  She always reminded
+him of a painted perfume-bottle with a crack in it; but he had
+grown to have a kindly feeling for her, based on the fact
+of her owing conjugal allegiance to Urbain de Bellegarde.
+He pitied M. de Bellegarde's wife, especially since she was
+a silly, thirstily-smiling little brunette, with a suggestion
+of an unregulated heart.  The small marquise sometimes looked
+at him with an intensity too marked not to be innocent,
+for coquetry is more finely shaded.  She apparently wanted to ask
+him something or tell him something; he wondered what it was.
+But he was shy of giving her an opportunity, because, if her
+communication bore upon the aridity of her matrimonial lot,
+he was at a loss to see how he could help her.  He had
+a fancy, however, of her coming up to him some day and saying
+(after looking around behind her) with a little passionate hiss,
+"I know you detest my husband; let me have the pleasure of assuring
+you for once that you are right.  Pity a poor woman who is married
+to a clock-image in papier-mache!" Possessing, however, in default
+of a competent knowledge of the principles of etiquette,
+a very downright sense of the "meanness" of certain actions,
+it seemed to him to belong to his position to keep on his guard;
+he was not going to put it into the power of these people
+to say that in their house he had done anything unpleasant.
+As it was, Madame de Bellegarde used to give him news of the dress
+she meant to wear at his wedding, and which had not yet,
+in her creative imagination, in spite of many interviews
+with the tailor, resolved itself into its composite totality.
+"I told you pale blue bows on the sleeves, at the elbows,"
+she said.  "But to-day I don't see my blue bows at all.
+I don't know what has become of them.  To-day I see pink--
+a tender pink.  And then I pass through strange, dull phases
+in which neither blue nor pink says anything to me.
+And yet I must have the bows."
+
+"Have them green or yellow," said Newman.
+
+"Malheureux!" the little marquise would cry.  "Green bows would
+break your marriage--your children would be illegitimate!"
+
+Madame de Cintre was calmly happy before the world,
+and Newman had the felicity of fancying that before him,
+when the world was absent, she was almost agitatedly happy.
+She said very tender things.  "I take no pleasure in you.
+You never give me a chance to scold you, to correct you.
+I bargained for that, I expected to enjoy it.  But you
+won't do anything dreadful; you are dismally inoffensive.
+It is very stupid; there is no excitement for me; I might
+as well be marrying some one else."
+
+"I am afraid it's the worst I can do," Newman would say in answer
+to this.  "Kindly overlook the deficiency."  He assured her that he,
+at least, would never scold her; she was perfectly satisfactory.
+"If you only knew," he said, "how exactly you are what I coveted!
+And I am beginning to understand why I coveted it;
+the having it makes all the difference that I expected.
+Never was a man so pleased with his good fortune.
+You have been holding your head for a week past just as I wanted
+my wife to hold hers.  You say just the things I want her to say.
+You walk about the room just as I want her to walk.
+You have just the taste in dress that I want her to have.
+In short, you come up to the mark, and, I can tell you,
+my mark was high."
+
+These observations seemed to make Madame de Cintre rather grave.
+At last she said, "Depend upon it, I don't come up to the mark;
+your mark is too high.  I am not all that you suppose; I am
+a much smaller affair.  She is a magnificent woman, your ideal.
+Pray, how did she come to such perfection?"
+
+"She was never anything else," Newman said.
+
+"I really believe," Madame de Cintre went on, "that she is better
+than my own ideal.  Do you know that is a very handsome compliment?
+Well, sir, I will make her my own!"
+
+Mrs. Tristram came to see her dear Claire after Newman had announced
+his engagement, and she told our hero the next day that his good
+fortune was simply absurd.  "For the ridiculous part of it is,"
+she said, "that you are evidently going to be as happy as if you
+were marrying Miss Smith or Miss Thompson.  I call it a brilliant
+match for you, but you get brilliancy without paying any tax upon it.
+Those things are usually a compromise, but here you have everything,
+and nothing crowds anything else out.  You will be brilliantly happy
+as well."  Newman thanked her for her pleasant, encouraging way
+of saying things; no woman could encourage or discourage better.
+Tristram's way of saying things was different; he had been taken
+by his wife to call upon Madame de Cintre, and he gave an account
+of the expedition.
+
+"You don't catch me giving an opinion on your countess this time,"
+he said; "I put my foot in it once.  That's a d--d underhand
+thing to do, by the way--coming round to sound a fellow upon
+the woman you are going to marry.  You deserve anything you get.
+Then of course you rush and tell her, and she takes care to make
+it pleasant for the poor spiteful wretch the first time he calls.
+I will do you the justice to say, however, that you don't seem to have
+told Madame de Cintre; or if you have she's uncommonly magnanimous.
+She was very nice; she was tremendously polite.
+She and Lizzie sat on the sofa, pressing each other's hands
+and calling each other chere belle, and Madame de Cintre sent
+me with every third word a magnificent smile, as if to give me
+to understand that I too was a handsome dear.  She quite made up
+for past neglect, I assure you; she was very pleasant and sociable.
+Only in an evil hour it came into her head to say that she must
+present us to her mother--her mother wished to know your friends.
+I didn't want to know her mother, and I was on the point of
+telling Lizzie to go in alone and let me wait for her outside.
+But Lizzie, with her usual infernal ingenuity,
+guessed my purpose and reduced me by a glance of her eye.
+So they marched off arm in arm, and I followed as I could.
+We found the old lady in her arm-chair, twiddling her
+aristocratic thumbs.  She looked at Lizzie from head to foot;
+but at that game Lizzie, to do her justice, was a match for her.
+My wife told her we were great friends of Mr. Newman.
+The marquise started a moment, and then said, 'Oh, Mr. Newman!
+My daughter has made up her mind to marry a Mr. Newman.'
+Then Madame de Cintre began to fondle Lizzie again,
+and said it was this dear lady that had planned the match
+and brought them together.  'Oh, 'tis you I have to thank for
+my American son-in-law,' the old lady said to Mrs. Tristram.
+'It was a very clever thought of yours.  Be sure of my gratitude.'
+And then she began to look at me and presently said,
+'Pray, are you engaged in some species of manufacture?'
+I wanted to say that I manufactured broom-sticks for old
+witches to ride on, but Lizzie got in ahead of me.
+'My husband, Madame la Marquise,' she said, 'belongs to
+that unfortunate class of persons who have no profession
+and no business, and do very little good in the world.'
+To get her poke at the old woman she didn't care where she shoved me.
+'Dear me,' said the marquise, 'we all have our duties.'
+'I am sorry mine compel me to take leave of you,' said Lizzie.
+And we bundled out again.  But you have a mother-in-law,
+in all the force of the term."
+
+"Oh," said Newman, "my mother-in-law desires nothing better
+than to let me alone."
+
+Betimes, on the evening of the 27th, he went to Madame de Bellegarde's ball.
+The old house in the Rue de l'Universite looked strangely brilliant.
+In the circle of light projected from the outer gate a detachment
+of the populace stood watching the carriages roll in; the court was
+illumined with flaring torches and the portico carpeted with crimson.
+When Newman arrived there were but a few people present.
+The marquise and her two daughters were at the top of the staircase,
+where the sallow old nymph in the angle peeped out from a bower of plants.
+Madame de Bellegarde, in purple and fine laces, looked like an old
+lady painted by Vandyke; Madame de Cintre was dressed in white.
+The old lady greeted Newman with majestic formality, and looking
+round her, called several of the persons who were standing near.
+They were elderly gentlemen, of what Valentin de Bellegarde had designated
+as the high-nosed category; two or three of them wore cordons and stars.
+They approached with measured alertness, and the marquise said that she
+wished to present them to Mr. Newman, who was going to marry her daughter.
+Then she introduced successively three dukes, three counts, and a baron.
+These gentlemen bowed and smiled most agreeably, and Newman indulged
+in a series of impartial hand-shakes, accompanied by a "Happy to make
+your acquaintance, sir."  He looked at Madame de Cintre, but she was
+not looking at him.  If his personal self-consciousness had been of a
+nature to make him constantly refer to her, as the critic before whom,
+in company, he played his part, he might have found it a flattering
+proof of her confidence that he never caught her eyes resting upon him.
+It is a reflection Newman did not make, but we nevertheless risk it,
+that in spite of this circumstance she probably saw every movement
+of his little finger.  Young Madame de Bellegarde was dressed in an
+audacious toilet of crimson crape, bestrewn with huge silver moons--
+thin crescent and full disks.
+
+"You don't say anything about my dress," she said to Newman.
+
+"I feel," he answered, "as if I were looking at you through a telescope.
+It is very strange."
+
+"If it is strange it matches the occasion.  But I am not a heavenly body."
+
+"I never saw the sky at midnight that particular shade
+of crimson," said Newman.
+
+"That is my originality; any one could have chosen blue.
+My sister-in-law would have chosen a lovely shade of blue, with a dozen
+little delicate moons.  But I think crimson is much more amusing.
+And I give my idea, which is moonshine."
+
+"Moonshine and bloodshed," said Newman.
+
+"A murder by moonlight," laughed Madame de Bellegarde.
+"What a delicious idea for a toilet!  To make it complete,
+there is the silver dagger, you see, stuck into my hair.
+But here comes Lord Deepmere," she added in a moment.
+"I must find out what he thinks of it."  Lord Deepmere came up,
+looking very red in the face, and laughing.  "Lord Deepmere
+can't decide which he prefers, my sister-in-law or me,"
+said Madame de Bellegarde.  "He likes Claire because she
+is his cousin, and me because I am not.  But he has no right
+to make love to Claire, whereas I am perfectly disponible.
+It is very wrong to make love to a woman who is engaged,
+but it is very wrong not to make love to a woman who is married."
+
+"Oh, it's very jolly making love to married women," said Lord Deepmere,
+"because they can't ask you to marry them."
+
+"Is that what the others do, the spinsters?"  Newman inquired.
+
+"Oh dear, yes," said Lord Deepmere; "in England all the girls
+ask a fellow to marry them."
+
+"And a fellow brutally refuses," said Madame de Bellegarde.
+
+"Why, really, you know, a fellow can't marry any girl that asks him,"
+said his lordship.
+
+"Your cousin won't ask you.  She is going to marry Mr. Newman."
+
+"Oh, that's a very different thing!" laughed Lord Deepmere.
+
+"You would have accepted HER, I suppose.  That makes me hope
+that after all you prefer me."
+
+"Oh, when things are nice I never prefer one to the other,"
+said the young Englishman.  "I take them all."
+
+"Ah, what a horror!  I won't be taken in that way; I must be kept apart,"
+cried Madame de Bellegarde.  "Mr. Newman is much better; he knows
+how to choose.  Oh, he chooses as if he were threading a needle.
+He prefers Madame de Cintre to any conceivable creature or thing."
+
+"Well, you can't help my being her cousin," said Lord Deepmere to Newman,
+with candid hilarity.
+
+"Oh, no, I can't help that," said Newman, laughing back;
+"neither can she!"
+
+"And you can't help my dancing with her," said Lord Deepmere,
+with sturdy simplicity.
+
+"I could prevent that only by dancing with her myself," said Newman.
+"But unfortunately I don't know how to dance."
+
+"Oh, you may dance without knowing how; may you not, milord?" said Madame
+de Bellegarde.  But to this Lord Deepmere replied that a fellow ought
+to know how to dance if he didn't want to make an ass of himself;
+and at this moment Urbain de Bellegarde joined the group, slow-stepping and
+with his hands behind him.
+
+"This is a very splendid entertainment," said Newman, cheerfully.
+"The old house looks very bright."
+
+"If YOU are pleased, we are content," said the marquis,
+lifting his shoulders and bending them forward.
+
+"Oh, I suspect every one is pleased," said Newman.
+"How can they help being pleased when the first thing they see
+as they come in is your sister, standing there as beautiful
+as an angel?"
+
+"Yes, she is very beautiful," rejoined the marquis, solemnly.
+"But that is not so great a source of satisfaction to other people,
+naturally, as to you."
+
+"Yes, I am satisfied, marquis, I am satisfied," said Newman,
+with his protracted enunciation.  "And now tell me," he added,
+looking round, "who some of your friends are."
+
+M. de Bellegarde looked about him in silence, with his head bent and his
+hand raised to his lower lip, which he slowly rubbed.  A stream of people
+had been pouring into the salon in which Newman stood with his host,
+the rooms were filling up and the spectacle had become brilliant.
+It borrowed its splendor chiefly from the shining shoulders and profuse
+jewels of the women, and from the voluminous elegance of their dresses.
+There were no uniforms, as Madame de Bellegarde's door was inexorably closed
+against the myrmidons of the upstart power which then ruled the fortunes
+of France, and the great company of smiling and chattering faces was not
+graced by any very frequent suggestions of harmonious beauty.  It is
+a pity, nevertheless, that Newman had not been a physiognomist, for a great
+many of the faces were irregularly agreeable, expressive, and suggestive.
+If the occasion had been different they would hardly have pleased him;
+he would have thought the women not pretty enough and the men too smirking;
+but he was now in a humor to receive none but agreeable impressions,
+and he looked no more narrowly than to perceive that every one was brilliant,
+and to feel that the sun of their brilliancy was a part of his credit.
+"I will present you to some people," said M. de Bellegarde after a while.
+"I will make a point of it, in fact.  You will allow me?"
+
+"Oh, I will shake hands with any one you want," said Newman.
+"Your mother just introduced me to half a dozen old gentlemen.
+Take care you don't pick up the same parties again."
+
+"Who are the gentlemen to whom my mother presented you?"
+
+"Upon my word, I forgot them," said Newman, laughing.
+"The people here look very much alike."
+
+"I suspect they have not forgotten you," said the marquis.
+And he began to walk through the rooms.  Newman, to keep near
+him in the crowd, took his arm; after which for some time,
+the marquis walked straight along, in silence.  At last,
+reaching the farther end of the suite of reception-rooms,
+Newman found himself in the presence of a lady of
+monstrous proportions, seated in a very capacious arm-chair,
+with several persons standing in a semicircle round her.
+This little group had divided as the marquis came up,
+and M. de Bellegarde stepped forward and stood for an instant
+silent and obsequious, with his hat raised to his lips,
+as Newman had seen some gentlemen stand in churches as soon
+as they entered their pews.  The lady, indeed, bore a very fair
+likeness to a reverend effigy in some idolatrous shrine.
+She was monumentally stout and imperturbably serene.
+Her aspect was to Newman almost formidable; he had a troubled
+consciousness of a triple chin, a small piercing eye, a vast
+expanse of uncovered bosom, a nodding and twinkling tiara of plumes
+and gems, and an immense circumference of satin petticoat.
+With her little circle of beholders this remarkable woman
+reminded him of the Fat Lady at a fair.  She fixed her small,
+unwinking eyes at the new-comers.
+
+"Dear duchess," said the marquis, "let me present you our
+good friend Mr. Newman, of whom you have heard us speak.
+Wishing to make Mr. Newman known to those who are dear to us,
+I could not possibly fail to begin with you."
+
+"Charmed, dear friend; charmed, monsieur," said the duchess
+in a voice which, though small and shrill, was not disagreeable,
+while Newman executed his obeisance.  "I came on purpose
+to see monsieur.  I hope he appreciates the compliment.
+You have only to look at me to do so, sir," she continued,
+sweeping her person with a much-encompassing glance.
+Newman hardly knew what to say, though it seemed that to a duchess
+who joked about her corpulence one might say almost anything.
+On hearing that the duchess had come on purpose to see Newman,
+the gentlemen who surrounded her turned a little and looked at him
+with sympathetic curiosity.  The marquis with supernatural gravity
+mentioned to him the name of each, while the gentleman who bore
+it bowed; they were all what are called in France beaux noms.
+"I wanted extremely to see you," the duchess went on.
+"C'est positif.  In the first place, I am very fond of the person you
+are going to marry; she is the most charming creature in France.
+Mind you treat her well, or you shall hear some news of me.
+But you look as if you were good.  I am told you are very remarkable.
+I have heard all sorts of extraordinary things about you.
+Voyons, are they true?"
+
+"I don't know what you can have heard," said Newman.
+
+"Oh, you have your legende.  We have heard that you
+have had a career the most checkered, the most bizarre.
+What is that about your having founded a city some ten years
+ago in the great West, a city which contains to-day half
+a million of inhabitants?  Isn't it half a million, messieurs?
+You are exclusive proprietor of this flourishing settlement,
+and are consequently fabulously rich, and you would be richer
+still if you didn't grant lands and houses free of rent to all
+newcomers who will pledge themselves never to smoke cigars.
+At this game, in three years, we are told, you are going
+to be made president of America."
+
+The duchess recited this amazing "legend" with a smooth self-possession
+which gave the speech to Newman's mind, the air of being a bit of amusing
+dialogue in a play, delivered by a veteran comic actress.  Before she
+had ceased speaking he had burst into loud, irrepressible laughter.
+"Dear duchess, dear duchess," the marquis began to murmur, soothingly.
+Two or three persons came to the door of the room to see who was laughing
+at the duchess.  But the lady continued with the soft, serene assurance
+of a person who, as a duchess, was certain of being listened to, and,
+as a garrulous woman, was independent of the pulse of her auditors.
+"But I know you are very remarkable.  You must be, to have endeared yourself
+to this good marquis and to his admirable world.  They are very exacting.
+I myself am not very sure at this hour of really possessing it.
+Eh, Bellegarde?  To please you, I see, one must be an American millionaire.
+But your real triumph, my dear sir, is pleasing the countess; she is
+as difficult as a princess in a fairy tale.  Your success is a miracle.
+What is your secret?  I don't ask you to reveal it before all these gentlemen,
+but come and see me some day and give me a specimen of your talents."
+
+"The secret is with Madame de Cintre," said Newman.
+"You must ask her for it.  It consists in her having a great
+deal of charity."
+
+"Very pretty!" said the duchess.  "That's a very nice specimen,
+to begin with.  What, Bellegarde, are you already taking monsieur away?"
+
+"I have a duty to perform, dear friend," said the marquis,
+pointing to the other groups.
+
+"Ah, for you I know what that means.  Well, I have seen monsieur;
+that is what I wanted.  He can't persuade me that he isn't
+very clever.  Farewell."
+
+As Newman passed on with his host, he asked who the duchess was.
+"The greatest lady in France," said the marquis.
+M. de Bellegarde then presented his prospective brother-in-law
+to some twenty other persons of both sexes, selected apparently
+for their typically august character.  In some cases this character
+was written in good round hand upon the countenance of the wearer;
+in others Newman was thankful for such help as his companion's
+impressively brief intimation contributed to the discovery of it.
+There were large, majestic men, and small demonstrative men;
+there were ugly ladies in yellow lace and quaint jewels,
+and pretty ladies with white shoulders from which jewels and every
+thing else were absent.  Every one gave Newman extreme attention,
+every one smiled, every one was charmed to make his acquaintance,
+every one looked at him with that soft hardness of good society
+which puts out its hand but keeps its fingers closed over
+the coin.  If the marquis was going about as a bear-leader,
+if the fiction of Beauty and the Beast was supposed to have
+found its companion-piece, the general impression appeared
+to be that the bear was a very fair imitation of humanity.
+Newman found his reception among the marquis's friends
+very "pleasant;" he could not have said more for it.
+It was pleasant to be treated with so much explicit politeness;
+it was pleasant to hear neatly turned civilities, with a flavor
+of wit, uttered from beneath carefully-shaped mustaches;
+it was pleasant to see clever Frenchwomen--they all seemed clever--
+turn their backs to their partners to get a good look at the
+strange American whom Claire de Cintre was to marry, and reward
+the object of the exhibition with a charming smile.  At last,
+as he turned away from a battery of smiles and other amenities,
+Newman caught the eye of the marquis looking at him heavily;
+and thereupon, for a single instant, he checked himself.
+"Am I behaving like a d--d fool?" he asked himself.
+"Am I stepping about like a terrier on his hind legs?"
+At this moment he perceived Mrs. Tristram at the other side
+of the room, and he waved his hand in farewell to M. de
+Bellegarde and made his way toward her.
+
+"Am I holding my head too high?" he asked.  "Do I look as if I
+had the lower end of a pulley fastened to my chin?"
+
+"You look like all happy men, very ridiculous," said Mrs. Tristram.
+"It's the usual thing, neither better nor worse.  I have been watching
+you for the last ten minutes, and I have been watching M. de Bellegarde.
+He doesn't like it."
+
+"The more credit to him for putting it through," replied Newman.
+"But I shall be generous.  I shan't trouble him any more.
+But I am very happy.  I can't stand still here.
+Please to take my arm and we will go for a walk."
+
+He led Mrs. Tristram through all the rooms.  There were a great
+many of them, and, decorated for the occasion and filled with a
+stately crowd, their somewhat tarnished nobleness recovered its lustre.
+Mrs. Tristram, looking about her, dropped a series of softly-incisive
+comments upon her fellow-guests. But Newman made vague answers;
+he hardly heard her, his thoughts were elsewhere.  They were lost
+in a cheerful sense of success, of attainment and victory.
+His momentary care as to whether he looked like a fool
+passed away, leaving him simply with a rich contentment.
+He had got what he wanted.  The savor of success had always been highly
+agreeable to him, and it had been his fortune to know it often.
+But it had never before been so sweet, been associated with
+so much that was brilliant and suggestive and entertaining.
+The lights, the flowers, the music, the crowd, the splendid women,
+the jewels, the strangeness even of the universal murmur of a
+clever foreign tongue were all a vivid symbol and assurance
+of his having grasped his purpose and forced along his groove.
+If Newman's smile was larger than usual, it was not tickled
+vanity that pulled the strings; he had no wish to be shown
+with the finger or to achieve a personal success.  If he could
+have looked down at the scene, invisible, from a hole in the roof,
+he would have enjoyed it quite as much.  It would have spoken to him
+about his own prosperity and deepened that easy feeling about life
+to which, sooner or later, he made all experience contribute.
+Just now the cup seemed full.
+
+"It is a very pretty party," said Mrs. Tristram, after they had walked
+a while.  "I have seen nothing objectionable except my husband leaning against
+the wall and talking to an individual whom I suppose he takes for a duke,
+but whom I more than suspect to be the functionary who attends to the lamps.
+Do you think you could separate them?  Knock over a lamp!"
+
+I doubt whether Newman, who saw no harm in Tristram's conversing with an
+ingenious mechanic, would have complied with this request; but at this
+moment Valentin de Bellegarde drew near.  Newman, some weeks previously,
+had presented Madame de Cintre's youngest brother to Mrs. Tristram,
+for whose merits Valentin professed a discriminating relish and to whom
+he had paid several visits.
+
+"Did you ever read Keats's Belle Dame sans Merci?" asked Mrs. Tristram.
+"You remind me of the hero of the ballad:--
+
+     'Oh, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
+      Alone and palely loitering?'"
+
+"If I am alone, it is because I have been deprived of your society,"
+said Valentin.  "Besides it is good manners for no man
+except Newman to look happy.  This is all to his address.
+It is not for you and me to go before the curtain."
+
+"You promised me last spring," said Newman to Mrs. Tristram,
+"that six months from that time I should get into a monstrous rage.
+It seems to me the time's up, and yet the nearest I can come
+to doing anything rough now is to offer you a cafe glace."
+
+"I told you we should do things grandly," said Valentin.
+"I don't allude to the cafes glaces.  But every one is here,
+and my sister told me just now that Urbain had been adorable."
+
+"He's a good fellow, he's a good fellow," said Newman.
+"I love him as a brother.  That reminds me that I ought to go
+and say something polite to your mother."
+
+"Let it be something very polite indeed," said Valentin.
+"It may be the last time you will feel so much like it!"
+
+Newman walked away, almost disposed to clasp old Madame de Bellegarde round
+the waist.  He passed through several rooms and at last found the old
+marquise in the first saloon, seated on a sofa, with her young kinsman,
+Lord Deepmere, beside her.  The young man looked somewhat bored;
+his hands were thrust into his pockets and his eyes were fixed upon
+the toes of his shoes, his feet being thrust out in front of him.
+Madame de Bellegarde appeared to have been talking to him with some
+intensity and to be waiting for an answer to what she had said,
+or for some sign of the effect of her words.  Her hands were folded
+in her lap, and she was looking at his lordship's simple physiognomy
+with an air of politely suppressed irritation.
+
+Lord Deepmere looked up as Newman approached, met his eyes,
+and changed color.
+
+"I am afraid I disturb an interesting interview," said Newman.
+
+Madame de Bellegarde rose, and her companion rising at the same time,
+she put her hand into his arm.  She answered nothing for an instant,
+and then, as he remained silent, she said with a smile, "It would
+be polite for Lord Deepmere to say it was very interesting."
+
+"Oh, I'm not polite!" cried his lordship.  "But it was interesting."
+
+"Madame de Bellegarde was giving you some good advice, eh?" said Newman;
+"toning you down a little?"
+
+"I was giving him some excellent advice," said the marquise,
+fixing her fresh, cold eyes upon our hero.  "It's for him
+to take it."
+
+"Take it, sir--take it," Newman exclaimed.  "Any advice the marquise
+gives you to-night must be good.  For to-night, marquise, you must
+speak from a cheerful, comfortable spirit, and that makes good advice.
+You see everything going on so brightly and successfully round you.
+Your party is magnificent; it was a very happy thought.
+It is much better than that thing of mine would have been."
+
+"If you are pleased I am satisfied," said Madame de Bellegarde.
+"My desire was to please you."
+
+"Do you want to please me a little more?" said Newman.  "Just drop our
+lordly friend; I am sure he wants to be off and shake his heels a little.
+Then take my arm and walk through the rooms."
+
+"My desire was to please you," the old lady repeated.
+And she liberated Lord Deepmere, Newman rather wondering
+at her docility.  "If this young man is wise," she added,
+"he will go and find my daughter and ask her to dance."
+
+"I have been indorsing your advice," said Newman, bending over
+her and laughing, "I suppose I must swallow that!"
+
+Lord Deepmere wiped his forehead and departed, and Madame de Bellegarde
+took Newman's arm.  "Yes, it's a very pleasant, sociable entertainment,"
+the latter declared, as they proceeded on their circuit.
+"Every one seems to know every one and to be glad to see every one.
+The marquis has made me acquainted with ever so many people, and I feel
+quite like one of the family.  It's an occasion," Newman continued,
+wanting to say something thoroughly kind and comfortable, "that I
+shall always remember, and remember very pleasantly."
+
+"I think it is an occasion that we shall none of us forget,"
+said the marquise, with her pure, neat enunciation.
+
+People made way for her as she passed, others turned round and looked
+at her, and she received a great many greetings and pressings of
+the hand, all of which she accepted with the most delicate dignity.
+But though she smiled upon every one, she said nothing until she
+reached the last of the rooms, where she found her elder son.
+Then, "This is enough, sir," she declared with measured softness to Newman,
+and turned to the marquis.  He put out both his hands and took both hers,
+drawing her to a seat with an air of the tenderest veneration.
+It was a most harmonious family group, and Newman discreetly retired.
+He moved through the rooms for some time longer, circulating freely,
+overtopping most people by his great height, renewing acquaintance
+with some of the groups to which Urbain de Bellegarde had presented him,
+and expending generally the surplus of his equanimity.  He continued to find
+it all extremely agreeable; but the most agreeable things have an end,
+and the revelry on this occasion began to deepen to a close.  The music
+was sounding its ultimate strains and people were looking for the marquise,
+to make their farewells.  There seemed to be some difficulty in finding her,
+and Newman heard a report that she had left the ball, feeling faint.
+"She has succumbed to the emotions of the evening," he heard a lady say.
+"Poor, dear marquise; I can imagine all that they may have been for her!"
+But he learned immediately afterwards that she had recovered herself
+and was seated in an armchair near the doorway, receiving parting
+compliments from great ladies who insisted upon her not rising.
+He himself set out in quest of Madame de Cintre.  He had seen her move
+past him many times in the rapid circles of a waltz, but in accordance
+with her explicit instructions he had exchanged no words with her since
+the beginning of the evening.  The whole house having been thrown open,
+the apartments of the rez-de-chaussee were also accessible, though a smaller
+number of persons had gathered there.  Newman wandered through them,
+observing a few scattered couples to whom this comparative seclusion appeared
+grateful and reached a small conservatory which opened into the garden.
+The end of the conservatory was formed by a clear sheet of glass,
+unmasked by plants, and admitting the winter starlight so directly that
+a person standing there would seem to have passed into the open air.
+Two persons stood there now, a lady and a gentleman; the lady Newman,
+from within the room and although she had turned her back to it,
+immediately recognized as Madame de Cintre.  He hesitated as to whether
+he would advance, but as he did so she looked round, feeling apparently
+that he was there.  She rested her eyes on him a moment and then turned
+again to her companion.
+
+"It is almost a pity not to tell Mr. Newman," she said softly,
+but in a tone that Newman could hear.
+
+"Tell him if you like!" the gentleman answered, in the voice
+of Lord Deepmere.
+
+"Oh, tell me by all means!" said Newman advancing.
+
+Lord Deepmere, he observed, was very red in the face, and he had twisted
+his gloves into a tight cord as if he had been squeezing them dry.
+These, presumably, were tokens of violent emotion, and it seemed
+to Newman that the traces of corresponding agitation were visible in
+Madame de Cintre's face.  The two had been talking with much vivacity.
+"What I should tell you is only to my lord's credit," said Madame de Cintre,
+smiling frankly enough.
+
+"He wouldn't like it any better for that!" said my lord,
+with his awkward laugh.
+
+"Come; what's the mystery?"  Newman demanded.  "Clear it up.
+I don't like mysteries."
+
+"We must have some things we don't like, and go without some we do,"
+said the ruddy young nobleman, laughing still.
+
+"It's to Lord Deepmere's credit, but it is not to every one's,"
+said Madam de Cintre.  "So I shall say nothing about it.
+You may be sure," she added; and she put out her hand to
+the Englishman, who took it half shyly, half impetuously.
+"And now go and dance!" she said.
+
+"Oh yes, I feel awfully like dancing!" he answered.  "I shall
+go and get tipsy."  And he walked away with a gloomy guffaw.
+
+"What has happened between you?"  Newman asked.
+
+"I can't tell you--now," said Madame de Cintre.
+"Nothing that need make you unhappy."
+
+"Has the little Englishman been trying to make love to you?"
+
+She hesitated, and then she uttered a grave "No! he's a very
+honest little fellow."
+
+"But you are agitated.  Something is the matter."
+
+"Nothing, I repeat, that need make you unhappy.  My agitation is over.
+Some day I will tell you what it was; not now.  I can't now!"
+
+"Well, I confess," remarked Newman, "I don't want to hear
+anything unpleasant.  I am satisfied with everything--
+most of all with you.  I have seen all the ladies and talked
+with a great many of them; but I am satisfied with you."
+Madame de Cintre covered him for a moment with her large,
+soft glance, and then turned her eyes away into the starry night.
+So they stood silent a moment, side by side.  "Say you are
+satisfied with me," said Newman.
+
+He had to wait a moment for the answer; but it came at last,
+low yet distinct:  "I am very happy."
+
+It was presently followed by a few words from another source,
+which made them both turn round.  "I am sadly afraid Madame de
+Cintre will take a chill.  I have ventured to bring a shawl."
+Mrs. Bread stood there softly solicitous, holding a white drapery
+in her hand.
+
+"Thank you," said Madame de Cintre, "the sight of those cold
+stars gives one a sense of frost.  I won't take your shawl,
+but we will go back into the house."
+
+She passed back and Newman followed her, Mrs. Bread standing
+respectfully aside to make way for them.  Newman paused an instant
+before the old woman, and she glanced up at him with a silent greeting.
+"Oh, yes," he said, "you must come and live with us."
+
+"Well then, sir, if you will," she answered, "you have not seen
+the last of me!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+Newman was fond of music and went often to the opera.  A couple of evenings
+after Madame de Bellegarde's ball he sat listening to "Don Giovanni,"
+having in honor of this work, which he had never yet seen represented,
+come to occupy his orchestra-chair before the rising of the curtain.
+Frequently he took a large box and invited a party of his compatriots;
+this was a mode of recreation to which he was much addicted.
+He liked making up parties of his friends and conducting them to the theatre,
+and taking them to drive on high drags or to dine at remote restaurants.
+He liked doing things which involved his paying for people; the vulgar
+truth is that he enjoyed "treating" them.  This was not because he was
+what is called purse-proud; handling money in public was on the contrary
+positively disagreeable to him; he had a sort of personal modesty about it,
+akin to what he would have felt about making a toilet before spectators.
+But just as it was a gratification to him to be handsomely dressed, just so
+it was a private satisfaction to him (he enjoyed it very clandestinely)
+to have interposed, pecuniarily, in a scheme of pleasure.
+To set a large group of people in motion and transport them to a distance,
+to have special conveyances, to charter railway-carriages and steamboats,
+harmonized with his relish for bold processes, and made hospitality seem
+more active and more to the purpose.  A few evenings before the occasion
+of which I speak he had invited several ladies and gentlemen to the opera
+to listen to Madame Alboni--a party which included Miss Dora Finch.
+It befell, however, that Miss Dora Finch, sitting near Newman in the box,
+discoursed brilliantly, not only during the entr'actes, but during many of
+the finest portions of the performance, so that Newman had really come away
+with an irritated sense that Madame Alboni had a thin, shrill voice, and that
+her musical phrase was much garnished with a laugh of the giggling order.
+After this he promised himself to go for a while to the opera alone.
+
+When the curtain had fallen upon the first act of "Don Giovanni"
+he turned round in his place to observe the house.  Presently, in one
+of the boxes, he perceived Urbain de Bellegarde and his wife.
+The little marquise was sweeping the house very busily with a glass,
+and Newman, supposing that she saw him, determined to go and bid
+her good evening.  M. de Bellegarde was leaning against a column,
+motionless, looking straight in front of him, with one hand in the breast
+of his white waistcoat and the other resting his hat on his thigh.
+Newman was about to leave his place when he noticed in that obscure region
+devoted to the small boxes which in France are called, not inaptly,
+"bathing-tubs," a face which even the dim light and the distance could
+not make wholly indistinct.  It was the face of a young and pretty woman,
+and it was surmounted with a coiffure of pink roses and diamonds.
+This person was looking round the house, and her fan was moving to and fro
+with the most practiced grace; when she lowered it, Newman perceived
+a pair of plump white shoulders and the edge of a rose-colored dress.
+Beside her, very close to the shoulders and talking, apparently with
+an earnestness which it pleased her scantily to heed, sat a young man
+with a red face and a very low shirt-collar. A moment's gazing left
+Newman with no doubts; the pretty young woman was Noemie Nioche.
+He looked hard into the depths of the box, thinking her father might
+perhaps be in attendance, but from what he could see the young man's
+eloquence had no other auditor.  Newman at last made his way out,
+and in doing so he passed beneath the baignoire of Mademoiselle Noemie.
+She saw him as he approached and gave him a nod and smile which seemed
+meant as an assurance that she was still a good-natured girl, in spite
+of her enviable rise in the world.  Newman passed into the foyer
+and walked through it.  Suddenly he paused in front of a gentleman
+seated on one of the divans.  The gentleman's elbows were on his knees;
+he was leaning forward and staring at the pavement, lost apparently
+in meditations of a somewhat gloomy cast.  But in spite of his bent
+head Newman recognized him, and in a moment sat down beside him.
+Then the gentleman looked up and displayed the expressive countenance
+of Valentin de Bellegarde.
+
+"What in the world are you thinking of so hard?" asked Newman.
+
+"A subject that requires hard thinking to do it justice," said Valentin.
+"My immeasurable idiocy."
+
+"What is the matter now?"
+
+"The matter now is that I am a man again, and no more a fool than usual.
+But I came within an inch of taking that girl au serieux."
+
+"You mean the young lady below stairs, in a baignoire in a
+pink dress?" said Newman.
+
+"Did you notice what a brilliant kind of pink it was?"
+Valentin inquired, by way of answer.  "It makes her look
+as white as new milk."
+
+"White or black, as you please.  But you have stopped going to see her?"
+
+"Oh, bless you, no.  Why should I stop?  I have changed, but she hasn't,"
+said Valentin.  "I see she is a vulgar little wretch, after all.
+But she is as amusing as ever, and one MUST be amused."
+
+"Well, I am glad she strikes you so unpleasantly," Newman rejoiced.
+"I suppose you have swallowed all those fine words you used about
+her the other night.  You compared her to a sapphire, or a topaz,
+or an amethyst--some precious stone; what was it?"
+
+"I don't remember," said Valentin, "it may have been to a carbuncle!
+But she won't make a fool of me now.  She has no real charm.
+It's an awfully low thing to make a mistake about a person
+of that sort."
+
+"I congratulate you," Newman declared, "upon the scales having
+fallen from your eyes.  It's a great triumph; it ought to make
+you feel better."
+
+"Yes, it makes me feel better!" said Valentin, gayly.  Then, checking himself,
+he looked askance at Newman.  "I rather think you are laughing at me.
+If you were not one of the family I would take it up."
+
+"Oh, no, I'm not laughing, any more than I am one of the family.
+You make me feel badly.  You are too clever a fellow, you are made
+of too good stuff, to spend your time in ups and downs over that
+class of goods.  The idea of splitting hairs about Miss Nioche!
+It seems to me awfully foolish.  You say you have given up taking
+her seriously; but you take her seriously so long as you take
+her at all."
+
+Valentin turned round in his place and looked a while
+at Newman, wrinkling his forehead and rubbing his knees.
+"Vous parlez d'or. But she has wonderfully pretty arms.
+Would you believe I didn't know it till this evening?"
+
+"But she is a vulgar little wretch, remember, all the same," said Newman.
+
+"Yes; the other day she had the bad taste to begin to abuse her father,
+to his face, in my presence.  I shouldn't have expected it of her;
+it was a disappointment; heigho!"
+
+"Why, she cares no more for her father than for her door-mat," said Newman.
+"I discovered that the first time I saw her."
+
+"Oh, that's another affair; she may think of the poor old beggar
+what she pleases.  But it was low in her to call him bad names;
+it quite threw me off.  It was about a frilled petticoat that he was
+to have fetched from the washer-woman's; he appeared to have neglected
+this graceful duty.  She almost boxed his ears.  He stood there staring
+at her with his little blank eyes and smoothing his old hat with his
+coat-tail. At last he turned round and went out without a word.
+Then I told her it was in very bad taste to speak so to one's papa.
+She said she should be so thankful to me if I would mention it to her
+whenever her taste was at fault; she had immense confidence in mine.
+I told her I couldn't have the bother of forming her manners;
+I had had an idea they were already formed, after the best models.
+She had disappointed me.  But I shall get over it," said Valentin, gayly.
+
+"Oh, time's a great consoler!"  Newman answered with humorous sobriety.
+He was silent a moment, and then he added, in another tone, "I wish you
+would think of what I said to you the other day.  Come over to America
+with us, and I will put you in the way of doing some business.
+You have a very good head, if you will only use it."
+
+Valentin made a genial grimace.  "My head is much obliged to you.
+Do you mean the place in a bank?"
+
+"There are several places, but I suppose you would consider the bank
+the most aristocratic."
+
+Valentin burst into a laugh.  "My dear fellow, at night all cats are gray!
+When one derogates there are no degrees."
+
+Newman answered nothing for a minute.  Then, "I think you will find
+there are degrees in success," he said with a certain dryness.
+
+Valentin had leaned forward again, with his elbows on his knees,
+and he was scratching the pavement with his stick.
+At last he said, looking up, "Do you really think I ought
+to do something?"
+
+Newman laid his hand on his companion's arm and looked at him
+a moment through sagaciously-narrowed eyelids.  "Try it and see.
+You are not good enough for it, but we will stretch a point."
+
+"Do you really think I can make some money?  I should like to see
+how it feels to have a little."
+
+"Do what I tell you, and you shall be rich," said Newman.
+"Think of it."  And he looked at his watch and prepared to resume
+his way to Madame de Bellegarde's box.
+
+"Upon my word I will think of it," said Valentin.  "I will go and listen
+to Mozart another half hour--I can always think better to music--
+and profoundly meditate upon it."
+
+The marquis was with his wife when Newman entered their box;
+he was bland, remote, and correct as usual; or, as it seemed
+to Newman, even more than usual.
+
+"What do you think of the opera?" asked our hero.
+"What do you think of the Don?"
+
+"We all know what Mozart is," said the marquis; "our impressions don't
+date from this evening.  Mozart is youth, freshness, brilliancy, facility--
+a little too great facility, perhaps.  But the execution is here and
+there deplorably rough."
+
+"I am very curious to see how it ends," said Newman.
+
+"You speak as if it were a feuilleton in the 'Figaro,' " observed
+the marquis.  "You have surely seen the opera before?"
+
+"Never," said Newman.  "I am sure I should have remembered it.
+Donna Elvira reminds me of Madame de Cintre; I don't mean
+in her circumstances, but in the music she sings."
+
+"It is a very nice distinction," laughed the marquis lightly.
+"There is no great possibility, I imagine, of Madame de
+Cintre being forsaken."
+
+"Not much!" said Newman.  "But what becomes of the Don?"
+
+"The devil comes down--or comes up, said Madame de Bellegarde,
+"and carries him off.  I suppose Zerlina reminds you of me."
+
+"I will go to the foyer for a few moments," said the marquis, "and give
+you a chance to say that the commander--the man of stone--resembles me."
+And he passed out of the box.
+
+The little marquise stared an instant at the velvet ledge
+of the balcony, and then murmured, "Not a man of stone,
+a man of wood."  Newman had taken her husband's empty chair.
+She made no protest, and then she turned suddenly and laid her
+closed fan upon his arm.  "I am very glad you came in," she said.
+"I want to ask you a favor.  I wanted to do so on Thursday,
+at my mother-in-law's ball, but you would give me no chance.
+You were in such very good spirits that I thought you might grant
+my little favor then; not that you look particularly doleful now.
+It is something you must promise me; now is the time to take you;
+after you are married you will be good for nothing.  Come, promise!"
+
+"I never sign a paper without reading it first," said Newt man.
+"Show me your document."
+
+"No, you must sign with your eyes shut; I will hold your hand.
+Come, before you put your head into the noose.  You ought to be
+thankful to me for giving you a chance to do something amusing."
+
+"If it is so amusing," said Newman, "it will be in even better
+season after I am married."
+
+"In other words," cried Madame de Bellegarde, "you will not do it at all.
+You will be afraid of your wife."
+
+"Oh, if the thing is intrinsically improper," said Newman, "I won't
+go into it.  If it is not, I will do it after my marriage."
+
+"You talk like a treatise on logic, and English logic into the bargain!"
+exclaimed Madame de Bellegarde.  "Promise, then, after you are married.
+After all, I shall enjoy keeping you to it."
+
+"Well, then, after I am married," said Newman serenely.
+
+The little marquise hesitated a moment, looking at him, and he
+wondered what was coming.  "I suppose you know what my life is,"
+she presently said.  "I have no pleasure, I see nothing,
+I do nothing.  I live in Paris as I might live at Poitiers.
+My mother-in-law calls me--what is the pretty word?--
+a gad-about? accuses me of going to unheard-of places,
+and thinks it ought to be joy enough for me to sit
+at home and count over my ancestors on my fingers.
+But why should I bother about my ancestors?  I am sure they
+never bothered about me.  I don't propose to live with a green
+shade on my eyes; I hold that things were made to look at.
+My husband, you know, has principles, and the first on
+the list is that the Tuileries are dreadfully vulgar.
+If the Tuileries are vulgar, his principles are tiresome.
+If I chose I might have principles quite as well as he.
+If they grew on one's family tree I should only have to
+give mine a shake to bring down a shower of the finest.
+At any rate, I prefer clever Bonapartes to stupid Bourbons."
+
+"Oh, I see; you want to go to court," said Newman, vaguely conjecturing
+that she might wish him to appeal to the United States legation to smooth
+her way to the imperial halls.
+
+The marquise gave a little sharp laugh.  "You are a thousand
+miles away.  I will take care of the Tuileries myself;
+the day I decide to go they will be very glad to have me.
+Sooner or later I shall dance in an imperial quadrille.
+I know what you are going to say:  'How will you dare?'
+But I SHALL dare.  I am afraid of my husband;
+he is soft, smooth, irreproachable; everything that you know;
+but I am afraid of him--horribly afraid of him.
+And yet I shall arrive at the Tuileries.  But that will not
+be this winter, nor perhaps next, and meantime I must live.
+For the moment, I want to go somewhere else; it's my dream.
+I want to go to the Bal Bullier."
+
+"To the Bal Bullier?" repeated Newman, for whom the words
+at first meant nothing.
+
+"The ball in the Latin Quarter, where the students dance with
+their mistresses.  Don't tell me you have not heard of it."
+
+"Oh yes," said Newman; "I have heard of it; I remember now.
+I have even been there.  And you want to go there?"
+
+"It is silly, it is low, it is anything you please.  But I want to go.
+Some of my friends have been, and they say it is awfully drole.
+My friends go everywhere; it is only I who sit moping at home."
+
+"It seems to me you are not at home now," said Newman,
+"and I shouldn't exactly say you were moping."
+
+"I am bored to death.  I have been to the opera twice a week
+for the last eight years.  Whenever I ask for anything my mouth
+is stopped with that:  Pray, madam, haven't you an opera box?
+Could a woman of taste want more?  In the first place,
+my opera box was down in my contrat; they have to give it to me.
+To-night, for instance, I should have preferred a thousand times
+to go to the Palais Royal.  But my husband won't go to the Palais
+Royal because the ladies of the court go there so much.
+You may imagine, then, whether he would take me to Bullier's;
+he says it is a mere imitation--and a bad one--of what
+they do at the Princess Kleinfuss's. But as I don't go
+to the Princess Kleinfuss's, the next best thing is to go
+to Bullier's. It is my dream, at any rate, it's a fixed idea.
+All I ask of you is to give me your arm; you are less
+compromising than any one else.  I don't know why, but you are.
+I can arrange it.  I shall risk something, but that is my
+own affair.  Besides, fortune favors the bold.  Don't refuse me;
+it is my dream!"
+
+Newman gave a loud laugh.  It seemed to him hardly worth while to be
+the wife of the Marquis de Bellegarde, a daughter of the crusaders,
+heiress of six centuries of glories and traditions, to have centred
+one's aspirations upon the sight of a couple of hundred young ladies
+kicking off young men's hats.  It struck him as a theme for the moralist;
+but he had no time to moralize upon it.  The curtain rose again;
+M. de Bellegarde returned, and Newman went back to his seat.
+
+He observed that Valentin de Bellegarde had taken his place
+in the baignoire of Mademoiselle Nioche, behind this young lady
+and her companion, where he was visible only if one carefully
+looked for him.  In the next act Newman met him in the lobby
+and asked him if he had reflected upon possible emigration.
+"If you really meant to meditate," he said, "you might have
+chosen a better place for it."
+
+"Oh, the place was not bad," said Valentin.  "I was not
+thinking of that girl.  I listened to the music, and,
+without thinking of the play or looking at the stage, I turned
+over your proposal.  At first it seemed quite fantastic.
+And then a certain fiddle in the orchestra--I could distinguish it--
+began to say as it scraped away, 'Why not, why not?'
+And then, in that rapid movement, all the fiddles took it
+up and the conductor's stick seemed to beat it in the air:
+'Why not, why not?'  I'm sure I can't say!  I don't see why not.
+I don't see why I shouldn't do something.  It appears to me really
+a very bright idea.  This sort of thing is certainly very stale.
+And then I could come back with a trunk full of dollars.
+Besides, I might possibly find it amusing.  They call me a raffine;
+who knows but that I might discover an unsuspected charm
+in shop-keeping? It would really have a certain romantic,
+picturesque side; it would look well in my biography.
+It would look as if I were a strong man, a first-rate man,
+a man who dominated circumstances."
+
+"Never mind how it would look," said Newman.
+"It always looks well to have half a million of dollars.
+There is no reason why you shouldn't have them if you will mind
+what I tell you--I alone--and not talk to other parties."
+He passed his arm into that of his companion, and the two walked
+for some time up and down one of the less frequented corridors.
+Newman's imagination began to glow with the idea of converting
+his bright, impracticable friend into a first-class man
+of business.  He felt for the moment a sort of spiritual zeal,
+the zeal of the propagandist.  Its ardor was in part
+the result of that general discomfort which the sight of all
+uninvested capital produced in him; so fine an intelligence
+as Bellegarde's ought to be dedicated to high uses.
+The highest uses known to Newman's experience were certain
+transcendent sagacities in the handling of railway stock.
+And then his zeal was quickened by his personal kindness
+for Valentin; he had a sort of pity for him which he was well aware
+he never could have made the Comte de Bellegarde understand.
+He never lost a sense of its being pitiable that Valentin
+should think it a large life to revolve in varnished boots
+between the Rue d'Anjou and the Rue de l'Universite, taking
+the Boulevard des Italiens on the way, when over there
+in America one's promenade was a continent, and one's
+Boulevard stretched from New York to San Francisco.
+It mortified him, moreover, to think that Valentin lacked money;
+there was a painful grotesqueness in it.  It affected him
+as the ignorance of a companion, otherwise without reproach,
+touching some rudimentary branch of learning would have done.
+There were things that one knew about as a matter of course,
+he would have said in such a case.  Just so, if one pretended
+to be easy in the world, one had money as a matter of course,
+one had made it!  There was something almost ridiculously
+anomalous to Newman in the sight of lively pretensions
+unaccompanied by large investments in railroads; though I may
+add that he would not have maintained that such investments
+were in themselves a proper ground for pretensions.
+"I will make you do something," he said to Valentin;
+"I will put you through.  I know half a dozen things in which we
+can make a place for you.  You will see some lively work.
+It will take you a little while to get used to the life,
+but you will work in before long, and at the end of six months--
+after you have done a thing or two on your own account--
+you will like it.  And then it will be very pleasant for you,
+having your sister over there.  It will be pleasant for her to
+have you, too.  Yes, Valentin," continued Newman, pressing his
+friend's arm genially, "I think I see just the opening for you.
+Keep quiet and I'll push you right in."
+
+Newman pursued this favoring strain for some time longer.
+The two men strolled about for a quarter of an hour.
+Valentin listened and questioned, many of his questions making
+Newman laugh loud at the naivete of his ignorance of the vulgar
+processes of money-getting; smiling himself, too, half ironical
+and half curious.  And yet he was serious; he was fascinated
+by Newman's plain prose version of the legend of El Dorado.
+It is true, however, that though to accept an "opening"
+in an American mercantile house might be a bold, original,
+and in its consequences extremely agreeable thing to do,
+he did not quite see himself objectively doing it.
+So that when the bell rang to indicate the close of the entr'acte,
+there was a certain mock-heroism in his saying, with his
+brilliant smile, "Well, then, put me through; push me in!
+I make myself over to you.  Dip me into the pot and turn
+me into gold."
+
+They had passed into the corridor which encircled the row of baignoires,
+and Valentin stopped in front of the dusky little box in which Mademoiselle
+Nioche had bestowed herself, laying his hand on the doorknob.
+"Oh, come, are you going back there?" asked Newman.
+
+"Mon Dieu, oui," said Valentin.
+
+"Haven't you another place?"
+
+"Yes, I have my usual place, in the stalls."
+
+"You had better go and occupy it, then."
+
+"I see her very well from there, too, added Valentin, serenely,
+"and to-night she is worth seeing.  But," he added in a moment,
+"I have a particular reason for going back just now."
+
+"Oh, I give you up," said Newman.  "You are infatuated!"
+
+"No, it is only this.  There is a young man in the box whom I
+shall annoy by going in, and I want to annoy him."
+
+"I am sorry to hear it," said Newman.  "Can't you leave
+the poor fellow alone?"
+
+"No, he has given me cause.  The box is not his.
+Noemie came in alone and installed herself.  I went and spoke
+to her, and in a few moments she asked me to go and get
+her fan from the pocket of her cloak, which the ouvreuse
+had carried off.  In my absence this gentleman came in and
+took the chair beside Noemie in which I had been sitting.
+My reappearance disgusted him, and he had the grossness
+to show it.  He came within an ace of being impertinent.
+I don't know who he is; he is some vulgar wretch.
+I can't think where she picks up such acquaintances.
+He has been drinking, too, but he knows what he is about.
+Just now, in the second act, he was unmannerly again.
+I shall put in another appearance for ten minutes--time enough
+to give him an opportunity to commit himself, if he feels inclined.
+I really can't let the brute suppose that he is keeping me
+out of the box."
+
+"My dear fellow," said Newman, remonstrantly, "what child's play!
+You are not going to pick a quarrel about that girl, I hope."
+
+"That girl has nothing to do with it, and I have no intention
+of picking a quarrel.  I am not a bully nor a fire-eater. I
+simply wish to make a point that a gentleman must."
+
+"Oh, damn your point!" said Newman.  "That is the trouble with you Frenchmen;
+you must be always making points.  Well," he added, "be short.
+But if you are going in for this kind of thing, we must ship you off
+to America in advance."
+
+"Very good," Valentin answered, "whenever you please.
+But if I go to America, I must not let this gentleman suppose
+that it is to run away from him."
+
+And they separated.  At the end of the act Newman observed that Valentin
+was still in the baignoire.  He strolled into the corridor again,
+expecting to meet him, and when he was within a few yards of
+Mademoiselle Nioche's box saw his friend pass out, accompanied by
+the young man who had been seated beside its fair occupant.
+The two gentlemen walked with some quickness of step to a distant part
+of the lobby, where Newman perceived them stop and stand talking.
+The manner of each was perfectly quiet, but the stranger,
+who looked flushed, had begun to wipe his face very emphatically with his
+pocket-handkerchief. By this time Newman was abreast of the baignoire;
+the door had been left ajar, and he could see a pink dress inside.
+He immediately went in.  Mademoiselle Nioche turned and greeted him
+with a brilliant smile.
+
+"Ah, you have at last decided to come and see me?" she exclaimed.
+"You just save your politeness.  You find me in a fine moment.
+Sit down."  There was a very becoming little flush in her cheek,
+and her eye had a noticeable spark.  You would have said that she
+had received some very good news.
+
+"Something has happened here!" said Newman, without sitting down.
+
+"You find me in a very fine moment," she repeated.  "Two gentlemen--
+one of them is M. de Bellegarde, the pleasure of whose acquaintance
+I owe to you--have just had words about your humble servant.
+Very big words too.  They can't come off without crossing swords.
+A duel--that will give me a push!" cried Mademoiselle Noemie clapping
+her little hands.  "C'est ca qui pose une femme!"
+
+"You don't mean to say that Bellegarde is going to fight about YOU!"
+exclaimed Newman, disgustedly.
+
+"Nothing else!" and she looked at him with a hard little smile.
+"No, no, you are not galant!  And if you prevent this affair I
+shall owe you a grudge--and pay my debt!"
+
+Newman uttered an imprecation which, though brief--it consisted
+simply of the interjection "Oh!" followed by a geographical,
+or more correctly, perhaps a theological noun in four letters--
+had better not be transferred to these pages.  He turned his back
+without more ceremony upon the pink dress and went out of the box.
+In the corridor he found Valentin and his companion walking towards him.
+The latter was thrusting a card into his waistcoat pocket.
+Mademoiselle Noemie's jealous votary was a tall, robust young man
+with a thick nose, a prominent blue eye, a Germanic physiognomy,
+and a massive watch-chain. When they reached the box,
+Valentin with an emphasized bow made way for him to pass in first.
+Newman touched Valentin's arm as a sign that he wished to speak with him,
+and Bellegarde answered that he would be with him in an instant.
+Valentin entered the box after the robust young man, but a couple
+of minutes afterwards he reappeared, largely smiling.
+
+"She is immensely tickled," he said.  "She says we will make her fortune.
+I don't want to be fatuous, but I think it is very possible."
+
+"So you are going to fight?" said Newman.
+
+"My dear fellow, don't look so mortally disgusted.  It was not my choice.
+The thing is all arranged."
+
+"I told you so!" groaned Newman.
+
+"I told HIM so," said Valentin, smiling.
+
+"What did he do to you?"
+
+"My good friend, it doesn't matter what.  He used an expression--
+I took it up."
+
+"But I insist upon knowing; I can't, as your elder brother,
+have you rushing into this sort of nonsense."
+
+"I am very much obliged to you," said Valentin.  "I have nothing to conceal,
+but I can't go into particulars now and here."
+
+"We will leave this place, then.  You can tell me outside."
+
+"Oh no, I can't leave this place, why should I hurry away?
+I will go to my orchestra-stall and sit out the opera."
+
+"You will not enjoy it; you will be preoccupied."
+
+Valentin looked at him a moment, colored a little, smiled, and patted him
+on the arm.  "You are delightfully simple!  Before an affair a man is quiet.
+The quietest thing I can do is to go straight to my place."
+
+"Ah," said Newman, "you want her to see you there--you and your quietness.
+I am not so simple!  It is a poor business."
+
+Valentin remained, and the two men, in their respective places,
+sat out the rest of the performance, which was also enjoyed by
+Mademoiselle Nioche and her truculent admirer.  At the end Newman
+joined Valentin again, and they went into the street together.
+Valentin shook his head at his friend's proposal that he should get
+into Newman's own vehicle, and stopped on the edge of the pavement.
+"I must go off alone," he said; "I must look up a couple of friends
+who will take charge of this matter."
+
+"I will take charge of it," Newman declared.  "Put it into my hands."
+
+"You are very kind, but that is hardly possible.  In the first place, you are,
+as you said just now, almost my brother; you are about to marry my sister.
+That alone disqualifies you; it casts doubts on your impartiality.
+And if it didn't, it would be enough for me that I strongly suspect you
+of disapproving of the affair.  You would try to prevent a meeting."
+
+"Of course I should," said Newman.  "Whoever your friends are,
+I hope they will do that."
+
+"Unquestionably they will.  They will urge that excuses be made,
+proper excuses.  But you would be too good-natured. You won't do."
+
+Newman was silent a moment.  He was keenly annoyed,
+but he saw it was useless to attempt interference.
+"When is this precious performance to come off?" he asked.
+
+"The sooner the better," said Valentin.  "The day after to-morrow, I hope."
+
+"Well," said Newman, "I have certainly a claim to know the facts.
+I can't consent to shut my eyes to the matter."
+
+"I shall be most happy to tell you the facts," said Valentin.
+"They are very simple, and it will be quickly done.
+But now everything depends on my putting my hands
+on my friends without delay.  I will jump into a cab;
+you had better drive to my room and wait for me there.
+I will turn up at the end of an hour."
+
+Newman assented protestingly, let his friend go, and then betook himself
+to the picturesque little apartment in the Rue d'Anjou. It was more
+than an hour before Valentin returned, but when he did so he was able
+to announce that he had found one of his desired friends, and that this
+gentleman had taken upon himself the care of securing an associate.
+Newman had been sitting without lights by Valentin's faded fire,
+upon which he had thrown a log; the blaze played over the richly-encumbered
+little sitting-room and produced fantastic gleams and shadows.
+He listened in silence to Valentin's account of what had passed
+between him and the gentleman whose card he had in his pocket--
+M. Stanislas Kapp, of Strasbourg--after his return to Mademoiselle
+Nioche's box.  This hospitable young lady had espied an acquaintance
+on the other side of the house, and had expressed her displeasure
+at his not having the civility to come and pay her a visit.
+"Oh, let him alone!"  M. Stanislas Kapp had hereupon exclaimed.
+"There are too many people in the box already."  And he had fixed
+his eyes with a demonstrative stare upon M. de Bellegarde.
+Valentin had promptly retorted that if there were too many people
+in the box it was easy for M. Kapp to diminish the number.
+"I shall be most happy to open the door for YOU!"  M. Kapp exclaimed.
+"I shall be delighted to fling you into the pit!"  Valentin had answered.
+"Oh, do make a rumpus and get into the papers!"  Miss Noemie had
+gleefully ejaculated.  "M. Kapp, turn him out; or, M. de Bellegarde,
+pitch him into the pit, into the orchestra--anywhere!
+I don't care who does which, so long as you make a scene."
+Valentin answered that they would make no scene, but that the
+gentleman would be so good as to step into the corridor with him.
+In the corridor, after a brief further exchange of words, there had
+been an exchange of cards.  M. Stanislas Kapp was very stiff.
+He evidently meant to force his offence home.
+
+"The man, no doubt, was insolent," Newman said; "but if you hadn't
+gone back into the box the thing wouldn't have happened."
+
+"Why, don't you see," Valentin replied, "that the event
+proves the extreme propriety of my going back into the box?
+M. Kapp wished to provoke me; he was awaiting his chance.
+In such a case--that is, when he has been, so to speak,
+notified--a man must be on hand to receive the provocation.
+My not returning would simply have been tantamount to my saying
+to M. Stanislas Kapp, 'Oh, if you are going to be disagreeable'"--
+
+" 'You must manage it by yourself; damned if I'll help you!'
+That would have been a thoroughly sensible thing to say.
+The only attraction for you seems to have been the prospect
+of M. Kapp's impertinence," Newman went on.  "You told me you
+were not going back for that girl."
+
+"Oh, don't mention that girl any more," murmured Valentin.
+"She's a bore."
+
+"With all my heart.  But if that is the way you feel about her,
+why couldn't you let her alone?"
+
+Valentin shook his head with a fine smile.  "I don't think
+you quite understand, and I don't believe I can make you.
+She understood the situation; she knew what was in the air;
+she was watching us."
+
+"A cat may look at a king!  What difference does that make?"
+
+"Why, a man can't back down before a woman."
+
+"I don't call her a woman.  You said yourself she was a stone," cried Newman.
+
+"Well," Valentin rejoined, "there is no disputing about tastes.
+It's a matter of feeling; it's measured by one's sense of honor."
+
+"Oh, confound your sense of honor!" cried Newman.
+
+"It is vain talking," said Valentin; "words have passed,
+and the thing is settled."
+
+Newman turned away, taking his hat.  Then pausing with his hand on the door,
+"What are you going to use?" he asked.
+
+"That is for M. Stanislas Kapp, as the challenged party, to decide.
+My own choice would be a short, light sword.  I handle it well.
+I'm an indifferent shot."
+
+Newman had put on his hat; he pushed it back, gently scratching
+his forehead, high up.  "I wish it were pistols," he said.
+"I could show you how to lodge a bullet!"
+
+Valentin broke into a laugh.  "What is it some English poet
+says about consistency?  It's a flower or a star, or a jewel.
+Yours has the beauty of all three!"  But he agreed to see
+Newman again on the morrow, after the details of his meeting
+with M. Stanislas Kapp should have been arranged.
+
+In the course of the day Newman received three lines from him,
+saying that it had been decided that he should cross the frontier,
+with his adversary, and that he was to take the night express to Geneva.
+He should have time, however, to dine with Newman.  In the afternoon
+Newman called upon Madame de Cintre, but his visit was brief.
+She was as gracious and sympathetic as he had ever found her, but she
+was sad, and she confessed, on Newman's charging her with her red eyes,
+that she had been crying.  Valentin had been with her a couple of
+hours before, and his visit had left her with a painful impression.
+He had laughed and gossiped, he had brought her no bad news,
+he had only been, in his manner, rather more affectionate than usual.
+His fraternal tenderness had touched her, and on his departure she
+had burst into tears.  She had felt as if something strange and sad
+were going to happen; she had tried to reason away the fancy,
+and the effort had only given her a headache.  Newman, of course,
+was perforce tongue-tied about Valentin's projected duel,
+and his dramatic talent was not equal to satirizing Madame de
+Cintre's presentiment as pointedly as perfect security demanded.
+Before he went away he asked Madame de Cintre whether Valentin
+had seen his mother.
+
+"Yes," she said, "but he didn't make her cry."
+
+It was in Newman's own apartment that Valentin dined, having brought
+his portmanteau, so that he might adjourn directly to the railway.
+M. Stanislas Kapp had positively declined to make excuses,
+and he, on his side, obviously, had none to offer.
+Valentin had found out with whom he was dealing.  M. Stanislas
+Kapp was the son of and heir of a rich brewer of Strasbourg,
+a youth of a sanguineous--and sanguinary--temperament.
+He was making ducks and drakes of the paternal brewery,
+and although he passed in a general way for a good fellow,
+he had already been observed to be quarrelsome after dinner.
+"Que voulez-vous?" said Valentin.  "Brought up on beer,
+he can't stand champagne."  He had chosen pistols.
+Valentin, at dinner, had an excellent appetite; he made a point,
+in view of his long journey, of eating more than usual.
+He took the liberty of suggesting to Newman a slight
+modification in the composition of a certain fish-sauce;
+he thought it would be worth mentioning to the cook.  But Newman
+had no thoughts for fish-sauce; he felt thoroughly discontented.
+As he sat and watched his amiable and clever companion going
+through his excellent repast with the delicate deliberation of
+hereditary epicurism, the folly of so charming a fellow traveling
+off to expose his agreeable young life for the sake of M. Stanislas
+and Mademoiselle Noemie struck him with intolerable force.
+He had grown fond of Valentin, he felt now how fond;
+and his sense of helplessness only increased his irritation.
+
+"Well, this sort of thing may be all very well,"
+he cried at last, "but I declare I don't see it.
+I can't stop you, perhaps, but at least I can protest.
+I do protest, violently."
+
+"My dear fellow, don't make a scene," said Valentin.
+"Scenes in these cases are in very bad taste."
+
+"Your duel itself is a scene," said Newman; "that's all it is!
+It's a wretched theatrical affair.  Why don't you take a band
+of music with you outright?  It's d--d barbarous and it's d--
+d corrupt, both."
+
+"Oh, I can't begin, at this time of day, to defend the theory of dueling,"
+said Valentin.  "It is our custom, and I think it is a good thing.
+Quite apart from the goodness of the cause in which a duel may be fought,
+it has a kind of picturesque charm which in this age of vile prose seems
+to me greatly to recommend it.  It's a remnant of a higher-tempered time;
+one ought to cling to it.  Depend upon it, a duel is never amiss."
+
+"I don't know what you mean by a higher-tempered time,"
+said Newman.  "Because your great-grandfather was an ass,
+is that any reason why you should be?  For my part I think we
+had better let our temper take care of itself; it generally seems
+to me quite high enough; I am not afraid of being too meek.
+If your great-grandfather were to make himself unpleasant to me,
+I think I could manage him yet."
+
+"My dear friend," said Valentin, smiling, "you can't invent
+anything that will take the place of satisfaction for an insult.
+To demand it and to give it are equally excellent arrangements."
+
+"Do you call this sort of thing satisfaction?"  Newman asked.
+"Does it satisfy you to receive a present of the carcass of that
+coarse fop? does it gratify you to make him a present of yours?
+If a man hits you, hit him back; if a man libels you, haul him up."
+
+"Haul him up, into court?  Oh, that is very nasty!" said Valentin.
+
+"The nastiness is his--not yours.  And for that matter, what you
+are doing is not particularly nice.  You are too good for it.
+I don't say you are the most useful man in the world, or the cleverest,
+or the most amiable.  But you are too good to go and get your throat
+cut for a prostitute."
+
+Valentin flushed a little, but he laughed.  "I shan't get my throat cut
+if I can help it.  Moreover, one's honor hasn't two different measures.
+It only knows that it is hurt; it doesn't ask when, or how, or where."
+
+"The more fool it is!" said Newman.
+
+Valentin ceased to laugh; he looked grave.  "I beg you not to say
+any more," he said.  "If you do I shall almost fancy you don't
+care about--about"--and he paused.
+
+"About what?"
+
+"About that matter--about one's honor."
+
+"Fancy what you please," said Newman.  "Fancy while you are at it
+that I care about YOU--though you are not worth it.  But come back
+without damage," he added in a moment, "and I will forgive you.
+And then," he continued, as Valentin was going, "I will ship you
+straight off to America."
+
+"Well," answered Valentin, "if I am to turn over a new page,
+this may figure as a tail-piece to the old."  And then he lit
+another cigar and departed.
+
+"Blast that girl!" said Newman as the door closed upon Valentin.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+Newman went the next morning to see Madame de Cintre, timing his visit
+so as to arrive after the noonday breakfast.  In the court of the hotel,
+before the portico, stood Madame de Bellegarde's old square carriage.
+The servant who opened the door answered Newman's inquiry with a slightly
+embarrassed and hesitating murmur, and at the same moment Mrs. Bread
+appeared in the background, dim-visaged as usual, and wearing a large
+black bonnet and shawl.
+
+"What is the matter?" asked Newman.  "Is Madame la Comtesse
+at home, or not?"
+
+Mrs. Bread advanced, fixing her eyes upon him:  he observed
+that she held a sealed letter, very delicately, in her fingers.
+"The countess has left a message for you, sir; she has left this,"
+said Mrs. Bread, holding out the letter, which Newman took.
+
+"Left it?  Is she out?  Is she gone away?"
+
+"She is going away, sir; she is leaving town," said Mrs. Bread.
+
+"Leaving town!" exclaimed Newman.  "What has happened?"
+
+"It is not for me to say, sir," said Mrs. Bread, with her eyes on the ground.
+"But I thought it would come."
+
+"What would come, pray?"  Newman demanded.  He had broken the seal
+of the letter, but he still questioned.  "She is in the house?
+She is visible?"
+
+"I don't think she expected you this morning," the old waiting-woman replied.
+"She was to leave immediately."
+
+"Where is she going?"
+
+"To Fleurieres."
+
+"To Fleurieres?  But surely I can see her?"
+
+Mrs. Bread hesitated a moment, and then clasping together her two hands,
+"I will take you!" she said.  And she led the way upstairs.  At the top
+of the staircase she paused and fixed her dry, sad eyes upon Newman.
+"Be very easy with her," she said; "she is most unhappy!"  Then she
+went on to Madame de Cintre's apartment; Newman, perplexed and alarmed,
+followed her rapidly.  Mrs. Bread threw open the door, and Newman
+pushed back the curtain at the farther side of its deep embrasure.
+In the middle of the room stood Madame de Cintre; her face was pale
+and she was dressed for traveling.  Behind her, before the fire-place,
+stood Urbain de Bellegarde, looking at his finger-nails; near the marquis
+sat his mother, buried in an arm-chair, and with her eyes immediately
+fixing themselves upon Newman.  He felt, as soon as he entered the room,
+that he was in the presence of something evil; he was startled and pained,
+as he would have been by a threatening cry in the stillness of the night.
+He walked straight to Madame de Cintre and seized her by the hand.
+
+"What is the matter?" he asked, commandingly; "what is happening?"
+
+Urbain de Bellegarde stared, then left his place and came
+and leaned upon his mother's chair, behind.  Newman's sudden
+irruption had evidently discomposed both mother and son.
+Madame de Cintre stood silent, with her eyes resting upon Newman's.
+She had often looked at him with all her soul, as it seemed to him;
+but in this present gaze there was a sort of bottomless depth.
+She was in distress; it was the most touching thing he had ever seen.
+His heart rose into his throat, and he was on the point of turning
+to her companions, with an angry challenge; but she checked him,
+pressing the hand that held her own.
+
+"Something very grave has happened," she said.  "I cannot marry you."
+
+Newman dropped her hand and stood staring, first at her and then
+at the others.  "Why not?" he asked, as quietly as possible.
+
+Madame de Cintre almost smiled, but the attempt was strange.
+"You must ask my mother, you must ask my brother."
+
+"Why can't she marry me?" said Newman, looking at them.
+
+Madame de Bellegarde did not move in her place, but she was
+as pale as her daughter.  The marquis looked down at her.
+She said nothing for some moments, but she kept her keen,
+clear eyes upon Newman, bravely.  The marquis drew himself up
+and looked at the ceiling.  "It's impossible!" he said softly.
+
+"It's improper," said Madame de Bellegarde.
+
+Newman began to laugh.  "Oh, you are fooling!" he exclaimed.
+
+"My sister, you have no time; you are losing your train,"
+said the marquis.
+
+"Come, is he mad?" asked Newman.
+
+"No; don't think that," said Madame de Cintre.  "But I am going away."
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"To the country, to Fleurieres; to be alone."
+
+"To leave me?" said Newman, slowly.
+
+"I can't see you, now," said Madame de Cintre.
+
+"NOW--why not?"
+
+"I am ashamed," said Madame de Cintre, simply.
+
+Newman turned toward the marquis.  "What have you done to her--
+what does it mean?" he asked with the same effort at calmness,
+the fruit of his constant practice in taking things easily.
+He was excited, but excitement with him was only an intenser deliberateness;
+it was the swimmer stripped.
+
+"It means that I have given you up," said Madame de Cintre.
+"It means that."
+
+Her face was too charged with tragic expression not fully to confirm
+her words.  Newman was profoundly shocked, but he felt as yet no resentment
+against her.  He was amazed, bewildered, and the presence of the old marquise
+and her son seemed to smite his eyes like the glare of a watchman's lantern.
+"Can't I see you alone?" he asked.
+
+"It would be only more painful.  I hoped I should not see you--
+I should escape.  I wrote to you.  Good-by." And she put out
+her hand again.
+
+Newman put both his own into his pockets.  "I will go with you," he said.
+
+She laid her two hands on his arm.  "Will you grant me a last request?"
+and as she looked at him, urging this, her eyes filled with tears.
+"Let me go alone--let me go in peace.  I can't call it peace--it's death.
+But let me bury myself.  So--good-by."
+
+Newman passed his hand into his hair and stood slowly
+rubbing his head and looking through his keenly-narrowed
+eyes from one to the other of the three persons before him.
+His lips were compressed, and the two lines which had formed
+themselves beside his mouth might have made it appear at a first
+glance that he was smiling.  I have said that his excitement was
+an intenser deliberateness, and now he looked grimly deliberate.
+"It seems very much as if you had interfered, marquis,"
+he said slowly.  "I thought you said you wouldn't interfere.
+I know you don't like me; but that doesn't make any difference.
+I thought you promised me you wouldn't interfere.
+I thought you swore on your honor that you wouldn't interfere.
+Don't you remember, marquis?"
+
+The marquis lifted his eyebrows; but he was apparently determined to be
+even more urbane than usual.  He rested his two hands upon the back of his
+mother's chair and bent forward, as if he were leaning over the edge of a
+pulpit or a lecture-desk. He did not smile, but he looked softly grave.
+"Excuse me, sir," he said, "I assured you that I would not influence
+my sister's decision.  I adhered, to the letter, to my engagement.
+Did I not, sister?"
+
+"Don't appeal, my son," said the marquise, "your word is sufficient."
+
+"Yes--she accepted me," said Newman.  "That is very true, I can't deny that.
+At least," he added, in a different tone, turning to Madame de Cintre,
+"you DID accept me?"
+
+Something in the tone seemed to move her strongly.
+She turned away, burying her face in her hands.
+
+"But you have interfered now, haven't you?" inquired Newman
+of the marquis.
+
+"Neither then nor now have I attempted to influence my sister.
+I used no persuasion then, I have used no persuasion to-day."
+
+"And what have you used?"
+
+"We have used authority,"' said Madame de Bellegarde in
+a rich, bell-like voice.
+
+"Ah, you have used authority," Newman exclaimed.  "They have
+used authority," he went on, turning to Madame de Cintre.
+"What is it? how did they use it?"
+
+"My mother commanded," said Madame de Cintre.
+
+"Commanded you to give me up--I see.  And you obey--I see.
+But why do you obey?" asked Newman.
+
+Madame de Cintre looked across at the old marquise;
+her eyes slowly measured her from head to foot.
+"I am afraid of my mother," she said.
+
+Madame de Bellegarde rose with a certain quickness, crying, "This is
+a most indecent scene!"
+
+"I have no wish to prolong it," said Madame de Cintre;
+and turning to the door she put out her hand again.
+"If you can pity me a little, let me go alone."
+
+Newman shook her hand quietly and firmly.  "I'll come down there," he said.
+The portiere dropped behind her, and Newman sank with a long breath
+into the nearest chair.  He leaned back in it, resting his hands on
+the knobs of the arms and looking at Madame de Bellegarde and Urbain.
+There was a long silence.  They stood side by side, with their heads
+high and their handsome eyebrows arched.
+
+"So you make a distinction?"  Newman said at last.
+"You make a distinction between persuading and commanding?
+It's very neat.  But the distinction is in favor of commanding.
+That rather spoils it."
+
+"We have not the least objection to defining our position,"
+said M. de Bellegarde.  "We understand that it should not at first
+appear to you quite clear.  We rather expected, indeed, that you
+should not do us justice."
+
+"Oh, I'll do you justice," said Newman.  "Don't be afraid.
+Please proceed."
+
+The marquise laid her hand on her son's arm, as if to deprecate
+the attempt to define their position.  "It is quite useless,"
+she said, "to try and arrange this matter so as to make
+it agreeable to you.  It can never be agreeable to you.
+It is a disappointment, and disappointments are unpleasant.
+I thought it over carefully and tried to arrange it better;
+but I only gave myself a headache and lost my sleep.
+Say what we will, you will think yourself ill-treated,
+and you will publish your wrongs among your friends.
+But we are not afraid of that.  Besides, your friends are not
+our friends, and it will not matter.  Think of us as you please.
+I only beg you not to be violent.  I have never in my life
+been present at a violent scene of any kind, and at my age I
+can't be expected to begin."
+
+"Is THAT all you have got to say?" asked Newman, slowly rising
+out of his chair.  "That's a poor show for a clever lady
+like you, marquise.  Come, try again."
+
+"My mother goes to the point, with her usual honesty and intrepidity,"
+said the marquis, toying with his watch-guard. "But it is
+perhaps well to say a little more.  We of course quite repudiate
+the charge of having broken faith with you.  We left you
+entirely at liberty to make yourself agreeable to my sister.
+We left her quite at liberty to entertain your proposal.
+When she accepted you we said nothing.  We therefore quite observed
+our promise.  It was only at a later stage of the affair, and on
+quite a different basis, as it were, that we determined to speak.
+It would have been better, perhaps, if we had spoken before.
+But really, you see, nothing has yet been done."
+
+"Nothing has yet been done?"  Newman repeated the words, unconscious of their
+comical effect.  He had lost the sense of what the marquis was saying;
+M. de Bellegarde's superior style was a mere humming in his ears.  All that
+he understood, in his deep and simple indignation, was that the matter was
+not a violent joke, and that the people before him were perfectly serious.
+"Do you suppose I can take this?" he asked.  "Do you suppose it can matter
+to me what you say?  Do you suppose I can seriously listen to you?
+You are simply crazy!"
+
+Madame de Bellegarde gave a rap with her fan in the palm of her hand.
+"If you don't take it you can leave it, sir.  It matters very little
+what you do.  My daughter has given you up."
+
+"She doesn't mean it," Newman declared after a moment.
+
+"I think I can assure you that she does," said the marquis.
+
+"Poor woman, what damnable thing have you done to her?" cried Newman.
+
+"Gently, gently!" murmured M. de Bellegarde.
+
+"She told you," said the old lady.  "I commanded her."
+
+Newman shook his head, heavily.  "This sort of thing can't be,
+you know," he said.  "A man can't be used in this fashion.
+You have got no right; you have got no power."
+
+"My power," said Madame de Bellegarde, "is in my children's obedience."
+
+"In their fear, your daughter said.  There is something very
+strange in it.  Why should your daughter be afraid of you?"
+added Newman, after looking a moment at the old lady.
+"There is some foul play."
+
+The marquise met his gaze without flinching, and as if she did not
+hear or heed what he said.  "I did my best," she said, quietly.
+"I could endure it no longer."
+
+"It was a bold experiment!" said the marquis.
+
+Newman felt disposed to walk to him, clutch his neck with his
+fingers and press his windpipe with his thumb.  "I needn't tell
+you how you strike me," he said; "of course you know that.
+But I should think you would be afraid of your friends--
+all those people you introduced me to the other night.
+There were some very nice people among them; you may depend
+upon it there were some honest men and women."
+
+"Our friends approve us," said M. de Bellegarde, "there is
+not a family among them that would have acted otherwise.
+And however that may be, we take the cue from no one.
+The Bellegardes have been used to set the example not to
+wait for it."
+
+"You would have waited long before any one would have set you such
+an example as this," exclaimed Newman.  "Have I done anything wrong?"
+he demanded.  "Have I given you reason to change your opinion?
+Have you found out anything against me?  I can't imagine."
+
+"Our opinion," said Madame de Bellegarde, "is quite the same as
+at first--exactly.  We have no ill-will towards yourself; we are very far
+from accusing you of misconduct.  Since your relations with us began
+you have been, I frankly confess, less--less peculiar than I expected.
+It is not your disposition that we object to, it is your antecedents.
+We really cannot reconcile ourselves to a commercial person.
+We fancied in an evil hour that we could; it was a great misfortune.
+We determined to persevere to the end, and to give you every advantage.  I was
+resolved that you should have no reason to accuse me of want of loyalty.
+We let the thing certainly go very far; we introduced you to our friends.
+To tell the truth, it was that, I think, that broke me down.
+I succumbed to the scene that took place on Thursday night in these rooms.
+You must excuse me if what I say is disagreeable to you, but we cannot
+release ourselves without an explanation."
+
+"There can be no better proof of our good faith," said the marquis, "than our
+committing ourselves to you in the eyes of the world the other evening.
+We endeavored to bind ourselves--to tie our hands, as it were."
+
+"But it was that," added his mother, "that opened our eyes
+and broke our bonds.  We should have been most uncomfortable!
+You know," she added in a moment, "that you were forewarned.
+I told you we were very proud."
+
+Newman took up his hat and began mechanically to smooth it;
+the very fierceness of his scorn kept him from speaking.
+"You are not proud enough," he observed at last.
+
+"In all this matter," said the marquis, smiling, "I really see
+nothing but our humility."
+
+"Let us have no more discussion than is necessary," resumed Madame
+de Bellegarde.  "My daughter told you everything when she said she
+gave you up."
+
+"I am not satisfied about your daughter," said Newman; "I want to know
+what you did to her.  It is all very easy talking about authority
+and saying you commanded her.  She didn't accept me blindly,
+and she wouldn't have given me up blindly.  Not that I believe
+yet she has really given me up; she will talk it over with me.
+But you have frightened her, you have bullied her, you have HURT her.
+What was it you did to her?"
+
+"I did very little! said Madame de Bellegarde, in a tone which gave
+Newman a chill when he afterwards remembered it.
+
+"Let me remind you that we offered you these explanations,"
+the marquis observed, "with the express understanding that you
+should abstain from violence of language."
+
+"I am not violent," Newman answered, "it is you who are violent!
+But I don't know that I have much more to say to you.
+What you expect of me, apparently, is to go my way, thanking you
+for favors received, and promising never to trouble you again."
+
+"We expect of you to act like a clever man," said Madame de Bellegarde.
+"You have shown yourself that already, and what we have done is
+altogether based upon your being so.  When one must submit, one must.
+Since my daughter absolutely withdraws, what will be the use of your
+making a noise?"
+
+"It remains to be seen whether your daughter absolutely withdraws.
+Your daughter and I are still very good friends; nothing is changed in that.
+As I say, I will talk it over with her."
+
+"That will be of no use," said the old lady.  "I know my daughter well
+enough to know that words spoken as she just now spoke to you are final.
+Besides, she has promised me."
+
+"I have no doubt her promise is worth a great deal more than your own,"
+said Newman; "nevertheless I don't give her up."
+
+"Just as you please!  But if she won't even see you,--and she won't,--
+your constancy must remain purely Platonic."
+
+Poor Newman was feigning a greater confidence than he felt.
+Madame de Cintre's strange intensity had in fact struck a chill
+to his heart; her face, still impressed upon his vision,
+had been a terribly vivid image of renunciation.  He felt sick,
+and suddenly helpless.  He turned away and stood for a moment
+with his hand on the door; then he faced about and after
+the briefest hesitation broke out with a different accent.
+"Come, think of what this must be to me, and let her alone!
+Why should you object to me so--what's the matter with me?
+I can't hurt you.  I wouldn't if I could.  I'm the most unobjectionable
+fellow in the world.  What if I am a commercial person?
+What under the sun do you mean?  A commercial person?
+I will be any sort of a person you want.  I never talked to you
+about business.  Let her go, and I will ask no questions.
+I will take her away, and you shall never see me or hear
+of me again.  I will stay in America if you like.
+I'll sign a paper promising never to come back to Europe!
+All I want is not to lose her!"
+
+Madame de Bellegarde and her son exchanged a glance of lucid irony,
+and Urbain said, "My dear sir, what you propose is hardly an improvement.
+We have not the slightest objection to seeing you, as an amiable foreigner,
+and we have every reason for not wishing to be eternally separated from
+my sister.  We object to the marriage; and in that way," and M. de Bellegarde
+gave a small, thin laugh, "she would be more married than ever."
+
+"Well, then," said Newman, "where is this place of yours--Fleurieres?
+I know it is near some old city on a hill."
+
+"Precisely.  Poitiers is on a hill," said Madame de Bellegarde.
+"I don't know how old it is.  We are not afraid to tell you."
+
+"It is Poitiers, is it?  Very good," said Newman.
+"I shall immediately follow Madame de Cintre."
+
+"The trains after this hour won't serve you," said Urbain.
+
+"I shall hire a special train!"
+
+"That will be a very silly waste of money," said Madame de Bellegarde.
+
+"It will be time enough to talk about waste three days hence,"
+Newman answered; and clapping his hat on his head, he departed.
+
+He did not immediately start for Fleurieres; he was too stunned and
+wounded for consecutive action.  He simply walked; he walked straight
+before him, following the river, till he got out of the enceinte
+of Paris.  He had a burning, tingling sense of personal outrage.
+He had never in his life received so absolute a check; he had never
+been pulled up, or, as he would have said, "let down," so short;
+and he found the sensation intolerable; he strode along, tapping the
+trees and lamp-posts fiercely with his stick and inwardly raging.
+To lose Madame de Cintre after he had taken such jubilant and triumphant
+possession of her was as great an affront to his pride as it was an injury
+to his happiness.  And to lose her by the interference and the dictation
+of others, by an impudent old woman and a pretentious fop stepping
+in with their "authority"! It was too preposterous, it was too pitiful.
+Upon what he deemed the unblushing treachery of the Bellegardes Newman
+wasted little thought; he consigned it, once for all, to eternal perdition.
+But the treachery of Madame de Cintre herself amazed and confounded him;
+there was a key to the mystery, of course, but he groped for it in vain.
+Only three days had elapsed since she stood beside him in the starlight,
+beautiful and tranquil as the trust with which he had inspired her,
+and told him that she was happy in the prospect of their marriage.
+What was the meaning of the change? of what infernal potion had she tasted?
+Poor Newman had a terrible apprehension that she had really changed.
+His very admiration for her attached the idea of force and weight
+to her rupture.  But he did not rail at her as false, for he was sure
+she was unhappy.  In his walk he had crossed one of the bridges of
+the Seine, and he still followed, unheedingly, the long, unbroken quay.
+He had left Paris behind him, and he was almost in the country; he was
+in the pleasant suburb of Auteuil.  He stopped at last, looked around him
+without seeing or caring for its pleasantness, and then slowly turned and at
+a slower pace retraced his steps.  When he came abreast of the fantastic
+embankment known as the Trocadero, he reflected, through his throbbing pain,
+that he was near Mrs. Tristram's dwelling, and that Mrs. Tristram,
+on particular occasions, had much of a woman's kindness in her utterance.
+He felt that he needed to pour out his ire and he took the road to her house.
+Mrs. Tristram was at home and alone, and as soon as she had looked at him,
+on his entering the room, she told him that she knew what he had come for.
+Newman sat down heavily, in silence, looking at her.
+
+"They have backed out!" she said.  "Well, you may think
+it strange, but I felt something the other night in the air."
+Presently he told her his story; she listened, with her
+eyes fixed on him.  When he had finished she said quietly,
+"They want her to marry Lord Deepmere."  Newman stared.
+He did not know that she knew anything about Lord Deepmere.
+"But I don't think she will," Mrs. Tristram added.
+
+"SHE marry that poor little cub!" cried Newman.  "Oh, Lord!
+And yet, why did she refuse me?"
+
+"But that isn't the only thing," said Mrs. Tristram.  "They really couldn't
+endure you any longer.  They had overrated their courage.  I must say,
+to give the devil his due, that there is something rather fine in that.
+It was your commercial quality in the abstract they couldn't swallow.
+That is really aristocratic.  They wanted your money, but they have given
+you up for an idea."
+
+Newman frowned most ruefully, and took up his hat again.  "I thought
+you would encourage me!" he said, with almost childlike sadness.
+
+"Excuse me," she answered very gently.  "I feel none the less
+sorry for you, especially as I am at the bottom of your troubles.
+I have not forgotten that I suggested the marriage to you.
+I don't believe that Madame de Cintre has any intention of marrying
+Lord Deepmere.  It is true he is not younger than she, as he looks.
+He is thirty-three years old; I looked in the Peerage.
+But no--I can't believe her so horribly, cruelly false."
+
+"Please say nothing against her," said Newman.
+
+"Poor woman, she IS cruel.  But of course you will go after her
+and you will plead powerfully.  Do you know that as you are now,"
+Mrs. Tristram pursued, with characteristic audacity of comment,
+"you are extremely eloquent, even without speaking?
+To resist you a woman must have a very fixed idea in her head.
+I wish I had done you a wrong, that you might come to me
+in that fine fashion!  But go to Madame de Cintre at
+any rate, and tell her that she is a puzzle even to me.
+I am very curious to see how far family discipline will go."
+
+Newman sat a while longer, leaning his elbows on his knees
+and his head in his hands, and Mrs. Tristram continued to temper
+charity with philosophy and compassion with criticism.
+At last she inquired, "And what does the Count Valentin say to it?"
+Newman started; he had not thought of Valentin and his errand
+on the Swiss frontier since the morning.  The reflection made
+him restless again, and he took his leave.  He went straight
+to his apartment, where, upon the table of the vestibule,
+he found a telegram.  It ran (with the date and place) as follows:
+"I am seriously ill; please to come to me as soon as possible.
+V. B." Newman groaned at this miserable news, and at the necessity
+of deferring his journey to the Chateau de Fleurieres.
+But he wrote to Madame de Cintre these few lines; they were
+all he had time for:--
+
+"I don't give you up, and I don't really believe you give me up.
+I don't understand it, but we shall clear it up together.
+I can't follow you to-day, as I am called to see
+a friend at a distance who is very ill, perhaps dying.
+But I shall come to you as soon as I can leave my friend.
+Why shouldn't I say that he is your brother?  C. N."
+
+After this he had only time to catch the night express to Geneva.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+Newman possessed a remarkable talent for sitting still when it was necessary,
+and he had an opportunity to use it on his journey to Switzerland.
+The successive hours of the night brought him no sleep, but he sat
+motionless in his corner of the railway-carriage, with his eyes closed,
+and the most observant of his fellow-travelers might have envied him
+his apparent slumber.  Toward morning slumber really came, as an effect
+of mental rather than of physical fatigue.  He slept for a couple of hours,
+and at last, waking, found his eyes resting upon one of the snow-powdered
+peaks of the Jura, behind which the sky was just reddening with the dawn.
+But he saw neither the cold mountain nor the warm sky; his consciousness
+began to throb again, on the very instant, with a sense of his wrong.
+He got out of the train half an hour before it reached Geneva, in the cold
+morning twilight, at the station indicated in Valentin's telegram.
+A drowsy station-master was on the platform with a lantern, and the hood
+of his overcoat over his head, and near him stood a gentleman who advanced
+to meet Newman.  This personage was a man of forty, with a tall lean figure,
+a sallow face, a dark eye, a neat mustache, and a pair of fresh gloves.
+He took off his hat, looking very grave, and pronounced Newman's name.
+Our hero assented and said, "You are M. de Bellegarde's friend?"
+
+"I unite with you in claiming that sad honor," said the gentleman.
+"I had placed myself at M. de Bellegarde's service in this melancholy
+affair, together with M. de Grosjoyaux, who is now at his bedside.
+M. de Grosjoyaux, I believe, has had the honor of meeting you in Paris,
+but as he is a better nurse than I he remained with our poor friend.
+Bellegarde has been eagerly expecting you."
+
+"And how is Bellegarde?" said Newman.  "He was badly hit?"
+
+"The doctor has condemned him; we brought a surgeon with us.
+But he will die in the best sentiments.  I sent last evening for
+the cure of the nearest French village, who spent an hour with him.
+The cure was quite satisfied."
+
+"Heaven forgive us!" groaned Newman.  "I would rather the doctor
+were satisfied!  And can he see me--shall he know me?"
+
+"When I left him, half an hour ago, he had fallen asleep after
+a feverish, wakeful night.  But we shall see."  And Newman's companion
+proceeded to lead the way out of the station to the village,
+explaining as he went that the little party was lodged in the humblest
+of Swiss inns, where, however, they had succeeded in making M. de
+Bellegarde much more comfortable than could at first have been expected.
+"We are old companions in arms," said Valentin's second; "it is not
+the first time that one of us has helped the other to lie easily.
+It is a very nasty wound, and the nastiest thing about it is that
+Bellegarde's adversary was not shot.  He put his bullet where he could.
+It took it into its head to walk straight into Bellegarde's left side,
+just below the heart."
+
+As they picked their way in the gray, deceptive dawn, between the
+manure-heaps of the village street, Newman's new acquaintance
+narrated the particulars of the duel.  The conditions of the meeting
+had been that if the first exchange of shots should fail to
+satisfy one of the two gentlemen, a second should take place.
+Valentin's first bullet had done exactly what Newman's
+companion was convinced he had intended it to do; it had grazed
+the arm of M. Stanislas Kapp, just scratching the flesh.
+M. Kapp's own projectile, meanwhile, had passed at ten good
+inches from the person of Valentin.  The representatives
+of M. Stanislas had demanded another shot, which was granted.
+Valentin had then fired aside and the young Alsatian had done
+effective execution.  "I saw, when we met him on the ground,"
+said Newman's informant, "that he was not going to be commode.
+It is a kind of bovine temperament."  Valentin had immediately
+been installed at the inn, and M. Stanislas and his friends
+had withdrawn to regions unknown.  The police authorities
+of the canton had waited upon the party at the inn, had been
+extremely majestic, and had drawn up a long proces-verbal;
+but it was probable that they would wink at so very gentlemanly
+a bit of bloodshed.  Newman asked whether a message had not
+been sent to Valentin's family, and learned that up to a late
+hour on the preceding evening Valentin had opposed it.
+He had refused to believe his wound was dangerous.
+But after his interview with the cure he had consented,
+and a telegram had been dispatched to his mother.
+"But the marquise had better hurry!" said Newman's conductor.
+
+"Well, it's an abominable affair!" said Newman.  "That's all I have to say!"
+To say this, at least, in a tone of infinite disgust was an irresistible need.
+
+"Ah, you don't approve?" questioned his conductor, with curious urbanity.
+
+"Approve?" cried Newman.  "I wish that when I had him there,
+night before last, I had locked him up in my cabinet de toilette!"
+
+Valentin's late second opened his eyes, and shook his head up and
+down two or three times, gravely, with a little flute-like whistle.
+But they had reached the inn, and a stout maid-servant in a
+night-cap was at the door with a lantern, to take Newman's
+traveling-bag from the porter who trudged behind him.
+Valentin was lodged on the ground-floor at the back of the house,
+and Newman's companion went along a stone-faced passage and softly
+opened a door.  Then he beckoned to Newman, who advanced and looked
+into the room, which was lighted by a single shaded candle.
+Beside the fire sat M. de Grosjoyaux asleep in his dressing-gown--
+a little plump, fair man whom Newman had seen several times
+in Valentin's company.  On the bed lay Valentin, pale and still,
+with his eyes closed--a figure very shocking to Newman,
+who had seen it hitherto awake to its finger tips.
+M. de Grosjoyaux's colleague pointed to an open door beyond,
+and whispered that the doctor was within, keeping guard.
+So long as Valentin slept, or seemed to sleep, of course Newman
+could not approach him; so our hero withdrew for the present,
+committing himself to the care of the half-waked bonne.
+She took him to a room above-stairs, and introduced him
+to a bed on which a magnified bolster, in yellow calico,
+figured as a counterpane.  Newman lay down, and, in spite
+of his counterpane, slept for three or four hours.
+When he awoke, the morning was advanced and the sun was filling
+his window, and he heard, outside of it, the clucking of hens.
+While he was dressing there came to his door a messenger
+from M. de Grosjoyaux and his companion proposing that
+he should breakfast with them.  Presently he went down-stairs
+to the little stone-paved dining-room, where the maid-servant,
+who had taken off her night-cap, was serving the repast.
+M. de Grosjoyaux was there, surprisingly fresh for a
+gentleman who had been playing sick-nurse half the night,
+rubbing his hands and watching the breakfast table attentively.
+Newman renewed acquaintance with him, and learned that Valentin was
+still sleeping; the surgeon, who had had a fairly tranquil night,
+was at present sitting with him.  Before M. de Grosjoyaux's
+associate reappeared, Newman learned that his name was M. Ledoux,
+and that Bellegarde's acquaintance with him dated from
+the days when they served together in the Pontifical Zouaves.
+M. Ledoux was the nephew of a distinguished Ultramontane bishop.
+At last the bishop's nephew came in with a toilet in which an
+ingenious attempt at harmony with the peculiar situation was visible,
+and with a gravity tempered by a decent deference to the best
+breakfast that the Croix Helvetique had ever set forth.
+Valentin's servant, who was allowed only in scanty measure
+the honor of watching with his master, had been lending a light
+Parisian hand in the kitchen.  The two Frenchmen did their best
+to prove that if circumstances might overshadow, they could
+not really obscure, the national talent for conversation,
+and M. Ledoux delivered a neat little eulogy on poor Bellegarde,
+whom he pronounced the most charming Englishman he had ever known.
+
+"Do you call him an Englishman?"  Newman asked.
+
+M. Ledoux smiled a moment and then made an epigram.  "C'est plus
+qu'un Anglais--c'est un Anglomane!"  Newman said soberly that he had
+never noticed it; and M. de Grosjoyaux remarked that it was really
+too soon to deliver a funeral oration upon poor Bellegarde.
+"Evidently," said M. Ledoux.  "But I couldn't help observing this
+morning to Mr. Newman that when a man has taken such excellent measures
+for his salvation as our dear friend did last evening, it seems almost
+a pity he should put it in peril again by returning to the world."
+M. Ledoux was a great Catholic, and Newman thought him a queer mixture.
+His countenance, by daylight, had a sort of amiably saturnine cast;
+he had a very large thin nose, and looked like a Spanish picture.
+He appeared to think dueling a very perfect arrangement, provided, if one
+should get hit, one could promptly see the priest.  He seemed to take
+a great satisfaction in Valentin's interview with the cure, and yet
+his conversation did not at all indicate a sanctimonious habit of mind.
+M. Ledoux had evidently a high sense of the becoming, and was
+prepared to be urbane and tasteful on all points.  He was always
+furnished with a smile (which pushed his mustache up under his nose)
+and an explanation.  Savoir-vivre--knowing how to live--was his specialty,
+in which he included knowing how to die; but, as Newman reflected,
+with a good deal of dumb irritation, he seemed disposed to delegate
+to others the application of his learning on this latter point.
+M. de Grosjoyaux was of quite another complexion, and appeared to regard
+his friend's theological unction as the sign of an inaccessibly
+superior mind.  He was evidently doing his utmost, with a kind
+of jovial tenderness, to make life agreeable to Valentin to the last,
+and help him as little as possible to miss the Boulevard des Italiens;
+but what chiefly occupied his mind was the mystery of a bungling
+brewer's son making so neat a shot.  He himself could snuff a candle,
+etc., and yet he confessed that he could not have done better than this.
+He hastened to add that on the present occasion he would have made
+a point of not doing so well.  It was not an occasion for that sort
+of murderous work, que diable!  He would have picked out some quiet
+fleshy spot and just tapped it with a harmless ball.  M. Stanislas
+Kapp had been deplorably heavy-handed; but really, when the world
+had come to that pass that one granted a meeting to a brewer's son!...
+This was M. de Grosjoyaux's nearest approach to a generalization.
+He kept looking through the window, over the shoulder of M. Ledoux,
+at a slender tree which stood at the end of a lane, opposite to the inn,
+and seemed to be measuring its distance from his extended arm
+and secretly wishing that, since the subject had been introduced,
+propriety did not forbid a little speculative pistol-practice.
+
+Newman was in no humor to enjoy good company.  He could
+neither eat nor talk; his soul was sore with grief and anger,
+and the weight of his double sorrow was intolerable.
+He sat with his eyes fixed upon his plate, counting the minutes,
+wishing at one moment that Valentin would see him
+and leave him free to go in quest of Madame de Cintre
+and his lost happiness, and mentally calling himself a vile
+brute the next, for the impatient egotism of the wish.
+He was very poor company, himself, and even his acute
+preoccupation and his general lack of the habit of pondering
+the impression he produced did not prevent him from reflecting
+that his companions must be puzzled to see how poor Bellegarde
+came to take such a fancy to this taciturn Yankee that he must
+needs have him at his death-bed. After breakfast he strolled
+forth alone into the village and looked at the fountain,
+the geese, the open barn doors, the brown, bent old women,
+showing their hugely darned stocking-heels at the ends of their
+slowly-clicking sabots, and the beautiful view of snowy Alps
+and purple Jura at either end of the little street.  The day
+was brilliant; early spring was in the air and in the sunshine,
+and the winter's damp was trickling out of the cottage eaves.
+It was birth and brightness for all nature, even for chirping
+chickens and waddling goslings, and it was to be death and
+burial for poor, foolish, generous, delightful Bellegarde.
+Newman walked as far as the village church, and went
+into the small grave-yard beside it, where he sat down and
+looked at the awkward tablets which were planted around.
+They were all sordid and hideous, and Newman could
+feel nothing but the hardness and coldness of death.
+He got up and came back to the inn, where he found M. Ledoux
+having coffee and a cigarette at a little green table
+which he had caused to be carried into the small garden.
+Newman, learning that the doctor was still sitting with Valentin,
+asked M. Ledoux if he might not be allowed to relieve him;
+he had a great desire to be useful to his poor friend.
+This was easily arranged; the doctor was very glad to go to bed.
+He was a youthful and rather jaunty practitioner, but he had a
+clever face, and the ribbon of the Legion of Honor in his buttonhole;
+Newman listened attentively to the instructions he gave him
+before retiring, and took mechanically from his hand a small
+volume which the surgeon recommended as a help to wakefulness,
+and which turned out to be an old copy of "Faublas."
+Valentin was still lying with his eyes closed, and there was
+no visible change in his condition.  Newman sat down near him,
+and for a long time narrowly watched him.  Then his eyes
+wandered away with his thoughts upon his own situation,
+and rested upon the chain of the Alps, disclosed by the drawing
+of the scant white cotton curtain of the window, through which
+the sunshine passed and lay in squares upon the red-tiled floor.
+He tried to interweave his reflections with hope, but he only
+half succeeded.  What had happened to him seemed to have,
+in its violence and audacity, the force of a real calamity--
+the strength and insolence of Destiny herself.  It was unnatural
+and monstrous, and he had no arms against it.  At last a sound
+struck upon the stillness, and he heard Valentin's voice.
+
+"It can't be about me you are pulling that long face!"  He found,
+when he turned, that Valentin was lying in the same position;
+but his eyes were open, and he was even trying to smile.
+It was with a very slender strength that he returned the pressure
+of Newman's hand.  "I have been watching you for a quarter of an hour,"
+Valentin went on; "you have been looking as black as thunder.
+You are greatly disgusted with me, I see.  Well, of course!
+So am I!"
+
+"Oh, I shall not scold you," said Newman.  "I feel too badly.
+And how are you getting on?"
+
+"Oh, I'm getting off!  They have quite settled that; haven't they?"
+
+"That's for you to settle; you can get well if you try,"
+said Newman, with resolute cheerfulness.
+
+"My dear fellow, how can I try?  Trying is violent exercise,
+and that sort of thing isn't in order for a man with a hole
+in his side as big as your hat, that begins to bleed
+if he moves a hair's-breadth. I knew you would come,"
+he continued; "I knew I should wake up and find you here;
+so I'm not surprised.  But last night I was very impatient.
+I didn't see how I could keep still until you came.
+It was a matter of keeping still, just like this; as still
+as a mummy in his case.  You talk about trying; I tried that!
+Well, here I am yet--these twenty hours.  It seems like twenty days."
+Bellegarde talked slowly and feebly, but distinctly enough.
+It was visible, however, that he was in extreme pain,
+and at last he closed his eyes.  Newman begged him to remain
+silent and spare himself; the doctor had left urgent orders.
+"Oh," said Valentin, "let us eat and drink, for to-morrow--to-morrow"--
+and he paused again.  "No, not to-morrow, perhaps, but today.
+I can't eat and drink, but I can talk.  What's to be gained,
+at this pass, by renun--renunciation?  I mustn't use such big words.
+I was always a chatterer; Lord, how I have talked in my day!"
+
+"That's a reason for keeping quiet now," said Newman.
+"We know how well you talk, you know."
+
+But Valentin, without heeding him, went on in the same weak, dying drawl.
+"I wanted to see you because you have seen my sister.  Does she know--
+will she come?"
+
+Newman was embarrassed.  "Yes, by this time she must know."
+
+"Didn't you tell her?"  Valentin asked.  And then,
+in a moment, "Didn't you bring me any message from her?"
+His eyes rested upon Newman's with a certain soft keenness.
+
+"I didn't see her after I got your telegram," said Newman.
+"I wrote to her."
+
+"And she sent you no answer?"
+
+Newman was obliged to reply that Madame de Cintre had left Paris.
+"She went yesterday to Fleurieres."
+
+"Yesterday--to Fleurieres?  Why did she go to Fleurieres?
+What day is this?  What day was yesterday?  Ah, then I shan't
+see her," said Valentin, sadly.  "Fleurieres is too far!"
+And then he closed his eyes again.  Newman sat silent,
+summoning pious invention to his aid, but he was relieved
+at finding that Valentin was apparently too weak to reason
+or to be curious.  Bellegarde, however, presently went on.
+"And my mother--and my brother--will they come?
+Are they at Fleurieres?"
+
+"They were in Paris, but I didn't see them, either," Newman answered.
+"If they received your telegram in time, they will have started this morning.
+Otherwise they will be obliged to wait for the night-express, and they
+will arrive at the same hour as I did."
+
+"They won't thank me--they won't thank me," Valentin murmured.
+"They will pass an atrocious night, and Urbain doesn't
+like the early morning air.  I don't remember ever in my
+life to have seen him before noon--before breakfast.
+No one ever saw him.  We don't know how he is then.
+Perhaps he's different.  Who knows?  Posterity, perhaps, will know.
+That's the time he works, in his cabinet, at the history
+of the Princesses.  But I had to send for them--hadn't I?
+And then I want to see my mother sit there where you sit,
+and say good-by to her.  Perhaps, after all, I don't know her,
+and she will have some surprise for me.  Don't think you
+know her yet, yourself; perhaps she may surprise YOU.
+But if I can't see Claire, I don't care for anything.
+I have been thinking of it--and in my dreams, too.
+Why did she go to Fleurieres to-day? She never told me.
+What has happened?  Ah, she ought to have guessed I was here--
+this way.  It is the first time in her life she ever
+disappointed me.  Poor Claire!"
+
+"You know we are not man and wife quite yet,--your sister and I,"
+said Newman.  "She doesn't yet account to me for all her actions."
+And, after a fashion, he smiled.
+
+Valentin looked at him a moment.  "Have you quarreled?"
+
+"Never, never, never!"  Newman exclaimed.
+
+"How happily you say that!" said Valentin.  "You are going
+to be happy--VA!"  In answer to this stroke of irony,
+none the less powerful for being so unconscious, all poor
+Newman could do was to give a helpless and transparent stare.
+Valentin continued to fix him with his own rather over-bright gaze,
+and presently he said, "But something is the matter with you.
+I watched you just now; you haven't a bridegroom's face."
+
+"My dear fellow," said Newman, "how can I show YOU a bridegroom's face?
+If you think I enjoy seeing you lie there and not being able to help you"--
+
+"Why, you are just the man to be cheerful; don't forfeit your rights!
+I'm a proof of your wisdom.  When was a man ever gloomy when
+he could say, 'I told you so?'  You told me so, you know.
+You did what you could about it.  You said some very good things;
+I have thought them over.  But, my dear friend, I was right, all the same.
+This is the regular way."
+
+"I didn't do what I ought," said Newman.  "I ought to have
+done something else."
+
+"For instance?"
+
+"Oh, something or other.  I ought to have treated you as a small boy."
+
+"Well, I'm a very small boy, now," said Valentin.
+"I'm rather less than an infant.  An infant is helpless,
+but it's generally voted promising.  I'm not promising, eh?
+Society can't lose a less valuable member."
+
+Newman was strongly moved.  He got up and turned his back upon his
+friend and walked away to the window, where he stood looking out,
+but only vaguely seeing.  "No, I don't like the look of your back,"
+Valentin continued.  "I have always been an observer of backs;
+yours is quite out of sorts."
+
+Newman returned to his bedside and begged him to be quiet.
+"Be quiet and get well," he said.  "That's what you must do.
+Get well and help me."
+
+"I told you you were in trouble!  How can I help you?"  Valentin asked.
+
+"I'll let you know when you are better.  You were always curious;
+there is something to get well for!"  Newman answered,
+with resolute animation.
+
+Valentin closed his eyes and lay a long time without speaking.
+He seemed even to have fallen asleep.  But at the end of half an hour
+he began to talk again.  "I am rather sorry about that place in the bank.
+Who knows but what I might have become another Rothschild?
+But I wasn't meant for a banker; bankers are not so easy to kill.
+Don't you think I have been very easy to kill?  It's not like a serious man.
+It's really very mortifying.  It's like telling your hostess you must go,
+when you count upon her begging you to stay, and then finding she
+does no such thing.  'Really--so soon?  You've only just come!'
+Life doesn't make me any such polite little speech."
+
+Newman for some time said nothing, but at last he broke out.
+"It's a bad case--it's a bad case--it's the worst case I ever met.
+I don't want to say anything unpleasant, but I can't help it.
+I've seen men dying before--and I've seen men shot.
+But it always seemed more natural; they were not so clever
+as you.  Damnation--damnation!  You might have done something
+better than this.  It's about the meanest winding-up of a man's
+affairs that I can imagine!"
+
+Valentin feebly waved his hand to and fro.  "Don't insist--don't insist!
+It is mean--decidedly mean.  For you see at the bottom--down at the bottom,
+in a little place as small as the end of a wine-funnel--I agree with you!"
+
+A few moments after this the doctor put his head through the half-opened
+door and, perceiving that Valentin was awake, came in and felt his pulse.
+He shook his head and declared that he had talked too much--
+ten times too much.  "Nonsense!" said Valentin; "a man sentenced
+to death can never talk too much.  Have you never read an account
+of an execution in a newspaper?  Don't they always set a lot of people
+at the prisoner--lawyers, reporters, priests--to make him talk?
+But it's not Mr. Newman's fault; he sits there as mum as a death's-head."
+
+The doctor observed that it was time his patient's wound should be
+dressed again; MM.  de Grosjoyaux and Ledoux, who had already witnessed
+this delicate operation, taking Newman's place as assistants.
+Newman withdrew and learned from his fellow-watchers that
+they had received a telegram from Urbain de Bellegarde to
+the effect that their message had been delivered in the Rue de
+l'Universite too late to allow him to take the morning train,
+but that he would start with his mother in the evening.
+Newman wandered away into the village again, and walked about
+restlessly for two or three hours.  The day seemed terribly long.
+At dusk he came back and dined with the doctor and M. Ledoux.
+The dressing of Valentin's wound had been a very critical operation;
+the doctor didn't really see how he was to endure a repetition of it.
+He then declared that he must beg of Mr. Newman to deny himself
+for the present the satisfaction of sitting with M. de Bellegarde;
+more than any one else, apparently, he had the flattering
+but inconvenient privilege of exciting him.  M. Ledoux, at this,
+swallowed a glass of wine in silence; he must have been wondering
+what the deuce Bellegarde found so exciting in the American.
+
+Newman, after dinner, went up to his room, where he sat
+for a long time staring at his lighted candle, and thinking
+that Valentin was dying down-stairs. Late, when the candle
+had burnt low, there came a soft rap at his door.
+The doctor stood there with a candlestick and a shrug.
+
+"He must amuse himself, still!" said Valentin's medical adviser.
+"He insists upon seeing you, and I am afraid you must come.
+I think at this rate, that he will hardly outlast the night."
+
+Newman went back to Valentin's room, which he found lighted
+by a taper on the hearth.  Valentin begged him to light a candle.
+"I want to see your face," he said.  "They say you excite me," he went on,
+as Newman complied with this request, "and I confess I do feel excited.
+But it isn't you--it's my own thoughts.  I have been thinking--thinking.
+Sit down there, and let me look at you again."  Newman seated himself,
+folded his arms, and bent a heavy gaze upon his friend.
+He seemed to be playing a part, mechanically, in a lugubrious comedy.
+Valentin looked at him for some time.  "Yes, this morning I was right;
+you have something on your mind heavier than Valentin de Bellegarde.
+Come, I'm a dying man and it's indecent to deceive me.
+Something happened after I left Paris.  It was not for nothing that
+my sister started off at this season of the year for Fleurieres.
+Why was it?  It sticks in my crop.  I have been thinking it over,
+and if you don't tell me I shall guess."
+
+"I had better not tell you," said Newman.  "It won't do you any good."
+
+"If you think it will do me any good not to tell me, you are
+very much mistaken.  There is trouble about your marriage."
+
+"Yes," said Newman.  "There is trouble about my marriage."
+
+"Good!"  And Valentin was silent again.  "They have stopped it."
+
+"They have stopped it," said Newman.  Now that he had spoken out,
+he found a satisfaction in it which deepened as he went on.
+"Your mother and brother have broken faith.  They have decided
+that it can't take place.  They have decided that I am not
+good enough, after all.  They have taken back their word.
+Since you insist, there it is!"
+
+Valentin gave a sort of groan, lifted his hands a moment,
+and then let them drop.
+
+"I am sorry not to have anything better to tell you about them,"
+Newman pursued.  "But it's not my fault.  I was, indeed, very unhappy
+when your telegram reached me; I was quite upside down.
+You may imagine whether I feel any better now."
+
+Valentin moaned gaspingly, as if his wound were throbbing.
+"Broken faith, broken faith!" he murmured.  "And my sister--
+my sister?"
+
+"Your sister is very unhappy; she has consented to give me up.
+I don't know why.  I don't know what they have done to her;
+it must be something pretty bad.  In justice to her you ought
+to know it.  They have made her suffer.  I haven't seen her alone,
+but only before them!  We had an interview yesterday morning.
+They came out, flat, in so many words.  They told me to go
+about my business.  It seems to me a very bad case.
+I'm angry, I'm sore, I'm sick."
+
+Valentin lay there staring, with his eyes more brilliantly lighted,
+his lips soundlessly parted, and a flush of color in his pale face.
+Newman had never before uttered so many words in the plaintive key,
+but now, in speaking to Valentin in the poor fellow's extremity,
+he had a feeling that he was making his complaint somewhere
+within the presence of the power that men pray to in trouble;
+he felt his outgush of resentment as a sort of spiritual privilege.
+
+"And Claire,"--said Bellegarde,--"Claire? She has given you up?"
+
+"I don't really believe it," said Newman.
+
+"No. Don't believe it, don't believe it.  She is gaining time; excuse her."
+
+"I pity her!" said Newman.
+
+"Poor Claire!" murmured Valentin.  "But they--but they"--and he paused again.
+"You saw them; they dismissed you, face to face?"
+
+"Face to face.  They were very explicit."
+
+"What did they say?"
+
+"They said they couldn't stand a commercial person."
+
+Valentin put out his hand and laid it upon Newman's arm.
+"And about their promise--their engagement with you?"
+
+"They made a distinction.  They said it was to hold good only until
+Madame de Cintre accepted me."
+
+Valentin lay staring a while, and his flush died away.
+"Don't tell me any more," he said at last.  "I'm ashamed."
+
+"You?  You are the soul of honor," said Newman simply.
+
+Valentin groaned and turned away his head.  For some time nothing
+more was said.  Then Valentin turned back again and found
+a certain force to press Newman's arm.  "It's very bad--very bad.
+When my people--when my race--come to that, it is time for me
+to withdraw.  I believe in my sister; she will explain.
+Excuse her.  If she can't--if she can't, forgive her.
+She has suffered.  But for the others it is very bad--very bad.
+You take it very hard?  No, it's a shame to make you say so."
+He closed his eyes and again there was a silence.  Newman felt
+almost awed; he had evoked a more solemn spirit than he expected.
+Presently Valentin looked at him again, removing his hand
+from his arm.  "I apologize," he said.  "Do you understand?
+Here on my death-bed. I apologize for my family.  For my mother.
+For my brother.  For the ancient house of Bellegarde.
+Voila!" he added, softly.
+
+Newman for an answer took his hand and pressed it
+with a world of kindness.  Valentin remained quiet,
+and at the end of half an hour the doctor softly came in.
+Behind him, through the half-open door, Newman saw the two
+questioning faces of MM.  de Grosjoyaux and Ledoux.
+The doctor laid his hand on Valentin's wrist and sat looking at him.
+He gave no sign and the two gentlemen came in, M. Ledoux having
+first beckoned to some one outside.  This was M. le cure,
+who carried in his hand an object unknown to Newman, and covered
+with a white napkin.  M. le cure was short, round, and red:
+he advanced, pulling off his little black cap to Newman,
+and deposited his burden on the table; and then he sat down
+in the best arm-chair, with his hands folded across his person.
+The other gentlemen had exchanged glances which expressed
+unanimity as to the timeliness of their presence.
+But for a long time Valentin neither spoke nor moved.
+It was Newman's belief, afterwards, that M. le cure went to sleep.
+At last abruptly, Valentin pronounced Newman's name.
+His friend went to him, and he said in French, "You are not alone.
+I want to speak to you alone."  Newman looked at the doctor,
+and the doctor looked at the cure, who looked back at him;
+and then the doctor and the cure, together, gave a shrug.
+"Alone--for five minutes," Valentin repeated.  "Please leave us."
+
+The cure took up his burden again and led the way out,
+followed by his companions.  Newman closed the door behind them
+and came back to Valentin's bedside.  Bellegarde had watched
+all this intently.
+
+"It's very bad, it's very bad," he said, after Newman had seated himself
+close to him.  "The more I think of it the worse it is."
+
+"Oh, don't think of it," said Newman.
+
+But Valentin went on, without heeding him.  "Even if they should come
+round again, the shame--the baseness--is there."
+
+"Oh, they won't come round!" said Newman.
+
+"Well, you can make them."
+
+"Make them?"
+
+"I can tell you something--a great secret--an immense secret.
+You can use it against them--frighten them, force them."
+
+"A secret!"  Newman repeated.  The idea of letting Valentin,
+on his death-bed, confide him an "immense secret" shocked him,
+for the moment, and made him draw back.  It seemed an illicit
+way of arriving at information, and even had a vague analogy
+with listening at a key-hole. Then, suddenly, the thought
+of "forcing" Madame de Bellegarde and her son became attractive,
+and Newman bent his head closer to Valentin's lips.
+For some time, however, the dying man said nothing more.  He only lay
+and looked at his friend with his kindled, expanded, troubled eye,
+and Newman began to believe that he had spoken in delirium.
+But at last he said,--
+
+"There was something done--something done at Fleurieres.
+It was foul play.  My father--something happened to him.
+I don't know; I have been ashamed--afraid to know.
+But I know there is something.  My mother knows--Urbain knows."
+
+"Something happened to your father?" said Newman, urgently.
+
+Valentin looked at him, still more wide-eyed. "He didn't get well."
+
+"Get well of what?"
+
+But the immense effort which Valentin had made, first to decide to utter
+these words and then to bring them out, appeared to have taken his
+last strength.  He lapsed again into silence, and Newman sat watching him.
+"Do you understand?" he began again, presently.  "At Fleurieres.
+You can find out.  Mrs. Bread knows.  Tell her I begged you to ask her.
+Then tell them that, and see.  It may help you.  If not, tell, every one.
+It will--it will"--here Valentin's voice sank to the feeblest murmur--"it
+will avenge you!"
+
+The words died away in a long, soft groan.  Newman stood up,
+deeply impressed, not knowing what to say; his heart was beating violently.
+"Thank you," he said at last.  "I am much obliged."  But Valentin
+seemed not to hear him, he remained silent, and his silence continued.
+At last Newman went and opened the door.  M. le cure reentered, bearing his
+sacred vessel and followed by the three gentlemen and by Valentin's servant.
+It was almost processional.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+Valentin de Bellegarde died, tranquilly, just as the cold, faint March dawn
+began to illumine the faces of the little knot of friends gathered about
+his bedside.  An hour afterwards Newman left the inn and drove to Geneva;
+he was naturally unwilling to be present at the arrival of Madame de
+Bellegarde and her first-born. At Geneva, for the moment, he remained.  He was
+like a man who has had a fall and wants to sit still and count his bruises.
+He instantly wrote to Madame de Cintre, relating to her the circumstances
+of her brother's death--with certain exceptions--and asking her what was
+the earliest moment at which he might hope that she would consent to see him.
+M. Ledoux had told him that he had reason to know that Valentin's will--
+Bellegarde had a great deal of elegant personal property to dispose of--
+contained a request that he should be buried near his father in the
+church-yard of Fleurieres, and Newman intended that the state of his own
+relations with the family should not deprive him of the satisfaction
+of helping to pay the last earthly honors to the best fellow in the world.
+He reflected that Valentin's friendship was older than Urbain's enmity,
+and that at a funeral it was easy to escape notice.  Madame de Cintre's
+answer to his letter enabled him to time his arrival at Fleurieres.
+This answer was very brief; it ran as follows:--
+
+"I thank you for your letter, and for your being with Valentin.
+It is a most inexpressible sorrow to me that I was not.
+To see you will be nothing but a distress to me; there is
+no need, therefore, to wait for what you call brighter days.
+It is all one now, and I shall have no brighter days.
+Come when you please; only notify me first.  My brother is
+to be buried here on Friday, and my family is to remain here.
+C. de C."
+
+As soon as he received this letter Newman went straight
+to Paris and to Poitiers.  The journey took him far southward,
+through green Touraine and across the far-shining Loire, into a
+country where the early spring deepened about him as he went.
+But he had never made a journey during which he heeded
+less what he would have called the lay of the land.
+He obtained lodging at the inn at Poitiers, and the next morning
+drove in a couple of hours to the village of Fleurieres.
+But here, preoccupied though he was, he could not fail to notice
+the picturesqueness of the place.  It was what the French call
+a petit bourg; it lay at the base of a sort of huge mound on
+the summit of which stood the crumbling ruins of a feudal castle,
+much of whose sturdy material, as well as that of the wall which
+dropped along the hill to inclose the clustered houses defensively,
+had been absorbed into the very substance of the village.
+The church was simply the former chapel of the castle, fronting upon
+its grass-grown court, which, however, was of generous enough width
+to have given up its quaintest corner to a little graveyard.
+Here the very headstones themselves seemed to sleep, as they
+slanted into the grass; the patient elbow of the rampart held
+them together on one side, and in front, far beneath their
+mossy lids, the green plains and blue distances stretched away.
+The way to church, up the hill, was impracticable to vehicles.
+It was lined with peasants, two or three rows deep, who stood
+watching old Madame de Bellegarde slowly ascend it, on the arm
+of her elder son, behind the pall-bearers of the other.
+Newman chose to lurk among the common mourners who murmured "Madame
+la Comtesse" as a tall figure veiled in black passed before them.
+He stood in the dusky little church while the service was
+going forward, but at the dismal tomb-side he turned away and walked
+down the hill.  He went back to Poitiers, and spent two days
+in which patience and impatience were singularly commingled.
+On the third day he sent Madame de Cintre a note,
+saying that he would call upon her in the afternoon, and in
+accordance with this he again took his way to Fleurieres.
+He left his vehicle at the tavern in the village street,
+and obeyed the simple instructions which were given him for
+finding the chateau.
+
+"It is just beyond there," said the landlord, and pointed
+to the tree-tops of the park, above the opposite houses.
+Newman followed the first cross-road to the right--
+it was bordered with mouldy cottages--and in a few moments saw
+before him the peaked roofs of the towers.  Advancing farther,
+he found himself before a vast iron gate, rusty and closed;
+here he paused a moment, looking through the bars.
+The chateau was near the road; this was at once its merit
+and its defect; but its aspect was extremely impressive.
+Newman learned afterwards, from a guide-book of the province,
+that it dated from the time of Henry IV.  It presented to the wide,
+paved area which preceded it and which was edged with shabby
+farm-buildings an immense facade of dark time-stained brick,
+flanked by two low wings, each of which terminated in a little
+Dutch-looking pavilion capped with a fantastic roof.
+Two towers rose behind, and behind the towers was a mass of elms
+and beeches, now just faintly green.  But the great feature was
+a wide, green river which washed the foundations of the chateau.
+The building rose from an island in the circling stream,
+so that this formed a perfect moat spanned by a two-arched
+bridge without a parapet.  The dull brick walls, which here
+and there made a grand, straight sweep; the ugly little cupolas
+of the wings, the deep-set windows, the long, steep pinnacles
+of mossy slate, all mirrored themselves in the tranquil river.
+Newman rang at the gate, and was almost frightened at the tone
+with which a big rusty bell above his head replied to him.
+An old woman came out from the gate-house and opened
+the creaking portal just wide enough for him to pass,
+and he went in, across the dry, bare court and the little
+cracked white slabs of the causeway on the moat.
+At the door of the chateau he waited for some moments, and this
+gave him a chance to observe that Fleurieres was not "kept up,"
+and to reflect that it was a melancholy place of residence.
+"It looks," said Newman to himself--and I give the comparison
+for what it is worth--"like a Chinese penitentiary."
+At last the door was opened by a servant whom he remembered
+to have seen in the Rue de l'Universite. The man's dull face
+brightened as he perceived our hero, for Newman, for indefinable
+reasons, enjoyed the confidence of the liveried gentry.
+The footman led the way across a great central vestibule,
+with a pyramid of plants in tubs in the middle of glass doors
+all around, to what appeared to be the principal drawing-room
+of the chateau.  Newman crossed the threshold of a room
+of superb proportions, which made him feel at first like a
+tourist with a guide-book and a cicerone awaiting a fee.
+But when his guide had left him alone, with the observation
+that he would call Madame la Comtesse, Newman perceived
+that the salon contained little that was remarkable save
+a dark ceiling with curiously carved rafters, some curtains
+of elaborate, antiquated tapestry, and a dark oaken floor,
+polished like a mirror.  He waited some minutes, walking up
+and down; but at length, as he turned at the end of the room,
+he saw that Madame de Cintre had come in by a distant door.
+She wore a black dress, and she stood looking at him.
+As the length of the immense room lay between them he had time
+to look at her before they met in the middle of it.
+
+He was dismayed at the change in her appearance.
+Pale, heavy-browed, almost haggard with a sort of monastic rigidity
+in her dress, she had little but her pure features in common
+with the woman whose radiant good grace he had hitherto admired.
+She let her eyes rest on his own, and she let him take her hand;
+but her eyes looked like two rainy autumn moons, and her touch
+was portentously lifeless.
+
+"I was at your brother's funeral," Newman said.  "Then I waited three days.
+But I could wait no longer."
+
+"Nothing can be lost or gained by waiting," said Madame de Cintre.
+"But it was very considerate of you to wait, wronged as you have been."
+
+"I'm glad you think I have been wronged," said Newman,
+with that oddly humorous accent with which he often uttered
+words of the gravest meaning.
+
+"Do I need to say so?" she asked.  "I don't think I
+have wronged, seriously, many persons; certainly not consciously.
+To you, to whom I have done this hard and cruel thing,
+the only reparation I can make is to say, 'I know it, I feel it!'
+The reparation is pitifully small!"
+
+"Oh, it's a great step forward!" said Newman, with a
+gracious smile of encouragement.  He pushed a chair
+towards her and held it, looking at her urgently.
+She sat down, mechanically, and he seated himself near her;
+but in a moment he got up, restlessly, and stood before her.
+She remained seated, like a troubled creature who had passed
+through the stage of restlessness.
+
+"I say nothing is to be gained by my seeing you," she went on,
+"and yet I am very glad you came.  Now I can tell you what I feel.
+It is a selfish pleasure, but it is one of the last I shall have."
+And she paused, with her great misty eyes fixed upon him.  "I know how I
+have deceived and injured you; I know how cruel and cowardly I have been.
+I see it as vividly as you do--I feel it to the ends of my fingers."
+And she unclasped her hands, which were locked together in her lap,
+lifted them, and dropped them at her side.  "Anything that you may
+have said of me in your angriest passion is nothing to what I have
+said to myself."
+
+"In my angriest passion," said Newman, "I have said nothing hard of you.
+The very worst thing I have said of you yet is that you are the loveliest
+of women."  And he seated himself before her again, abruptly.
+
+She flushed a little, but even her flush was pale.
+"That is because you think I will come back.  But I will not
+come back.  It is in that hope you have come here, I know;
+I am very sorry for you.  I would do almost anything for you.
+To say that, after what I have done, seems simply impudent;
+but what can I say that will not seem impudent?  To wrong you
+and apologize--that is easy enough.  I should not have wronged you."
+She stopped a moment, looking at him, and motioned him
+to let her go on.  "I ought never to have listened to you
+at first; that was the wrong.  No good could come of it.
+I felt it, and yet I listened; that was your fault.
+I liked you too much; I believed in you."
+
+"And don't you believe in me now?"
+
+"More than ever.  But now it doesn't matter.  I have given you up."
+
+Newman gave a powerful thump with his clenched fist upon his knee.
+"Why, why, why?" he cried.  "Give me a reason--a decent reason.
+You are not a child--you are not a minor, nor an idiot.
+You are not obliged to drop me because your mother told you to.
+Such a reason isn't worthy of you."
+
+"I know that; it's not worthy of me.  But it's the only one I have to give.
+After all," said Madame de Cintre, throwing out her hands, "think me an idiot
+and forget me!  That will be the simplest way."
+
+Newman got up and walked away with a crushing sense that his cause
+was lost, and yet with an equal inability to give up fighting.
+He went to one of the great windows, and looked out at the stiffly
+embanked river and the formal gardens which lay beyond it.
+When he turned round, Madame de Cintre had risen;
+she stood there silent and passive.  "You are not frank,"
+said Newman; "you are not honest.  Instead of saying that you
+are imbecile, you should say that other people are wicked.
+Your mother and your brother have been false and cruel;
+they have been so to me, and I am sure they have been so to you.
+Why do you try to shield them?  Why do you sacrifice me to them?
+I'm not false; I'm not cruel.  You don't know what you give up;
+I can tell you that--you don't. They bully you and plot
+about you; and I--I"--And he paused, holding out his hands.
+She turned away and began to leave him.  "You told me the other day
+that you were afraid of your mother," he said, following her.
+"What did you mean?"
+
+Madame de Cintre shook her head.  "I remember; I was sorry afterwards."
+
+"You were sorry when she came down and put on the thumb-screws.
+In God's name what IS it she does to you?"
+
+"Nothing.  Nothing that you can understand.  And now that I have given you up,
+I must not complain of her to you."
+
+"That's no reasoning!" cried Newman.  "Complain of her, on the contrary.
+Tell me all about it, frankly and trustfully, as you ought, and we will talk
+it over so satisfactorily that you won't give me up."
+
+Madame de Cintre looked down some moments, fixedly; and then,
+raising her eyes, she said, "One good at least has come of this:
+I have made you judge me more fairly.  You thought of me in a way that
+did me great honor; I don't know why you had taken it into your head.
+But it left me no loophole for escape--no chance to be the common,
+weak creature I am.  It was not my fault; I warned you from the first.
+But I ought to have warned you more.  I ought to have convinced you
+that I was doomed to disappoint you.  But I WAS, in a way, too proud.
+You see what my superiority amounts to, I hope!" she went on, raising her
+voice with a tremor which even then and there Newman thought beautiful.
+"I am too proud to be honest, I am not too proud to be faithless.
+I am timid and cold and selfish.  I am afraid of being uncomfortable."
+
+"And you call marrying me uncomfortable!" said Newman staring.
+
+Madame de Cintre blushed a little and seemed to say that if begging
+his pardon in words was impudent, she might at least thus mutely
+express her perfect comprehension of his finding her conduct odious.
+"It is not marrying you; it is doing all that would go with it.
+It's the rupture, the defiance, the insisting upon being happy in my own way.
+What right have I to be happy when--when"--And she paused.
+
+"When what?" said Newman.
+
+"When others have been most unhappy!"
+
+"What others?"  Newman asked.  "What have you to do with any others but me?
+Besides you said just now that you wanted happiness, and that you should find
+it by obeying your mother.  You contradict yourself."
+
+"Yes, I contradict myself; that shows you that I am not even intelligent."
+
+"You are laughing at me!" cried Newman.  "You are mocking me!"
+
+She looked at him intently, and an observer might have said
+that she was asking herself whether she might not most quickly
+end their common pain by confessing that she was mocking him.
+"No; I am not," she presently said.
+
+"Granting that you are not intelligent," he went on, "that you are weak,
+that you are common, that you are nothing that I have believed you were--
+what I ask of you is not heroic effort, it is a very common effort.
+There is a great deal on my side to make it easy.  The simple truth
+is that you don't care enough about me to make it."
+
+"I am cold," said Madame de Cintre, "I am as cold as that flowing river."
+
+Newman gave a great rap on the floor with his stick, and a long,
+grim laugh.  "Good, good!" he cried.  "You go altogether too far--
+you overshoot the mark.  There isn't a woman in the world
+as bad as you would make yourself out.  I see your game;
+it's what I said.  You are blackening yourself to whiten others.
+You don't want to give me up, at all; you like me--you like me.
+I know you do; you have shown it, and I have felt it.
+After that, you may be as cold as you please!  They have bullied you,
+I say; they have tortured you.  It's an outrage, and I insist
+upon saving you from the extravagance of your own generosity.
+Would you chop off your hand if your mother requested it?"
+
+Madame de Cintre looked a little frightened.  "I spoke of my mother
+too blindly, the other day.  I am my own mistress, by law and by
+her approval.  She can do nothing to me; she has done nothing.
+She has never alluded to those hard words I used about her."
+
+"She has made you feel them, I'll promise you!" said Newman.
+
+"It's my conscience that makes me feel them."
+
+"Your conscience seems to me to be rather mixed!"
+exclaimed Newman, passionately.
+
+"It has been in great trouble, but now it is very clear,"
+said Madame de Cintre.  "I don't give you up for any worldly
+advantage or for any worldly happiness."
+
+"Oh, you don't give me up for Lord Deepmere, I know," said Newman.
+"I won't pretend, even to provoke you, that I think that.
+But that's what your mother and your brother wanted,
+and your mother, at that villainous ball of hers--I liked it
+at the time, but the very thought of it now makes me rabid--
+tried to push him on to make up to you."
+
+"Who told you this?" said Madame de Cintre softly.
+
+"Not Valentin.  I observed it.  I guessed it.  I didn't know at the time
+that I was observing it, but it stuck in my memory.  And afterwards,
+you recollect, I saw Lord Deepmere with you in the conservatory.
+You said then that you would tell me at another time what he had
+said to you."
+
+"That was before--before THIS," said Madame de Cintre.
+
+"It doesn't matter," said Newman; "and, besides, I think I know.
+He's an honest little Englishman.  He came and told you what
+your mother was up to--that she wanted him to supplant me;
+not being a commercial person.  If he would make you an offer
+she would undertake to bring you over and give me the slip.
+Lord Deepmere isn't very intellectual, so she had to spell it out to him.
+He said he admired you 'no end,' and that he wanted you to know it;
+but he didn't like being mixed up with that sort of underhand work,
+and he came to you and told tales.  That was about the amount of it,
+wasn't it?  And then you said you were perfectly happy."
+
+"I don't see why we should talk of Lord Deepmere," said Madame de Cintre.
+"It was not for that you came here.  And about my mother, it doesn't
+matter what you suspect and what you know.  When once my mind has
+been made up, as it is now, I should not discuss these things.
+Discussing anything, now, is very idle.  We must try and live each as we can.
+I believe you will be happy again; even, sometimes, when you think of me.
+When you do so, think this--that it was not easy, and that I did
+the best I could.  I have things to reckon with that you don't know.
+I mean I have feelings.  I must do as they force me--I must, I must.
+They would haunt me otherwise," she cried, with vehemence;
+"they would kill me!"
+
+"I know what your feelings are:  they are superstitions!
+They are the feeling that, after all, though I AM a good fellow,
+I have been in business; the feeling that your mother's
+looks are law and your brother's words are gospel; that you
+all hang together, and that it's a part of the everlasting
+proprieties that they should have a hand in everything you do.
+It makes my blood boil.  That is cold; you are right.
+And what I feel here," and Newman struck his heart and became
+more poetical than he knew, "is a glowing fire!"
+
+A spectator less preoccupied than Madame de Cintre's
+distracted wooer would have felt sure from the first that her
+appealing calm of manner was the result of violent effort,
+in spite of which the tide of agitation was rapidly rising.
+On these last words of Newman's it overflowed, though at
+first she spoke low, for fear of her voice betraying her.
+"No. I was not right--I am not cold!  I believe that if I am
+doing what seems so bad, it is not mere weakness and falseness.
+Mr. Newman, it's like a religion.  I can't tell you--I can't!
+It's cruel of you to insist.  I don't see why I shouldn't
+ask you to believe me--and pity me.  It's like a religion.
+There's a curse upon the house; I don't know what--
+I don't know why--don't ask me.  We must all bear it.
+I have been too selfish; I wanted to escape from it.
+You offered me a great chance--besides my liking you.
+It seemed good to change completely, to break, to go away.
+And then I admired you.  But I can't--it has overtaken
+and come back to me."  Her self-control had now completely
+abandoned her, and her words were broken with long sobs.
+"Why do such dreadful things happen to us--why is my brother
+Valentin killed, like a beast in the midst of his youth and
+his gayety and his brightness and all that we loved him for?
+Why are there things I can't ask about--that I am afraid to know?
+Why are there places I can't look at, sounds I can't hear?
+Why is it given to me to choose, to decide, in a case
+so hard and so terrible as this?  I am not meant for that--
+I am not made for boldness and defiance.  I was made
+to be happy in a quiet, natural way."  At this Newman gave
+a most expressive groan, but Madame de Cintre went on.
+"I was made to do gladly and gratefully what is expected of me.
+My mother has always been very good to me; that's all I can say.
+I must not judge her; I must not criticize her.  If I did,
+it would come back to me.  I can't change!"
+
+"No," said Newman, bitterly; "I must change--if I break in two
+in the effort!"
+
+"You are different.  You are a man; you will get over it.
+You have all kinds of consolation.  You were born--you were trained,
+to changes.  Besides--besides, I shall always think of you."
+
+"I don't care for that!" cried Newman.  "You are cruel--you are
+terribly cruel.  God forgive you!  You may have the best reasons
+and the finest feelings in the world; that makes no difference.
+You are a mystery to me; I don't see how such hardness can go
+with such loveliness."
+
+Madame de Cintre fixed him a moment with her swimming eyes.
+"You believe I am hard, then?"
+
+Newman answered her look, and then broke out, "You are a perfect,
+faultless creature!  Stay by me!"
+
+"Of course I am hard," she went on.  "Whenever we give pain
+we are hard.  And we MUST give pain; that's the world,--
+the hateful, miserable world!  Ah!" and she gave a long, deep sigh,
+"I can't even say I am glad to have known you--though I am.
+That too is to wrong you.  I can say nothing that is not cruel.
+Therefore let us part, without more of this.  Good-by!" And she
+put out her hand.
+
+Newman stood and looked at it without taking it, and raised his
+eyes to her face.  He felt, himself, like shedding tears of rage.
+"What are you going to do?" he asked.  "Where are you going?"
+
+"Where I shall give no more pain and suspect no more evil.
+I am going out of the world."
+
+"Out of the world?"
+
+"I am going into a convent."
+
+"Into a convent!"  Newman repeated the words with the deepest dismay;
+it was as if she had said she was going into an hospital.
+"Into a convent--YOU!"
+
+"I told you that it was not for my worldly advantage or pleasure
+I was leaving you."
+
+But still Newman hardly understood.  "You are going to be a nun,"
+he went on, "in a cell--for life--with a gown and white veil?"
+
+"A nun--a Carmelite nun," said Madame de Cintre.  "For life,
+with God's leave."
+
+The idea struck Newman as too dark and horrible for belief, and made him
+feel as he would have done if she had told him that she was going to
+mutilate her beautiful face, or drink some potion that would make her mad.
+He clasped his hands and began to tremble, visibly.
+
+"Madame de Cintre, don't, don't!" he said.  "I beseech you!
+On my knees, if you like, I'll beseech you."
+
+She laid her hand upon his arm, with a tender, pitying,
+almost reassuring gesture.  "You don't understand,"
+she said.  "You have wrong ideas.  It's nothing horrible.
+It is only peace and safety.  It is to be out of the world,
+where such troubles as this come to the innocent, to the best.
+And for life--that's the blessing of it!  They can't begin again."
+
+Newman dropped into a chair and sat looking at her with a long,
+inarticulate murmur.  That this superb woman, in whom he had
+seen all human grace and household force, should turn from him
+and all the brightness that he offered her--him and his future
+and his fortune and his fidelity--to muffle herself in ascetic
+rags and entomb herself in a cell was a confounding combination
+of the inexorable and the grotesque.  As the image deepened
+before him the grotesque seemed to expand and overspread it;
+it was a reduction to the absurd of the trial to which he was subjected.
+"You--you a nun!" he exclaimed; "you with your beauty defaced--
+you behind locks and bars!  Never, never, if I can prevent it!"
+And he sprang to his feet with a violent laugh.
+
+"You can't prevent it," said Madame de Cintre, "and it ought--
+a little--to satisfy you.  Do you suppose I will go on living
+in the world, still beside you, and yet not with you?
+It is all arranged.  Good-by, good-by."
+
+This time he took her hand, took it in both his own.  "Forever?" he said.
+Her lips made an inaudible movement and his own uttered a deep imprecation.
+She closed her eyes, as if with the pain of hearing it; then he drew
+her towards him and clasped her to his breast.  He kissed her white face;
+for an instant she resisted and for a moment she submitted; then, with force,
+she disengaged herself and hurried away over the long shining floor.
+The next moment the door closed behind her.
+
+Newman made his way out as he could.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+There is a pretty public walk at Poitiers, laid out upon
+the crest of the high hill around which the little city clusters,
+planted with thick trees and looking down upon the fertile fields
+in which the old English princes fought for their right and held it.
+Newman paced up and down this quiet promenade for the greater part
+of the next day and let his eyes wander over the historic prospect;
+but he would have been sadly at a loss to tell you afterwards
+whether the latter was made up of coal-fields or of vineyards.
+He was wholly given up to his grievance, or which reflection
+by no means diminished the weight.  He feared that Madame
+de Cintre was irretrievably lost; and yet, as he would have
+said himself, he didn't see his way clear to giving her up.
+He found it impossible to turn his back upon Fleurieres
+and its inhabitants; it seemed to him that some germ of hope
+or reparation must lurk there somewhere, if he could only stretch
+his arm out far enough to pluck it.  It was as if he had his hand
+on a door-knob and were closing his clenched fist upon it:
+he had thumped, he had called, he had pressed the door
+with his powerful knee and shaken it with all his strength,
+and dead, damning silence had answered him.  And yet something
+held him there--something hardened the grasp of his fingers.
+Newman's satisfaction had been too intense, his whole plan too
+deliberate and mature, his prospect of happiness too rich and
+comprehensive for this fine moral fabric to crumble at a stroke.
+The very foundation seemed fatally injured, and yet he felt
+a stubborn desire still to try to save the edifice.
+He was filled with a sorer sense of wrong than he had ever known,
+or than he had supposed it possible he should know.
+To accept his injury and walk away without looking behind him
+was a stretch of good-nature of which he found himself incapable.
+He looked behind him intently and continually,
+and what he saw there did not assuage his resentment.
+He saw himself trustful, generous, liberal, patient, easy,
+pocketing frequent irritation and furnishing unlimited modesty.
+To have eaten humble pie, to have been snubbed and patronized
+and satirized and have consented to take it as one of
+the conditions of the bargain--to have done this, and done
+it all for nothing, surely gave one a right to protest.
+And to be turned off because one was a commercial person!
+As if he had ever talked or dreamt of the commercial
+since his connection with the Bellegardes began--
+as if he had made the least circumstance of the commercial--
+as if he would not have consented to confound the commercial
+fifty times a day, if it might have increased by a hair's
+breadth the chance of the Bellegardes' not playing him a trick!
+Granted that being commercial was fair ground for having a trick
+played upon one, how little they knew about the class so designed
+and its enterprising way of not standing upon trifles!
+It was in the light of his injury that the weight of Newman's
+past endurance seemed so heavy; his actual irritation had not
+been so great, merged as it was in his vision of the cloudless
+blue that overarched his immediate wooing.  But now his sense
+of outrage was deep, rancorous, and ever present; he felt that
+he was a good fellow wronged.  As for Madame de Cintre's conduct,
+it struck him with a kind of awe, and the fact that he was
+powerless to understand it or feel the reality of its motives
+only deepened the force with which he had attached himself to her.
+He had never let the fact of her Catholicism trouble him;
+Catholicism to him was nothing but a name, and to express
+a mistrust of the form in which her religious feelings
+had moulded themselves would have seemed to him on his own
+part a rather pretentious affectation of Protestant zeal.
+If such superb white flowers as that could bloom in Catholic soil,
+the soil was not insalubrious.  But it was one thing
+to be a Catholic, and another to turn nun--on your hand!
+There was something lugubriously comical in the way Newman's
+thoroughly contemporaneous optimism was confronted with this
+dusky old-world expedient.  To see a woman made for him and for
+motherhood to his children juggled away in this tragic travesty--
+it was a thing to rub one's eyes over, a nightmare, an illusion,
+a hoax.  But the hours passed away without disproving the thing,
+and leaving him only the after-sense of the vehemence with which
+he had embraced Madame de Cintre.  He remembered her words
+and her looks; he turned them over and tried to shake the mystery
+out of them and to infuse them with an endurable meaning.
+What had she meant by her feeling being a kind of religion?
+It was the religion simply of the family laws, the religion
+of which her implacable little mother was the high priestess.
+Twist the thing about as her generosity would, the one
+certain fact was that they had used force against her.
+Her generosity had tried to screen them, but Newman's heart rose
+into his throat at the thought that they should go scot-free.
+
+The twenty-four hours wore themselves away, and the next morning
+Newman sprang to his feet with the resolution to return to
+Fleurieres and demand another interview with Madame de Bellegarde
+and her son.  He lost no time in putting it into practice.
+As he rolled swiftly over the excellent road in the little
+caleche furnished him at the inn at Poitiers, he drew forth,
+as it were, from the very safe place in his mind to which he had
+consigned it, the last information given him by poor Valentin.
+Valentin had told him he could do something with it,
+and Newman thought it would be well to have it at hand.
+This was of course not the first time, lately, that Newman
+had given it his attention.  It was information in the rough,--
+it was dark and puzzling; but Newman was neither helpless nor afraid.
+Valentin had evidently meant to put him in possession of a
+powerful instrument, though he could not be said to have placed
+the handle very securely within his grasp.  But if he had not really
+told him the secret, he had at least given him the clew to it--
+a clew of which that queer old Mrs. Bread held the other end.
+Mrs. Bread had always looked to Newman as if she knew secrets;
+and as he apparently enjoyed her esteem, he suspected
+she might be induced to share her knowledge with him.
+So long as there was only Mrs. Bread to deal with, he felt easy.
+As to what there was to find out, he had only one fear--
+that it might not be bad enough.  Then, when the image
+of the marquise and her son rose before him again,
+standing side by side, the old woman's hand in Urbain's arm,
+and the same cold, unsociable fixedness in the eyes of each,
+he cried out to himself that the fear was groundless.
+There was blood in the secret at the very last!  He arrived at
+Fleurieres almost in a state of elation; he had satisfied himself,
+logically, that in the presence of his threat of exposure they would,
+as he mentally phrased it, rattle down like unwound buckets.
+He remembered indeed that he must first catch his hare--
+first ascertain what there was to expose; but after that,
+why shouldn't his happiness be as good as new again?
+Mother and son would drop their lovely victim in terror
+and take to hiding, and Madame de Cintre, left to herself,
+would surely come back to him.  Give her a chance
+and she would rise to the surface, return to the light.
+How could she fail to perceive that his house would be much
+the most comfortable sort of convent?
+
+Newman, as he had done before, left his conveyance at the inn
+and walked the short remaining distance to the chateau.
+When he reached the gate, however, a singular feeling took
+possession of him--a feeling which, strange as it may seem,
+had its source in its unfathomable good nature.  He stood there
+a while, looking through the bars at the large, time-stained face
+of the edifice, and wondering to what crime it was that the dark
+old house, with its flowery name, had given convenient occasion.
+It had given occasion, first and last, to tyrannies and
+sufferings enough, Newman said to himself; it was an evil-looking
+place to live in.  Then, suddenly, came the reflection--
+What a horrible rubbish-heap of iniquity to fumble in!  The attitude
+of inquisitor turned its ignobler face, and with the same movement
+Newman declared that the Bellegardes should have another chance.
+He would appeal once more directly to their sense of fairness,
+and not to their fear, and if they should be accessible to reason,
+he need know nothing worse about them than what he already knew.
+That was bad enough.
+
+The gate-keeper let him in through the same stiff crevice as before,
+and he passed through the court and over the little rustic bridge
+on the moat.  The door was opened before he had reached it,
+and, as if to put his clemency to rout with the suggestion
+of a richer opportunity, Mrs. Bread stood there awaiting him.
+Her face, as usual, looked as hopelessly blank as the tide-smoothed
+sea-sand, and her black garments seemed of an intenser sable.
+Newman had already learned that her strange inexpressiveness could
+be a vehicle for emotion, and he was not surprised at the muffled
+vivacity with which she whispered, "I thought you would try again, sir.
+I was looking out for you."
+
+"I am glad to see you," said Newman; "I think you are my friend."
+
+Mrs. Bread looked at him opaquely.  "I wish you well sir;
+but it's vain wishing now."
+
+"You know, then, how they have treated me?"
+
+"Oh, sir," said Mrs. Bread, dryly, "I know everything."
+
+Newman hesitated a moment.  "Everything?"
+
+Mrs. Bread gave him a glance somewhat more lucent.
+"I know at least too much, sir."
+
+"One can never know too much.  I congratulate you.
+I have come to see Madame de Bellegarde and her son," Newman added.
+"Are they at home?  If they are not, I will wait."
+
+"My lady is always at home," Mrs. Bread replied, "and the marquis
+is mostly with her."
+
+"Please then tell them--one or the other, or both--that I am
+here and that I desire to see them."
+
+Mrs. Bread hesitated.  "May I take a great liberty, sir?"
+
+"You have never taken a liberty but you have justified it,"
+said Newman, with diplomatic urbanity.
+
+Mrs. Bread dropped her wrinkled eyelids as if she were curtseying;
+but the curtsey stopped there; the occasion was too grave.
+"You have come to plead with them again, sir?  Perhaps you don't
+know this--that Madame de Cintre returned this morning to Paris."
+
+"Ah, she's gone!"  And Newman, groaning, smote the pavement
+with his stick.
+
+"She has gone straight to the convent--the Carmelites they call it.
+I see you know, sir.  My lady and the marquis take it very ill.
+It was only last night she told them."
+
+"Ah, she had kept it back, then?" cried Newman.  "Good, good!
+And they are very fierce?"
+
+"They are not pleased," said Mrs. Bread.  "But they may well dislike it.
+They tell me it's most dreadful, sir; of all the nuns in Christendom
+the Carmelites are the worst.  You may say they are really not human, sir;
+they make you give up everything--forever.  And to think of HER there!
+If I was one that cried, sir, I could cry."
+
+Newman looked at her an instant.  "We mustn't cry, Mrs. Bread; we must act.
+Go and call them!"  And he made a movement to enter farther.
+
+But Mrs. Bread gently checked him.  "May I take another liberty?
+I am told you were with my dearest Mr. Valentin,
+in his last hours.  If you would tell me a word about him!
+The poor count was my own boy, sir; for the first year of his
+life he was hardly out of my arms; I taught him to speak.
+And the count spoke so well, sir!  He always spoke well to
+his poor old Bread.  When he grew up and took his pleasure
+he always had a kind word for me.  And to die in that wild way!
+They have a story that he fought with a wine-merchant. I can't
+believe that, sir!  And was he in great pain?"
+
+"You are a wise, kind old woman, Mrs. Bread," said Newman.
+"I hoped I might see you with my own children in your arms.
+Perhaps I shall, yet."  And he put out his hand.  Mrs. Bread
+looked for a moment at his open palm, and then, as if fascinated
+by the novelty of the gesture, extended her own ladylike fingers.
+Newman held her hand firmly and deliberately, fixing his eyes upon her.
+"You want to know all about Mr. Valentin?" he said.
+
+"It would be a sad pleasure, sir."
+
+"I can tell you everything.  Can you sometimes leave this place?"
+
+"The chateau, sir?  I really don't know.  I never tried."
+
+"Try, then; try hard.  Try this evening, at dusk.  Come to me
+in the old ruin there on the hill, in the court before the church.
+I will wait for you there; I have something very important to tell you.
+An old woman like you can do as she pleases."
+
+Mrs. Bread stared, wondering, with parted lips.
+"Is it from the count, sir?" she asked.
+
+"From the count--from his death-bed," said Newman.
+
+"I will come, then.  I will be bold, for once, for HIM."
+
+She led Newman into the great drawing-room with which he had
+already made acquaintance, and retired to execute his commands.
+Newman waited a long time; at last he was on the point of
+ringing and repeating his request.  He was looking round him
+for a bell when the marquis came in with his mother on his arm.
+It will be seen that Newman had a logical mind when I
+say that he declared to himself, in perfect good faith,
+as a result of Valentin's dark hints, that his adversaries
+looked grossly wicked.  "There is no mistake about it now,"
+he said to himself as they advanced.  "They're a bad lot;
+they have pulled off the mask."  Madame de Bellegarde and her son
+certainly bore in their faces the signs of extreme perturbation;
+they looked like people who had passed a sleepless night.
+Confronted, moreover, with an annoyance which they hoped they
+had disposed of, it was not natural that they should have any
+very tender glances to bestow upon Newman.  He stood before them,
+and such eye-beams as they found available they leveled at him;
+Newman feeling as if the door of a sepulchre had suddenly
+been opened, and the damp darkness were being exhaled.
+
+"You see I have come back," he said.  "I have come to try again."
+
+"It would be ridiculous," said M. de Bellegarde, "to pretend that we are glad
+to see you or that we don't question the taste of your visit."
+
+"Oh, don't talk about taste," said Newman, with a laugh, "or that will
+bring us round to yours!  If I consulted my taste I certainly shouldn't
+come to see you.  Besides, I will make as short work as you please.
+Promise me to raise the blockade--to set Madame de Cintre at liberty--
+and I will retire instantly."
+
+"We hesitated as to whether we would see you," said Madame
+de Bellegarde; "and we were on the point of declining the honor.
+But it seemed to me that we should act with civility,
+as we have always done, and I wished to have the satisfaction
+of informing you that there are certain weaknesses that people
+of our way of feeling can be guilty of but once."
+
+"You may be weak but once, but you will be audacious many times, madam,''
+Newman answered.  "I didn't come however, for conversational purposes.
+I came to say this, simply:  that if you will write immediately
+to your daughter that you withdraw your opposition to her marriage,
+I will take care of the rest.  You don't want her to turn nun--
+you know more about the horrors of it than I do.  Marrying a commercial
+person is better than that.  Give me a letter to her, signed and sealed,
+saying you retract and that she may marry me with your blessing,
+and I will take it to her at the convent and bring her out.
+There's your chance--I call those easy terms."
+
+"We look at the matter otherwise, you know.
+We call them very hard terms," said Urbain de Bellegarde.
+They had all remained standing rigidly in the middle of the room.
+"I think my mother will tell you that she would rather her
+daughter should become Soeur Catherine than Mrs. Newman."
+
+But the old lady, with the serenity of supreme power,
+let her son make her epigrams for her.  She only smiled,
+almost sweetly, shaking her head and repeating, "But once,
+Mr. Newman; but once!"
+
+Nothing that Newman had ever seen or heard gave him such a sense
+of marble hardness as this movement and the tone that accompanied it.
+"Could anything compel you?" he asked.  "Do you know of anything
+that would force you?"
+
+"This language, sir," said the marquis, "addressed to people
+in bereavement and grief is beyond all qualification."
+
+"In most cases," Newman answered, "your objection would have
+some weight, even admitting that Madame de Cintre's present intentions
+make time precious.  But I have thought of what you speak of,
+and I have come here to-day without scruple simply because I
+consider your brother and you two very different parties.
+I see no connection between you.  Your brother was ashamed of you.
+Lying there wounded and dying, the poor fellow apologized to me
+for your conduct.  He apologized to me for that of his mother."
+
+For a moment the effect of these words was as if Newman had struck
+a physical blow.  A quick flush leaped into the faces of Madame de
+Bellegarde and her son, and they exchanged a glance like a twinkle
+of steel.  Urbain uttered two words which Newman but half heard,
+but of which the sense came to him as it were in the reverberation
+of the sound, "Le miserable!"
+
+"You show little respect for the living," said Madame de Bellegarde,
+"but at least respect the dead.  Don't profane--don't insult--
+the memory of my innocent son."
+
+"I speak the simple truth," Newman declared, "and I speak it for a purpose.
+I repeat it--distinctly.  Your son was utterly disgusted--
+your son apologized."
+
+Urbain de Bellegarde was frowning portentously, and Newman supposed he was
+frowning at poor Valentin's invidious image.  Taken by surprise, his scant
+affection for his brother had made a momentary concession to dishonor.
+But not for an appreciable instant did his mother lower her flag.
+"You are immensely mistaken, sir," she said.  "My son was sometimes light,
+but he was never indecent.  He died faithful to his name."
+
+"You simply misunderstood him," said the marquis, beginning to rally.
+"You affirm the impossible!"
+
+"Oh, I don't care for poor Valentin's apology," said Newman.
+"It was far more painful than pleasant to me.  This atrocious
+thing was not his fault; he never hurt me, or any one else;
+he was the soul of honor.  But it shows how he took it."
+
+"If you wish to prove that my poor brother, in his
+last moments, was out of his head, we can only say that under
+the melancholy circumstances nothing was more possible.
+But confine yourself to that."
+
+"He was quite in his right mind," said Newman, with gentle but
+dangerous doggedness; "I have never seen him so bright and clever.
+It was terrible to see that witty, capable fellow dying such a death.
+You know I was very fond of your brother.  And I have further proof
+of his sanity," Newman concluded.
+
+The marquise gathered herself together majestically.
+"This is too gross!" she cried.  "We decline to accept
+your story, sir--we repudiate it.  Urbain, open the door."
+She turned away, with an imperious motion to her son,
+and passed rapidly down the length of the room.
+The marquis went with her and held the door open.
+Newman was left standing.
+
+He lifted his finger, as a sign to M. de Bellegarde,
+who closed the door behind his mother and stood waiting.
+Newman slowly advanced, more silent, for the moment, than life.
+The two men stood face to face.  Then Newman had a singular sensation;
+he felt his sense of injury almost brimming over into jocularity.
+"Come," he said, "you don't treat me well; at least admit that."
+
+M. de Bellegarde looked at him from head to foot, and then, in the
+most delicate, best-bred voice, "I detest you, personally," he said.
+
+"That's the way I feel to you, but for politeness sake I
+don't say it," said Newman.  "It's singular I should want
+so much to be your brother-in-law, but I can't give it up.
+Let me try once more."  And he paused a moment.
+"You have a secret--you have a skeleton in the closet."
+M. de Bellegarde continued to look at him hard, but Newman
+could not see whether his eyes betrayed anything; the look
+of his eyes was always so strange.  Newman paused again,
+and then went on.  "You and your mother have committed a crime."
+At this M. de Bellegarde's eyes certainly did change;
+they seemed to flicker, like blown candles.  Newman could
+see that he was profoundly startled; but there was something
+admirable in his self-control.
+
+"Continue," said M. de Bellegarde.
+
+Newman lifted a finger and made it waver a little in the air.
+"Need I continue?  You are trembling."
+
+"Pray where did you obtain this interesting information?"
+M. de Bellegarde asked, very softly.
+
+"I shall be strictly accurate," said Newman.  "I won't pretend
+to know more than I do.  At present that is all I know.
+You have done something that you must hide, something that would
+damn you if it were known, something that would disgrace the name
+you are so proud of.  I don't know what it is, but I can find out.
+Persist in your present course and I WILL find out.  Change it,
+let your sister go in peace, and I will leave you alone.
+It's a bargain?"
+
+The marquis almost succeeded in looking untroubled; the breaking up of the ice
+in his handsome countenance was an operation that was necessarily gradual.
+But Newman's mildly-syllabled argumentation seemed to press, and press,
+and presently he averted his eyes.  He stood some moments, reflecting.
+
+"My brother told you this," he said, looking up.
+
+Newman hesitated a moment.  "Yes, your brother told me."
+
+The marquis smiled, handsomely.  "Didn't I say that he was out of his mind?"
+
+"He was out of his mind if I don't find out.  He was very much
+in it if I do."
+
+M. de Bellegarde gave a shrug.  "Eh, sir, find out or not,
+as you please."
+
+"I don't frighten you?" demanded Newman.
+
+"That's for you to judge."
+
+"No, it's for you to judge, at your leisure.  Think it over,
+feel yourself all round.  I will give you an hour or two.
+I can't give you more, for how do we know how fast they may be
+making Madame de Cintre a nun?  Talk it over with your mother;
+let her judge whether she is frightened.  I don't believe she
+is as easily frightened, in general, as you; but you will see.
+I will go and wait in the village, at the inn, and I beg you
+to let me know as soon as possible.  Say by three o'clock. A
+simple YES or NO on paper will do.  Only, you know, in case of a
+yes I shall expect you, this time, to stick to your bargain."
+And with this Newman opened the door and let himself out.
+The marquis did not move, and Newman, retiring, gave him
+another look.  "At the inn, in the village," he repeated.
+Then he turned away altogether and passed out of the house.
+
+He was extremely excited by what he had been doing, for it was
+inevitable that there should be a certain emotion in calling up
+the spectre of dishonor before a family a thousand years old.
+But he went back to the inn and contrived to wait there,
+deliberately, for the next two hours.  He thought it more than
+probable that Urbain de Bellegarde would give no sign; for an answer
+to his challenge, in either sense, would be a confession of guilt.
+What he most expected was silence--in other words defiance.
+But he prayed that, as he imagined it, his shot might bring them down.
+It did bring, by three o'clock, a note, delivered by a footman;
+a note addressed in Urbain de Bellegarde's handsome English hand.
+It ran as follows:--
+
+"I cannot deny myself the satisfaction of letting you know that I return
+to Paris, to-morrow, with my mother, in order that we may see my sister
+and confirm her in the resolution which is the most effectual reply
+to your audacious pertinacity.
+
+                         HENRI-URBAIN DE BELLEGARDE."
+
+Newman put the letter into his pocket, and continued
+his walk up and down the inn-parlor. He had spent most
+of his time, for the past week, in walking up and down.
+He continued to measure the length of the little salle
+of the Armes de Prance until the day began to wane,
+when he went out to keep his rendezvous with Mrs. Bread.
+The path which led up the hill to the ruin was easy to find,
+and Newman in a short time had followed it to the top.
+He passed beneath the rugged arch of the castle wall,
+and looked about him in the early dusk for an old woman in black.
+The castle yard was empty, but the door of the church was open.
+Newman went into the little nave and of course found a deeper dusk
+than without.  A couple of tapers, however, twinkled on the altar and
+just enabled him to perceive a figure seated by one of the pillars.
+Closer inspection helped him to recognize Mrs. Bread, in spite
+of the fact that she was dressed with unwonted splendor.
+She wore a large black silk bonnet, with imposing bows of crape,
+and an old black satin dress disposed itself in vaguely
+lustrous folds about her person.  She had judged it proper
+to the occasion to appear in her stateliest apparel.
+She had been sitting with her eyes fixed upon the ground,
+but when Newman passed before her she looked up at him,
+and then she rose.
+
+"Are you a Catholic, Mrs. Bread?" he asked.
+
+"No, sir; I'm a good Church-of-England woman, very Low," she answered.
+"But I thought I should be safer in here than outside.
+I was never out in the evening before, sir."
+
+"We shall be safer," said Newman, "where no one can hear us."
+And he led the way back into the castle court and then
+followed a path beside the church, which he was sure must
+lead into another part of the ruin.  He was not deceived.
+It wandered along the crest of the hill and terminated
+before a fragment of wall pierced by a rough aperture
+which had once been a door.  Through this aperture Newman
+passed and found himself in a nook peculiarly favorable
+to quiet conversation, as probably many an earnest couple,
+otherwise assorted than our friends, had assured themselves.
+The hill sloped abruptly away, and on the remnant of its
+crest were scattered two or three fragments of stone.
+Beneath, over the plain, lay the gathered twilight, through which,
+in the near distance, gleamed two or three lights from the chateau.
+Mrs. Bread rustled slowly after her guide, and Newman,
+satisfying himself that one of the fallen stones was steady,
+proposed to her to sit upon it.  She cautiously complied,
+and he placed himself upon another, near her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+I am very much obliged to you for coming," Newman said.
+"I hope it won't get you into trouble."
+
+"I don't think I shall be missed.  My lady, in, these days,
+is not fond of having me about her."  This was said with a certain
+fluttered eagerness which increased Newman's sense of having
+inspired the old woman with confidence.
+
+"From the first, you know," he answered, "you took an interest in
+my prospects.  You were on my side.  That gratified me, I assure you.
+And now that you know what they have done to me, I am sure you are
+with me all the more."
+
+"They have not done well--I must say it," said Mrs. Bread.
+"But you mustn't blame the poor countess; they pressed her hard."
+
+"I would give a million of dollars to know what they did
+to her!" cried Newman.
+
+Mrs. Bread sat with a dull, oblique gaze fixed upon the lights of
+the chateau.  "They worked on her feelings; they knew that was the way.
+She is a delicate creature.  They made her feel wicked.
+She is only too good."
+
+"Ah, they made her feel wicked," said Newman, slowly; and then
+he repeated it.  "They made her feel wicked,--they made her feel wicked."
+The words seemed to him for the moment a vivid description
+of infernal ingenuity.
+
+"It was because she was so good that she gave up--poor sweet lady!"
+added Mrs. Bread.
+
+"But she was better to them than to me," said Newman.
+
+"She was afraid," said Mrs. Bread, very confidently;
+"she has always been afraid, or at least for a long time.
+That was the real trouble, sir.  She was like a fair peach,
+I may say, with just one little speck.  She had one little sad spot.
+You pushed her into the sunshine, sir, and it almost disappeared.
+Then they pulled her back into the shade and in a moment
+it began to spread.  Before we knew it she was gone.
+She was a delicate creature."
+
+This singular attestation of Madame de Cintre's delicacy,
+for all its singularity, set Newman's wound aching afresh.
+"I see," he presently said; "she knew something bad
+about her mother."
+
+"No, sir, she knew nothing," said Mrs. Bread, holding her head very stiff
+and keeping her eyes fixed upon the glimmering windows of the chateau.
+
+"She guessed something, then, or suspected it."
+
+"She was afraid to know," said Mrs. Bread.
+
+"But YOU know, at any rate," said Newman.
+
+She slowly turned her vague eyes upon Newman, squeezing her
+hands together in her lap.  "You are not quite faithful, sir.
+I thought it was to tell me about Mr. Valentin you asked me
+to come here."
+
+"Oh, the more we talk of Mr. Valentin the better," said Newman.
+"That's exactly what I want.  I was with him, as I told you, in his
+last hour.  He was in a great deal of pain, but he was quite himself.
+You know what that means; he was bright and lively and clever."
+
+"Oh, he would always be clever, sir," said Mrs. Bread.
+"And did he know of your trouble?"
+
+"Yes, he guessed it of himself."
+
+"And what did he say to it?"
+
+"He said it was a disgrace to his name--but it was not the first."
+
+"Lord, Lord!" murmured Mrs. Bread.
+
+"He said that his mother and his brother had once put their heads
+together and invented something even worse."
+
+"You shouldn't have listened to that, sir."
+
+"Perhaps not.  But I DID listen, and I don't forget it.
+Now I want to know what it is they did."
+
+Mrs. Bread gave a soft moan.  "And you have enticed me up into this
+strange place to tell you?"
+
+"Don't be alarmed," said Newman.  "I won't say a word that shall be
+disagreeable to you.  Tell me as it suits you, and when it suits you.
+Only remember that it was Mr. Valentin's last wish that you should."
+
+"Did he say that?"
+
+"He said it with his last breath--'Tell Mrs. Bread I told you
+to ask her.'  "
+
+"Why didn't he tell you himself?"
+
+"It was too long a story for a dying man; he had no breath left in his body.
+He could only say that he wanted me to know--that, wronged as I was,
+it was my right to know."
+
+"But how will it help you, sir?" said Mrs. Bread.
+
+"That's for me to decide.  Mr. Valentin believed it would,
+and that's why he told me.  Your name was almost the last
+word he spoke."
+
+Mrs. Bread was evidently awe-struck by this statement;
+she shook her clasped hands slowly up and down.
+"Excuse me, sir," she said, "if I take a great liberty.
+Is it the solemn truth you are speaking?  I MUST ask you that;
+must I not, sir?"
+
+"There's no offense.  It is the solemn truth; I solemnly swear it.
+Mr. Valentin himself would certainly have told me more if he had been able."
+
+"Oh, sir, if he knew more!"
+
+"Don't you suppose he did?"
+
+"There's no saying what he knew about anything," said Mrs. Bread,
+with a mild head-shake. "He was so mightily clever.
+He could make you believe he knew things that he didn't, and
+that he didn't know others that he had better not have known."
+
+"I suspect he knew something about his brother that kept the marquis
+civil to him," Newman propounded; "he made the marquis feel him.
+What he wanted now was to put me in his place; he wanted to give me
+a chance to make the marquis feel ME."
+
+"Mercy on us!" cried the old waiting-woman, "how wicked we all are!"
+
+"I don't know," said Newman; "some of us are wicked, certainly.
+I am very angry, I am very sore, and I am very bitter, but I
+don't know that I am wicked.  I have been cruelly injured.
+They have hurt me, and I want to hurt them.  I don't deny that;
+on the contrary, I tell you plainly that it is the use I want
+to make of your secret."
+
+Mrs. Bread seemed to hold her breath.  "You want to publish them--
+you want to shame them?"
+
+"I want to bring them down,--down, down, down!  I want to turn
+the tables upon them--I want to mortify them as they mortified me.
+They took me up into a high place and made me stand there for all
+the world to see me, and then they stole behind me and pushed me
+into this bottomless pit, where I lie howling and gnashing my teeth!
+I made a fool of myself before all their friends; but I shall make
+something worse of them."
+
+This passionate sally, which Newman uttered with the greater
+fervor that it was the first time he had had a chance to say all
+this aloud, kindled two small sparks in Mrs. Bread's fixed eyes.
+"I suppose you have a right to your anger, sir; but think
+of the dishonor you will draw down on Madame de Cintre."
+
+"Madame de Cintre is buried alive," cried Newman.
+"What are honor or dishonor to her?  The door of the tomb
+is at this moment closing behind her."
+
+"Yes, it's most awful," moaned Mrs. Bread.
+
+"She has moved off, like her brother Valentin, to give me room to work.
+It's as if it were done on purpose."
+
+"Surely," said Mrs. Bread, apparently impressed by the ingenuity
+of this reflection.  She was silent for some moments; then she added,
+"And would you bring my lady before the courts?"
+
+"The courts care nothing for my lady," Newman replied.
+"If she has committed a crime, she will be nothing for the courts
+but a wicked old woman."
+
+"And will they hang her, Sir?"
+
+"That depends upon what she has done."  And Newman eyed Mrs. Bread intently.
+
+"It would break up the family most terribly, sir!"
+
+"It's time such a family should be broken up!" said Newman,
+with a laugh.
+
+"And me at my age out of place, sir!" sighed Mrs. Bread.
+
+"Oh, I will take care of you!  You shall come and live with me.
+You shall be my housekeeper, or anything you like.
+I will pension you for life."
+
+"Dear, dear, sir, you think of everything."  And she seemed
+to fall a-brooding.
+
+Newman watched her a while, and then he said suddenly.
+"Ah, Mrs. Bread, you are too fond of my lady!"
+
+She looked at him as quickly.  "I wouldn't have you say that, sir.
+I don't think it any part of my duty to be fond of my lady.
+I have served her faithfully this many a year; but if she were to die
+to-morrow, I believe, before Heaven I shouldn't shed a tear for her."
+Then, after a pause, "I have no reason to love her!"  Mrs. Bread added.
+"The most she has done for me has been not to turn me out of the house."
+Newman felt that decidedly his companion was more and more confidential--
+that if luxury is corrupting, Mrs. Bread's conservative habits were
+already relaxed by the spiritual comfort of this preconcerted interview,
+in a remarkable locality, with a free-spoken millionaire.
+All his native shrewdness admonished him that his part was simply
+to let her take her time--let the charm of the occasion work.
+So he said nothing; he only looked at her kindly.  Mrs. Bread sat
+nursing her lean elbows.  "My lady once did me a great wrong,"
+she went on at last.  "She has a terrible tongue when she is vexed.
+It was many a year ago, but I have never forgotten it.  I have never
+mentioned it to a human creature; I have kept my grudge to myself.
+I dare say I have been wicked, but my grudge has grown old with me.
+It has grown good for nothing, too, I dare say; but it has lived along,
+as I have lived.  It will die when I die,--not before!"
+
+"And what IS your grudge?"  Newman asked.
+
+Mrs. Bread dropped her eyes and hesitated.
+"If I were a foreigner, sir, I should make less of
+telling you; it comes harder to a decent Englishwoman.
+But I sometimes think I have picked up too many foreign ways.
+What I was telling you belongs to a time when I was much
+younger and very different looking to what I am now.
+I had a very high color, sir, if you can believe it, indeed I
+was a very smart lass.  My lady was younger, too, and the late
+marquis was youngest of all--I mean in the way he went on, sir;
+he had a very high spirit; he was a magnificent man.
+He was fond of his pleasure, like most foreigners, and it must
+be owned that he sometimes went rather below him to take it.
+My lady was often jealous, and, if you'll believe it, sir, she did
+me the honor to be jealous of me.  One day I had a red ribbon in
+my cap, and my lady flew out at me and ordered me to take it off.
+She accused me of putting it on to make the marquis look at me.
+I don't know that I was impertinent, but I spoke up like an
+honest girl and didn't count my words.  A red ribbon indeed!
+As if it was my ribbons the marquis looked at!  My lady knew
+afterwards that I was perfectly respectable, but she never said
+a word to show that she believed it.  But the marquis did!"
+Mrs. Bread presently added, "I took off my red ribbon and put
+it away in a drawer, where I have kept it to this day.
+It's faded now, it's a very pale pink; but there it lies.
+My grudge has faded, too; the red has all gone out of it; but it
+lies here yet."  And Mrs. Bread stroked her black satin bodice.
+
+Newman listened with interest to this decent narrative, which seemed
+to have opened up the deeps of memory to his companion.  Then, as she
+remained silent, and seemed to be losing herself in retrospective
+meditation upon her perfect respectability, he ventured upon a short
+cut to his goal.  "So Madame de Bellegarde was jealous; I see.
+And M. de Bellegarde admired pretty women, without distinction of class.
+I suppose one mustn't be hard upon him, for they probably didn't
+all behave so properly as you.  But years afterwards it could hardly
+have been jealousy that turned Madame de Bellegarde into a criminal."
+
+Mrs. Bread gave a weary sigh.  "We are using dreadful words,
+sir, but I don't care now.  I see you have your idea, and I
+have no will of my own.  My will was the will of my children,
+as I called them; but I have lost my children now.  They are dead--
+I may say it of both of them; and what should I care for the living?
+What is any one in the house to me now--what am I to them?
+My lady objects to me--she has objected to me these thirty years.
+I should have been glad to be something to young Madame
+de Bellegarde, though I never was nurse to the present marquis.
+When he was a baby I was too young; they wouldn't trust me with him.
+But his wife told her own maid, Mamselle Clarisse, the opinion
+she had of me.  Perhaps you would like to hear it, sir."
+
+"Oh, immensely," said Newman.
+
+"She said that if I would sit in her children's schoolroom I
+should do very well for a penwiper!  When things have come
+to that I don't think I need stand upon ceremony."
+
+"Decidedly not," said Newman.  "Go on, Mrs. Bread."
+
+Mrs. Bread, however, relapsed again into troubled dumbness,
+and all Newman could do was to fold his arms and wait.
+But at last she appeared to have set her memories in order.
+"It was when the late marquis was an old man and his eldest
+son had been two years married.  It was when the time came
+on for marrying Mademoiselle Claire; that's the way they talk
+of it here, you know, sir.  The marquis's health was bad;
+he was very much broken down.  My lady had picked out
+M. de Cintre, for no good reason that I could see.
+But there are reasons, I very well know, that are beyond me,
+and you must be high in the world to understand them.
+Old M. de Cintre was very high, and my lady thought him
+almost as good as herself; that's saying a good deal.
+Mr. Urbain took sides with his mother, as he always did.
+The trouble, I believe, was that my lady would give very
+little money, and all the other gentlemen asked more.
+It was only M. de Cintre that was satisfied.  The Lord willed it
+he should have that one soft spot; it was the only one he had.
+He may have been very grand in his birth, and he certainly was
+very grand in his bows and speeches; but that was all the grandeur
+he had.  I think he was like what I have heard of comedians;
+not that I have ever seen one.  But I know he painted his face.
+He might paint it all he would; he could never make me like it!
+The marquis couldn't abide him, and declared that sooner than take
+such a husband as that Mademoiselle Claire should take none at all.
+He and my lady had a great scene; it came even to our ears
+in the servants' hall.  It was not their first quarrel,
+if the truth must be told.  They were not a loving couple,
+but they didn't often come to words, because, I think,
+neither of them thought the other's doings worth the trouble.
+My lady had long ago got over her jealousy, and she had taken
+to indifference.  In this, I must say, they were well matched.
+The marquis was very easy-going; he had a most gentlemanly temper.
+He got angry only once a year, but then it was very bad.
+He always took to bed directly afterwards.  This time I speak
+of he took to bed as usual, but he never got up again.
+I'm afraid the poor gentleman was paying for his dissipation;
+isn't it true they mostly do, sir, when they get old?
+My lady and Mr. Urbain kept quiet, but I know my lady wrote letters
+to M. de Cintre.  The marquis got worse and the doctors gave him up.
+My lady, she gave him up too, and if the truth must be told,
+she gave up gladly.  When once he was out of the way she could
+do what she pleased with her daughter, and it was all arranged
+that my poor innocent child should be handed over to M. de Cintre.
+You don't know what Mademoiselle was in those days, sir; she was
+the sweetest young creature in France, and knew as little of
+what was going on around her as the lamb does of the butcher.
+I used to nurse the marquis, and I was always in his room.
+It was here at Fleurieres, in the autumn.  We had a doctor
+from Paris, who came and stayed two or three weeks in the house.
+Then there came two others, and there was a consultation,
+and these two others, as I said, declared that the marquis
+couldn't be saved.  After this they went off, pocketing
+their fees, but the other one stayed and did what he could.
+The marquis himself kept crying out that he wouldn't die,
+that he didn't want to die, that he would live and look
+after his daughter.  Mademoiselle Claire and the viscount--
+that was Mr. Valentin, you know--were both in the house.
+The doctor was a clever man,--that I could see myself,--
+and I think he believed that the marquis might get well.
+We took good care of him, he and I, between us, and one day,
+when my lady had almost ordered her mourning, my patient suddenly
+began to mend.  He got better and better, till the doctor said
+he was out of danger.  What was killing him was the dreadful
+fits of pain in his stomach.  But little by little they stopped,
+and the poor marquis began to make his jokes again.
+The doctor found something that gave him great comfort--some white
+stuff that we kept in a great bottle on the chimney-piece. I
+used to give it to the marquis through a glass tube; it always
+made him easier.  Then the doctor went away, after telling
+me to keep on giving him the mixture whenever he was bad.
+After that there was a little doctor from Poitiers,
+who came every day.  So we were alone in the house--
+my lady and her poor husband and their three children.
+Young Madame de Bellegarde had gone away, with her little girl,
+to her mothers.  You know she is very lively, and her maid
+told me that she didn't like to be where people were dying."
+Mrs. Bread paused a moment, and then she went on with the same
+quiet consistency.  "I think you have guessed, sir, that when
+the marquis began to turn my lady was disappointed."
+And she paused again, bending upon Newman a face which seemed
+to grow whiter as the darkness settled down upon them.
+
+Newman had listened eagerly--with an eagerness greater
+even than that with which he had bent his ear to Valentin
+de Bellegarde's last words.  Every now and then, as his
+companion looked up at him, she reminded him of an ancient
+tabby cat, protracting the enjoyment of a dish of milk.
+Even her triumph was measured and decorous; the faculty of
+exultation had been chilled by disuse.  She presently continued.
+"Late one night I was sitting by the marquis in his room,
+the great red room in the west tower.  He had been complaining
+a little, and I gave him a spoonful of the doctor's dose.
+My lady had been there in the early part of the evening; she sat far
+more than an hour by his bed.  Then she went away and left me alone.
+After midnight she came back, and her eldest son was with her.
+They went to the bed and looked at the marquis, and my lady took
+hold of his hand.  Then she turned to me and said he was not
+so well; I remember how the marquis, without saying anything,
+lay staring at her.  I can see his white face, at this moment,
+in the great black square between the bed-curtains. I said I
+didn't think he was very bad; and she told me to go to bed--
+she would sit a while with him.  When the marquis saw me going
+he gave a sort of groan, and called out to me not to leave him;
+but Mr. Urbain opened the door for me and pointed the way out.
+The present marquis--perhaps you have noticed, sir--has a very
+proud way of giving orders, and I was there to take orders.
+I went to my room, but I wasn't easy; I couldn't tell you why.
+I didn't undress; I sat there waiting and listening.
+For what, would you have said, sir?  I couldn't have told you;
+for surely a poor gentleman might be comfortable with his wife
+and his son.  It was as if I expected to hear the marquis
+moaning after me again.  I listened, but I heard nothing.
+It was a very still night; I never knew a night so still.
+At last the very stillness itself seemed to frighten me,
+and I came out of my room and went very softly down-stairs.
+In the anteroom, outside of the marquis's chamber,
+I found Mr. Urbain walking up and down.  He asked me
+what I wanted, and I said I came back to relieve my lady.
+He said HE would relieve my lady, and ordered me back to bed;
+but as I stood there, unwilling to turn away, the door of the room
+opened and my lady came out.  I noticed she was very pale;
+she was very strange.  She looked a moment at the count
+and at me, and then she held out her arms to the count.
+He went to her, and she fell upon him and hid her face.
+I went quickly past her into the room and to the marquis's bed.
+He was lying there, very white, with his eyes shut, like a corpse.
+I took hold of his hand and spoke to him, and he felt to me like a
+dead man.  Then I turned round; my lady and Mr. Urbain were there.
+'My poor Bread,' said my lady, 'M. le Marquis is gone.'
+Mr. Urbain knelt down by the bed and said softly, 'Mon pere,
+mon pere.'  I thought it wonderful strange, and asked my lady
+what in the world had happened, and why she hadn't called me.
+She said nothing had happened; that she had only been
+sitting there with the marquis, very quiet.  She had closed
+her eyes, thinking she might sleep, and she had slept,
+she didn't know how long.  When she woke up he was dead.
+'It's death, my son, It's death,' she said to the count.
+Mr. Urbain said they must have the doctor, immediately,
+from Poitiers, and that he would ride off and fetch him.
+He kissed his father's face, and then he kissed his mother
+and went away.  My lady and I stood there at the bedside.
+As I looked at the poor marquis it came into my head
+that he was not dead, that he was in a kind of swoon.
+And then my lady repeated, 'My poor Bread, it's death,
+it's death;' and I said, 'Yes, my lady, it's certainly death.'
+I said just the opposite to what I believed; it was my notion.
+Then my lady said we must wait for the doctor, and we sat there
+and waited.  It was a long time; the poor marquis neither
+stirred nor changed.  'I have seen death before,' said my lady,
+'and it's terribly like this.'  'Yes please, my lady,'
+said I; and I kept thinking.  The night wore away without
+the count's coming back, and my lady began to be frightened.
+She was afraid he had had an accident in the dark, or met
+with some wild people.  At last she got so restless that she
+went below to watch in the court for her son's return.
+I sat there alone and the marquis never stirred."
+
+Here Mrs. Bread paused again, and the most artistic of
+romancers could not have been more effective.  Newman made
+a movement as if he were turning over the page of a novel.
+"So he WAS dead!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Three days afterwards he was in his grave,"
+said Mrs. Bread, sententiously.  "In a little while I went
+away to the front of the house and looked out into the court,
+and there, before long, I saw Mr. Urbain ride in alone.
+I waited a bit, to hear him come upstairs with his mother,
+but they stayed below, and I went back to the marquis's room.
+I went to the bed and held up the light to him,
+but I don't know why I didn't let the candlestick fall.
+The marquis's eyes were open--open wide! they were staring at me.
+I knelt down beside him and took his hands, and begged him
+to tell me, in the name of wonder, whether he was alive or dead.
+Still he looked at me a long time, and then he made me a sign
+to put my ear close to him:  'I am dead,' he said, 'I am dead.
+The marquise has killed me.'  I was all in a tremble;
+I didn't understand him.  He seemed both a man and a corpse,
+if you can fancy, sir.  'But you'll get well now, sir,' I said.
+And then he whispered again, ever so weak; 'I wouldn't get
+well for a kingdom.  I wouldn't be that woman's husband again.'
+And then he said more; he said she had murdered him.
+I asked him what she had done to him, but he only replied,
+'Murder, murder.  And she'll kill my daughter,' he said;
+'my poor unhappy child.'  And he begged me to prevent that,
+and then he said that he was dying, that he was dead.
+I was afraid to move or to leave him; I was almost dead myself.
+All of a sudden he asked me to get a pencil and write for him;
+and then I had to tell him that I couldn't manage a pencil.
+He asked me to hold him up in bed while he wrote himself,
+and I said he could never, never do such a thing.
+But he seemed to have a kind of terror that gave him strength.
+I found a pencil in the room and a piece of paper and a book,
+and I put the paper on the book and the pencil into
+his hand, and moved the candle near him.  You will think
+all this very strange, sir; and very strange it was.
+The strangest part of it was that I believed he was dying,
+and that I was eager to help him to write.  I sat on the bed
+and put my arm round him, and held him up.  I felt very strong;
+I believe I could have lifted him and carried him.
+It was a wonder how he wrote, but he did write, in a big
+scratching hand; he almost covered one side of the paper.
+It seemed a long time; I suppose it was three or four minutes.
+He was groaning, terribly, all the while.  Then he said it
+was ended, and I let him down upon his pillows and he gave me
+the paper and told me to fold it, and hide it, and give it
+to those who would act upon it.  'Whom do you mean?'  I said.
+'Who are those who will act upon it?'  But he only groaned,
+for an answer; he couldn't speak, for weakness.  In a few minutes
+he told me to go and look at the bottle on the chimney-piece.
+I knew the bottle he meant; the white stuff that was good
+for his stomach.  I went and looked at it, but it was empty.
+When I came back his eyes were open and he was staring
+at me; but soon he closed them and he said no more.
+I hid the paper in my dress; I didn't look at what was
+written upon it, though I can read very well, sir, if I
+haven't any handwriting.  I sat down near the bed, but it
+was nearly half an hour before my lady and the count came in.
+The marquis looked as he did when they left him, and I never
+said a word about his having been otherwise.  Mr. Urbain said
+that the doctor had been called to a person in child-birth,
+but that he promised to set out for Fleurieres immediately.
+In another half hour he arrived, and as soon as he had
+examined the marquis he said that we had had a false alarm.
+The poor gentleman was very low, but he was still living.
+I watched my lady and her son when he said this, to see if they
+looked at each other, and I am obliged to admit that they
+didn't. The doctor said there was no reason he should die;
+he had been going on so well.  And then he wanted to know
+how he had suddenly fallen off; he had left him so very hearty.
+My lady told her little story again--what she had told Mr. Urbain
+and me--and the doctor looked at her and said nothing.
+He stayed all the next day at the chateau, and hardly left
+the marquis.  I was always there.  Mademoiselle and Mr. Valentin
+came and looked at their father, but he never stirred.
+It was a strange, deathly stupor.  My lady was always about;
+her face was as white as her husband's, and she looked very proud,
+as I had seen her look when her orders or her wishes had
+been disobeyed.  It was as if the poor marquis had defied her;
+and the way she took it made me afraid of her.  The apothecary
+from Poitiers kept the marquis along through the day, and we
+waited for the other doctor from Paris, who, as I told you,
+had been staying at Fleurieres.  They had telegraphed for
+him early in the morning, and in the evening he arrived.
+He talked a bit outside with the doctor from Poitiers, and then
+they came in to see the marquis together.  I was with him,
+and so was Mr. Urbain.  My lady had been to receive the doctor
+from Paris, and she didn't come back with him into the room.
+He sat down by the marquis; I can see him there now, with his
+hand on the marquis's wrist, and Mr. Urbain watching him with
+a little looking-glass in his hand.  'I'm sure he's better,'
+said the little doctor from Poitiers; 'I'm sure he'll come back.'
+A few moments after he had said this the marquis opened his eyes,
+as if he were waking up, and looked at us, from one to the other.
+I saw him look at me, very softly, as you'd say.
+At the same moment my lady came in on tiptoe; she came up
+to the bed and put in her head between me and the count.
+The marquis saw her and gave a long, most wonderful moan.
+He said something we couldn't understand, and he seemed
+to have a kind of spasm.  He shook all over and then closed
+his eyes, and the doctor jumped up and took hold of my lady.
+He held her for a moment a bit roughly.  The marquis was stone dead!
+This time there were those there that knew."
+
+Newman felt as if he had been reading by starlight the report
+of highly important evidence in a great murder case.
+"And the paper--the paper!" he said, excitedly.  "What was
+written upon it?"
+
+"I can't tell you, sir," answered Mrs. Bread.  "I couldn't read it;
+it was in French."
+
+"But could no one else read it?"
+
+"I never asked a human creature."
+
+"No one has ever seen it?"
+
+"If you see it you'll be the first."
+
+Newman seized the old woman's hand in both his own and pressed
+it vigorously.  "I thank you ever so much for that," he cried.
+"I want to be the first, I want it to be my property and no one else's!
+You're the wisest old woman in Europe.  And what did you do with the paper?"
+This information had made him feel extraordinarily strong.
+"Give it to me quick!"
+
+Mrs. Bread got up with a certain majesty.  "It is not so easy as that, sir.
+If you want the paper, you must wait."
+
+"But waiting is horrible, you know," urged Newman.
+
+"I am sure I have waited; I have waited these many years,"
+said Mrs. Bread.
+
+"That is very true.  You have waited for me.  I won't forget it.
+And yet, how comes it you didn't do as M. de Bellegarde said,
+show the paper to some one?"
+
+"To whom should I show it?" answered Mrs. Bread, mournfully.
+"It was not easy to know, and many's the night I have
+lain awake thinking of it.  Six months afterwards,
+when they married Mademoiselle to her vicious old husband,
+I was very near bringing it out.  I thought it was my duty
+to do something with it, and yet I was mightily afraid.
+I didn't know what was written on the paper or how bad it
+might be, and there was no one I could trust enough to ask.
+And it seemed to me a cruel kindness to do that sweet young creature,
+letting her know that her father had written her mother down
+so shamefully; for that's what he did, I suppose.  I thought she
+would rather be unhappy with her husband than be unhappy that way.
+It was for her and for my dear Mr. Valentin I kept quiet.
+Quiet I call it, but for me it was a weary quietness.
+It worried me terribly, and it changed me altogether.
+But for others I held my tongue, and no one, to this hour,
+knows what passed between the poor marquis and me."
+
+"But evidently there were suspicions," said Newman.
+"Where did Mr. Valentin get his ideas?"
+
+"It was the little doctor from Poitiers.  He was very ill-satisfied, and
+he made a great talk.  He was a sharp Frenchman, and coming to the house,
+as he did day after day, I suppose he saw more than he seemed to see.
+And indeed the way the poor marquis went off as soon as his eyes fell
+on my lady was a most shocking sight for anyone.  The medical gentleman
+from Paris was much more accommodating, and he hushed up the other.
+But for all he could do Mr. Valentin and Mademoiselle heard something;
+they knew their father's death was somehow against nature.
+Of course they couldn't accuse their mother, and, as I tell you,
+I was as dumb as that stone.  Mr. Valentin used to look at me sometimes,
+and his eyes seemed to shine, as if he were thinking of asking me something.
+I was dreadfully afraid he would speak, and I always looked away and went
+about my business.  If I were to tell him, I was sure he would hate
+me afterwards, and that I could never have borne.  Once I went up to him and
+took a great liberty; I kissed him, as I had kissed him when he was a child.
+'You oughtn't to look so sad, sir,' I said; 'believe your poor old Bread.
+Such a gallant, handsome young man can have nothing to be sad about.'
+And I think he understood me; he understood that I was begging off,
+and he made up his mind in his own way.  He went about with his unasked
+question in his mind, as I did with my untold tale; we were both afraid of
+bringing dishonor on a great house.  And it was the same with Mademoiselle.
+She didn't know what happened; she wouldn't know.  My lady and Mr. Urbain
+asked me no questions because they had no reason.  I was as still as a mouse.
+When I was younger my lady thought me a hussy, and now she thought me a fool.
+How should I have any ideas?"
+
+"But you say the little doctor from Poitiers made a talk," said Newman.
+"Did no one take it up?"
+
+"I heard nothing of it, sir.  They are always talking
+scandal in these foreign countries you may have noticed--
+and I suppose they shook their heads over Madame de Bellegarde.
+But after all, what could they say?  The marquis had been ill,
+and the marquis had died; he had as good a right to die as any one.
+The doctor couldn't say he had not come honestly by his cramps.
+The next year the little doctor left the place and bought a practice
+in Bordeaux, and if there has been any gossip it died out.
+And I don't think there could have been much gossip about my lady
+that any one would listen to.  My lady is so very respectable."
+
+Newman, at this last affirmation, broke into an immense, resounding laugh.
+Mrs. Bread had begun to move away from the spot where they were sitting,
+and he helped her through the aperture in the wall and along the
+homeward path.  "Yes," he said, "my lady's respectability is delicious;
+it will be a great crash!"  They reached the empty space in front
+of the church, where they stopped a moment, looking at each other with
+something of an air of closer fellowship--like two sociable conspirators.
+"But what was it," said Newman, "what was it she did to her husband?
+She didn't stab him or poison him."
+
+"I don't know, sir; no one saw it."
+
+"Unless it was Mr. Urbain.  You say he was walking up and down,
+outside the room.  Perhaps he looked through the keyhole.
+But no; I think that with his mother he would take it on trust."
+
+"You may be sure I have often thought of it," said Mrs. Bread.
+"I am sure she didn't touch him with her hands.
+I saw nothing on him, anywhere.  I believe it was in this way.
+He had a fit of his great pain, and he asked her for his medicine.
+Instead of giving it to him she went and poured it away,
+before his eyes.  Then he saw what she meant, and, weak and
+helpless as he was, he was frightened, he was terrified.
+'You want to kill me,' he said.  'Yes, M. le Marquis, I want to
+kill you,' says my lady, and sits down and fixes her eyes upon him.
+You know my lady's eyes, I think, sir; it was with them she killed him;
+it was with the terrible strong will she put into them.
+It was like a frost on flowers."
+
+"Well, you are a very intelligent woman; you have shown great discretion,"
+said Newman.  "I shall value your services as housekeeper extremely."
+
+They had begun to descend the hill, and Mrs. Bread said nothing
+until they reached the foot.  Newman strolled lightly beside her;
+his head was thrown back and he was gazing at all the stars;
+he seemed to himself to be riding his vengeance along the Milky Way.
+"So you are serious, sir, about that?" said Mrs. Bread, softly.
+
+"About your living with me?  Why of course I will take care of you
+to the end of your days.  You can't live with those people any longer.
+And you oughtn't to, you know, after this.  You give me the paper,
+and you move away."
+
+"It seems very flighty in me to be taking a new place at this time of life,"
+observed Mrs. Bread, lugubriously.  "But if you are going to turn the house
+upside down, I would rather be out of it."
+
+"Oh," said Newman, in the cheerful tone of a man who feels rich
+in alternatives.  "I don't think I shall bring in the constables,
+if that's what you mean.  Whatever Madame de Bellegarde did,
+I am afraid the law can't take hold of it.  But I am glad of that;
+it leaves it altogether to me!"
+
+"You are a mighty bold gentleman, sir," murmured Mrs. Bread,
+looking at him round the edge of her great bonnet.
+
+He walked with her back to the chateau; the curfew had tolled for the
+laborious villagers of Fleurieres, and the street was unlighted and empty.
+She promised him that he should have the marquis's manuscript in half
+an hour.  Mrs. Bread choosing not to go in by the great gate, they passed
+round by a winding lane to a door in the wall of the park, of which she
+had the key, and which would enable her to enter the chateau from behind.
+Newman arranged with her that he should await outside the wall her return
+with the coveted document.
+
+She went in, and his half hour in the dusky lane seemed very long.
+But he had plenty to think about.  At last the door in the wall
+opened and Mrs. Bread stood there, with one hand on the latch
+and the other holding out a scrap of white paper, folded small.
+In a moment he was master of it, and it had passed into his waistcoat pocket.
+"Come and see me in Paris," he said; "we are to settle your future,
+you know; and I will translate poor M. de Bellegarde's French to you."
+Never had he felt so grateful as at this moment for M. Nioche's instructions.
+
+Mrs. Bread's dull eyes had followed the disappearance of the paper,
+and she gave a heavy sigh.  "Well, you have done what you would with me,
+sir, and I suppose you will do it again.  You MUST take care of me now.
+You are a terribly positive gentleman."
+
+"Just now," said Newman, "I'm a terribly impatient gentleman!"
+And he bade her good-night and walked rapidly back to the inn.
+He ordered his vehicle to be prepared for his return to Poitiers,
+and then he shut the door of the common salle and strode toward
+the solitary lamp on the chimney-piece. He pulled out the paper
+and quickly unfolded it.  It was covered with pencil-marks,
+which at first, in the feeble light, seemed indistinct.
+But Newman's fierce curiosity forced a meaning from the tremulous signs.
+The English of them was as follows:--
+
+
+"My wife has tried to kill me, and she has done it; I am dying,
+dying horribly.  It is to marry my dear daughter to M. de Cintre.
+With all my soul I protest,--I forbid it.  I am not insane,--
+ask the doctors, ask Mrs. B----. It was alone with me here, to-night;
+she attacked me and put me to death.  It is murder, if murder ever was.
+Ask the doctors.
+
+"HENRI-URBAIN DE BELLEGARDE"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+Newman returned to Paris the second day after his interview with Mrs. Bread.
+The morrow he had spent at Poitiers, reading over and over again
+the little document which he had lodged in his pocket-book, and thinking
+what he would do in the circumstances and how he would do it.
+He would not have said that Poitiers was an amusing place; yet the day
+seemed very short.  Domiciled once more in the Boulevard Haussmann,
+he walked over to the Rue de l'Universite and inquired of Madame
+de Bellegarde's portress whether the marquise had come back.
+The portress told him that she had arrived, with M. le Marquis,
+on the preceding day, and further informed him that if he desired
+to enter, Madame de Bellegarde and her son were both at home.
+As she said these words the little white-faced old woman who peered
+out of the dusky gate-house of the Hotel de Bellegarde gave a small
+wicked smile--a smile which seemed to Newman to mean, "Go in if you dare!"
+She was evidently versed in the current domestic history;
+she was placed where she could feel the pulse of the house.
+Newman stood a moment, twisting his mustache and looking at her;
+then he abruptly turned away.  But this was not because he was afraid
+to go in--though he doubted whether, if he did so, he should be
+able to make his way, unchallenged, into the presence of Madame de
+Cintre's relatives.  Confidence--excessive confidence, perhaps--quite as
+much as timidity prompted his retreat.  He was nursing his thunder-bolt;
+he loved it; he was unwilling to part with it.  He seemed to be holding
+it aloft in the rumbling, vaguely-flashing air, directly over the heads
+of his victims, and he fancied he could see their pale, upturned faces.
+Few specimens of the human countenance had ever given him such pleasure
+as these, lighted in the lurid fashion I have hinted at, and he was
+disposed to sip the cup of contemplative revenge in a leisurely fashion.
+It must be added, too, that he was at a loss to see exactly
+how he could arrange to witness the operation of his thunder.
+To send in his card to Madame de Bellegarde would be a waste
+of ceremony; she would certainly decline to receive him.
+On the other hand he could not force his way into her presence.
+It annoyed him keenly to think that he might be reduced to the blind
+satisfaction of writing her a letter; but he consoled himself in a
+measure with the reflection that a letter might lead to an interview.
+He went home, and feeling rather tired--nursing a vengeance was, it must
+be confessed, a rather fatiguing process; it took a good deal out of one--
+flung himself into one of his brocaded fauteuils, stretched his legs,
+thrust his hands into his pockets, and, while he watched the reflected sunset
+fading from the ornate house-tops on the opposite side of the Boulevard,
+began mentally to compose a cool epistle to Madame de Bellegarde.
+While he was so occupied his servant threw open the door and
+announced ceremoniously, "Madame Brett!"
+
+Newman roused himself, expectantly, and in a few moments perceived
+upon his threshold the worthy woman with whom he had conversed
+to such good purpose on the starlit hill-top of Fleurieres.
+Mrs. Bread had made for this visit the same toilet as for her
+former expedition.  Newman was struck with her distinguished appearance.
+His lamp was not lit, and as her large, grave face gazed at him
+through the light dusk from under the shadow of her ample bonnet,
+he felt the incongruity of such a person presenting herself as a servant.
+He greeted her with high geniality and bade her come in and sit down and
+make herself comfortable.  There was something which might have touched
+the springs both of mirth and of melancholy in the ancient maidenliness
+with which Mrs. Bread endeavored to comply with these directions.
+She was not playing at being fluttered, which would have been
+simply ridiculous; she was doing her best to carry herself as a person
+so humble that, for her, even embarrassment would have been pretentious;
+but evidently she had never dreamed of its being in her horoscope
+to pay a visit, at night-fall, to a friendly single gentleman who lived
+in theatrical-looking rooms on one of the new Boulevards.
+
+"I truly hope I am not forgetting my place, sir," she murmured.
+
+"Forgetting your place?" cried Newman.  "Why, you are remembering it.
+This is your place, you know.  You are already in my service;
+your wages, as housekeeper, began a fortnight ago.
+I can tell you my house wants keeping!  Why don't you take off
+your bonnet and stay?"
+
+"Take off my bonnet?" said Mrs. Bread, with timid literalness.
+"Oh, sir, I haven't my cap.  And with your leave, sir, I couldn't
+keep house in my best gown."
+
+"Never mind your gown," said Newman, cheerfully.  "You shall
+have a better gown than that."
+
+Mrs. Bread stared solemnly and then stretched her hands over her lustreless
+satin skirt, as if the perilous side of her situation were defining itself.
+"Oh, sir, I am fond of my own clothes," she murmured.
+
+"I hope you have left those wicked people, at any rate," said Newman.
+
+"Well, sir, here I am!" said Mrs. Bread.  "That's all I can tell you.
+Here I sit, poor Catherine Bread.  It's a strange place for me to be.
+I don't know myself; I never supposed I was so bold.  But indeed, sir,
+I have gone as far as my own strength will bear me."
+
+"Oh, come, Mrs. Bread," said Newman, almost caressingly, "don't make
+yourself uncomfortable.  Now's the time to feel lively, you know."
+
+She began to speak again with a trembling voice.
+"I think it would be more respectable if I could--if I could"--
+and her voice trembled to a pause.
+
+"If you could give up this sort of thing altogether?" said Newman kindly,
+trying to anticipate her meaning, which he supposed might be a wish
+to retire from service.
+
+"If I could give up everything, sir!  All I should ask is
+a decent Protestant burial."
+
+"Burial!" cried Newman, with a burst of laughter.
+"Why, to bury you now would be a sad piece of extravagance.
+It's only rascals who have to be buried to get respectable.
+Honest folks like you and me can live our time out--
+and live together.  Come!  Did you bring your baggage?"
+
+"My box is locked and corded; but I haven't yet spoken to my lady."
+
+"Speak to her, then, and have done with it.  I should like to have
+your chance!" cried Newman.
+
+"I would gladly give it you, sir.  I have passed some weary hours
+in my lady's dressing-room; but this will be one of the longest.
+She will tax me with ingratitude."
+
+"Well," said Newman, "so long as you can tax her with murder--"
+
+"Oh, sir, I can't; not I," sighed Mrs. Bread.
+
+"You don't mean to say anything about it?  So much the better.
+Leave that to me."
+
+"If she calls me a thankless old woman," said Mrs. Bread,
+"I shall have nothing to say.  But it is better so,"
+she softly added.  "She shall be my lady to the last.
+That will be more respectable."
+
+"And then you will come to me and I shall be your gentleman,"
+said Newman; "that will be more respectable still!"
+
+Mrs. Bread rose, with lowered eyes, and stood a moment;
+then, looking up, she rested her eyes upon Newman's face.
+The disordered proprieties were somehow settling to rest.
+She looked at Newman so long and so fixedly, with such a dull,
+intense devotedness, that he himself might have had a pretext
+for embarrassment.  At last she said gently, "You are not
+looking well, sir."
+
+"That's natural enough," said Newman.  "I have nothing to feel well about.
+To be very indifferent and very fierce, very dull and very jovial,
+very sick and very lively, all at once,--why, it rather mixes one up."
+
+Mrs. Bread gave a noiseless sigh.  "I can tell you something that
+will make you feel duller still, if you want to feel all one way.
+About Madame de Cintre."
+
+"What can you tell me?"  Newman demanded.  "Not that you have seen her?"
+
+She shook her head.  "No, indeed, sir, nor ever shall.
+That's the dullness of it.  Nor my lady.  Nor M. de Bellegarde."
+
+"You mean that she is kept so close."
+
+"Close, close," said Mrs. Bread, very softly.
+
+These words, for an instant, seemed to check the beating of Newman's heart.
+He leaned back in his chair, staring up at the old woman.  "They have tried
+to see her, and she wouldn't--she couldn't?"
+
+"She refused--forever!  I had it from my lady's own maid,"
+said Mrs. Bread, "who had it from my lady.  To speak
+of it to such a person my lady must have felt the shock.
+Madame de Cintre won't see them now, and now is her only chance.
+A while hence she will have no chance."
+
+"You mean the other women--the mothers, the daughters, the sisters;
+what is it they call them?--won't let her?"
+
+"It is what they call the rule of the house,--or of the order, I believe,"
+said Mrs. Bread.  "There is no rule so strict as that of the Carmelites.
+The bad women in the reformatories are fine ladies to them.
+They wear old brown cloaks--so the femme de chambre told me--
+that you wouldn't use for a horse blanket.  And the poor countess was
+so fond of soft-feeling dresses; she would never have anything stiff!
+They sleep on the ground," Mrs. Bread went on; "they are no better,
+no better,"--and she hesitated for a comparison,--"they are no better
+than tinkers' wives.  They give up everything, down to the very
+name their poor old nurses called them by.  They give up father
+and mother, brother and sister,--to say nothing of other persons,"
+Mrs. Bread delicately added.  "They wear a shroud under their brown
+cloaks and a rope round their waists, and they get up on winter
+nights and go off into cold places to pray to the Virgin Mary.
+The Virgin Mary is a hard mistress!"
+
+Mrs. Bread, dwelling on these terrible facts, sat dry-eyed
+and pale, with her hands clasped in her satin lap.  Newman gave
+a melancholy groan and fell forward, leaning his head on his hands.
+There was a long silence, broken only by the ticking of the great
+gilded clock on the chimney-piece.
+
+"Where is this place--where is the convent?"  Newman asked
+at last, looking up.
+
+"There are two houses," said Mrs. Bread.  "I found out; I thought
+you would like to know--though it's poor comfort, I think.
+One is in the Avenue de Messine; they have learned that Madame de Cintre
+is there.  The other is in the Rue d'Enfer. That's a terrible name;
+I suppose you know what it means."
+
+Newman got up and walked away to the end of his long room.  When he came
+back Mrs. Bread had got up, and stood by the fire with folded hands.
+"Tell me this," he said.  "Can I get near her--even if I don't see her?
+Can I look through a grating, or some such thing, at the place where she is?"
+
+It is said that all women love a lover, and Mrs. Bread's sense
+of the pre-established harmony which kept servants in their
+"place," even as planets in their orbits (not that Mrs. Bread
+had ever consciously likened herself to a planet), barely
+availed to temper the maternal melancholy with which she
+leaned her head on one side and gazed at her new employer.
+She probably felt for the moment as if, forty years before,
+she had held him also in her arms.  "That wouldn't help you, sir.
+It would only make her seem farther away."
+
+"I want to go there, at all events," said Newman.  "Avenue de Messine,
+you say?  And what is it they call themselves?"
+
+"Carmelites," said Mrs. Bread.
+
+"I shall remember that."
+
+Mrs. Bread hesitated a moment, and then, "It's my duty to tell
+you this, sir," she went on.  "The convent has a chapel,
+and some people are admitted on Sunday to the Mass.
+You don't see the poor creatures that are shut up there,
+but I am told you can hear them sing.  It's a wonder they have
+any heart for singing!  Some Sunday I shall make bold to go.
+It seems to me I should know her voice in fifty."
+
+Newman looked at his visitor very gratefully; then he held out his hand
+and shook hers.  "Thank you," he said.  "If any one can get in, I will."
+A moment later Mrs. Bread proposed, deferentially, to retire,
+but he checked her and put a lighted candle into her hand.
+"There are half a dozen rooms there I don't use," he said,
+pointing through an open door.  "Go and look at them and take
+your choice.  You can live in the one you like best."
+From this bewildering opportunity Mrs. Bread at first recoiled;
+but finally, yielding to Newman's gentle, reassuring push,
+she wandered off into the dusk with her tremulous taper.
+She remained absent a quarter of an hour, during which Newman
+paced up and down, stopped occasionally to look out of the window
+at the lights on the Boulevard, and then resumed his walk.
+Mrs. Bread's relish for her investigation apparently increased
+as she proceeded; but at last she reappeared and deposited her
+candlestick on the chimney-piece.
+
+"Well, have you picked one out?" asked Newman.
+
+"A room, sir?  They are all too fine for a dingy old body like me.
+There isn't one that hasn't a bit of gilding."
+
+"It's only tinsel, Mrs. Bread," said Newman.
+"If you stay there a while it will all peel off of itself."
+And he gave a dismal smile.
+
+"Oh, sir, there are things enough peeling off already!" rejoined Mrs. Bread,
+with a head-shake. "Since I was there I thought I would look about me.
+I don't believe you know, sir.  The corners are most dreadful.
+You do want a housekeeper, that you do; you want a tidy Englishwoman
+that isn't above taking hold of a broom."
+
+Newman assured her that he suspected, if he had not measured,
+his domestic abuses, and that to reform them was a mission worthy
+of her powers.  She held her candlestick aloft again and looked
+around the salon with compassionate glances; then she intimated
+that she accepted the mission, and that its sacred character
+would sustain her in her rupture with Madame de Bellegarde.
+With this she curtsied herself away.
+
+She came back the next day with her worldly goods, and Newman,
+going into his drawing-room, found her upon her aged
+knees before a divan, sewing up some detached fringe.
+He questioned her as to her leave-taking with her late mistress,
+and she said it had proved easier than she feared.
+"I was perfectly civil, sir, but the Lord helped me to remember
+that a good woman has no call to tremble before a bad one."
+
+"I should think so!" cried Newman.  "And does she know you
+have come to me?"
+
+"She asked me where I was going, and I mentioned your name,"
+said Mrs. Bread.
+
+"What did she say to that?"
+
+"She looked at me very hard, and she turned very red.  Then she bade
+me leave her.  I was all ready to go, and I had got the coachman,
+who is an Englishman, to bring down my poor box and to fetch me a cab.
+But when I went down myself to the gate I found it closed.
+My lady had sent orders to the porter not to let me pass, and by
+the same orders the porter's wife--she is a dreadful sly old body--
+had gone out in a cab to fetch home M. de Bellegarde from his club."
+
+Newman slapped his knee.  "She IS scared! she IS scared!"
+he cried, exultantly.
+
+"I was frightened too, sir," said Mrs. Bread, "but I was also
+mightily vexed.  I took it very high with the porter and asked
+him by what right he used violence to an honorable Englishwoman
+who had lived in the house for thirty years before he was heard of.
+Oh, sir, I was very grand, and I brought the man down.
+He drew his bolts and let me out, and I promised the cabman something
+handsome if he would drive fast.  But he was terribly slow;
+it seemed as if we should never reach your blessed door.
+I am all of a tremble still; it took me five minutes, just now,
+to thread my needle."
+
+Newman told her, with a gleeful laugh, that if she chose she
+might have a little maid on purpose to thread her needles;
+and he went away murmuring to himself again that the old woman
+WAS scared--she WAS scared!
+
+He had not shown Mrs. Tristram the little paper that he carried in his
+pocket-book, but since his return to Paris he had seen her several times,
+and she had told him that he seemed to her to be in a strange way--
+an even stranger way than his sad situation made natural.
+Had his disappointment gone to his head?  He looked like a man who was
+going to be ill, and yet she had never seen him more restless and active.
+One day he would sit hanging his head and looking as if he were firmly
+resolved never to smile again; another he would indulge in laughter
+that was almost unseemly and make jokes that were bad even for him.
+If he was trying to carry off his sorrow, he at such times really
+went too far.  She begged him of all things not to be "strange."
+Feeling in a measure responsible as she did for the affair which had turned
+out so ill for him, she could endure anything but his strangeness.
+He might be melancholy if he would, or he might be stoical;
+he might be cross and cantankerous with her and ask her why she had
+ever dared to meddle with his destiny:  to this she would submit;
+for this she would make allowances.  Only, for Heaven's sake,
+let him not be incoherent.  That would be extremely unpleasant.
+It was like people talking in their sleep; they always frightened her.
+And Mrs. Tristram intimated that, taking very high ground as regards
+the moral obligation which events had laid upon her, she proposed not to
+rest quiet until she should have confronted him with the least inadequate
+substitute for Madame de Cintre that the two hemispheres contained.
+
+"Oh," said Newman, "we are even now, and we had better not open
+a new account!  You may bury me some day, but you shall never
+marry me.  It's too rough.  I hope, at any rate," he added,
+"that there is nothing incoherent in this--that I want to go
+next Sunday to the Carmelite chapel in the Avenue de Messine.
+You know one of the Catholic ministers--an abbe, is that it?--
+I have seen him here, you know; that motherly old gentleman
+with the big waist-band. Please ask him if I need a special
+leave to go in, and if I do, beg him to obtain it for me."
+
+Mrs. Tristram gave expression to the liveliest joy.
+"I am so glad you have asked me to do something!" she cried.
+"You shall get into the chapel if the abbe is disfrocked
+for his share in it."  And two days afterwards she told him
+that it was all arranged; the abbe was enchanted to serve him,
+and if he would present himself civilly at the convent gate
+there would be no difficulty.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+Sunday was as yet two days off; but meanwhile, to beguile his impatience,
+Newman took his way to the Avenue de Messine and got what comfort he could
+in staring at the blank outer wall of Madame de Cintre's present residence.
+The street in question, as some travelers will remember, adjoins the
+Parc Monceau, which is one of the prettiest corners of Paris.
+The quarter has an air of modern opulence and convenience which seems
+at variance with the ascetic institution, and the impression made upon
+Newman's gloomily-irritated gaze by the fresh-looking, windowless expanse
+behind which the woman he loved was perhaps even then pledging herself
+to pass the rest of her days was less exasperating than he had feared.
+The place suggested a convent with the modern improvements--an asylum in
+which privacy, though unbroken, might be not quite identical with privation,
+and meditation, though monotonous, might be of a cheerful cast.  And yet
+he knew the case was otherwise; only at present it was not a reality to him.
+It was too strange and too mocking to be real; it was like a page torn
+out of a romance, with no context in his own experience.
+
+On Sunday morning, at the hour which Mrs. Tristram had indicated,
+he rang at the gate in the blank wall.  It instantly
+opened and admitted him into a clean, cold-looking court,
+from beyond which a dull, plain edifice looked down upon him.
+A robust lay sister with a cheerful complexion emerged from a
+porter's lodge, and, on his stating his errand, pointed to the open
+door of the chapel, an edifice which occupied the right side
+of the court and was preceded by the high flight of steps.
+Newman ascended the steps and immediately entered the open door.
+Service had not yet begun; the place was dimly lighted, and it
+was some moments before he could distinguish its features.
+Then he saw it was divided by a large close iron screen into two
+unequal portions.  The altar was on the hither side of the screen,
+and between it and the entrance were disposed several benches
+and chairs.  Three or four of these were occupied by vague,
+motionless figures--figures that he presently perceived to
+be women, deeply absorbed in their devotion.  The place seemed
+to Newman very cold; the smell of the incense itself was cold.
+Besides this there was a twinkle of tapers and here and
+there a glow of colored glass.  Newman seated himself;
+the praying women kept still, with their backs turned.
+He saw they were visitors like himself and he would have liked
+to see their faces; for he believed that they were the mourning
+mothers and sisters of other women who had had the same pitiless
+courage as Madame de Cintre.  But they were better off than he,
+for they at least shared the faith to which the others
+had sacrificed themselves.  Three or four persons came in;
+two of them were elderly gentlemen.  Every one was very quiet.
+Newman fastened his eyes upon the screen behind the altar.
+That was the convent, the real convent, the place where she was.
+But he could see nothing; no light came through the crevices.
+He got up and approached the partition very gently,
+trying to look through.  But behind it there was darkness,
+with nothing stirring.  He went back to his place, and after
+that a priest and two altar boys came in and began to say mass.
+Newman watched their genuflections and gyrations with a grim,
+still enmity; they seemed aids and abettors of Madame de
+Cintre's desertion; they were mouthing and droning out their triumph.
+The priest's long, dismal intonings acted upon his nerves
+and deepened his wrath; there was something defiant in his
+unintelligible drawl; it seemed meant for Newman himself.
+Suddenly there arose from the depths of the chapel, from behind
+the inexorable grating, a sound which drew his attention from
+the altar--the sound of a strange, lugubrious chant, uttered by
+women's voices.  It began softly, but it presently grew louder,
+and as it increased it became more of a wail and a dirge.
+It was the chant of the Carmelite nuns, their only human utterance.
+It was their dirge over their buried affections and over the vanity
+of earthly desires.  At first Newman was bewildered--almost stunned--
+by the strangeness of the sound; then, as he comprehended
+its meaning, he listened intently and his heart began to throb.
+He listened for Madame de Cintre's voice, and in the very
+heart of the tuneless harmony he imagined he made it out.
+(We are obliged to believe that he was wrong, inasmuch as
+she had obviously not yet had time to become a member
+of the invisible sisterhood.) The chant kept on, mechanical
+and monotonous, with dismal repetitions and despairing cadences.
+It was hideous, it was horrible; as it continued, Newman felt
+that he needed all his self-control. He was growing more agitated;
+he felt tears in his eyes.  At last, as in its full force
+the thought came over him that this confused, impersonal wail
+was all that either he or the world she had deserted should ever
+hear of the voice he had found so sweet, he felt that he could
+bear it no longer.  He rose abruptly and made his way out.
+On the threshold he paused, listened again to the dreary strain,
+and then hastily descended into the court.  As he did so he saw
+the good sister with the high-colored cheeks and the fanlike
+frill to her coiffure, who had admitted him, was in conference
+at the gate with two persons who had just come in.
+A second glance informed him that these persons were Madame
+de Bellegarde and her son, and that they were about to avail
+themselves of that method of approach to Madame de Cintre
+which Newman had found but a mockery of consolation.
+As he crossed the court M. de Bellegarde recognized him;
+the marquis was coming to the steps, leading his mother.  The old
+lady also gave Newman a look, and it resembled that of her son.
+Both faces expressed a franker perturbation, something more akin
+to the humbleness of dismay, than Newman had yet seen in them.
+Evidently he startled the Bellegardes, and they had not their
+grand behavior immediately in hand.  Newman hurried past them,
+guided only by the desire to get out of the convent walls
+and into the street.  The gate opened itself at his approach;
+he strode over the threshold and it closed behind him.
+A carriage which appeared to have been standing there,
+was just turning away from the sidewalk.  Newman looked at it
+for a moment, blankly; then he became conscious, through the dusky
+mist that swam before his eyes, that a lady seated in it was bowing
+to him.  The vehicle had turned away before he recognized her;
+it was an ancient landau with one half the cover lowered.
+The lady's bow was very positive and accompanied with a smile;
+a little girl was seated beside her.  He raised his hat, and then
+the lady bade the coachman stop.  The carriage halted again
+beside the pavement, and she sat there and beckoned to Newman--
+beckoned with the demonstrative grace of Madame Urbain de Bellegarde.
+Newman hesitated a moment before he obeyed her summons, during this
+moment he had time to curse his stupidity for letting the others
+escape him.  He had been wondering how he could get at them;
+fool that he was for not stopping them then and there!
+What better place than beneath the very prison walls to which they
+had consigned the promise of his joy?  He had been too bewildered
+to stop them, but now he felt ready to wait for them at the gate.
+Madame Urbain, with a certain attractive petulance, beckoned to
+him again, and this time he went over to the carriage.
+She leaned out and gave him her hand, looking at him kindly,
+and smiling.
+
+"Ah, monsieur," she said, "you don't include me in your wrath?
+I had nothing to do with it."
+
+"Oh, I don't suppose YOU could have prevented it!"
+Newman answered in a tone which was not that of studied gallantry.
+
+"What you say is too true for me to resent the small account
+it makes of my influence.  I forgive you, at any rate,
+because you look as if you had seen a ghost."
+
+"I have!" said Newman.
+
+"I am glad, then, I didn't go in with Madame de Bellegarde and my husband.
+You must have seen them, eh?  Was the meeting affectionate?  Did you
+hear the chanting?  They say it's like the lamentations of the damned.
+I wouldn't go in:  one is certain to hear that soon enough.
+Poor Claire--in a white shroud and a big brown cloak!
+That's the toilette of the Carmelites, you know.  Well, she was always
+fond of long, loose things.  But I must not speak of her to you;
+only I must say that I am very sorry for you, that if I could have
+helped you I would, and that I think every one has been very shabby.
+I was afraid of it, you know; I felt it in the air for a fortnight
+before it came.  When I saw you at my mother-in-law's ball,
+taking it all so easily, I felt as if you were dancing on your grave.
+But what could I do?  I wish you all the good I can think of.
+You will say that isn't much!  Yes; they have been very shabby;
+I am not a bit afraid to say it; I assure you every one thinks so.
+We are not all like that.  I am sorry I am not going to see you again;
+you know I think you very good company.  I would prove it by asking
+you to get into the carriage and drive with me for a quarter of
+an hour, while I wait for my mother-in-law. Only if we were seen--
+considering what has passed, and every one knows you have been turned away--
+it might be thought I was going a little too far, even for me.
+But I shall see you sometimes--somewhere, eh?  You know"--
+this was said in English--"we have a plan for a little amusement."
+
+Newman stood there with his hand on the carriage-door
+listening to this consolatory murmur with an unlighted eye.
+He hardly knew what Madame de Bellegarde was saying;
+he was only conscious that she was chattering ineffectively.
+But suddenly it occurred to him that, with her pretty
+professions, there was a way of making her effective;
+she might help him to get at the old woman and the marquis.
+"They are coming back soon--your companions?" he said.
+"You are waiting for them?"
+
+"They will hear the mass out; there is nothing to keep them longer.
+Claire has refused to see them."
+
+"I want to speak to them," said Newman; "and you can help me, you can do me
+a favor.  Delay your return for five minutes and give me a chance at them.
+I will wait for them here."
+
+Madame de Bellegarde clasped her hands with a tender grimace.
+"My poor friend, what do you want to do to them?
+To beg them to come back to you?  It will be wasted words.
+They will never come back!"
+
+"I want to speak to them, all the same.  Pray do what I ask you.
+Stay away and leave them to me for five minutes; you needn't be afraid;
+I shall not be violent; I am very quiet."
+
+"Yes, you look very quiet!  If they had le coeur tendre you would move them.
+But they haven't! However, I will do better for you than what you propose.
+The understanding is not that I shall come back for them.
+I am going into the Parc Monceau with my little girl to give her
+a walk, and my mother-in-law, who comes so rarely into this quarter,
+is to profit by the same opportunity to take the air.  We are to wait
+for her in the park, where my husband is to bring her to us.
+Follow me now; just within the gates I shall get out of my carriage.
+Sit down on a chair in some quiet corner and I will bring them near you.
+There's devotion for you!  Le reste vous regarde."
+
+This proposal seemed to Newman extremely felicitous; it revived his
+drooping spirit, and he reflected that Madame Urbain was not such
+a goose as she seemed.  He promised immediately to overtake her,
+and the carriage drove away.
+
+The Parc Monceau is a very pretty piece of landscape-gardening,
+but Newman, passing into it, bestowed little attention upon its
+elegant vegetation, which was full of the freshness of spring.
+He found Madame de Bellegarde promptly, seated in one of the quiet
+corners of which she had spoken, while before her, in the alley,
+her little girl, attended by the footman and the lap-dog, walked
+up and down as if she were taking a lesson in deportment.
+Newman sat down beside the mamma, and she talked a great deal,
+apparently with the design of convincing him that--if he would
+only see it--poor dear Claire did not belong to the most
+fascinating type of woman.  She was too tall and thin, too stiff
+and cold; her mouth was too wide and her nose too narrow.
+She had no dimples anywhere.  And then she was eccentric,
+eccentric in cold blood; she was an Anglaise, after all.
+Newman was very impatient; he was counting the minutes until his
+victims should reappear.  He sat silent, leaning upon his cane,
+looking absently and insensibly at the little marquise.
+At length Madame de Bellegarde said she would walk toward the gate
+of the park and meet her companions; but before she went she
+dropped her eyes, and, after playing a moment with the lace
+of her sleeve, looked up again at Newman.
+
+"Do you remember," she asked, "the promise you made me three
+weeks ago?"  And then, as Newman, vainly consulting his memory,
+was obliged to confess that the promise had escaped it,
+she declared that he had made her, at the time, a very
+queer answer--an answer at which, viewing it in the light
+of the sequel, she had fair ground for taking offense.
+"You promised to take me to Bullier's after your marriage.
+After your marriage--you made a great point of that.
+Three days after that your marriage was broken off.  Do you know,
+when I heard the news, the first thing I said to myself?
+'Oh heaven, now he won't go with me to Bullier's!' And I really
+began to wonder if you had not been expecting the rupture."
+
+"Oh, my dear lady," murmured Newman, looking down the path to see
+if the others were not coming.
+
+"I shall be good-natured," said Madame de Bellegarde.  "One must not
+ask too much of a gentleman who is in love with a cloistered nun.
+Besides, I can't go to Bullier's while we are in mourning.
+But I haven't given it up for that.  The partie is arranged;
+I have my cavalier.  Lord Deepmere, if you please!  He has gone
+back to his dear Dublin; but a few months hence I am to name
+any evening and he will come over from Ireland, on purpose.
+That's what I call gallantry!"
+
+Shortly after this Madame de Bellegarde walked away with her little girl.
+Newman sat in his place; the time seemed terribly long.
+He felt how fiercely his quarter of an hour in the convent chapel
+had raked over the glowing coals of his resentment.  Madame de
+Bellegarde kept him waiting, but she proved as good as her word.
+At last she reappeared at the end of the path, with her little
+girl and her footman; beside her slowly walked her husband,
+with his mother on his arm.  They were a long time advancing,
+during which Newman sat unmoved.  Tingling as he was with passion,
+it was extremely characteristic of him that he was able to moderate
+his expression of it, as he would have turned down a flaring
+gas-burner. His native coolness, shrewdness, and deliberateness,
+his life-long submissiveness to the sentiment that words were acts
+and acts were steps in life, and that in this matter of taking steps
+curveting and prancing were exclusively reserved for quadrupeds
+and foreigners--all this admonished him that rightful wrath had no
+connection with being a fool and indulging in spectacular violence.
+So as he rose, when old Madame de Bellegarde and her son were close
+to him, he only felt very tall and light.  He had been sitting beside
+some shrubbery, in such a way as not to be noticeable at a distance;
+but M. de Bellegarde had evidently already perceived him.
+His mother and he were holding their course, but Newman
+stepped in front of them, and they were obliged to pause.
+He lifted his hat slightly, and looked at them for a moment;
+they were pale with amazement and disgust.
+
+"Excuse me for stopping you," he said in a low tone, "but I
+must profit by the occasion.  I have ten words to say to you.
+Will you listen to them?"
+
+The marquis glared at him and then turned to his mother.
+"Can Mr. Newman possibly have anything to say that is worth
+our listening to?"
+
+"I assure you I have something," said Newman, "besides, it is my duty
+to say it.  It's a notification--a warning."
+
+"Your duty?" said old Madame de Bellegarde, her thin lips curving
+like scorched paper.  "That is your affair, not ours."
+
+Madame Urbain meanwhile had seized her little girl by the hand,
+with a gesture of surprise and impatience which struck Newman,
+intent as he was upon his own words, with its dramatic effectiveness.
+"If Mr. Newman is going to make a scene in public,"
+she exclaimed, "I will take my poor child out of the melee.
+She is too young to see such naughtiness!" and she instantly
+resumed her walk.
+
+"You had much better listen to me," Newman went on.
+"Whether you do or not, things will be disagreeable for you;
+but at any rate you will be prepared."
+
+"We have already heard something of your threats," said the marquis,
+"and you know what we think of them."
+
+"You think a good deal more than you admit.  A moment,"
+Newman added in reply to an exclamation of the old lady.
+"I remember perfectly that we are in a public place, and you see I am
+very quiet.  I am not going to tell your secret to the passers-by;
+I shall keep it, to begin with, for certain picked listeners.
+Any one who observes us will think that we are having a friendly chat,
+and that I am complimenting you, madam, on your venerable virtues."
+
+The marquis gave three short sharp raps on the ground with his stick.
+"I demand of you to step out of our path!" he hissed.
+
+Newman instantly complied, and M. de Bellegarde stepped forward
+with his mother.  Then Newman said, "Half an hour hence Madame de
+Bellegarde will regret that she didn't learn exactly what I mean."
+
+The marquise had taken a few steps, but at these words she paused,
+looking at Newman with eyes like two scintillating globules of ice.
+"You are like a peddler with something to sell," she said,
+with a little cold laugh which only partially concealed the tremor
+in her voice.
+
+"Oh, no, not to sell," Newman rejoined; "I give it to you for nothing."
+And he approached nearer to her, looking her straight in the eyes.
+"You killed your husband," he said, almost in a whisper.  "That is,
+you tried once and failed, and then, without trying, you succeeded."
+
+Madame de Bellegarde closed her eyes and gave a little cough, which,
+as a piece of dissimulation, struck Newman as really heroic.
+"Dear mother," said the marquis, "does this stuff amuse you so much?"
+
+"The rest is more amusing," said Newman.  "You had better not lose it."
+
+Madame de Bellegarde opened her eyes; the scintillations had gone out of them;
+they were fixed and dead.  But she smiled superbly with her narrow
+little lips, and repeated Newman's word.  "Amusing?  Have I killed
+some one else?"
+
+"I don't count your daughter," said Newman, "though I might!
+Your husband knew what you were doing.  I have a proof
+of it whose existence you have never suspected."
+And he turned to the marquis, who was terribly white--
+whiter than Newman had ever seen any one out of a picture.
+"A paper written by the hand, and signed with the name,
+of Henri-Urbain de Bellegarde.  Written after you, madame, had left
+him for dead, and while you, sir, had gone--not very fast--
+for the doctor."
+
+The marquis looked at his mother; she turned away, looking vaguely round her.
+"I must sit down," she said in a low tone, going toward the bench on which
+Newman had been sitting.
+
+"Couldn't you have spoken to me alone?" said the marquis to Newman,
+with a strange look.
+
+"Well, yes, if I could have been sure of speaking to your mother alone, too,"
+Newman answered.  "But I have had to take you as I could get you."
+
+Madame de Bellegarde, with a movement very eloquent of what he would
+have called her "grit," her steel-cold pluck and her instinctive
+appeal to her own personal resources, drew her hand out of her son's
+arm and went and seated herself upon the bench.  There she remained,
+with her hands folded in her lap, looking straight at Newman.
+The expression of her face was such that he fancied at first
+that she was smiling; but he went and stood in front of her
+and saw that her elegant features were distorted by agitation.
+He saw, however, equally, that she was resisting her agitation with all
+the rigor of her inflexible will, and there was nothing like either
+fear or submission in her stony stare.  She had been startled,
+but she was not terrified.  Newman had an exasperating feeling
+that she would get the better of him still; he would not have
+believed it possible that he could so utterly fail to be touched
+by the sight of a woman (criminal or other) in so tight a place.
+Madame de Bellegarde gave a glance at her son which seemed tantamount
+to an injunction to be silent and leave her to her own devices.
+The marquis stood beside her, with his hands behind him,
+looking at Newman.
+
+"What paper is this you speak of?" asked the old lady, with an imitation
+of tranquillity which would have been applauded in a veteran actress.
+
+"Exactly what I have told you," said Newman.  "A paper
+written by your husband after you had left him for dead,
+and during the couple of hours before you returned.
+You see he had the time; you shouldn't have stayed away so long.
+It declares distinctly his wife's murderous intent."
+
+"I should like to see it," Madame de Bellegarde observed.
+
+"I thought you might," said Newman, "and I have taken a copy."
+And he drew from his waistcoat pocket a small, folded sheet.
+
+"Give it to my son," said Madame de Bellegarde.
+Newman handed it to the marquis, whose mother, glancing at him,
+said simply, "Look at it."  M. de Bellegarde's eyes had a pale
+eagerness which it was useless for him to try to dissimulate;
+he took the paper in his light-gloved fingers and opened it.
+There was a silence, during which he read it.  He had more than time
+to read it, but still he said nothing; he stood staring at it.
+"Where is the original?" asked Madame de Bellegarde, in a voice
+which was really a consummate negation of impatience.
+
+"In a very safe place.  Of course I can't show you that," said Newman.
+"You might want to take hold of it," he added with conscious quaintness.
+"But that's a very correct copy--except, of course, the handwriting.
+I am keeping the original to show some one else."
+
+M. de Bellegarde at last looked up, and his eyes were still very eager.
+"To whom do you mean to show it?"
+
+"Well, I'm thinking of beginning with the duchess," said Newman;
+"that stout lady I saw at your ball.  She asked me to come and see her,
+you know.  I thought at the moment I shouldn't have much to say to her;
+but my little document will give us something to talk about."
+
+"You had better keep it, my son," said Madame de Bellegarde.
+
+"By all means," said Newman; "keep it and show it to your mother
+when you get home."
+
+"And after showing it to the duchess?"--asked the marquis,
+folding the paper and putting it away.
+
+"Well, I'll take up the dukes," said Newman.  "Then the counts
+and the barons--all the people you had the cruelty to introduce me
+to in a character of which you meant immediately to deprive me.
+I have made out a list."
+
+For a moment neither Madame de Bellegarde nor her son said a word;
+the old lady sat with her eyes upon the ground; M. de Bellegarde's
+blanched pupils were fixed upon her face.  Then, looking at Newman,
+"Is that all you have to say?" she asked.
+
+"No, I want to say a few words more.  I want to say that I hope you
+quite understand what I'm about.  This is my revenge, you know.
+You have treated me before the world--convened for the express purpose--
+as if I were not good enough for you.  I mean to show the world that,
+however bad I may be, you are not quite the people to say it."
+
+Madame de Bellegarde was silent again, and then she broke
+her silence.  Her self-possession continued to be extraordinary.
+"I needn't ask you who has been your accomplice.
+Mrs. Bread told me that you had purchased her services."
+
+"Don't accuse Mrs. Bread of venality," said Newman.  "She has kept
+your secret all these years.  She has given you a long respite.
+It was beneath her eyes your husband wrote that paper; he put it into
+her hands with a solemn injunction that she was to make it public.
+She was too good-hearted to make use of it."
+
+The old lady appeared for an instant to hesitate, and then,
+"She was my husband's mistress," she said, softly.  This was
+the only concession to self-defense that she condescended to make.
+
+"I doubt that," said Newman.
+
+Madame de Bellegarde got up from her bench.  "It was not to your
+opinions I undertook to listen, and if you have nothing left but them
+to tell me I think this remarkable interview may terminate."
+And turning to the marquis she took his arm again.  "My son,"
+she said, "say something!"
+
+M. de Bellegarde looked down at his mother, passing his hand
+over his forehead, and then, tenderly, caressingly, "What shall
+I say?" he asked.
+
+"There is only one thing to say," said the Marquise.
+"That it was really not worth while to have interrupted our walk."
+
+But the marquis thought he could improve this.  "Your paper's a forgery,"
+he said to Newman.
+
+Newman shook his head a little, with a tranquil smile.
+"M. de Bellegarde," he said, "your mother does better.
+She has done better all along, from the first of my knowing you.
+You're a mighty plucky woman, madam," he continued.
+"It's a great pity you have made me your enemy.
+I should have been one of your greatest admirers."
+
+"Mon pauvre ami," said Madame de Bellegarde to her son in French,
+and as if she had not heard these words, "you must take me immediately
+to my carriage."
+
+Newman stepped back and let them leave him; he watched them a moment and saw
+Madame Urbain, with her little girl, come out of a by-path to meet them.
+The old lady stooped and kissed her grandchild.  "Damn it, she is plucky!"
+said Newman, and he walked home with a slight sense of being balked.
+She was so inexpressively defiant!  But on reflection he decided that what
+he had witnessed was no real sense of security, still less a real innocence.
+It was only a very superior style of brazen assurance.  "Wait till she
+reads the paper!" he said to himself; and he concluded that he should hear
+from her soon.
+
+He heard sooner than he expected.  The next morning,
+before midday, when he was about to give orders for his breakfast
+to be served, M. de Bellegarde's card was brought to him.
+"She has read the paper and she has passed a bad night,"
+said Newman.  He instantly admitted his visitor, who came
+in with the air of the ambassador of a great power meeting
+the delegate of a barbarous tribe whom an absurd accident
+had enabled for the moment to be abominably annoying.
+The ambassador, at all events, had passed a bad night, and his
+faultlessly careful toilet only threw into relief the frigid rancor
+in his eyes and the mottled tones of his refined complexion.
+He stood before Newman a moment, breathing quickly and softly,
+and shaking his forefinger curtly as his host pointed to a chair.
+
+"What I have come to say is soon said," he declared "and can
+only be said without ceremony."
+
+"I am good for as much or for as little as you desire," said Newman.
+
+The marquis looked round the room a moment, and then, "On what terms
+will you part with your scrap of paper?"
+
+"On none!"  And while Newman, with his head on one side and his hands
+behind him sounded the marquis's turbid gaze with his own, he added,
+"Certainly, that is not worth sitting down about."
+
+M. de Bellegarde meditated a moment, as if he had not heard Newman's refusal.
+"My mother and I, last evening," he said, "talked over your story.
+You will be surprised to learn that we think your little document is--a"--
+and he held back his word a moment--"is genuine."
+
+"You forget that with you I am used to surprises!" exclaimed Newman,
+with a laugh.
+
+"The very smallest amount of respect that we owe to my father's memory,"
+the marquis continued, "makes us desire that he should not be held
+up to the world as the author of so--so infernal an attack upon
+the reputation of a wife whose only fault was that she had been
+submissive to accumulated injury."
+
+"Oh, I see," said Newman.  "It's for your father's sake."
+And he laughed the laugh in which he indulged when he was most amused--
+a noiseless laugh, with his lips closed.
+
+But M. de Bellegarde's gravity held good.  "There are a few
+of my father's particular friends for whom the knowledge of so--
+so unfortunate an--inspiration--would be a real grief.
+Even say we firmly established by medical evidence the presumption
+of a mind disordered by fever, il en resterait quelque chose.
+At the best it would look ill in him.  Very ill!"
+
+"Don't try medical evidence," said Newman.  "Don't touch the doctors and they
+won't touch you.  I don't mind your knowing that I have not written to them."
+
+Newman fancied that he saw signs in M. de Bellegarde's discolored mask
+that this information was extremely pertinent.  But it may have been
+merely fancy; for the marquis remained majestically argumentative.
+"For instance, Madame d'Outreville," he said, "of whom you spoke yesterday.
+I can imagine nothing that would shock her more."
+
+"Oh, I am quite prepared to shock Madame d'Outreville, you know.
+That's on the cards.  I expect to shock a great many people."
+
+M. de Bellegarde examined for a moment the stitching on the back of one of
+his gloves.  Then, without looking up, "We don't offer you money," he said.
+"That we supposed to be useless."
+
+Newman, turning away, took a few turns about the room and then came back.
+"What DO you offer me?  By what I can make out, the generosity is all to be
+on my side."
+
+The marquis dropped his arms at his side and held his head a little higher.
+"What we offer you is a chance--a chance that a gentleman should appreciate.
+A chance to abstain from inflicting a terrible blot upon the memory of a man
+who certainly had his faults, but who, personally, had done you no wrong."
+
+"There are two things to say to that," said Newman.
+"The first is, as regards appreciating your 'chance,' that you
+don't consider me a gentleman.  That's your great point you know.
+It's a poor rule that won't work both ways.  The second
+is that--well, in a word, you are talking great nonsense!"
+
+Newman, who in the midst of his bitterness had, as I have said,
+kept well before his eyes a certain ideal of saying nothing rude,
+was immediately somewhat regretfully conscious of the sharpness
+of these words.  But he speedily observed that the marquis took
+them more quietly than might have been expected.  M. de Bellegarde,
+like the stately ambassador that he was, continued the policy
+of ignoring what was disagreeable in his adversary's replies.
+He gazed at the gilded arabesques on the opposite wall, and then
+presently transferred his glance to Newman, as if he too were
+a large grotesque in a rather vulgar system of chamber-decoration.
+"I suppose you know that as regards yourself it won't do at all."
+
+"How do you mean it won't do?"
+
+"Why, of course you damn yourself.  But I suppose that's in your programme.
+You propose to throw mud at us; you believe, you hope, that some of it
+may stick.  We know, of course, it can't," explained the marquis in a tone
+of conscious lucidity; "but you take the chance, and are willing at any rate
+to show that you yourself have dirty hands."
+
+"That's a good comparison; at least half of it is," said Newman.
+"I take the chance of something sticking.  But as regards my hands,
+they are clean.  I have taken the matter up with my finger-tips."
+
+M. de Bellegarde looked a moment into his hat.  "All our friends are quite
+with us," he said.  "They would have done exactly as we have done."
+
+"I shall believe that when I hear them say it.  Meanwhile I shall
+think better of human nature."
+
+The marquis looked into his hat again.  "Madame de Cintre was
+extremely fond of her father.  If she knew of the existence of the few
+written words of which you propose to make this scandalous use,
+she would demand of you proudly for his sake to give it up to her,
+and she would destroy it without reading it."
+
+"Very possibly," Newman rejoined.  "But she will not know.
+I was in that convent yesterday and I know what SHE is doing.
+Lord deliver us!  You can guess whether it made me feel forgiving!"
+
+M. de Bellegarde appeared to have nothing more to suggest;
+but he continued to stand there, rigid and elegant, as a man who
+believed that his mere personal presence had an argumentative value.
+Newman watched him, and, without yielding an inch on the main issue,
+felt an incongruously good-natured impulse to help him to retreat
+in good order.
+
+"Your visit's a failure, you see," he said.  "You offer too little."
+
+"Propose something yourself," said the marquis.
+
+"Give me back Madame de Cintre in the same state in which you
+took her from me."
+
+M. de Bellegarde threw back his head and his pale face flushed.
+"Never!" he said.
+
+"You can't!"
+
+"We wouldn't if we could!  In the sentiment which led us to deprecate
+her marriage nothing is changed."
+
+" 'Deprecate' is good!" cried Newman.  "It was hardly worth while to
+come here only to tell me that you are not ashamed of yourselves.
+I could have guessed that!"
+
+The marquis slowly walked toward the door, and Newman,
+following, opened it for him.  "What you propose to do will be
+very disagreeable," M. de Bellegarde said.  "That is very evident.
+But it will be nothing more."
+
+"As I understand it," Newman answered, "that will be quite enough!"
+
+M. de Bellegarde stood for a moment looking on the ground,
+as if he were ransacking his ingenuity to see what else
+he could do to save his father's reputation.  Then, with a
+little cold sigh, he seemed to signify that he regretfully
+surrendered the late marquis to the penalty of his turpitude.
+He gave a hardly perceptible shrug, took his neat umbrella from
+the servant in the vestibule, and, with his gentlemanly walk,
+passed out.  Newman stood listening till he heard the door close;
+then he slowly exclaimed, "Well, I ought to begin to
+be satisfied now!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+Newman called upon the comical duchess and found her at home.
+An old gentleman with a high nose and a gold-headed cane was just taking
+leave of her; he made Newman a protracted obeisance as he retired,
+and our hero supposed that he was one of the mysterious grandees
+with whom he had shaken hands at Madame de Bellegarde's ball.
+The duchess, in her arm-chair, from which she did not move,
+with a great flower-pot on one side of her, a pile of pink-covered
+novels on the other, and a large piece of tapestry depending
+from her lap, presented an expansive and imposing front;
+but her aspect was in the highest degree gracious, and there was
+nothing in her manner to check the effusion of his confidence.
+She talked to him about flowers and books, getting launched
+with marvelous promptitude; about the theatres, about the peculiar
+institutions of his native country, about the humidity of Paris
+about the pretty complexions of the American ladies, about his
+impressions of France and his opinion of its female inhabitants.
+All this was a brilliant monologue on the part of the duchess, who,
+like many of her country-women, was a person of an affirmative rather
+than an interrogative cast of mind, who made mots and put them
+herself into circulation, and who was apt to offer you a present
+of a convenient little opinion, neatly enveloped in the gilt paper
+of a happy Gallicism.  Newman had come to her with a grievance,
+but he found himself in an atmosphere in which apparently
+no cognizance was taken of grievance; an atmosphere into which
+the chill of discomfort had never penetrated, and which seemed
+exclusively made up of mild, sweet, stale intellectual perfumes.
+The feeling with which he had watched Madame d'Outreville at
+the treacherous festival of the Bellegardes came back to him;
+she struck him as a wonderful old lady in a comedy, particularly well
+up in her part.  He observed before long that she asked him
+no questions about their common friends; she made no allusion
+to the circumstances under which he had been presented to her.
+She neither feigned ignorance of a change in these circumstances
+nor pretended to condole with him upon it; but she smiled and
+discoursed and compared the tender-tinted wools of her tapestry,
+as if the Bellegardes and their wickedness were not of this world.
+"She is fighting shy!" said Newman to himself; and, having made
+the observation, he was prompted to observe, farther, how the duchess
+would carry off her indifference.  She did so in a masterly manner.
+There was not a gleam of disguised consciousness in those small,
+clear, demonstrative eyes which constituted her nearest claim
+to personal loveliness, there was not a symptom of apprehension
+that Newman would trench upon the ground she proposed to avoid.
+"Upon my word, she does it very well," he tacitly commented.
+"They all hold together bravely, and, whether any one else can
+trust them or not, they can certainly trust each other."
+
+Newman, at this juncture, fell to admiring the duchess for her
+fine manners.  He felt, most accurately, that she was not
+a grain less urbane than she would have been if his marriage
+were still in prospect; but he felt also that she was not
+a particle more urbane.  He had come, so reasoned the duchess--
+Heaven knew why he had come, after what had happened;
+and for the half hour, therefore, she would be charmante.
+But she would never see him again.  Finding no ready-made
+opportunity to tell his story, Newman pondered these things
+more dispassionately than might have been expected;
+he stretched his legs, as usual, and even chuckled a little,
+appreciatively and noiselessly.  And then as the duchess went
+on relating a mot with which her mother had snubbed the great
+Napoleon, it occurred to Newman that her evasion of a chapter
+of French history more interesting to himself might possibly
+be the result of an extreme consideration for his feelings.
+Perhaps it was delicacy on the duchess's part--not policy.
+He was on the point of saying something himself, to make
+the chance which he had determined to give her still better,
+when the servant announced another visitor.  The duchess,
+on hearing the name--it was that of an Italian prince--
+gave a little imperceptible pout, and said to Newman, rapidly:
+"I beg you to remain; I desire this visit to be short."
+Newman said to himself, at this, that Madame d'Outreville intended,
+after all, that they should discuss the Bellegardes together.
+
+The prince was a short, stout man, with a head disproportionately large.
+He had a dusky complexion and a bushy eyebrow, beneath which his
+eye wore a fixed and somewhat defiant expression; he seemed to be
+challenging you to insinuate that he was top-heavy. The duchess,
+judging from her charge to Newman, regarded him as a bore;
+but this was not apparent from the unchecked flow of her conversation.
+She made a fresh series of mots, characterized with great felicity
+the Italian intellect and the taste of the figs at Sorrento,
+predicted the ultimate future of the Italian kingdom
+(disgust with the brutal Sardinian rule and complete reversion,
+throughout the peninsula, to the sacred sway of the Holy Father), and,
+finally, gave a history of the love affairs of the Princess X----.
+This narrative provoked some rectifications on the part of the prince,
+who, as he said, pretended to know something about that matter;
+and having satisfied himself that Newman was in no laughing mood,
+either with regard to the size of his head or anything else,
+he entered into the controversy with an animation for which the duchess,
+when she set him down as a bore, could not have been prepared.
+The sentimental vicissitudes of the Princess X----led to a discussion
+of the heart history of Florentine nobility in general; the duchess
+had spent five weeks in Florence and had gathered much information
+on the subject.  This was merged, in turn, in an examination of the
+Italian heart per se.  The duchess took a brilliantly heterodox view--
+thought it the least susceptible organ of its kind that she had
+ever encountered, related examples of its want of susceptibility,
+and at last declared that for her the Italians were a people of ice.
+The prince became flame to refute her, and his visit really
+proved charming.  Newman was naturally out of the conversation;
+he sat with his head a little on one side, watching the interlocutors.
+The duchess, as she talked, frequently looked at him with a smile,
+as if to intimate, in the charming manner of her nation, that it
+lay only with him to say something very much to the point.
+But he said nothing at all, and at last his thoughts began to wander.
+A singular feeling came over him--a sudden sense of the folly of
+his errand.  What under the sun had he to say to the duchess, after all?
+Wherein would it profit him to tell her that the Bellegardes were
+traitors and that the old lady, into the bargain was a murderess?
+He seemed morally to have turned a sort of somersault, and to find
+things looking differently in consequence.  He felt a sudden stiffening
+of his will and quickening of his reserve.  What in the world had he been
+thinking of when he fancied the duchess could help him, and that it
+would conduce to his comfort to make her think ill of the Bellegardes?
+What did her opinion of the Bellegardes matter to him?
+It was only a shade more important than the opinion the Bellegardes
+entertained of her.  The duchess help him--that cold, stout, soft,
+artificial woman help him?--she who in the last twenty minutes had
+built up between them a wall of polite conversation in which she
+evidently flattered herself that he would never find a gate.
+Had it come to that--that he was asking favors of conceited people,
+and appealing for sympathy where he had no sympathy to give?  He rested
+his arms on his knees, and sat for some minutes staring into his hat.
+As he did so his ears tingled--he had come very near being an ass.
+Whether or no the duchess would hear his story, he wouldn't tell it.
+Was he to sit there another half hour for the sake of exposing
+the Bellegardes?  The Bellegardes be hanged!  He got up abruptly,
+and advanced to shake hands with his hostess.
+
+"You can't stay longer?" she asked, very graciously.
+
+"I am afraid not," he said.
+
+She hesitated a moment, and then, "I had an idea you had something
+particular to say to me," she declared.
+
+Newman looked at her; he felt a little dizzy; for the moment he seemed to be
+turning his somersault again.  The little Italian prince came to his help:
+"Ah, madam, who has not that?" he softly sighed.
+
+"Don't teach Mr. Newman to say fadaises," said the duchess.
+"It is his merit that he doesn't know how."
+
+"Yes, I don't know how to say fadaises," said Newman, "and I
+don't want to say anything unpleasant."
+
+"I am sure you are very considerate," said the duchess with a smile;
+and she gave him a little nod for good-by with which he took his departure.
+
+Once in the street, he stood for some time on the pavement,
+wondering whether, after all, he was not an ass not to have discharged
+his pistol.  And then again he decided that to talk to any one
+whomsoever about the Bellegardes would be extremely disagreeable
+to him.  The least disagreeable thing, under the circumstances,
+was to banish them from his mind, and never think of them again.
+Indecision had not hitherto been one of Newman's weaknesses,
+and in this case it was not of long duration.  For three days after this
+he did not, or at least he tried not to, think of the Bellegardes.
+He dined with Mrs. Tristram, and on her mentioning their name,
+he begged her almost severely to desist.  This gave Tom Tristram
+a much-coveted opportunity to offer his condolences.
+
+He leaned forward, laying his hand on Newman's arm compressing his
+lips and shaking his head.  "The fact is my dear fellow, you see,
+that you ought never to have gone into it.  It was not your doing,
+I know--it was all my wife.  If you want to come down on her,
+I'll stand off; I give you leave to hit her as hard as you like.
+You know she has never had a word of reproach from me in her life,
+and I think she is in need of something of the kind.
+Why didn't you listen to ME?  You know I didn't believe in the thing.
+I thought it at the best an amiable delusion.  I don't profess
+to be a Don Juan or a gay Lothario,--that class of man, you know;
+but I do pretend to know something about the harder sex.  I have
+never disliked a woman in my life that she has not turned out badly.
+I was not at all deceived in Lizzie, for instance; I always had my
+doubts about her.  Whatever you may think of my present situation,
+I must at least admit that I got into it with my eyes open.
+Now suppose you had got into something like this box with Madame de Cintre.
+You may depend upon it she would have turned out a stiff one.
+And upon my word I don't see where you could have found your comfort.
+Not from the marquis, my dear Newman; he wasn't a man you could go and talk
+things over with in a sociable, common-sense way.  Did he ever seem
+to want to have you on the premises--did he ever try to see you alone?
+Did he ever ask you to come and smoke a cigar with him of an evening,
+or step in, when you had been calling on the ladies, and take something?
+I don't think you would have got much encouragement out of HIM.
+And as for the old lady, she struck one as an uncommonly strong dose.
+They have a great expression here, you know; they call it 'sympathetic.'
+Everything is sympathetic--or ought to be.  Now Madame de Bellegarde
+is about as sympathetic as that mustard-pot. They're a d--
+d cold-blooded lot, any way; I felt it awfully at that ball of theirs.
+I felt as if I were walking up and down in the Armory, in the Tower
+of London!  My dear boy, don't think me a vulgar brute for hinting
+at it, but you may depend upon it, all they wanted was your money.
+I know something about that; I can tell when people want one's money!
+Why they stopped wanting yours I don't know; I suppose because
+they could get some one else's without working so hard for it.
+It isn't worth finding out.  It may be that it was not Madame de Cintre
+that backed out first, very likely the old woman put her up to it.
+I suspect she and her mother are really as thick as thieves, eh?
+You are well out of it, my boy; make up your mind to that.
+If I express myself strongly it is all because I love you so much;
+and from that point of view I may say I should as soon have thought
+of making up to that piece of pale high-mightiness as I should have
+thought of making up to the Obelisk in the Place des la Concorde."
+
+Newman sat gazing at Tristram during this harangue with a lack-lustre eye;
+never yet had he seemed to himself to have outgrown so completely the phase
+of equal comradeship with Tom Tristram.  Mrs. Tristram's glance at her husband
+had more of a spark; she turned to Newman with a slightly lurid smile.
+"You must at least do justice," she said, "to the felicity with which
+Mr. Tristram repairs the indiscretions of a too zealous wife."
+
+But even without the aid of Tom Tristram's conversational felicities,
+Newman would have begun to think of the Bellegardes again.
+He could cease to think of them only when he ceased to
+think of his loss and privation, and the days had as yet
+but scantily lightened the weight of this incommodity.
+In vain Mrs. Tristram begged him to cheer up; she assured him
+that the sight of his countenance made her miserable.
+
+"How can I help it?" he demanded with a trembling voice.
+"I feel like a widower--and a widower who has not even
+the consolation of going to stand beside the grave of his wife--
+who has not the right to wear so much mourning as a weed on his hat.
+I feel," he added in a moment "as if my wife had been murdered
+and her assassins were still at large."
+
+Mrs. Tristram made no immediate rejoinder, but at last she said,
+with a smile which, in so far as it was a forced one, was less
+successfully simulated than such smiles, on her lips, usually were;
+"Are you very sure that you would have been happy?"
+
+Newman stared a moment, and then shook his head.  "That's weak,"
+he said; "that won't do."
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Tristram with a more triumphant bravery,
+"I don't believe you would have been happy."
+
+Newman gave a little laugh.  "Say I should have been miserable, then;
+it's a misery I should have preferred to any happiness."
+
+Mrs. Tristram began to muse.  "I should have been curious to see;
+it would have been very strange."
+
+"Was it from curiosity that you urged me to try and marry her?"
+
+"A little," said Mrs. Tristram, growing still more audacious.
+Newman gave her the one angry look he had been destined ever to give her,
+turned away and took up his hat.  She watched him a moment, and then
+she said, "That sounds very cruel, but it is less so than it sounds.
+Curiosity has a share in almost everything I do.  I wanted very much
+to see, first, whether such a marriage could actually take place;
+second, what would happen if it should take place."
+
+"So you didn't believe," said Newman, resentfully.
+
+"Yes, I believed--I believed that it would take place, and that you
+would be happy.  Otherwise I should have been, among my speculations,
+a very heartless creature.  BUT," she continued, laying her hand upon
+Newman's arm and hazarding a grave smile, "it was the highest flight
+ever taken by a tolerably bold imagination!"
+
+Shortly after this she recommended him to leave Paris and travel
+for three months.  Change of scene would do him good, and he would
+forget his misfortune sooner in absence from the objects which had
+witnessed it.  "I really feel," Newman rejoined, "as if to leave YOU,
+at least, would do me good--and cost me very little effort.
+You are growing cynical, you shock me and pain me."
+
+"Very good," said Mrs. Tristram, good-naturedly or cynically,
+as may be thought most probable.  "I shall certainly see you again."
+
+Newman was very willing to get away from Paris; the brilliant streets
+he had walked through in his happier hours, and which then seemed to wear
+a higher brilliancy in honor of his happiness, appeared now to be in
+the secret of his defeat and to look down upon it in shining mockery.
+He would go somewhere; he cared little where; and he made his preparations.
+Then, one morning, at haphazard, he drove to the train that would transport
+him to Boulogne and dispatch him thence to the shores of Britain.
+As he rolled along in the train he asked himself what had become of
+his revenge, and he was able to say that it was provisionally pigeon-holed
+in a very safe place; it would keep till called for.
+
+He arrived in London in the midst of what is called "the season,"
+and it seemed to him at first that he might here put himself
+in the way of being diverted from his heavy-heartedness.
+He knew no one in all England, but the spectacle of the
+mighty metropolis roused him somewhat from his apathy.
+Anything that was enormous usually found favor with Newman,
+and the multitudinous energies and industries of England stirred
+within him a dull vivacity of contemplation.  It is on record
+that the weather, at that moment, was of the finest English quality;
+he took long walks and explored London in every direction;
+he sat by the hour in Kensington Gardens and beside the adjoining
+Drive, watching the people and the horses and the carriages;
+the rosy English beauties, the wonderful English dandies,
+and the splendid flunkies.  He went to the opera and found
+it better than in Paris; he went to the theatre and found
+a surprising charm in listening to dialogue the finest
+points of which came within the range of his comprehension.
+He made several excursions into the country, recommended by
+the waiter at his hotel, with whom, on this and similar points,
+he had established confidential relations.  He watched the deer
+in Windsor Forest and admired the Thames from Richmond Hill;
+he ate white-bait and brown-bread and butter at Greenwich,
+and strolled in the grassy shadow of the cathedral of Canterbury.
+He also visited the Tower of London and Madame Tussaud's exhibition.
+One day he thought he would go to Sheffield, and then,
+thinking again, he gave it up.  Why should he go to Sheffield?
+He had a feeling that the link which bound him to a possible
+interest in the manufacture of cutlery was broken.
+He had no desire for an "inside view" of any successful
+enterprise whatever, and he would not have given the smallest
+sum for the privilege of talking over the details of the most
+"splendid" business with the shrewdest of overseers.
+
+One afternoon he had walked into Hyde Park, and was slowly
+threading his way through the human maze which edges the Drive.
+The stream of carriages was no less dense, and Newman, as usual,
+marveled at the strange, dingy figures which he saw taking the air
+in some of the stateliest vehicles.  They reminded him of what he had
+read of eastern and southern countries, in which grotesque idols
+and fetiches were sometimes taken out of their temples and carried
+abroad in golden chariots to be displayed to the multitude.
+He saw a great many pretty cheeks beneath high-plumed hats as he squeezed
+his way through serried waves of crumpled muslin; and sitting on little
+chairs at the base of the great serious English trees, he observed
+a number of quiet-eyed maidens who seemed only to remind him afresh
+that the magic of beauty had gone out of the world with Madame de Cintre:
+to say nothing of other damsels, whose eyes were not quiet,
+and who struck him still more as a satire on possible consolation.
+He had been walking for some time, when, directly in front of him,
+borne back by the summer breeze, he heard a few words uttered in that bright
+Parisian idiom from which his ears had begun to alienate themselves.
+The voice in which the words were spoken made them seem even more
+like a thing with which he had once been familiar, and as he bent his
+eyes it lent an identity to the commonplace elegance of the back hair
+and shoulders of a young lady walking in the same direction as himself.
+Mademoiselle Nioche, apparently, had come to seek a more rapid
+advancement in London, and another glance led Newman to suppose
+that she had found it.  A gentleman was strolling beside her,
+lending a most attentive ear to her conversation and too entranced
+to open his lips.  Newman did not hear his voice, but perceived
+that he presented the dorsal expression of a well-dressed Englishman.
+Mademoiselle Nioche was attracting attention:  the ladies who passed
+her turned round to survey the Parisian perfection of her toilet.
+A great cataract of flounces rolled down from the young lady's waist
+to Newman's feet; he had to step aside to avoid treading upon them.
+He stepped aside, indeed, with a decision of movement which the
+occasion scarcely demanded; for even this imperfect glimpse of Miss
+Noemie had excited his displeasure.  She seemed an odious blot
+upon the face of nature; he wanted to put her out of his sight.
+He thought of Valentin de Bellegarde, still green in the earth
+of his burial--his young life clipped by this flourishing impudence.
+The perfume of the young lady's finery sickened him; he turned his head
+and tried to deflect his course; but the pressure of the crowd kept him
+near her a few minutes longer, so that he heard what she was saying.
+
+"Ah, I am sure he will miss me," she murmured.  "It was very cruel in me
+to leave him; I am afraid you will think me a very heartless creature.
+He might perfectly well have come with us.  I don't think he is very well,"
+she added; "it seemed to me to-day that he was not very gay."
+
+Newman wondered whom she was talking about, but just then an
+opening among his neighbors enabled him to turn away, and he said
+to himself that she was probably paying a tribute to British
+propriety and playing at tender solicitude about her papa.
+Was that miserable old man still treading the path of vice in her train?
+Was he still giving her the benefit of his experience of affairs,
+and had he crossed the sea to serve as her interpreter?
+Newman walked some distance farther, and then began to retrace his steps
+taking care not to traverse again the orbit of Mademoiselle Nioche.
+At last he looked for a chair under the trees, but he had some
+difficulty in finding an empty one.  He was about to give up
+the search when he saw a gentleman rise from the seat he had
+been occupying, leaving Newman to take it without looking at
+his neighbors.  He sat there for some time without heeding them;
+his attention was lost in the irritation and bitterness produced
+by his recent glimpse of Miss Noemie's iniquitous vitality.
+But at the end of a quarter of an hour, dropping his eyes,
+he perceived a small pug-dog squatted upon the path near his feet--
+a diminutive but very perfect specimen of its interesting species.
+The pug was sniffing at the fashionable world, as it passed him,
+with his little black muzzle, and was kept from extending his
+investigation by a large blue ribbon attached to his collar with an
+enormous rosette and held in the hand of a person seated next to Newman.
+To this person Newman transferred his attention, and immediately
+perceived that he was the object of all that of his neighbor,
+who was staring up at him from a pair of little fixed white eyes.
+These eyes Newman instantly recognized; he had been
+sitting for the last quarter of an hour beside M. Nioche.
+He had vaguely felt that some one was staring at him.
+M. Nioche continued to stare; he appeared afraid to move,
+even to the extent of evading Newman's glance.
+
+"Dear me," said Newman; "are you here, too?"  And he looked
+at his neighbor's helplessness more grimly than he knew.
+M. Nioche had a new hat and a pair of kid gloves;
+his clothes, too, seemed to belong to a more recent antiquity
+than of yore.  Over his arm was suspended a lady's mantilla--
+a light and brilliant tissue, fringed with white lace--
+which had apparently been committed to his keeping;
+and the little dog's blue ribbon was wound tightly round his hand.
+There was no expression of recognition in his face--
+or of anything indeed save a sort of feeble, fascinated dread;
+Newman looked at the pug and the lace mantilla, and then he met
+the old man's eyes again.  "You know me, I see," he pursued.
+"You might have spoken to me before."  M. Nioche still said nothing,
+but it seemed to Newman that his eyes began faintly to water.
+"I didn't expect," our hero went on, "to meet you so far from--
+from the Cafe de la Patrie."  The old man remained silent,
+but decidedly Newman had touched the source of tears.
+His neighbor sat staring and Newman added, "What's the matter,
+M. Nioche?  You used to talk--to talk very prettily.
+Don't you remember you even gave lessons in conversation?"
+
+At this M. Nioche decided to change his attitude.
+He stooped and picked up the pug, lifted it to his face and wiped
+his eyes on its little soft back.  "I'm afraid to speak to you,"
+he presently said, looking over the puppy's shoulder.
+"I hoped you wouldn't notice me.  I should have moved away,
+but I was afraid that if I moved you would notice me.
+So I sat very still."
+
+"I suspect you have a bad conscience, sir," said Newman.
+
+The old man put down the little dog and held it carefully in his lap.
+Then he shook his head, with his eyes still fixed upon his interlocutor.
+"No, Mr. Newman, I have a good conscience," he murmured.
+
+"Then why should you want to slink away from me?"
+
+"Because--because you don't understand my position."
+
+"Oh, I think you once explained it to me," said Newman.
+"But it seems improved."
+
+"Improved!" exclaimed M. Nioche, under his breath.
+"Do you call this improvement?"  And he glanced at the treasures
+in his arms.
+
+"Why, you are on your travels," Newman rejoined.  "A visit to London
+in the season is certainly a sign of prosperity."
+
+M. Nioche, in answer to this cruel piece of irony,
+lifted the puppy up to his face again, peering at Newman with
+his small blank eye-holes. There was something almost imbecile
+in the movement, and Newman hardly knew whether he was taking
+refuge in a convenient affectation of unreason, or whether
+he had in fact paid for his dishonor by the loss of his wits.
+In the latter case, just now, he felt little more tenderly
+to the foolish old man than in the former.  Responsible or not,
+he was equally an accomplice of his detestably mischievous daughter.
+Newman was going to leave him abruptly, when a ray of entreaty
+appeared to disengage itself from the old man's misty gaze.
+"Are you going away?" he asked.
+
+"Do you want me to stay?" said Newman.
+
+"I should have left you--from consideration.  But my dignity
+suffers at your leaving me--that way."
+
+"Have you got anything particular to say to me?"
+
+M. Nioche looked around him to see that no one was listening, and then
+he said, very softly but distinctly, "I have NOT forgiven her!"
+
+Newman gave a short laugh, but the old man seemed for the moment
+not to perceive it; he was gazing away, absently, at some
+metaphysical image of his implacability.  "It doesn't much
+matter whether you forgive her or not," said Newman.
+"There are other people who won't, I assure you."
+
+"What has she done?"  M. Nioche softly questioned, turning round again.
+"I don't know what she does, you know."
+
+"She has done a devilish mischief; it doesn't matter what," said Newman.
+"She's a nuisance; she ought to be stopped."
+
+M. Nioche stealthily put out his hand and laid it very gently
+upon Newman's arm.  "Stopped, yes," he whispered.  "That's it.
+Stopped short.  She is running away--she must be stopped."
+Then he paused a moment and looked round him.  "I mean to stop her,"
+he went on.  "I am only waiting for my chance."
+
+"I see," said Newman, laughing briefly again.
+"She is running away and you are running after her.
+You have run a long distance!"
+
+But M. Nioche stared insistently:  "I shall stop her!"
+he softly repeated.
+
+He had hardly spoken when the crowd in front of them separated,
+as if by the impulse to make way for an important personage.
+Presently, through the opening, advanced Mademoiselle Nioche,
+attended by the gentleman whom Newman had lately observed.
+His face being now presented to our hero, the latter recognized
+the irregular features, the hardly more regular complexion,
+and the amiable expression of Lord Deepmere.  Noemie, on finding
+herself suddenly confronted with Newman, who, like M. Nioche,
+had risen from his seat, faltered for a barely perceptible instant.
+She gave him a little nod, as if she had seen him yesterday,
+and then, with a good-natured smile, "Tiens, how we keep meeting!"
+she said.  She looked consummately pretty, and the front of her
+dress was a wonderful work of art.  She went up to her father,
+stretching out her hands for the little dog, which he submissively
+placed in them, and she began to kiss it and murmur over it:
+"To think of leaving him all alone,--what a wicked,
+abominable creature he must believe me!  He has been very unwell,"
+she added, turning and affecting to explain to Newman, with a
+spark of infernal impudence, fine as a needlepoint, in her eye.
+"I don't think the English climate agrees with him."
+
+"It seems to agree wonderfully well with his mistress," said Newman.
+
+"Do you mean me?  I have never been better, thank you,"
+Miss Noemie declared.  "But with MILORD"--and she gave a brilliant
+glance at her late companion--"how can one help being well?"
+She seated herself in the chair from which her father had risen,
+and began to arrange the little dog's rosette.
+
+Lord Deepmere carried off such embarrassment as might be incidental to this
+unexpected encounter with the inferior grace of a male and a Briton.
+He blushed a good deal, and greeted the object of his late momentary
+aspiration to rivalry in the favor of a person other than the mistress
+of the invalid pug with an awkward nod and a rapid ejaculation--
+an ejaculation to which Newman, who often found it hard to understand
+the speech of English people, was able to attach no meaning.
+Then the young man stood there, with his hand on his hip,
+and with a conscious grin, staring askance at Miss Noemie.
+Suddenly an idea seemed to strike him, and he said, turning to Newman,
+"Oh, you know her?"
+
+"Yes," said Newman, "I know her.  I don't believe you do."
+
+"Oh dear, yes, I do!" said Lord Deepmere, with another grin.
+"I knew her in Paris--by my poor cousin Bellegarde you know.
+He knew her, poor fellow, didn't he?  It was she you know,
+who was at the bottom of his affair.  Awfully sad, wasn't it?"
+continued the young man, talking off his embarrassment as his
+simple nature permitted.  "They got up some story about its
+being for the Pope; about the other man having said something
+against the Pope's morals.  They always do that, you know.
+They put it on the Pope because Bellegarde was once in the Zouaves.
+But it was about HER morals--SHE was the Pope!"
+Lord Deepmere pursued, directing an eye illumined by this
+pleasantry toward Mademoiselle Nioche, who was bending gracefully
+over her lap-dog, apparently absorbed in conversation with it.
+"I dare say you think it rather odd that I should--a-- keep up
+the acquaintance," the young man resumed.  "But she couldn't help it,
+you know, and Bellegarde was only my twentieth cousin.  I dare say
+you think it's rather cheeky, my showing with her in Hyde Park.
+But you see she isn't known yet, and she's in such very good form"--
+And Lord Deepmere's conclusion was lost in the attesting glance
+which he again directed toward the young lady.
+
+Newman turned away; he was having more of her than he relished.
+M. Nioche had stepped aside on his daughter's approach, and he stood there,
+within a very small compass, looking down hard at the ground.
+It had never yet, as between him and Newman, been so apposite
+to place on record the fact that he had not forgiven his daughter.
+As Newman was moving away he looked up and drew near to him,
+and Newman, seeing the old man had something particular to say,
+bent his head for an instant.
+
+"You will see it some day in the papers,"' murmured M. Nioche.
+
+Our hero departed to hide his smile, and to this day, though the newspapers
+form his principal reading, his eyes have not been arrested by any paragraph
+forming a sequel to this announcement.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+In that uninitiated observation of the great spectacle of English life
+upon which I have touched, it might be supposed that Newman passed
+a great many dull days.  But the dullness of his days pleased him;
+his melancholy, which was settling into a secondary stage,
+like a healing wound, had in it a certain acrid, palatable sweetness.
+He had company in his thoughts, and for the present he wanted no other.
+He had no desire to make acquaintances, and he left untouched a couple
+of notes of introduction which had been sent him by Tom Tristram.
+He thought a great deal of Madame de Cintre--sometimes with a dogged
+tranquillity which might have seemed, for a quarter of an hour
+at a time, a near neighbor to forgetfulness.  He lived over again
+the happiest hours he had known--that silver chain of numbered days
+in which his afternoon visits, tending sensibly to the ideal result,
+had subtilized his good humor to a sort of spiritual intoxication.
+He came back to reality, after such reveries, with a somewhat muffled shock;
+he had begun to feel the need of accepting the unchangeable.
+At other times the reality became an infamy again and the unchangeable
+an imposture, and he gave himself up to his angry restlessness till
+he was weary.  But on the whole he fell into a rather reflective mood.
+Without in the least intending it or knowing it, he attempted to read the
+moral of his strange misadventure.  He asked himself, in his quieter hours,
+whether perhaps, after all, he WAS more commercial than was pleasant.
+We know that it was in obedience to a strong reaction against
+questions exclusively commercial that he had come out to pick up
+aesthetic entertainment in Europe; it may therefore be understood
+that he was able to conceive that a man might be too commercial.
+He was very willing to grant it, but the concession, as to his
+own case, was not made with any very oppressive sense of shame.
+If he had been too commercial, he was ready to forget it, for in being
+so he had done no man any wrong that might not be as easily forgotten.
+He reflected with sober placidity that at least there were
+no monuments of his "meanness" scattered about the world.
+If there was any reason in the nature of things why his connection
+with business should have cast a shadow upon a connection--
+even a connection broken--with a woman justly proud, he was willing
+to sponge it out of his life forever.  The thing seemed a possibility;
+he could not feel it, doubtless, as keenly as some people, and it hardly
+seemed worth while to flap his wings very hard to rise to the idea;
+but he could feel it enough to make any sacrifice that still remained
+to be made.  As to what such sacrifice was now to be made to,
+here Newman stopped short before a blank wall over which there sometimes
+played a shadowy imagery.  He had a fancy of carrying out his life
+as he would have directed it if Madame de Cintre had been left to him--
+of making it a religion to do nothing that she would have disliked.
+In this, certainly, there was no sacrifice; but there was a pale,
+oblique ray of inspiration.  It would be lonely entertainment--a good deal
+like a man talking to himself in the mirror for want of better company.
+Yet the idea yielded Newman several half hours' dumb exaltation
+as he sat, with his hands in his pockets and his legs stretched,
+over the relics of an expensively poor dinner, in the undying
+English twilight.  If, however, his commercial imagination was dead,
+he felt no contempt for the surviving actualities begotten by it.
+He was glad he had been prosperous and had been a great man of
+business rather than a small one; he was extremely glad he was rich.
+He felt no impulse to sell all he had and give to the poor, or to retire
+into meditative economy and asceticism.  He was glad he was rich
+and tolerably young; it was possible to think too much about buying
+and selling, it was a gain to have a good slice of life left in which
+not to think about them.  Come, what should he think about now?
+Again and again Newman could think only of one thing; his thoughts
+always came back to it, and as they did so, with an emotional rush
+which seemed physically to express itself in a sudden upward choking,
+he leaned forward--the waiter having left the room--and, resting his
+arms on the table, buried his troubled face.
+
+He remained in England till midsummer, and spent a month in
+the country, wandering about cathedrals, castles, and ruins.
+Several times, taking a walk from his inn into meadows and parks,
+he stopped by a well-worn stile, looked across through the early
+evening at a gray church tower, with its dusky nimbus of
+thick-circling swallows, and remembered that this might have been
+part of the entertainment of his honeymoon.  He had never been
+so much alone or indulged so little in accidental dialogue.
+The period of recreation appointed by Mrs. Tristram had at
+last expired, and he asked himself what he should do now.
+Mrs. Tristram had written to him, proposing to him that he
+should join her in the Pyrenees; but he was not in the humor
+to return to France.  The simplest thing was to repair
+to Liverpool and embark on the first American steamer.
+Newman made his way to the great seaport and secured his berth;
+and the night before sailing he sat in his room at the hotel,
+staring down, vacantly and wearily, at an open portmanteau.
+A number of papers were lying upon it, which he had been meaning
+to look over; some of them might conveniently be destroyed.
+But at last he shuffled them roughly together, and pushed
+them into a corner of the valise; they were business papers,
+and he was in no humor for sifting them.  Then he drew
+forth his pocket-book and took out a paper of smaller
+size than those he had dismissed.  He did not unfold it;
+he simply sat looking at the back of it.  If he had momentarily
+entertained the idea of destroying it, the idea quickly expired.
+What the paper suggested was the feeling that lay in his innermost
+heart and that no reviving cheerfulness could long quench--
+the feeling that after all and above all he was a good
+fellow wronged.  With it came a hearty hope that the Bellegardes
+were enjoying their suspense as to what he would do yet.
+The more it was prolonged the more they would enjoy it!
+He had hung fire once, yes; perhaps, in his present queer
+state of mind, he might hang fire again.  But he restored
+the little paper to his pocket-book very tenderly, and felt
+better for thinking of the suspense of the Bellegardes.
+He felt better every time he thought of it after that,
+as he sailed the summer seas.  He landed in New York and
+journeyed across the continent to San Francisco, and nothing
+that he observed by the way contributed to mitigate his sense
+of being a good fellow wronged.
+
+He saw a great many other good fellows--his old friends--
+but he told none of them of the trick that had been played him.
+He said simply that the lady he was to have married had changed
+her mind, and when he was asked if he had changed his own,
+he said, "Suppose we change the subject."  He told his friends
+that he had brought home no "new ideas" from Europe, and his conduct
+probably struck them as an eloquent proof of failing invention.
+He took no interest in chatting about his affairs and manifested
+no desire to look over his accounts.  He asked half a dozen
+questions which, like those of an eminent physician inquiring
+for particular symptoms, showed that he still knew what he was
+talking about; but he made no comments and gave no directions.
+He not only puzzled the gentlemen on the stock exchange,
+but he was himself surprised at the extent of his indifference.
+As it seemed only to increase, he made an effort to combat it;
+he tried to interest himself and to take up his old occupations.
+But they appeared unreal to him; do what he would he somehow
+could not believe in them.  Sometimes he began to fear that there
+was something the matter with his head; that his brain, perhaps,
+had softened, and that the end of his strong activities had come.
+This idea came back to him with an exasperating force.  A hopeless,
+helpless loafer, useful to no one and detestable to himself--
+this was what the treachery of the Bellegardes had made of him.
+In his restless idleness he came back from San Francisco
+to New York, and sat for three days in the lobby of his hotel,
+looking out through a huge wall of plate-glass at the unceasing
+stream of pretty girls in Parisian-looking dresses, undulating past
+with little parcels nursed against their neat figures.
+At the end of three days he returned to San Francisco,
+and having arrived there he wished he had stayed away.
+He had nothing to do, his occupation was gone, and it seemed to him
+that he should never find it again.  He had nothing to do here,
+he sometimes said to himself; but there was something beyond
+the ocean that he was still to do; something that he had left
+undone experimentally and speculatively, to see if it could
+content itself to remain undone.  But it was not content:
+it kept pulling at his heartstrings and thumping at his reason;
+it murmured in his ears and hovered perpetually before his eyes.
+It interposed between all new resolutions and their fulfillment;
+it seemed like a stubborn ghost, dumbly entreating to be laid.
+Till that was done he should never be able to do anything else.
+
+One day, toward the end of the winter, after a long interval,
+he received a letter from Mrs. Tristram, who apparently was animated
+by a charitable desire to amuse and distract her correspondent.
+She gave him much Paris gossip, talked of General Packard and Miss
+Kitty Upjohn, enumerated the new plays at the theatre, and inclosed
+a note from her husband, who had gone down to spend a month at Nice.
+Then came her signature, and after this her postscript.
+The latter consisted of these few lines:  "I heard three days since
+from my friend, the Abbe Aubert, that Madame de Cintre last week took
+the veil at the Carmelites.  It was on her twenty-seventh birthday,
+and she took the name of her, patroness, St. Veronica.
+Sister Veronica has a life-time before her!"
+
+This letter came to Newman in the morning; in the evening he started
+for Paris.  His wound began to ache with its first fierceness,
+and during his long bleak journey the thought of Madame de
+Cintre's "life-time," passed within prison walls on whose
+outer side he might stand, kept him perpetual company.
+Now he would fix himself in Paris forever; he would extort
+a sort of happiness from the knowledge that if she was
+not there, at least the stony sepulchre that held her was.
+He descended, unannounced, upon Mrs. Bread, whom he found keeping
+lonely watch in his great empty saloons on the Boulevard Haussmann.
+They were as neat as a Dutch village, Mrs. Bread's only
+occupation had been removing individual dust-particles. She made
+no complaint, however, of her loneliness, for in her philosophy
+a servant was but a mysteriously projected machine, and it would
+be as fantastic for a housekeeper to comment upon a gentleman's
+absences as for a clock to remark upon not being wound up.
+No particular clock, Mrs. Bread supposed, went all the time,
+and no particular servant could enjoy all the sunshine diffused
+by the career of an exacting master.  She ventured, nevertheless,
+to express a modest hope that Newman meant to remain a while
+in Paris.  Newman laid his hand on hers and shook it gently.
+"I mean to remain forever," he said.
+
+He went after this to see Mrs. Tristram, to whom he had telegraphed,
+and who expected him.  She looked at him a moment and shook her head.
+"This won't do," she said; "you have come back too soon."  He sat down
+and asked about her husband and her children, tried even to inquire
+about Miss Dora Finch.  In the midst of this--"Do you know where she is?"
+he asked, abruptly.
+
+Mrs. Tristram hesitated a moment; of course he couldn't mean Miss Dora Finch.
+Then she answered, properly:  "She has gone to the other house--
+in the Rue d'Enfer." After Newman had sat a while longer looking
+very sombre, she went on:  "You are not so good a man as I thought.
+You are more--you are more--"
+
+"More what?"  Newman asked.
+
+"More unforgiving."
+
+"Good God!" cried Newman; "do you expect me to forgive?"
+
+"No, not that.  I have forgiven, so of course you can't. But you
+might forget!  You have a worse temper about it than I should have expected.
+You look wicked--you look dangerous."
+
+"I may be dangerous," he said; "but I am not wicked.  No, I am not wicked."
+And he got up to go.  Mrs. Tristram asked him to come back to dinner;
+but he answered that he did not feel like pledging himself to be present
+at an entertainment, even as a solitary guest.  Later in the evening,
+if he should be able, he would come.
+
+He walked away through the city, beside the Seine and over it,
+and took the direction of the Rue d'Enfer. The day had the
+softness of early spring; but the weather was gray and humid.
+Newman found himself in a part of Paris which he little knew--
+a region of convents and prisons, of streets bordered by long
+dead walls and traversed by a few wayfarers.  At the intersection
+of two of these streets stood the house of the Carmelites--a dull,
+plain edifice, with a high-shouldered blank wall all round it.
+From without Newman could see its upper windows, its steep
+roof and its chimneys.  But these things revealed no symptoms
+of human life; the place looked dumb, deaf, inanimate.
+The pale, dead, discolored wall stretched beneath it,
+far down the empty side street--a vista without a human figure.
+Newman stood there a long time; there were no passers;
+he was free to gaze his fill.  This seemed the goal of his journey;
+it was what he had come for.  It was a strange satisfaction,
+and yet it was a satisfaction; the barren stillness of the place
+seemed to be his own release from ineffectual longing.
+It told him that the woman within was lost beyond recall,
+and that the days and years of the future would pile themselves
+above her like the huge immovable slab of a tomb.  These days
+and years, in this place, would always be just so gray and silent.
+Suddenly, from the thought of their seeing him stand there,
+again the charm utterly departed.  He would never stand there again;
+it was gratuitous dreariness.  He turned away with a heavy heart,
+but with a heart lighter than the one he had brought.
+Everything was over, and he too at last could rest.
+He walked down through narrow, winding streets to the edge
+of the Seine again, and there he saw, close above him, the soft,
+vast towers of Notre Dame.  He crossed one of the bridges and
+stood a moment in the empty place before the great cathedral;
+then he went in beneath the grossly-imaged portals.
+He wandered some distance up the nave and sat down in the
+splendid dimness.  He sat a long time; he heard far-away bells
+chiming off, at long intervals, to the rest of the world.
+He was very tired; this was the best place he could be in.
+He said no prayers; he had no prayers to say.
+He had nothing to be thankful for, and he had nothing to ask;
+nothing to ask, because now he must take care of himself.
+But a great cathedral offers a very various hospitality,
+and Newman sat in his place, because while he was there
+he was out of the world.  The most unpleasant thing that had
+ever happened to him had reached its formal conclusion,
+as it were; he could close the book and put it away.
+He leaned his head for a long time on the chair in front of him;
+when he took it up he felt that he was himself again.
+Somewhere in his mind, a tight knot seemed to have loosened.
+He thought of the Bellegardes; he had almost forgotten them.
+He remembered them as people he had meant to do something to.
+He gave a groan as he remembered what he had meant to do;
+he was annoyed at having meant to do it; the bottom, suddenly,
+had fallen out of his revenge.  Whether it was Christian charity
+or unregenerate good nature--what it was, in the background
+of his soul--I don't pretend to say; but Newman's last
+thought was that of course he would let the Bellegardes go.
+If he had spoken it aloud he would have said that he didn't want
+to hurt them.  He was ashamed of having wanted to hurt them.
+They had hurt him, but such things were really not his game.
+At last he got up and came out of the darkening church;
+not with the elastic step of a man who had won a victory
+or taken a resolve, but strolling soberly, like a good-natured
+man who is still a little ashamed.
+
+Going home, he said to Mrs. Bread that he must trouble her to put back
+his things into the portmanteau she had unpacked the evening before.
+His gentle stewardess looked at him through eyes a trifle bedimmed.
+"Dear me, sir," she exclaimed, "I thought you said that you were going
+to stay forever."
+
+"I meant that I was going to stay away forever," said Newman kindly.
+And since his departure from Paris on the following day he has
+certainly not returned.  The gilded apartments I have so often spoken
+of stand ready to receive him; but they serve only as a spacious
+residence for Mrs. Bread, who wanders eternally from room to room,
+adjusting the tassels of the curtains, and keeps her wages,
+which are regularly brought her by a banker's clerk, in a great pink
+Sevres vase on the drawing-room mantel-shelf.
+
+Late in the evening Newman went to Mrs. Tristram's
+and found Tom Tristram by the domestic fireside.
+"I'm glad to see you back in Paris," this gentleman declared.
+"You know it's really the only place for a white man to live."
+Mr. Tristram made his friend welcome, according to his
+own rosy light, and offered him a convenient resume
+of the Franco-American gossip of the last six months.
+Then at last he got up and said he would go for half an hour
+to the club.  "I suppose a man who has been for six months
+in California wants a little intellectual conversation.
+I'll let my wife have a go at you."
+
+Newman shook hands heartily with his host, but did not ask him to remain;
+and then he relapsed into his place on the sofa, opposite to Mrs. Tristram.
+She presently asked him what he had done after leaving her.
+"Nothing particular," said Newman
+
+"You struck me," she rejoined, "as a man with a plot in his head.
+You looked as if you were bent on some sinister errand, and after you
+had left me I wondered whether I ought to have let you go."
+
+"I only went over to the other side of the river--
+to the Carmelites," said Newman.
+
+Mrs. Tristram looked at him a moment and smiled.  "What did you do there?
+Try to scale the wall?"
+
+"I did nothing.  I looked at the place for a few minutes and then came away."
+
+Mrs. Tristram gave him a sympathetic glance.  "You didn't happen to meet
+M. de Bellegarde," she asked, "staring hopelessly at the convent wall
+as well?  I am told he takes his sister's conduct very hard."
+
+"No, I didn't meet him, I am happy to say," Newman answered,
+after a pause.
+
+"They are in the country," Mrs. Tristram went on; "at--what is the name
+of the place?--Fleurieres.  They returned there at the time you
+left Paris and have been spending the year in extreme seclusion.
+The little marquise must enjoy it; I expect to hear that she has
+eloped with her daughter's music-master!"
+
+Newman was looking at the light wood-fire; but he listened to this with
+extreme interest.  At last he spoke:  "I mean never to mention the name
+of those people again, and I don't want to hear anything more about them."
+And then he took out his pocket-book and drew forth a scrap of paper.
+He looked at it an instant, then got up and stood by the fire.
+"I am going to burn them up," he said.  "I am glad to have you as a witness.
+There they go!"  And he tossed the paper into the flame.
+
+Mrs. Tristram sat with her embroidery needle suspended.
+"What is that paper?" she asked.
+
+Newman leaning against the fire-place, stretched his arms and drew a longer
+breath than usual.  Then after a moment, "I can tell you now," he said.
+"It was a paper containing a secret of the Bellegardes--something which would
+damn them if it were known."
+
+Mrs. Tristram dropped her embroidery with a reproachful moan.
+"Ah, why didn't you show it to me?"
+
+"I thought of showing it to you--I thought of showing it to every one.
+I thought of paying my debt to the Bellegardes that way.
+So I told them, and I frightened them.  They have been staying
+in the country as you tell me, to keep out of the explosion.
+But I have given it up."
+
+Mrs. Tristram began to take slow stitches again.
+"Have you quite given it up?"
+
+"Oh yes."
+
+"Is it very bad, this secret?"
+
+"Yes, very bad."
+
+"For myself," said Mrs. Tristram, "I am sorry you have given
+it up.  I should have liked immensely to see your paper.
+They have wronged me too, you know, as your sponsor
+and guarantee, and it would have served for my revenge as well.
+How did you come into possession of your secret?"
+
+"It's a long story.  But honestly, at any rate."
+
+"And they knew you were master of it?"
+
+"Oh, I told them."
+
+"Dear me, how interesting!" cried Mrs. Tristram.
+"And you humbled them at your feet?"
+
+Newman was silent a moment.  "No, not at all.  They pretended not to care--
+not to be afraid.  But I know they did care--they were afraid."
+
+"Are you very sure?"
+
+Newman stared a moment.  "Yes, I'm sure."
+
+Mrs. Tristram resumed her slow stitches.  "They defied you, eh?"
+
+"Yes," said Newman, "it was about that."
+
+"You tried by the threat of exposure to make them retract?"
+Mrs. Tristram pursued.
+
+"Yes, but they wouldn't. I gave them their choice, and they chose to take
+their chance of bluffing off the charge and convicting me of fraud.
+But they were frightened," Newman added, "and I have had all
+the vengeance I want."
+
+"It is most provoking," said Mrs. Tristram, "to hear you talk of
+the 'charge' when the charge is burnt up.  Is it quite consumed?"
+she asked, glancing at the fire.
+
+Newman assured her that there was nothing left of it.
+"Well then," she said, "I suppose there is no harm in saying
+that you probably did not make them so very uncomfortable.
+My impression would be that since, as you say, they defied you,
+it was because they believed that, after all, you would never
+really come to the point.  Their confidence, after counsel taken
+of each other, was not in their innocence, nor in their talent
+for bluffing things off; it was in your remarkable good nature!
+You see they were right."
+
+Newman instinctively turned to see if the little paper was in fact consumed;
+but there was nothing left of it.
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg edition of The American by Henry James
+
+
+
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+**The Project Gutenberg Etext of The American, by Henry James**
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+Prepared by Pauline J. Iacono <pauline@ramsey.lib.mn.us>
+and John Hamm <John_Hamm@MindLink.bc.ca>
+
+
+
+
+
+The American 
+
+by Henry James 1877
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+
+
+On a brilliant day in May, in the year 1868, a gentleman was reclining
+at his ease on the great circular divan which at that period occupied
+the centre of the Salon Carre, in the Museum of the Louvre.
+This commodious ottoman has since been removed, to the extreme regret
+of all weak-kneed lovers of the fine arts, but the gentleman in question
+had taken serene possession of its softest spot, and, with his head
+thrown back and his legs outstretched, was staring at Murillo's
+beautiful moon-borne Madonna in profound enjoyment of his posture.
+He had removed his hat, and flung down beside him a little red guide-book
+and an opera-glass. The day was warm; he was heated with walking,
+and he repeatedly passed his handkerchief over his forehead,
+with a somewhat wearied gesture.  And yet he was evidently not
+a man to whom fatigue was familiar; long, lean, and muscular,
+he suggested the sort of vigor that is commonly known as "toughness."
+But his exertions on this particular day had been of an unwonted sort,
+and he had performed great physical feats which left him less jaded
+than his tranquil stroll through the Louvre.  He had looked out all
+the pictures to which an asterisk was affixed in those formidable
+pages of fine print in his Badeker; his attention had been strained
+and his eyes dazzled, and he had sat down with an aesthetic headache.
+He had looked, moreover, not only at all the pictures, but at all
+the copies that were going forward around them, in the hands of those
+innumerable young women in irreproachable toilets who devote themselves,
+in France, to the propagation of masterpieces, and if the truth must
+be told, he had often admired the copy much more than the original.
+His physiognomy would have sufficiently indicated that he was a shrewd
+and capable fellow, and in truth he had often sat up all night over
+a bristling bundle of accounts, and heard the cock crow without a yawn.
+But Raphael and Titian and Rubens were a new kind of arithmetic,
+and they inspired our friend, for the first time in his life,
+with a vague self-mistrust.
+
+An observer with anything of an eye for national types would
+have had no difficulty in determining the local origin
+of this undeveloped connoisseur, and indeed such an observer
+might have felt a certain humorous relish of the almost ideal
+completeness with which he filled out the national mould.
+The gentleman on the divan was a powerful specimen of an American.
+But he was not only a fine American; he was in the first place,
+physically, a fine man.  He appeared to possess that kind of health
+and strength which, when found in perfection, are the most impressive--
+the physical capital which the owner does nothing to "keep up."
+If he was a muscular Christian, it was quite without knowing it.
+If it was necessary to walk to a remote spot, he walked,
+but he had never known himself to "exercise."  He had no theory
+with regard to cold bathing or the use of Indian clubs;
+he was neither an oarsman, a rifleman, nor a fencer--he had
+never had time for these amusements--and he was quite unaware
+that the saddle is recommended for certain forms of indigestion.
+He was by inclination a temperate man; but he had supped
+the night before his visit to the Louvre at the Cafe Anglais--
+some one had told him it was an experience not to be omitted--
+and he had slept none the less the sleep of the just.
+His usual attitude and carriage were of a rather relaxed
+and lounging kind, but when under a special inspiration,
+he straightened himself, he looked like a grenadier on parade.
+He never smoked.  He had been assured--such things are said--
+that cigars were excellent for the health, and he was quite
+capable of believing it; but he knew as little about tobacco as
+about homeopathy.  He had a very well-formed head, with a shapely,
+symmetrical balance of the frontal and the occipital development,
+and a good deal of straight, rather dry brown hair.
+His complexion was brown, and his nose had a bold well-marked arch.
+His eye was of a clear, cold gray, and save for a rather
+abundant mustache he was clean-shaved. He had the flat jaw
+and sinewy neck which are frequent in the American type;
+but the traces of national origin are a matter of expression even
+more than of feature, and it was in this respect that our friend's
+countenance was supremely eloquent.  The discriminating observer
+we have been supposing might, however, perfectly have measured
+its expressiveness, and yet have been at a loss to describe it.
+It had that typical vagueness which is not vacuity,
+that blankness which is not simplicity, that look of being
+committed to nothing in particular, of standing in an attitude
+of general hospitality to the chances of life, of being very much
+at one's own disposal so characteristic of many American faces.
+It was our friend's eye that chiefly told his story; an eye
+in which innocence and experience were singularly blended.
+It was full of contradictory suggestions, and though it
+was by no means the glowing orb of a hero of romance,
+you could find in it almost anything you looked for.
+Frigid and yet friendly, frank yet cautious, shrewd yet credulous,
+positive yet skeptical, confident yet shy, extremely intelligent
+and extremely good-humored, there was something vaguely defiant in
+its concessions, and something profoundly reassuring in its reserve.
+The cut of this gentleman's mustache, with the two premature
+wrinkles in the cheek above it, and the fashion of his garments,
+in which an exposed shirt-front and a cerulean cravat played perhaps
+an obtrusive part, completed the conditions of his identity.
+We have approached him, perhaps, at a not especially favorable moment;
+he is by no means sitting for his portrait.  But listless
+as he lounges there, rather baffled on the aesthetic question,
+and guilty of the damning fault (as we have lately discovered it to be)
+of confounding the merit of the artist with that of his work
+(for he admires the squinting Madonna of the young lady with
+the boyish coiffure, because he thinks the young lady herself
+uncommonly taking), he is a sufficiently promising acquaintance.
+Decision, salubrity, jocosity, prosperity, seem to hover
+within his call; he is evidently a practical man, but the idea
+in his case, has undefined and mysterious boundaries,
+which invite the imagination to bestir itself on his behalf.
+
+As the little copyist proceeded with her work, she sent every now and then
+a responsive glance toward her admirer.  The cultivation of the fine
+arts appeared to necessitate, to her mind, a great deal of byplay,
+a great standing off with folded arms and head drooping from side to side,
+stroking of a dimpled chin with a dimpled hand, sighing and frowning
+and patting of the foot, fumbling in disordered tresses for wandering
+hair-pins. These performances were accompanied by a restless glance,
+which lingered longer than elsewhere upon the gentleman we have described.
+At last he rose abruptly, put on his hat, and approached the young lady.
+He placed himself before her picture and looked at it for some moments,
+during which she pretended to be quite unconscious of his inspection.
+Then, addressing her with the single word which constituted the strength
+of his French vocabulary, and holding up one finger in a manner which appeared
+to him to illuminate his meaning, "Combien?" he abruptly demanded.
+
+The artist stared a moment, gave a little pout, shrugged her shoulders,
+put down her palette and brushes, and stood rubbing her hands.
+
+"How much?" said our friend, in English.  "Combien?"
+
+"Monsieur wishes to buy it?" asked the young lady in French.
+
+"Very pretty, splendide.  Combien?" repeated the American.
+
+"It pleases monsieur, my little picture?  It's a very beautiful subject,"
+said the young lady.
+
+"The Madonna, yes; I am not a Catholic, but I want to buy it.  Combien?
+Write it here."  And he took a pencil from his pocket and showed
+her the fly-leaf of his guide-book. She stood looking at him and
+scratching her chin with the pencil.  "Is it not for sale?" he asked.
+And as she still stood reflecting, and looking at him with an eye which,
+in spite of her desire to treat this avidity of patronage as a very old story,
+betrayed an almost touching incredulity, he was afraid he had offended her.
+She simply trying to look indifferent, and wondering how far she might go.
+"I haven't made a mistake--pas insulte, no?" her interlocutor continued.
+"Don't you understand a little English?"
+
+The young lady's aptitude for playing a part at short notice
+was remarkable.  She fixed him with her conscious, perceptive eye
+and asked him if he spoke no French.  Then, "Donnez!" she said briefly,
+and took the open guide-book. In the upper corner of the fly-leaf
+she traced a number, in a minute and extremely neat hand.
+Then she handed back the book and took up her palette again.
+
+Our friend read the number:  "2,000 francs."
+He said nothing for a time, but stood looking at the picture,
+while the copyist began actively to dabble with her paint.
+"For a copy, isn't that a good deal?" he asked at last.
+"Pas beaucoup?"
+
+The young lady raised her eyes from her palette, scanned him from head
+to foot, and alighted with admirable sagacity upon exactly the right answer.
+"Yes, it's a good deal.  But my copy has remarkable qualities, it is
+worth nothing less."
+
+The gentleman in whom we are interested understood no French, but I
+have said he was intelligent, and here is a good chance to prove it.
+He apprehended, by a natural instinct, the meaning of the young
+woman's phrase, and it gratified him to think that she was
+so honest.  Beauty, talent, virtue; she combined everything!
+"But you must finish it," he said.  "FINISH, you know;"
+and he pointed to the unpainted hand of the figure.
+
+"Oh, it shall be finished in perfection; in the perfection of perfections!"
+cried mademoiselle; and to confirm her promise, she deposited a rosy blotch
+in the middle of the Madonna's cheek.
+
+But the American frowned.  "Ah, too red, too red!" he rejoined.
+"Her complexion," pointing to the Murillo, "is--more delicate."
+
+"Delicate?  Oh, it shall be delicate, monsieur; delicate as Sevres biscuit.
+I am going to tone that down; I know all the secrets of my art.
+And where will you allow us to send it to you?  Your address?"
+
+"My address?  Oh yes!"  And the gentleman drew a card from
+his pocket-book and wrote something upon it.  Then hesitating
+a moment he said, "If I don't like it when it it's finished,
+you know, I shall not be obliged to take it."
+
+The young lady seemed as good a guesser as himself.
+"Oh, I am very sure that monsieur is not capricious,"
+she said with a roguish smile.
+
+"Capricious?"  And at this monsieur began to laugh.
+"Oh no, I'm not capricious.  I am very faithful.
+I am very constant.  Comprenez?"
+
+"Monsieur is constant; I understand perfectly.  It's a rare virtue.
+To recompense you, you shall have your picture on the first possible day;
+next week--as soon as it is dry.  I will take the card of monsieur."
+And she took it and read his name:  "Christopher Newman."
+Then she tried to repeat it aloud, and laughed at her bad accent.
+"Your English names are so droll!"
+
+"Droll?" said Mr. Newman, laughing too.  "Did you ever hear
+of Christopher Columbus?"
+
+"Bien sur!  He invented America; a very great man.
+And is he your patron?"
+
+"My patron?"
+
+"Your patron-saint, in the calendar."
+
+"Oh, exactly; my parents named me for him."
+
+"Monsieur is American?"
+
+"Don't you see it?" monsieur inquired.
+
+"And you mean to carry my little picture away over there?"
+and she explained her phrase with a gesture.
+
+"Oh, I mean to buy a great many pictures--beaucoup, beaucoup,"
+said Christopher Newman.
+
+"The honor is not less for me," the young lady answered,
+"for I am sure monsieur has a great deal of taste."
+
+"But you must give me your card," Newman said; "your card, you know."
+
+The young lady looked severe for an instant, and then said,
+"My father will wait upon you."
+
+But this time Mr. Newman's powers of divination were at fault.
+"Your card, your address," he simply repeated.
+
+"My address?" said mademoiselle.  Then with a little shrug,
+"Happily for you, you are an American!  It is the first time I
+ever gave my card to a gentleman."  And, taking from her pocket
+a rather greasy porte-monnaie, she extracted from it a small
+glazed visiting card, and presented the latter to her patron.
+It was neatly inscribed in pencil, with a great many flourishes,
+"Mlle. Noemie Nioche."  But Mr. Newman, unlike his companion,
+read the name with perfect gravity; all French names to him
+were equally droll.
+
+"And precisely, here is my father, who has come to escort me home,"
+said Mademoiselle Noemie.  "He speaks English.  He will arrange with you."
+And she turned to welcome a little old gentleman who came shuffling up,
+peering over his spectacles at Newman.
+
+M. Nioche wore a glossy wig, of an unnatural color which overhung his
+little meek, white, vacant face, and left it hardly more expressive
+than the unfeatured block upon which these articles are displayed
+in the barber's window.  He was an exquisite image of shabby gentility.
+His scant ill-made coat, desperately brushed, his darned gloves,
+his highly polished boots, his rusty, shapely hat, told the story
+of a person who had "had losses" and who clung to the spirit
+of nice habits even though the letter had been hopelessly effaced.
+Among other things M. Nioche had lost courage.  Adversity had not only
+ruined him, it had frightened him, and he was evidently going through
+his remnant of life on tiptoe, for fear of waking up the hostile fates.
+If this strange gentleman was saying anything improper to his daughter,
+M. Nioche would entreat him huskily, as a particular favor, to forbear;
+but he would admit at the same time that he was very presumptuous
+to ask for particular favors.
+
+"Monsieur has bought my picture," said Mademoiselle Noemie.
+"When it's finished you'll carry it to him in a cab."
+
+"In a cab!" cried M. Nioche; and he stared, in a bewildered way,
+as if he had seen the sun rising at midnight.
+
+"Are you the young lady's father?" said Newman.
+"I think she said you speak English."
+
+"Speak English--yes," said the old man slowly rubbing his hands.
+"I will bring it in a cab."
+
+"Say something, then," cried his daughter.  "Thank him a little--
+not too much."
+
+"A little, my daughter, a little?" said M. Nioche perplexed.
+"How much?"
+
+"Two thousand!" said Mademoiselle Noemie.  "Don't make a fuss
+or he'll take back his word."
+
+"Two thousand!" cried the old man, and he began to fumble
+for his snuff-box. He looked at Newman from head to foot;
+he looked at his daughter and then at the picture.
+"Take care you don't spoil it!" he cried almost sublimely.
+
+"We must go home," said Mademoiselle Noemie.  "This is a good day's work.
+Take care how you carry it!"  And she began to put up her utensils.
+
+"How can I thank you?" said M. Nioche.  "My English does not suffice."
+
+"I wish I spoke French as well," said Newman, good-naturedly. "Your
+daughter is very clever."
+
+"Oh, sir!" and M. Nioche looked over his spectacles with tearful
+eyes and nodded several times with a world of sadness.
+"She has had an education--tres-superieure! Nothing was spared.
+Lessons in pastel at ten francs the lesson, lessons in oil
+at twelve francs.  I didn't look at the francs then.
+She's an artiste, ah!"
+
+"Do I understand you to say that you have had reverses?" asked Newman.
+
+"Reverses?  Oh, sir, misfortunes--terrible."
+
+"Unsuccessful in business, eh?"
+
+"Very unsuccessful, sir."
+
+"Oh, never fear, you'll get on your legs again," said Newman cheerily.
+
+The old man drooped his head on one side and looked at him with an expression
+of pain, as if this were an unfeeling jest.
+
+"What does he say?" demanded Mademoiselle Noemie.
+
+M. Nioche took a pinch of snuff.  "He says I will make my fortune again."
+
+"Perhaps he will help you.  And what else?"
+
+"He says thou art very clever."
+
+"It is very possible.  You believe it yourself, my father?"
+
+"Believe it, my daughter?  With this evidence!"
+And the old man turned afresh, with a staring, wondering homage,
+to the audacious daub on the easel.
+
+"Ask him, then, if he would not like to learn French."
+
+"To learn French?"
+
+"To take lessons."
+
+"To take lessons, my daughter?  From thee?"
+
+"From you!"
+
+"From me, my child?  How should I give lessons?"
+
+"Pas de raisons!  Ask him immediately!" said Mademoiselle Noemie,
+with soft brevity.
+
+M. Nioche stood aghast, but under his daughter's eye he collected his wits,
+and, doing his best to assume an agreeable smile, he executed her commands.
+"Would it please you to receive instruction in our beautiful language?"
+he inquired, with an appealing quaver.
+
+"To study French?" asked Newman, staring.
+
+M. Nioche pressed his finger-tips together and slowly raised his shoulders.
+"A little conversation!"
+
+"Conversation--that's it!" murmured Mademoiselle Noemie, who had caught
+the word.  "The conversation of the best society."
+
+"Our French conversation is famous, you know," M. Nioche ventured
+to continue.  "It's a great talent."
+
+"But isn't it awfully difficult?" asked Newman, very simply.
+
+"Not to a man of esprit, like monsieur, an admirer of beauty in every form!"
+and M. Nioche cast a significant glance at his daughter's Madonna.
+
+"I can't fancy myself chattering French!" said Newman with a laugh.
+"And yet, I suppose that the more a man knows the better."
+
+"Monsieur expresses that very happily.  Helas, oui!"
+
+"I suppose it would help me a great deal, knocking about Paris,
+to know the language."
+
+"Ah, there are so many things monsieur must want to say:  difficult things!"
+
+"Everything I want to say is difficult.  But you give lessons?"
+
+Poor M. Nioche was embarrassed; he smiled more appealingly.
+"I am not a regular professor," he admitted.  "I can't nevertheless
+tell him that I'm a professor," he said to his daughter.
+
+"Tell him it's a very exceptional chance," answered Mademoiselle Noemie;
+"an homme du monde--one gentleman conversing with another!
+Remember what you are--what you have been!"
+
+"A teacher of languages in neither case!  Much more formerly and much
+less to-day! And if he asks the price of the lessons?"
+
+"He won't ask it," said Mademoiselle Noemie.
+
+"What he pleases, I may say?"
+
+"Never!  That's bad style."
+
+"If he asks, then?"
+
+Mademoiselle Noemie had put on her bonnet and was tying the ribbons.
+She smoothed them out, with her soft little chin thrust forward.
+"Ten francs," she said quickly.
+
+"Oh, my daughter!  I shall never dare."
+
+"Don't dare, then!  He won't ask till the end of the lessons,
+and then I will make out the bill."
+
+M. Nioche turned to the confiding foreigner again, and stood
+rubbing his hands, with an air of seeming to plead guilty which
+was not intenser only because it was habitually so striking.
+It never occurred to Newman to ask him for a guarantee of his
+skill in imparting instruction; he supposed of course M. Nioche
+knew his own language, and his appealing forlornness was quite
+the perfection of what the American, for vague reasons, had always
+associated with all elderly foreigners of the lesson-giving class.
+Newman had never reflected upon philological processes.
+His chief impression with regard to ascertaining those mysterious
+correlatives of his familiar English vocables which were current
+in this extraordinary city of Paris was, that it was simply
+a matter of a good deal of unwonted and rather ridiculous
+muscular effort on his own part.  "How did you learn English?"
+he asked of the old man.
+
+"When I was young, before my miseries.  Oh, I was wide awake, then.
+My father was a great commercant; he placed me for a year
+in a counting-house in England.  Some of it stuck to me;
+but I have forgotten!"
+
+"How much French can I learn in a month?"
+
+"What does he say?" asked Mademoiselle Noemie.
+
+M. Nioche explained.
+
+"He will speak like an angel!" said his daughter.
+
+But the native integrity which had been vainly exerted to
+secure M. Nioche's commercial prosperity flickered up again.
+"Dame, monsieur!" he answered.  "All I can teach you!"
+And then, recovering himself at a sign from his daughter,
+"I will wait upon you at your hotel."
+
+"Oh yes, I should like to learn French," Newman went on,
+with democratic confidingness.  "Hang me if I should ever
+have thought of it!  I took for granted it was impossible.
+But if you learned my language, why shouldn't I learn yours?"
+and his frank, friendly laugh drew the sting from the jest.
+"Only, if we are going to converse, you know, you must think
+of something cheerful to converse about."
+
+"You are very good, sir; I am overcome!" said M. Nioche, throwing out
+his hands.  "But you have cheerfulness and happiness for two!"
+
+"Oh no," said Newman more seriously.  "You must be bright and lively;
+that's part of the bargain."
+
+M. Nioche bowed, with his hand on his heart.  "Very well, sir;
+you have already made me lively."
+
+"Come and bring me my picture then; I will pay you for it,
+and we will talk about that.  That will be a cheerful subject!"
+
+Mademoiselle Noemie had collected her accessories, and she gave
+the precious Madonna in charge to her father, who retreated backwards
+out of sight, holding it at arm's-length and reiterating his obeisance.
+The young lady gathered her shawl about her like a perfect Parisienne,
+and it was with the smile of a Parisienne that she took leave
+of her patron.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+
+
+He wandered back to the divan and seated himself on
+the other side, in view of the great canvas on which Paul
+Veronese had depicted the marriage-feast of Cana.
+Wearied as he was he found the picture entertaining;
+it had an illusion for him; it satisfied his conception,
+which was ambitious, of what a splendid banquet should be.
+In the left-hand corner of the picture is a young woman
+with yellow tresses confined in a golden head-dress;
+she is bending forward and listening, with the smile
+of a charming woman at a dinner-party, to her neighbor.
+Newman detected her in the crowd, admired her, and perceived
+that she too had her votive copyist--a young man with his hair
+standing on end.  Suddenly he became conscious of the germ
+of the mania of the "collector;" he had taken the first step;
+why should he not go on?  It was only twenty minutes before
+that he had bought the first picture of his life, and now he was
+already thinking of art-patronage as a fascinating pursuit.
+His reflections quickened his good-humor, and he was on
+the point of approaching the young man with another "Combien?"
+Two or three facts in this relation are noticeable,
+although the logical chain which connects them may seem imperfect.
+He knew Mademoiselle Nioche had asked too much; he bore her no
+grudge for doing so, and he was determined to pay the young man
+exactly the proper sum.  At this moment, however, his attention
+was attracted by a gentleman who had come from another part of
+the room and whose manner was that of a stranger to the gallery,
+although he was equipped with neither guide-book nor opera-glass.
+He carried a white sun-umbrella, lined with blue silk, and he
+strolled in front of the Paul Veronese, vaguely looking at it,
+but much too near to see anything but the grain of the canvas.
+Opposite to Christopher Newman he paused and turned,
+and then our friend, who had been observing him, had a chance
+to verify a suspicion aroused by an imperfect view of his face.
+The result of this larger scrutiny was that he presently sprang
+to his feet, strode across the room, and, with an outstretched hand,
+arrested the gentleman with the blue-lined umbrella.
+The latter stared, but put out his hand at a venture.
+He was corpulent and rosy, and though his countenance,
+which was ornamented with a beautiful flaxen beard,
+carefully divided in the middle and brushed outward at the sides,
+was not remarkable for intensity of expression, he looked
+like a person who would willingly shake hands with any one.
+I know not what Newman thought of his face, but he found a want
+of response in his grasp.
+
+"Oh, come, come," he said, laughing; "don't say, now, you don't know me--
+if I have NOT got a white parasol!"
+
+The sound of his voice quickened the other's memory, his face expanded
+to its fullest capacity, and he also broke into a laugh.  "Why, Newman--
+I'll be blowed!  Where in the world--I declare--who would have thought?
+You know you have changed."
+
+"You haven't!" said Newman.
+
+"Not for the better, no doubt.  When did you get here?"
+
+"Three days ago."
+
+"Why didn't you let me know?"
+
+"I had no idea YOU were here."
+
+"I have been here these six years."
+
+"It must be eight or nine since we met."
+
+"Something of that sort.  We were very young."
+
+"It was in St. Louis, during the war.  You were in the army."
+
+"Oh no, not I!  But you were."
+
+"I believe I was."
+
+"You came out all right?"
+
+"I came out with my legs and arms--and with satisfaction. All
+that seems very far away."
+
+"And how long have you been in Europe?"
+
+"Seventeen days."
+
+"First time?"
+
+"Yes, very much so."
+
+"Made your everlasting fortune?"
+
+Christopher Newman was silent a moment, and then with a tranquil
+smile he answered, "Yes."
+
+"And come to Paris to spend it, eh?"
+
+"Well, we shall see.  So they carry those parasols here--the menfolk?"
+
+"Of course they do.  They're great things.  They understand
+comfort out here."
+
+"Where do you buy them?"
+
+"Anywhere, everywhere."
+
+"Well, Tristram, I'm glad to get hold of you.  You can show me the ropes.
+I suppose you know Paris inside out."
+
+Mr. Tristram gave a mellow smile of self-gratulation. "Well,
+I guess there are not many men that can show me much.
+I'll take care of you."
+
+"It's a pity you were not here a few minutes ago.
+I have just bought a picture.  You might have put the thing
+through for me."
+
+"Bought a picture?" said Mr. Tristram, looking vaguely round at the walls.
+"Why, do they sell them?"
+
+"I mean a copy."
+
+"Oh, I see.  These," said Mr. Tristram, nodding at the Titians and Vandykes,
+"these, I suppose, are originals."
+
+"I hope so," cried Newman.  "I don't want a copy of a copy."
+
+"Ah," said Mr. Tristram, mysteriously, "you can never tell.
+They imitate, you know, so deucedly well.  It's like the jewelers,
+with their false stones.  Go into the Palais Royal, there; you see
+'Imitation' on half the windows.  The law obliges them to stick it on,
+you know; but you can't tell the things apart.  To tell the truth,"
+Mr. Tristram continued, with a wry face, "I don't do much in pictures.
+I leave that to my wife."
+
+"Ah, you have got a wife?"
+
+"Didn't I mention it?  She's a very nice woman; you must know her.
+She's up there in the Avenue d'Iena."
+
+"So you are regularly fixed--house and children and all."
+
+"Yes, a tip-top house and a couple of youngsters."
+
+"Well," said Christopher Newman, stretching his arms a little,
+with a sigh, "I envy you."
+
+"Oh no! you don't!" answered Mr. Tristram, giving him a little
+poke with his parasol.
+
+"I beg your pardon; I do!"
+
+"Well, you won't, then, when--when--"
+
+"You don't certainly mean when I have seen your establishment?"
+
+"When you have seen Paris, my boy.  You want to be your own master here."
+
+"Oh, I have been my own master all my life, and I'm tired of it."
+
+"Well, try Paris.  How old are you?"
+
+"Thirty-six."
+
+"C'est le bel age, as they say here."
+
+"What does that mean?"
+
+"It means that a man shouldn't send away his plate till he has
+eaten his fill."
+
+"All that?  I have just made arrangements to take French lessons."
+
+"Oh, you don't want any lessons.  You'll pick it up.
+I never took any."
+
+"I suppose you speak French as well as English?"
+
+"Better!" said Mr. Tristram, roundly.  "It's a splendid language.
+You can say all sorts of bright things in it."
+
+"But I suppose," said Christopher Newman, with an earnest desire
+for information, "that you must be bright to begin with."
+
+"Not a bit; that's just the beauty of it."
+
+The two friends, as they exchanged these remarks, had remained standing
+where they met, and leaning against the rail which protected the pictures.
+Mr. Tristram at last declared that he was overcome with fatigue and should
+be happy to sit down.  Newman recommended in the highest terms the great
+divan on which he had been lounging, and they prepared to seat themselves.
+"This is a great place; isn't it?" said Newman, with ardor.
+
+"Great place, great place.  Finest thing in the world."
+And then, suddenly, Mr. Tristram hesitated and looked about him.
+"I suppose they won't let you smoke here."
+
+Newman stared.  "Smoke?  I'm sure I don't know.
+You know the regulations better than I."
+
+"I?  I never was here before!"
+
+"Never! in six years?"
+
+"I believe my wife dragged me here once when we first came to Paris,
+but I never found my way back."
+
+"But you say you know Paris so well!"
+
+"I don't call this Paris!" cried Mr. Tristram, with assurance.
+"Come; let's go over to the Palais Royal and have a smoke."
+
+"I don't smoke," said Newman.
+
+"A drink, then."
+
+And Mr. Tristram led his companion away.  They passed through
+the glorious halls of the Louvre, down the staircases, along the cool,
+dim galleries of sculpture, and out into the enormous court.
+Newman looked about him as he went, but he made no comments,
+and it was only when they at last emerged into the open air
+that he said to his friend, "It seems to me that in your place
+I should have come here once a week."
+
+"Oh, no you wouldn't!" said Mr. Tristram.  "You think so, but you
+wouldn't. You wouldn't have had time.  You would always mean to go,
+but you never would go.  There's better fun than that, here in Paris.
+Italy's the place to see pictures; wait till you get there.
+There you have to go; you can't do anything else.
+It's an awful country; you can't get a decent cigar.
+I don't know why I went in there, to-day; I was strolling along,
+rather hard up for amusement.  I sort of noticed the Louvre as
+I passed, and I thought I would go in and see what was going on.
+But if I hadn't found you there I should have felt rather sold.
+Hang it, I don't care for pictures; I prefer the reality!"
+And Mr. Tristram tossed off this happy formula with an assurance
+which the numerous class of persons suffering from an overdose
+of "culture" might have envied him.
+
+The two gentlemen proceeded along the Rue de Rivoli and into the Palais Royal,
+where they seated themselves at one of the little tables stationed
+at the door of the cafe which projects into the great open quadrangle.
+The place was filled with people, the fountains were spouting,
+a band was playing, clusters of chairs were gathered beneath all
+the lime-trees, and buxom, white-capped nurses, seated along the benches,
+were offering to their infant charges the amplest facilities for nutrition.
+There was an easy, homely gayety in the whole scene, and Christopher
+Newman felt that it was most characteristically Parisian.
+
+"And now," began Mr. Tristram, when they had tested the decoction which
+he had caused to be served to them, "now just give an account of yourself.
+What are your ideas, what are your plans, where have you come from and
+where are you going?  In the first place, where are you staying?"
+
+"At the Grand Hotel," said Newman.
+
+Mr. Tristram puckered his plump visage.  "That won't do!
+You must change."
+
+"Change?" demanded Newman.  "Why, it's the finest hotel I ever was in."
+
+"You don't want a 'fine' hotel; you want something small
+and quiet and elegant, where your bell is answered and you--
+your person is recognized."
+
+"They keep running to see if I have rung before I have touched the bell,"
+said Newman "and as for my person they are always bowing and scraping to it."
+
+"I suppose you are always tipping them.  That's very bad style."
+
+"Always?  By no means.  A man brought me something yesterday,
+and then stood loafing in a beggarly manner.
+I offered him a chair and asked him if he wouldn't sit down.
+Was that bad style?"
+
+"Very!"
+
+"But he bolted, instantly.  At any rate, the place amuses me.
+Hang your elegance, if it bores me.  I sat in the court of
+the Grand Hotel last night until two o'clock in the morning,
+watching the coming and going, and the people knocking about."
+
+"You're easily pleased.  But you can do as you choose--a man in your shoes.
+You have made a pile of money, eh?"
+
+"I have made enough"
+
+"Happy the man who can say that?  Enough for what?"
+
+"Enough to rest awhile, to forget the confounded thing,
+to look about me, to see the world, to have a good time,
+to improve my mind, and, if the fancy takes me, to marry a wife."
+Newman spoke slowly, with a certain dryness of accent and with
+frequent pauses.  This was his habitual mode of utterance,
+but it was especially marked in the words I have just quoted.
+
+"Jupiter!  There's a programme!" cried Mr. Tristram.
+"Certainly, all that takes money, especially the wife;
+unless indeed she gives it, as mine did.  And what's the story?
+How have you done it?"
+
+Newman had pushed his hat back from his forehead, folded his arms,
+and stretched his legs.  He listened to the music, he looked about him at
+the bustling crowd, at the plashing fountains, at the nurses and the babies.
+"I have worked!" he answered at last.
+
+Tristram looked at him for some moments, and allowed his placid eyes
+to measure his friend's generous longitude and rest upon his comfortably
+contemplative face.  "What have you worked at?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, at several things."
+
+"I suppose you're a smart fellow, eh?"
+
+Newman continued to look at the nurses and babies; they imparted to the scene
+a kind of primordial, pastoral simplicity.  "Yes," he said at last,
+"I suppose I am."  And then, in answer to his companion's inquiries,
+he related briefly his history since their last meeting.
+It was an intensely Western story, and it dealt with enterprises
+which it will be needless to introduce to the reader in detail.
+Newman had come out of the war with a brevet of brigadier-general,
+an honor which in this case--without invidious comparisons--
+had lighted upon shoulders amply competent to bear it.  But though
+he could manage a fight, when need was, Newman heartily disliked
+the business; his four years in the army had left him with an angry,
+bitter sense of the waste of precious things--life and time and money
+and "smartness" and the early freshness of purpose; and he had addressed
+himself to the pursuits of peace with passionate zest and energy.
+He was of course as penniless when he plucked off his shoulder-straps
+as when he put them on, and the only capital at his disposal was
+his dogged resolution and his lively perception of ends and means.
+Exertion and action were as natural to him as respiration; a more
+completely healthy mortal had never trod the elastic soil of the West.
+His experience, moreover, was as wide as his capacity; when he was
+fourteen years old, necessity had taken him by his slim young shoulders
+and pushed him into the street, to earn that night's supper.
+He had not earned it but he had earned the next night's, and afterwards,
+whenever he had had none, it was because he had gone without it to use
+the money for something else, a keener pleasure or a finer profit.
+He had turned his hand, with his brain in it, to many things;
+he had been enterprising, in an eminent sense of the term; he had
+been adventurous and even reckless, and he had known bitter failure
+as well as brilliant success; but he was a born experimentalist,
+and he had always found something to enjoy in the pressure of necessity,
+even when it was as irritating as the haircloth shirt of the mediaeval monk.
+At one time failure seemed inexorably his portion; ill-luck became his
+bed-fellow, and whatever he touched he turned, not to gold, but to ashes.
+His most vivid conception of a supernatural element in the world's affairs
+had come to him once when this pertinacity of misfortune was at its climax;
+there seemed to him something stronger in life than his own will.
+But the mysterious something could only be the devil, and he was accordingly
+seized with an intense personal enmity to this impertinent force.
+He had known what it was to have utterly exhausted his credit,
+to be unable to raise a dollar, and to find himself at nightfall
+in a strange city, without a penny to mitigate its strangeness.
+It was under these circumstances that he made his entrance into
+San Francisco, the scene, subsequently, of his happiest strokes
+of fortune.  If he did not, like Dr. Franklin in Philadelphia,
+march along the street munching a penny-loaf, it was only
+because he had not the penny-loaf necessary to the performance.
+In his darkest days he had had but one simple, practical impulse--
+the desire, as he would have phrased it, to see the thing through.
+He did so at last, buffeted his way into smooth waters,
+and made money largely.  It must be admitted, rather nakedly,
+that Christopher Newman's sole aim in life had been to make money;
+what he had been placed in the world for was, to his own perception,
+simply to wrest a fortune, the bigger the better, from defiant opportunity.
+This idea completely filled his horizon and satisfied his imagination.
+Upon the uses of money, upon what one might do with a life
+into which one had succeeded in injecting the golden stream,
+he had up to his thirty-fifth year very scantily reflected.
+Life had been for him an open game, and he had played for high stakes.
+He had won at last and carried off his winnings; and now what was
+he to do with them?  He was a man to whom, sooner or later, the question
+was sure to present itself, and the answer to it belongs to our story.
+A vague sense that more answers were possible than his philosophy
+had hitherto dreamt of had already taken possession of him, and it
+seemed softly and agreeably to deepen as he lounged in this brilliant
+corner of Paris with his friend.
+
+"I must confess," he presently went on, "that here I don't feel at all smart.
+My remarkable talents seem of no use.  I feel as simple as a little child,
+and a little child might take me by the hand and lead me about."
+
+"Oh, I'll be your little child," said Tristram, jovially; "I'll take
+you by the hand.  Trust yourself to me"
+
+"I am a good worker," Newman continued, "but I rather think
+I am a poor loafer.  I have come abroad to amuse myself,
+but I doubt whether I know how."
+
+"Oh, that's easily learned."
+
+"Well, I may perhaps learn it, but I am afraid I shall never do it by rote.
+I have the best will in the world about it, but my genius doesn't lie
+in that direction.  As a loafer I shall never be original, as I take it
+that you are."
+
+"Yes," said Tristram, "I suppose I am original; like all those immoral
+pictures in the Louvre."
+
+"Besides," Newman continued, "I don't want to work at pleasure,
+any more than I played at work.  I want to take it easily.
+I feel deliciously lazy, and I should like to spend six months
+as I am now, sitting under a tree and listening to a band.
+There's only one thing; I want to hear some good music."
+
+"Music and pictures!  Lord, what refined tastes!
+You are what my wife calls intellectual.  I ain't, a bit.
+But we can find something better for you to do than to sit
+under a tree.  To begin with, you must come to the club."
+
+"What club?"
+
+"The Occidental.  You will see all the Americans there;
+all the best of them, at least.  Of course you play poker?"
+
+"Oh, I say," cried Newman, with energy, "you are not going to lock
+me up in a club and stick me down at a card-table! I haven't come
+all this way for that."
+
+"What the deuce HAVE you come for!  You were glad enough to play
+poker in St. Louis, I recollect, when you cleaned me out."
+
+"I have come to see Europe, to get the best out of it I can.
+I want to see all the great things, and do what the clever people do."
+
+"The clever people?  Much obliged.  You set me down as a blockhead, then?"
+
+Newman was sitting sidewise in his chair, with his elbow
+on the back and his head leaning on his hand.  Without moving
+he looked a while at his companion with his dry, guarded,
+half-inscrutable, and yet altogether good-natured smile.
+"Introduce me to your wife!" he said at last.
+
+Tristram bounced about in his chair.  "Upon my word,
+I won't. She doesn't want any help to turn up her nose at me,
+nor do you, either!"
+
+"I don't turn up my nose at you, my dear fellow; nor at any one,
+or anything.  I'm not proud, I assure you I'm not proud.
+That's why I am willing to take example by the clever people."
+
+"Well, if I'm not the rose, as they say here, I have lived near it.
+I can show you some clever people, too.  Do you know General Packard?
+Do you know C. P. Hatch?  Do you know Miss Kitty Upjohn?"
+
+"I shall be happy to make their acquaintance; I want to cultivate society."
+
+Tristram seemed restless and suspicious; he eyed his friend askance,
+and then, "What are you up to, any way?" he demanded.
+"Are you going to write a book?"
+
+Christopher Newman twisted one end of his mustache a while,
+in silence, and at last he made answer.  "One day, a couple
+of months ago, something very curious happened to me.
+I had come on to New York on some important business; it was rather
+a long story--a question of getting ahead of another party,
+in a certain particular way, in the stock-market. This other party
+had once played me a very mean trick.  I owed him a grudge, I felt
+awfully savage at the time, and I vowed that, when I got a chance,
+I would, figuratively speaking, put his nose out of joint.
+There was a matter of some sixty thousand dollars at stake.
+If I put it out of his way, it was a blow the fellow would feel,
+and he really deserved no quarter.  I jumped into a hack and went
+about my business, and it was in this hack--this immortal,
+historical hack--that the curious thing I speak of occurred.
+It was a hack like any other, only a trifle dirtier,
+with a greasy line along the top of the drab cushions,
+as if it had been used for a great many Irish funerals.
+It is possible I took a nap; I had been traveling all night,
+and though I was excited with my errand, I felt the want of sleep.
+At all events I woke up suddenly, from a sleep or from a kind
+of a reverie, with the most extraordinary feeling in the world--
+a mortal disgust for the thing I was going to do.  It came upon
+me like THAT!" and he snapped his fingers--"as abruptly as an old
+wound that begins to ache.  I couldn't tell the meaning of it;
+I only felt that I loathed the whole business and wanted to wash
+my hands of it.  The idea of losing that sixty thousand dollars,
+of letting it utterly slide and scuttle and never hearing
+of it again, seemed the sweetest thing in the world.
+And all this took place quite independently of my will,
+and I sat watching it as if it were a play at the theatre.
+I could feel it going on inside of me.  You may depend upon it
+that there are things going on inside of us that we understand
+mighty little about."
+
+"Jupiter! you make my flesh creep!" cried Tristram.
+"And while you sat in your hack, watching the play, as you call it,
+the other man marched in and bagged your sixty thousand dollars?"
+
+"I have not the least idea.  I hope so, poor devil! but I never found out.
+We pulled up in front of the place I was going to in Wall Street,
+but I sat still in the carriage, and at last the driver scrambled down
+off his seat to see whether his carriage had not turned into a hearse.
+I couldn't have got out, any more than if I had been a corpse.
+What was the matter with me?  Momentary idiocy, you'll say.
+What I wanted to get out of was Wall Street.  I told the man
+to drive down to the Brooklyn ferry and to cross over.
+When we were over, I told him to drive me out into the country.
+As I had told him originally to drive for dear life down town, I suppose
+he thought me insane.  Perhaps I was, but in that case I am insane still.
+I spent the morning looking at the first green leaves on Long Island.
+I was sick of business; I wanted to throw it all up and break
+off short; I had money enough, or if I hadn't I ought to have.
+I seemed to feel a new man inside my old skin, and I longed for a
+new world.  When you want a thing so very badly you had better treat
+yourself to it.  I didn't understand the matter, not in the least;
+but I gave the old horse the bridle and let him find his way.
+As soon as I could get out of the game I sailed for Europe.
+That is how I come to be sitting here."
+
+"You ought to have bought up that hack," said Tristram;
+"it isn't a safe vehicle to have about.  And you have really
+sold out, then; you have retired from business?"
+
+"I have made over my hand to a friend; when I feel disposed,
+I can take up the cards again.  I dare say that a twelvemonth hence
+the operation will be reversed.  The pendulum will swing back again.
+I shall be sitting in a gondola or on a dromedary, and all of a sudden
+I shall want to clear out.  But for the present I am perfectly free.
+I have even bargained that I am to receive no business letters."
+
+"Oh, it's a real caprice de prince," said Tristram.  "I back out; a poor
+devil like me can't help you to spend such very magnificent leisure as that.
+You should get introduced to the crowned heads."
+
+Newman looked at him a moment, and then, with his easy smile,
+"How does one do it?" he asked.
+
+"Come, I like that!" cried Tristram.  "It shows you are in earnest."
+
+"Of course I am in earnest.  Didn't I say I wanted the best?
+I know the best can't be had for mere money, but I rather think
+money will do a good deal.  In addition, I am willing to take
+a good deal of trouble."
+
+"You are not bashful, eh?"
+
+"I haven't the least idea.  I want the biggest kind of entertainment
+a man can get.  People, places, art, nature, everything!  I want
+to see the tallest mountains, and the bluest lakes, and the finest
+pictures and the handsomest churches, and the most celebrated men,
+and the most beautiful women."
+
+"Settle down in Paris, then.  There are no mountains that I
+know of, and the only lake is in the Bois du Boulogne,
+and not particularly blue.  But there is everything else:
+plenty of pictures and churches, no end of celebrated men,
+and several beautiful women."
+
+"But I can't settle down in Paris at this season, just as summer
+is coming on."
+
+"Oh, for the summer go up to Trouville."
+
+"What is Trouville?"
+
+"The French Newport.  Half the Americans go."
+
+"Is it anywhere near the Alps?"
+
+"About as near as Newport is to the Rocky Mountains."
+
+"Oh, I want to see Mont Blanc," said Newman, "and Amsterdam,
+and the Rhine, and a lot of places.  Venice in particular.
+I have great ideas about Venice."
+
+"Ah," said Mr. Tristram, rising, "I see I shall have to introduce
+you to my wife!"
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+
+
+He performed this ceremony on the following day, when, by appointment,
+Christopher Newman went to dine with him.  Mr. and Mrs. Tristram
+lived behind one of those chalk-colored facades which decorate
+with their pompous sameness the broad avenues manufactured
+by Baron Haussmann in the neighborhood of the Arc de Triomphe.
+Their apartment was rich in the modern conveniences, and Tristram
+lost no time in calling his visitor's attention to their principal
+household treasures, the gas-lamps and the furnace-holes.
+"Whenever you feel homesick," he said, "you must come up here.
+We'll stick you down before a register, under a good big burner, and--"
+
+"And you will soon get over your homesickness," said Mrs. Tristram.
+
+Her husband stared; his wife often had a tone which he found
+inscrutable he could not tell for his life whether she was in jest
+or in earnest.  The truth is that circumstances had done much
+to cultivate in Mrs. Tristram a marked tendency to irony.
+Her taste on many points differed from that of her husband,
+and though she made frequent concessions it must be
+confessed that her concessions were not always graceful.
+They were founded upon a vague project she had of some day
+doing something very positive, something a trifle passionate.
+What she meant to do she could by no means have told you;
+but meanwhile, nevertheless, she was buying a good conscience,
+by installments.
+
+It should be added, without delay, to anticipate misconception,
+that her little scheme of independence did not definitely
+involve the assistance of another person, of the opposite sex;
+she was not saving up virtue to cover the expenses of a flirtation.
+For this there were various reasons.  To begin with, she had
+a very plain face and she was entirely without illusions as to
+her appearance.  She had taken its measure to a hair's breadth,
+she knew the worst and the best, she had accepted herself.
+It had not been, indeed, without a struggle.  As a young girl she
+had spent hours with her back to her mirror, crying her eyes out;
+and later she had from desperation and bravado adopted
+the habit of proclaiming herself the most ill-favored of women,
+in order that she might--as in common politeness was inevitable--
+be contradicted and reassured.  It was since she had come to live
+in Europe that she had begun to take the matter philosophically.
+Her observation, acutely exercised here, had suggested to her that
+a woman's first duty is not to be beautiful, but to be pleasing,
+and she encountered so many women who pleased without beauty
+that she began to feel that she had discovered her mission.
+She had once heard an enthusiastic musician, out of patience
+with a gifted bungler, declare that a fine voice is really
+an obstacle to singing properly; and it occurred to her
+that it might perhaps be equally true that a beautiful face
+is an obstacle to the acquisition of charming manners.
+Mrs. Tristram, then, undertook to be exquisitely agreeable,
+and she brought to the task a really touching devotion.
+How well she would have succeeded I am unable to say;
+unfortunately she broke off in the middle.  Her own excuse
+was the want of encouragement in her immediate circle.
+But I am inclined to think that she had not a real genius for
+the matter, or she would have pursued the charming art for itself.
+The poor lady was very incomplete.  She fell back upon the harmonies
+of the toilet, which she thoroughly understood, and contented
+herself with dressing in perfection.  She lived in Paris,
+which she pretended to detest, because it was only in Paris
+that one could find things to exactly suit one's complexion.
+Besides out of Paris it was always more or less of a trouble to get
+ten-button gloves.  When she railed at this serviceable city
+and you asked her where she would prefer to reside, she returned
+some very unexpected answer.  She would say in Copenhagen,
+or in Barcelona; having, while making the tour of Europe,
+spent a couple of days at each of these places.  On the whole,
+with her poetic furbelows and her misshapen, intelligent little face,
+she was, when you knew her, a decidedly interesting woman.
+She was naturally shy, and if she had been born a beauty,
+she would (having no vanity) probably have remained shy.
+Now, she was both diffident and importunate; extremely reserved
+sometimes with her friends, and strangely expansive with strangers.
+She despised her husband; despised him too much, for she had been
+perfectly at liberty not to marry him.  She had been in love
+with a clever man who had slighted her, and she had married
+a fool in the hope that this thankless wit, reflecting on it,
+would conclude that she had no appreciation of merit, and that
+he had flattered himself in supposing that she cared for his own.
+Restless, discontented, visionary, without personal ambitions,
+but with a certain avidity of imagination, she was,
+as I have said before, eminently incomplete.  She was full--
+both for good and for ill--of beginnings that came to nothing;
+but she had nevertheless, morally, a spark of the sacred fire.
+
+Newman was fond, under all circumstances, of the society of women,
+and now that he was out of his native element and deprived
+of his habitual interests, he turned to it for compensation.
+He took a great fancy to Mrs. Tristram; she frankly repaid it,
+and after their first meeting he passed a great many hours in her
+drawing-room. After two or three talks they were fast friends.
+Newman's manner with women was peculiar, and it required some
+ingenuity on a lady's part to discover that he admired her.
+He had no gallantry, in the usual sense of the term; no compliments,
+no graces, no speeches.  Very fond of what is called chaffing,
+in his dealings with men, he never found himself on a sofa beside
+a member of the softer sex without feeling extremely serious.
+He was not shy, and so far as awkwardness proceeds from a struggle
+with shyness, he was not awkward; grave, attentive, submissive,
+often silent, he was simply swimming in a sort of rapture of respect.
+This emotion was not at all theoretic, it was not even in a high
+degree sentimental; he had thought very little about the "position"
+of women, and he was not familiar either sympathetically
+or otherwise, with the image of a President in petticoats.
+His attitude was simply the flower of his general good-nature,
+and a part of his instinctive and genuinely democratic
+assumption of every one's right to lead an easy life.
+If a shaggy pauper had a right to bed and board and wages and
+a vote, women, of course, who were weaker than paupers, and whose
+physical tissue was in itself an appeal, should be maintained,
+sentimentally, at the public expense.  Newman was willing to be
+taxed for this purpose, largely, in proportion to his means.
+Moreover, many of the common traditions with regard to women were
+with him fresh personal impressions; he had never read a novel!
+He had been struck with their acuteness, their subtlety, their tact,
+their felicity of judgment.  They seemed to him exquisitely organized.
+If it is true that one must always have in one's work here below
+a religion, or at least an ideal, of some sort, Newman found
+his metaphysical inspiration in a vague acceptance of final
+responsibility to some illumined feminine brow.
+
+He spent a great deal of time in listening to advice from
+Mrs. Tristram; advice, it must be added, for which he had
+never asked.  He would have been incapable of asking for it,
+for he had no perception of difficulties, and consequently
+no curiosity about remedies.  The complex Parisian world
+about him seemed a very simple affair; it was an immense,
+amazing spectacle, but it neither inflamed his imagination nor
+irritated his curiosity.  He kept his hands in his pockets,
+looked on good-humoredly, desired to miss nothing important,
+observed a great many things narrowly, and never reverted to himself.
+Mrs. Tristram's "advice" was a part of the show, and a more
+entertaining element, in her abundant gossip, than the others.
+He enjoyed her talking about himself; it seemed a part of her
+beautiful ingenuity; but he never made an application of
+anything she said, or remembered it when he was away from her.
+For herself, she appropriated him; he was the most interesting
+thing she had had to think about in many a month.
+She wished to do something with him--she hardly knew what.
+There was so much of him; he was so rich and robust, so easy,
+friendly, well-disposed, that he kept her fancy constantly
+on the alert.  For the present, the only thing she could do
+was to like him.  She told him that he was "horribly Western,"
+but in this compliment the adverb was tinged with insincerity.
+She led him about with her, introduced him to fifty people,
+and took extreme satisfaction in her conquest.  Newman accepted
+every proposal, shook hands universally and promiscuously,
+and seemed equally unfamiliar with trepidation or with elation.
+Tom Tristram complained of his wife's avidity, and declared
+that he could never have a clear five minutes with his friend.
+If he had known how things were going to turn out,
+he never would have brought him to the Avenue d'Iena. The
+two men, formerly, had not been intimate, but Newman remembered
+his earlier impression of his host, and did Mrs. Tristram,
+who had by no means taken him into her confidence,
+but whose secret he presently discovered, the justice
+to admit that her husband was a rather degenerate mortal.
+At twenty-five he had been a good fellow, and in this
+respect he was unchanged; but of a man of his age one
+expected something more.  People said he was sociable,
+but this was as much a matter of course as for a dipped sponge
+to expand; and it was not a high order of sociability.
+He was a great gossip and tattler, and to produce a laugh
+would hardly have spared the reputation of his aged mother.
+Newman had a kindness for old memories, but he found it impossible
+not to perceive that Tristram was nowadays a very light weight.
+His only aspirations were to hold out at poker, at his club,
+to know the names of all the cocottes, to shake hands all round,
+to ply his rosy gullet with truffles and champagne,
+and to create uncomfortable eddies and obstructions
+among the constituent atoms of the American colony.
+He was shamefully idle, spiritless, sensual, snobbish.
+He irritated our friend by the tone of his allusions to their
+native country, and Newman was at a loss to understand why
+the United States were not good enough for Mr. Tristram.
+He had never been a very conscious patriot, but it vexed
+him to see them treated as little better than a vulgar
+smell in his friend's nostrils, and he finally broke out
+and swore that they were the greatest country in the world,
+that they could put all Europe into their breeches'
+pockets, and that an American who spoke ill of them ought
+to be carried home in irons and compelled to live in Boston.
+(This, for Newman was putting it very vindictively.)
+Tristram was a comfortable man to snub, he bore no malice,
+and he continued to insist on Newman's finishing his evening
+at the Occidental Club.
+
+Christopher Newman dined several times in the Avenue d'Iena, and his
+host always proposed an early adjournment to this institution.
+Mrs. Tristram protested, and declared that her husband exhausted
+his ingenuity in trying to displease her.
+
+"Oh no, I never try, my love," he answered.  "I know you loathe
+me quite enough when I take my chance."
+
+Newman hated to see a husband and wife on these terms,
+and he was sure one or other of them must be very unhappy.
+He knew it was not Tristram.  Mrs. Tristram had a balcony
+before her windows, upon which, during the June evenings,
+she was fond of sitting, and Newman used frankly
+to say that he preferred the balcony to the club.
+It had a fringe of perfumed plants in tubs, and enabled you
+to look up the broad street and see the Arch of Triumph vaguely
+massing its heroic sculptures in the summer starlight.
+Sometimes Newman kept his promise of following Mr. Tristram,
+in half an hour, to the Occidental, and sometimes he forgot it.
+His hostess asked him a great many questions about himself,
+but on this subject he was an indifferent talker.
+He was not what is called subjective, though when he felt that her
+interest was sincere, he made an almost heroic attempt to be.
+He told her a great many things he had done, and regaled her
+with anecdotes of Western life; she was from Philadelphia,
+and with her eight years in Paris, talked of herself
+as a languid Oriental.  But some other person was always
+the hero of the tale, by no means always to his advantage;
+and Newman's own emotions were but scantily chronicled.
+She had an especial wish to know whether he had ever been
+in love--seriously, passionately--and, failing to gather any
+satisfaction from his allusions, she at last directly inquired.
+He hesitated a while, and at last he said, "No!"  She declared
+that she was delighted to hear it, as it confirmed her private
+conviction that he was a man of no feeling.
+
+"Really?" he asked, very gravely.  "Do you think so?
+How do you recognize a man of feeling?"
+
+"I can't make out," said Mrs. Tristram, "whether you are very simple
+or very deep."
+
+"I'm very deep.  That's a fact."
+
+"I believe that if I were to tell you with a certain air that you
+have no feeling, you would implicitly believe me."
+
+"A certain air?" said Newman.  "Try it and see."
+
+"You would believe me, but you would not care," said Mrs. Tristram.
+
+"You have got it all wrong.  I should care immensely, but I shouldn't
+believe you.  The fact is I have never had time to feel things.
+I have had to DO them, to make myself felt."
+
+"I can imagine that you may have done that tremendously, sometimes."
+
+"Yes, there's no mistake about that."
+
+"When you are in a fury it can't be pleasant."
+
+"I am never in a fury."
+
+"Angry, then, or displeased."
+
+"I am never angry, and it is so long since I have been displeased
+that I have quite forgotten it."
+
+"I don't believe," said Mrs. Tristram, "that you are never angry.
+A man ought to be angry sometimes, and you are neither good enough
+nor bad enough always to keep your temper."
+
+"I lose it perhaps once in five years."
+
+"The time is coming round, then," said his hostess.
+"Before I have known you six months I shall see you in
+a fine fury."
+
+"Do you mean to put me into one?"
+
+"I should not be sorry.  You take things too coolly.
+It exasperates me.  And then you are too happy.  You have what must
+be the most agreeable thing in the world, the consciousness
+of having bought your pleasure beforehand and paid for it.
+You have not a day of reckoning staring you in the face.
+Your reckonings are over."
+
+"Well, I suppose I am happy," said Newman, meditatively.
+
+"You have been odiously successful."
+
+"Successful in copper," said Newman, "only so-so in railroads,
+and a hopeless fizzle in oil."
+
+"It is very disagreeable to know how Americans have made their money.
+Now you have the world before you.  You have only to enjoy."
+
+"Oh, I suppose I am very well off," said Newman.  "Only I am tired
+of having it thrown up at me.  Besides, there are several drawbacks.
+I am not intellectual."
+
+"One doesn't expect it of you," Mrs. Tristram answered.
+Then in a moment, "Besides, you are!"
+
+"Well, I mean to have a good time, whether or no," said Newman.
+"I am not cultivated, I am not even educated; I know nothing
+about history, or art, or foreign tongues, or any other learned matters.
+But I am not a fool, either, and I shall undertake to know
+something about Europe by the time I have done with it.
+I feel something under my ribs here," he added in a moment,
+"that I can't explain--a sort of a mighty hankering, a desire
+to stretch out and haul in."
+
+"Bravo!" said Mrs. Tristram, "that is very fine.
+You are the great Western Barbarian, stepping forth in his
+innocence and might, gazing a while at this poor effete Old
+World and then swooping down on it."
+
+"Oh, come," said Newman.  "I am not a barbarian, by a good deal.
+I am very much the reverse.  I have seen barbarians;
+I know what they are."
+
+"I don't mean that you are a Comanche chief, or that you wear
+a blanket and feathers.  There are different shades."
+
+"I am a highly civilized man," said Newman.  "I stick to that.
+If you don't believe it, I should like to prove it to you."
+
+Mrs. Tristram was silent a while.  "I should like to make you prove it,"
+she said, at last.  "I should like to put you in a difficult place."
+
+"Pray do," said Newman.
+
+"That has a little conceited sound!" his companion rejoined.
+
+"Oh," said Newman, "I have a very good opinion of myself."
+
+"I wish I could put it to the test.  Give me time and I will."
+And Mrs. Tristram remained silent for some time afterwards,
+as if she was trying to keep her pledge.  It did not appear that
+evening that she succeeded; but as he was rising to take his leave
+she passed suddenly, as she was very apt to do, from the tone
+of unsparing persiflage to that of almost tremulous sympathy.
+"Speaking seriously," she said, "I believe in you, Mr. Newman.
+You flatter my patriotism."
+
+"Your patriotism?"  Christopher demanded.
+
+"Even so.  It would take too long to explain, and you probably would
+not understand.  Besides, you might take it--really, you might take
+it for a declaration.  But it has nothing to do with you personally;
+it's what you represent.  Fortunately you don't know all that,
+or your conceit would increase insufferably."
+
+Newman stood staring and wondering what under the sun he "represented."
+
+"Forgive all my meddlesome chatter and forget my advice.
+It is very silly in me to undertake to tell you what to do.
+When you are embarrassed, do as you think best, and you will do very well.
+When you are in a difficulty, judge for yourself."
+
+"I shall remember everything you have told me," said Newman.
+"There are so many forms and ceremonies over here--"
+
+"Forms and ceremonies are what I mean, of course."
+
+"Ah, but I want to observe them," said Newman.
+"Haven't I as good a right as another?  They don't
+scare me, and you needn't give me leave to violate them.
+I won't take it."
+
+"That is not what I mean.  I mean, observe them in your own way.
+Settle nice questions for yourself.  Cut the knot or untie it,
+as you choose."
+
+"Oh, I am sure I shall never fumble over it!" said Newman.
+
+The next time that he dined in the Avenue d'Iena was a Sunday,
+a day on which Mr. Tristram left the cards unshuffled,
+so that there was a trio in the evening on the balcony.
+The talk was of many things, and at last Mrs. Tristram suddenly
+observed to Christopher Newman that it was high time he should
+take a wife.
+
+"Listen to her; she has the audacity!" said Tristram, who on Sunday
+evenings was always rather acrimonious.
+
+"I don't suppose you have made up your mind not to marry?"
+Mrs. Tristram continued.
+
+"Heaven forbid!" cried Newman.  "I am sternly resolved on it."
+
+"It's very easy," said Tristram; "fatally easy!"
+
+"Well, then, I suppose you do not mean to wait till you are fifty."
+
+"On the contrary, I am in a great hurry."
+
+"One would never suppose it.  Do you expect a lady to come
+and propose to you?"
+
+"No; I am willing to propose.  I think a great deal about it."
+
+"Tell me some of your thoughts."
+
+"Well," said Newman, slowly, "I want to marry very well."
+
+"Marry a woman of sixty, then," said Tristram.
+
+"'Well' in what sense?"
+
+"In every sense.  I shall be hard to please."
+
+"You must remember that, as the French proverb says, the most beautiful
+girl in the world can give but what she has."
+
+"Since you ask me," said Newman, "I will say frankly that I want extremely
+to marry.  It is time, to begin with:  before I know it I shall be forty.
+And then I'm lonely and helpless and dull.  But if I marry now, so long as I
+didn't do it in hot haste when I was twenty, I must do it with my eyes open.
+I want to do the thing in handsome style.  I do not only want to make
+no mistakes, but I want to make a great hit.  I want to take my pick.
+My wife must be a magnificent woman."
+
+"Voila ce qui s'appelle parler!" cried Mrs. Tristram.
+
+"Oh, I have thought an immense deal about it."
+
+"Perhaps you think too much.  The best thing is simply to fall in love."
+
+"When I find the woman who pleases me, I shall love her enough.
+My wife shall be very comfortable."
+
+"You are superb!  There's a chance for the magnificent women."
+
+"You are not fair."  Newman rejoined.  "You draw a fellow out and put
+him off guard, and then you laugh at him."
+
+"I assure you," said Mrs. Tristram, "that I am very serious.
+To prove it, I will make you a proposal.  Should you like me,
+as they say here, to marry you?"
+
+"To hunt up a wife for me?"
+
+"She is already found.  I will bring you together."
+
+"Oh, come," said Tristram, "we don't keep a matrimonial bureau.
+He will think you want your commission."
+
+"Present me to a woman who comes up to my notions," said Newman,
+"and I will marry her tomorrow."
+
+"You have a strange tone about it, and I don't quite understand you.
+I didn't suppose you would be so coldblooded and calculating."
+
+Newman was silent a while.  "Well," he said, at last,
+"I want a great woman.  I stick to that.  That's one thing I
+CAN treat myself to, and if it is to be had I mean to have it.
+What else have I toiled and struggled for, all these years?
+I have succeeded, and now what am I to do with my success?
+To make it perfect, as I see it, there must be a beautiful
+woman perched on the pile, like a statue on a monument.
+She must be as good as she is beautiful, and as clever as she is good.
+I can give my wife a good deal, so I am not afraid to ask a good
+deal myself.  She shall have everything a woman can desire;
+I shall not even object to her being too good for me;
+she may be cleverer and wiser than I can understand, and I shall
+only be the better pleased.  I want to possess, in a word,
+the best article in the market."
+
+"Why didn't you tell a fellow all this at the outset?"  Tristram demanded.
+"I have been trying so to make you fond of ME!"
+
+"This is very interesting," said Mrs. Tristram.
+"I like to see a man know his own mind."
+
+"I have known mine for a long time," Newman went on.
+"I made up my mind tolerably early in life that a beautiful
+wife was the thing best worth having, here below.
+It is the greatest victory over circumstances.  When I say beautiful,
+I mean beautiful in mind and in manners, as well as in person.
+It is a thing every man has an equal right to; he may get it if he can.
+He doesn't have to be born with certain faculties, on purpose;
+he needs only to be a man.  Then he needs only to use his will,
+and such wits as he has, and to try."
+
+"It strikes me that your marriage is to be rather a matter of vanity."
+
+"Well, it is certain," said Newman, "that if people notice my wife
+and admire her, I shall be mightily tickled."
+
+"After this," cried Mrs. Tristram, "call any man modest!"
+
+"But none of them will admire her so much as I."
+
+"I see you have a taste for splendor."
+
+Newman hesitated a little; and then, "I honestly believe I have!" he said.
+
+"And I suppose you have already looked about you a good deal."
+
+"A good deal, according to opportunity."
+
+"And you have seen nothing that satisfied you?"
+
+"No," said Newman, half reluctantly, "I am bound to say in honesty
+that I have seen nothing that really satisfied me."
+
+"You remind me of the heroes of the French romantic poets,
+Rolla and Fortunio and all those other insatiable gentlemen
+for whom nothing in this world was handsome enough.
+But I see you are in earnest, and I should like to help you."
+
+"Who the deuce is it, darling, that you are going to put upon him?"
+Tristram cried.  "We know a good many pretty girls, thank Heaven,
+but magnificent women are not so common."
+
+"Have you any objections to a foreigner?" his wife continued,
+addressing Newman, who had tilted back his chair and, with his
+feet on a bar of the balcony railing and his hands in his pockets,
+was looking at the stars.
+
+"No Irish need apply," said Tristram.
+
+Newman meditated a while.  "As a foreigner, no," he said at last;
+"I have no prejudices."
+
+"My dear fellow, you have no suspicions!" cried Tristram.
+"You don't know what terrible customers these foreign women are;
+especially the 'magnificent' ones.  How should you like a
+fair Circassian, with a dagger in her belt?"
+
+Newman administered a vigorous slap to his knee.  "I would marry a Japanese,
+if she pleased me," he affirmed.
+
+"We had better confine ourselves to Europe," said Mrs. Tristram.
+"The only thing is, then, that the person be in herself to your taste?"
+
+"She is going to offer you an unappreciated governess!"  Tristram groaned.
+
+"Assuredly.  I won't deny that, other things being equal,
+I should prefer one of my own countrywomen.  We should
+speak the same language, and that would be a comfort.
+But I am not afraid of a foreigner.  Besides, I rather like the idea
+of taking in Europe, too.  It enlarges the field of selection.
+When you choose from a greater number, you can bring your choice
+to a finer point!"
+
+"You talk like Sardanapalus!" exclaimed Tristram.
+
+"You say all this to the right person," said Newman's hostess.
+"I happen to number among my friends the loveliest woman in the world.
+Neither more nor less.  I don't say a very charming person or a very
+estimable woman or a very great beauty; I say simply the loveliest
+woman in the world."
+
+"The deuce!" cried Tristram, "you have kept very quiet about her.
+Were you afraid of me?"
+
+"You have seen her," said his wife, "but you have no perception
+of such merit as Claire's."
+
+"Ah, her name is Claire?  I give it up."
+
+"Does your friend wish to marry?" asked Newman.
+
+"Not in the least.  It is for you to make her change her mind.
+It will not be easy; she has had one husband, and he gave her a low
+opinion of the species."
+
+"Oh, she is a widow, then?" said Newman.
+
+"Are you already afraid?  She was married at eighteen,
+by her parents, in the French fashion, to a disagreeable old man.
+But he had the good taste to die a couple of years afterward,
+and she is now twenty-five."
+
+"So she is French?"
+
+"French by her father, English by her mother.  She is really more
+English than French, and she speaks English as well as you or I--
+or rather much better.  She belongs to the very top of the basket,
+as they say here.  Her family, on each side, is of fabulous antiquity;
+her mother is the daughter of an English Catholic earl.  Her father is dead,
+and since her widowhood she has lived with her mother and a married brother.
+There is another brother, younger, who I believe is wild.
+They have an old hotel in the Rue de l'Universite, but their fortune
+is small, and they make a common household, for economy's sake.
+When I was a girl I was put into a convent here for my education,
+while my father made the tour of Europe.  It was a silly thing to do
+with me, but it had the advantage that it made me acquainted with Claire
+de Bellegarde.  She was younger than I but we became fast friends.
+I took a tremendous fancy to her, and she returned my passion as far
+as she could.  They kept such a tight rein on her that she could
+do very little, and when I left the convent she had to give me up.
+I was not of her monde; I am not now, either, but we sometimes meet.
+They are terrible people--her monde; all mounted upon stilts a mile high,
+and with pedigrees long in proportion.  It is the skim of the milk of
+the old noblesse.  Do you know what a Legitimist is, or an Ultramontane?
+Go into Madame de Cintre's drawing-room some afternoon, at five
+o'clock, and you will see the best preserved specimens.  I say go,
+but no one is admitted who can't show his fifty quarterings."
+
+"And this is the lady you propose to me to marry?" asked Newman.
+"A lady I can't even approach?"
+
+"But you said just now that you recognized no obstacles."
+
+Newman looked at Mrs. Tristram a while, stroking his mustache.
+"Is she a beauty?" he demanded.
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh, then it's no use--"
+
+"She is not a beauty, but she is beautiful, two very different things.
+A beauty has no faults in her face, the face of a beautiful woman may
+have faults that only deepen its charm."
+
+"I remember Madame de Cintre, now," said Tristram.
+"She is as plain as a pike-staff. A man wouldn't look
+at her twice."
+
+"In saying that HE would not look at her twice, my husband sufficiently
+describes her," Mrs. Tristram rejoined.
+
+"Is she good; is she clever?"  Newman asked.
+
+"She is perfect!  I won't say more than that.
+When you are praising a person to another who is to know her,
+it is bad policy to go into details.  I won't exaggerate.
+I simply recommend her.  Among all women I have known she
+stands alone; she is of a different clay."
+
+"I should like to see her," said Newman, simply.
+
+"I will try to manage it.  The only way will be to invite her to dinner.
+I have never invited her before, and I don't know that she will come.
+Her old feudal countess of a mother rules the family with an iron hand,
+and allows her to have no friends but of her own choosing, and to visit
+only in a certain sacred circle.  But I can at least ask her."
+
+At this moment Mrs. Tristram was interrupted; a servant stepped out upon
+the balcony and announced that there were visitors in the drawing-room.
+When Newman's hostess had gone in to receive her friends, Tom Tristram
+approached his guest.
+
+"Don't put your foot into THIS, my boy," he said, puffing the last whiffs
+of his cigar.  "There's nothing in it!"
+
+Newman looked askance at him, inquisitive.  "You tell another story, eh?"
+
+"I say simply that Madame de Cintre is a great white doll of a woman,
+who cultivates quiet haughtiness."
+
+"Ah, she's haughty, eh?"
+
+"She looks at you as if you were so much thin air, and cares
+for you about as much."
+
+"She is very proud, eh?"
+
+"Proud?  As proud as I'm humble."
+
+"And not good-looking?"
+
+Tristram shrugged his shoulders:  "It's a kind of beauty you must be
+INTELLECTUAL to understand.  But I must go in and amuse the company."
+
+Some time elapsed before Newman followed his friends into
+the drawing-room. When he at last made his appearance there
+he remained but a short time, and during this period sat
+perfectly silent, listening to a lady to whom Mrs. Tristram had
+straightway introduced him and who chattered, without a pause,
+with the full force of an extraordinarily high-pitched voice.
+Newman gazed and attended.  Presently he came to bid good-night
+to Mrs. Tristram.
+
+"Who is that lady?" he asked.
+
+"Miss Dora Finch.  How do you like her?"
+
+"She's too noisy."
+
+"She is thought so bright!  Certainly, you are fastidious,"
+said Mrs. Tristram.
+
+Newman stood a moment, hesitating.  Then at last "Don't forget about
+your friend," he said, "Madame What's-her-name? the proud beauty.
+Ask her to dinner, and give me a good notice."  And with this he departed.
+
+Some days later he came back; it was in the afternoon.
+He found Mrs. Tristram in her drawing-room; with her was a visitor,
+a woman young and pretty, dressed in white.  The two ladies
+had risen and the visitor was apparently taking her leave.
+As Newman approached, he received from Mrs. Tristram a glance
+of the most vivid significance, which he was not immediately
+able to interpret.
+
+"This is a good friend of ours," she said, turning to her companion,
+"Mr. Christopher Newman.  I have spoken of you to him
+and he has an extreme desire to make your acquaintance.
+If you had consented to come and dine, I should have offered
+him an opportunity."
+
+The stranger turned her face toward Newman, with a smile.
+He was not embarrassed, for his unconscious sang-froid
+was boundless; but as he became aware that this was the proud
+and beautiful Madame de Cintre, the loveliest woman
+in the world, the promised perfection, the proposed ideal,
+he made an instinctive movement to gather his wits together.
+Through the slight preoccupation that it produced he had
+a sense of a long, fair face, and of two eyes that were both
+brilliant and mild.
+
+"I should have been most happy," said Madame de Cintre.
+"Unfortunately, as I have been telling Mrs. Tristram,
+I go on Monday to the country."
+
+Newman had made a solemn bow.  "I am very sorry," he said.
+
+"Paris is getting too warm," Madame de Cintre added, taking her friend's
+hand again in farewell.
+
+Mrs. Tristram seemed to have formed a sudden and somewhat
+venturesome resolution, and she smiled more intensely, as women
+do when they take such resolution.  "I want Mr. Newman to know you,"
+she said, dropping her head on one side and looking at Madame de
+Cintre's bonnet ribbons.
+
+Christopher Newman stood gravely silent, while his native
+penetration admonished him.  Mrs. Tristram was determined
+to force her friend to address him a word of encouragement which
+should be more than one of the common formulas of politeness;
+and if she was prompted by charity, it was by the charity
+that begins at home.  Madame de Cintre was her dearest Claire,
+and her especial admiration but Madame de Cintre had found it
+impossible to dine with her and Madame de Cintre should for once
+be forced gently to render tribute to Mrs. Tristram.
+
+"It would give me great pleasure," she said, looking at Mrs. Tristram.
+
+"That's a great deal," cried the latter, "for Madame de Cintre to say!"
+
+"I am very much obliged to you," said Newman.  "Mrs. Tristram
+can speak better for me than I can speak for myself."
+
+Madame de Cintre looked at him again, with the same soft brightness.
+"Are you to be long in Paris?" she asked.
+
+"We shall keep him," said Mrs. Tristram.
+
+"But you are keeping ME!" and Madame de Cintre shook her friend's hand.
+
+"A moment longer," said Mrs. Tristram.
+
+Madame de Cintre looked at Newman again; this time without her smile.
+Her eyes lingered a moment.  "Will you come and see me?" she asked.
+
+Mrs. Tristram kissed her.  Newman expressed his thanks,
+and she took her leave.  Her hostess went with her to the door,
+and left Newman alone a moment.  Presently she returned,
+rubbing her hands.  "It was a fortunate chance," she said.
+"She had come to decline my invitation.  You triumphed on
+the spot, making her ask you, at the end of three minutes,
+to her house."
+
+"It was you who triumphed," said Newman.  "You must not be too
+hard upon her."
+
+Mrs. Tristram stared.  "What do you mean?"
+
+"She did not strike me as so proud.  I should say she was shy."
+
+"You are very discriminating.  And what do you think of her face?"
+
+"It's handsome!" said Newman.
+
+"I should think it was!  Of course you will go and see her."
+
+"To-morrow!" cried Newman.
+
+"No, not to-morrow; the next day.  That will be Sunday; she leaves Paris
+on Monday.  If you don't see her; it will at least be a beginning."
+And she gave him Madame de Cintre's address.
+
+He walked across the Seine, late in the summer afternoon,
+and made his way through those gray and silent streets
+of the Faubourg St. Germain whose houses present to the outer
+world a face as impassive and as suggestive of the concentration
+of privacy within as the blank walls of Eastern seraglios.
+Newman thought it a queer way for rich people to live;
+his ideal of grandeur was a splendid facade diffusing
+its brilliancy outward too, irradiating hospitality.
+The house to which he had been directed had a dark, dusty,
+painted portal, which swung open in answer to his ring.
+It admitted him into a wide, graveled court, surrounded on three
+sides with closed windows, and with a doorway facing the street,
+approached by three steps and surmounted by a tin canopy.
+The place was all in the shade; it answered to Newman's conception
+of a convent.  The portress could not tell him whether Madame de
+Cintre was visible; he would please to apply at the farther door.
+He crossed the court; a gentleman was sitting, bareheaded,
+on the steps of the portico, playing with a beautiful pointer.
+He rose as Newman approached, and, as he laid his hand upon
+the bell, said with a smile, in English, that he was afraid Newman
+would be kept waiting; the servants were scattered, he himself
+had been ringing, he didn't know what the deuce was in them.
+He was a young man, his English was excellent, and his smile
+very frank.  Newman pronounced the name of Madame de Cintre.
+
+"I think," said the young man, "that my sister is visible.
+Come in, and if you will give me your card I will carry it
+to her myself."
+
+Newman had been accompanied on his present errand by a slight sentiment,
+I will not say of defiance--a readiness for aggression or defense,
+as they might prove needful--but of reflection, good-humored suspicion.
+He took from his pocket, while he stood on the portico, a card
+upon which, under his name, he had written the words "San Francisco,"
+and while he presented it he looked warily at his interlocutor.
+His glance was singularly reassuring; he liked the young man's face;
+it strongly resembled that of Madame de Cintre.  He was evidently
+her brother.  The young man, on his side, had made a rapid inspection
+of Newman's person.  He had taken the card and was about to enter
+the house with it when another figure appeared on the threshold--
+an older man, of a fine presence, wearing evening dress.
+He looked hard at Newman, and Newman looked at him.  "Madame de Cintre,"
+the younger man repeated, as an introduction of the visitor.
+The other took the card from his hand, read it in a rapid glance,
+looked again at Newman from head to foot, hesitated a moment,
+and then said, gravely but urbanely, "Madame de Cintre is not at home."
+
+The younger man made a gesture, and then, turning to Newman,
+"I am very sorry, sir," he said.
+
+Newman gave him a friendly nod, to show that he bore him no malice,
+and retraced his steps.  At the porter's lodge he stopped;
+the two men were still standing on the portico.
+
+"Who is the gentleman with the dog?" he asked of the old woman
+who reappeared.  He had begun to learn French.
+
+"That is Monsieur le Comte."
+
+"And the other?"
+
+"That is Monsieur le Marquis."
+
+"A marquis?" said Christopher in English, which the old woman fortunately
+did not understand.  "Oh, then he's not the butler!"
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+
+
+Early one morning, before Christopher Newman was dressed, a little old
+man was ushered into his apartment, followed by a youth in a blouse,
+bearing a picture in a brilliant frame.  Newman, among the distractions
+of Paris, had forgotten M. Nioche and his accomplished daughter;
+but this was an effective reminder.
+
+"I am afraid you had given me up, sir," said the old man, after many
+apologies and salutations.  "We have made you wait so many days.
+You accused us, perhaps, of inconstancy of bad faith.
+But behold me at last!  And behold also the pretty Madonna.
+Place it on a chair, my friend, in a good light, so that monsieur
+may admire it."  And M. Nioche, addressing his companion,
+helped him to dispose the work of art.
+
+It had been endued with a layer of varnish an inch thick and
+its frame, of an elaborate pattern, was at least a foot wide.
+It glittered and twinkled in the morning light, and looked,
+to Newman's eyes, wonderfully splendid and precious.  It seemed to him
+a very happy purchase, and he felt rich in the possession of it.
+He stood looking at it complacently, while he proceeded with his toilet,
+and M. Nioche, who had dismissed his own attendant, hovered near,
+smiling and rubbing his hands.
+
+"It has wonderful finesse," he murmured, caressingly.  "And here
+and there are marvelous touches, you probably perceive them, sir.
+It attracted great attention on the Boulevard, as we came along.
+And then a gradation of tones!  That's what it is to know how to paint.
+I don't say it because I am her father, sir; but as one man of taste
+addressing another I cannot help observing that you have there an
+exquisite work.  It is hard to produce such things and to have to part
+with them.  If our means only allowed us the luxury of keeping it!
+I really may say, sir--" and M. Nioche gave a little feebly
+insinuating laugh--"I really may say that I envy you!  You see,"
+he added in a moment, "we have taken the liberty of offering you a frame.
+It increases by a trifle the value of the work, and it will save
+you the annoyance--so great for a person of your delicacy--
+of going about to bargain at the shops."
+
+The language spoken by M. Nioche was a singular compound, which I shrink
+from the attempt to reproduce in its integrity.  He had apparently once
+possessed a certain knowledge of English, and his accent was oddly tinged
+with the cockneyism of the British metropolis.  But his learning had grown
+rusty with disuse, and his vocabulary was defective and capricious.
+He had repaired it with large patches of French, with words anglicized
+by a process of his own, and with native idioms literally translated.
+The result, in the form in which he in all humility presented it,
+would be scarcely comprehensible to the reader, so that I have ventured
+to trim and sift it.  Newman only half understood it, but it amused him,
+and the old man's decent forlornness appealed to his democratic instincts.
+The assumption of a fatality in misery always irritated his strong
+good nature--it was almost the only thing that did so; and he felt the impulse
+to wipe it out, as it were, with the sponge of his own prosperity.
+The papa of Mademoiselle Noemie, however, had apparently on this occasion
+been vigorously indoctrinated, and he showed a certain tremulous eagerness
+to cultivate unexpected opportunities.
+
+"How much do I owe you, then, with the frame?" asked Newman.
+
+"It will make in all three thousand francs," said the old man,
+smiling agreeably, but folding his hands in instinctive suppliance.
+
+"Can you give me a receipt?"
+
+"I have brought one," said M. Nioche.  "I took the liberty of drawing
+it up, in case monsieur should happen to desire to discharge his debt."
+And he drew a paper from his pocket-book and presented it to his patron.
+The document was written in a minute, fantastic hand, and couched
+in the choicest language.
+
+Newman laid down the money, and M. Nioche dropped the napoleons one by one,
+solemnly and lovingly, into an old leathern purse.
+
+"And how is your young lady?" asked Newman.  "She made a great
+impression on me."
+
+"An impression?  Monsieur is very good.  Monsieur admires her appearance?"
+
+"She is very pretty, certainly."
+
+"Alas, yes, she is very pretty!"
+
+"And what is the harm in her being pretty?"
+
+M. Nioche fixed his eyes upon a spot on the carpet and shook his head.
+Then looking up at Newman with a gaze that seemed to brighten and expand,
+"Monsieur knows what Paris is.  She is dangerous to beauty, when beauty
+hasn't the sou."
+
+"Ah, but that is not the case with your daughter.
+She is rich, now."
+
+"Very true; we are rich for six months.  But if my daughter were a plain
+girl I should sleep better all the same."
+
+"You are afraid of the young men?"
+
+"The young and the old!"
+
+"She ought to get a husband."
+
+"Ah, monsieur, one doesn't get a husband for nothing.
+Her husband must take her as she is:  I can't give her a sou.
+But the young men don't see with that eye."
+
+"Oh," said Newman, "her talent is in itself a dowry."
+
+"Ah, sir, it needs first to be converted into specie!"
+and M. Nioche slapped his purse tenderly before he stowed it away.
+"The operation doesn't take place every day."
+
+"Well, your young men are very shabby, said Newman; "that's all I can say.
+They ought to pay for your daughter, and not ask money themselves."
+
+"Those are very noble ideas, monsieur; but what will you have?
+They are not the ideas of this country.  We want to know what we
+are about when we marry."
+
+"How big a portion does your daughter want?"
+
+M. Nioche stared, as if he wondered what was coming next;
+but he promptly recovered himself, at a venture, and replied that
+he knew a very nice young man, employed by an insurance company,
+who would content himself with fifteen thousand francs.
+
+"Let your daughter paint half a dozen pictures for me,
+and she shall have her dowry."
+
+"Half a dozen pictures--her dowry!  Monsieur is not speaking inconsiderately?"
+
+"If she will make me six or eight copies in the Louvre as pretty
+as that Madonna, I will pay her the same price," said Newman.
+
+Poor M. Nioche was speechless a moment, with amazement
+and gratitude, and then he seized Newman's hand, pressed it
+between his own ten fingers, and gazed at him with watery eyes.
+"As pretty as that?  They shall be a thousand times prettier--
+they shall be magnificent, sublime.  Ah, if I only knew
+how to paint, myself, sir, so that I might lend a hand!
+What can I do to thank you?  Voyons!"  And he pressed his
+forehead while he tried to think of something.
+
+"Oh, you have thanked me enough," said Newman.
+
+"Ah, here it is, sir!" cried M. Nioche.  "To express my gratitude,
+I will charge you nothing for the lessons in French conversation."
+
+"The lessons?  I had quite forgotten them.  Listening to your English,"
+added Newman, laughing, "is almost a lesson in French."
+
+"Ah, I don't profess to teach English, certainly," said M. Nioche.
+"But for my own admirable tongue I am still at your service."
+
+"Since you are here, then," said Newman, "we will begin.
+This is a very good hour.  I am going to have my coffee;
+come every morning at half-past nine and have yours with me."
+
+"Monsieur offers me my coffee, also?" cried M. Nioche.
+"Truly, my beaux jours are coming back."
+
+"Come," said Newman, "let us begin.  The coffee is almighty hot.
+How do you say that in French?"
+
+Every day, then, for the following three weeks, the minutely respectable
+figure of M. Nioche made its appearance, with a series of little inquiring and
+apologetic obeisances, among the aromatic fumes of Newman's morning beverage.
+I don't know how much French our friend learned, but, as he himself said,
+if the attempt did him no good, it could at any rate do him no harm.
+And it amused him; it gratified that irregularly sociable side of his nature
+which had always expressed itself in a relish for ungrammatical conversation,
+and which often, even in his busy and preoccupied days, had made him sit
+on rail fences in young Western towns, in the twilight, in gossip hardly
+less than fraternal with humorous loafers and obscure fortune-seekers.
+He had notions, wherever he went, about talking with the natives; he had
+been assured, and his judgment approved the advice, that in traveling abroad
+it was an excellent thing to look into the life of the country.  M. Nioche
+was very much of a native and, though his life might not be particularly worth
+looking into, he was a palpable and smoothly-rounded unit in that picturesque
+Parisian civilization which offered our hero so much easy entertainment
+and propounded so many curious problems to his inquiring and practical mind.
+Newman was fond of statistics; he liked to know how things were done;
+it gratified him to learn what taxes were paid, what profits were gathered,
+what commercial habits prevailed, how the battle of life was fought.
+M. Nioche, as a reduced capitalist, was familiar with these considerations,
+and he formulated his information, which he was proud to be able to impart,
+in the neatest possible terms and with a pinch of snuff between finger
+and thumb.  As a Frenchman--quite apart from Newman's napoleons--M. Nioche
+loved conversation, and even in his decay his urbanity had not grown rusty.
+As a Frenchman, too, he could give a clear account of things, and--still as
+a Frenchman--when his knowledge was at fault he could supply its lapses
+with the most convenient and ingenious hypotheses.  The little shrunken
+financier was intensely delighted to have questions asked him, and he scraped
+together information, by frugal processes, and took notes, in his little
+greasy pocket-book, of incidents which might interest his munificent friend.
+He read old almanacs at the book-stalls on the quays, and he began to
+frequent another cafe, where more newspapers were taken and his postprandial
+demitasse cost him a penny extra, and where he used to con the tattered
+sheets for curious anecdotes, freaks of nature, and strange coincidences.
+He would relate with solemnity the next morning that a child of five years
+of age had lately died at Bordeaux, whose brain had been found to weigh
+sixty ounces--the brain of a Napoleon or a Washington! or that Madame
+P--, charcutiere in the Rue de Clichy, had found in the wadding of an old
+petticoat the sum of three hundred and sixty francs, which she had lost five
+years before.  He pronounced his words with great distinctness and sonority,
+and Newman assured him that his way of dealing with the French tongue was
+very superior to the bewildering chatter that he heard in other mouths.
+Upon this M. Nioche's accent became more finely trenchant than ever,
+he offered to read extracts from Lamartine, and he protested that,
+although he did endeavor according to his feeble lights to cultivate
+refinement of diction, monsieur, if he wanted the real thing, should go
+to the Theatre Francais.
+
+Newman took an interest in French thriftiness and conceived a lively
+admiration for Parisian economies.  His own economic genius was so
+entirely for operations on a larger scale, and, to move at his ease,
+he needed so imperatively the sense of great risks and great prizes,
+that he found an ungrudging entertainment in the spectacle of
+fortunes made by the aggregation of copper coins, and in the minute
+subdivision of labor and profit.  He questioned M. Nioche about
+his own manner of life, and felt a friendly mixture of compassion
+and respect over the recital of his delicate frugalities.
+The worthy man told him how, at one period, he and his daughter had
+supported existence comfortably upon the sum of fifteen sous per diem;
+recently, having succeeded in hauling ashore the last floating fragments
+of the wreck of his fortune, his budget had been a trifle more ample.
+But they still had to count their sous very narrowly, and M. Nioche
+intimated with a sigh that Mademoiselle Noemie did not bring to this
+task that zealous cooperation which might have been desired.
+
+"But what will you have?"' he asked, philosophically.  "One is young,
+one is pretty, one needs new dresses and fresh gloves; one can't wear
+shabby gowns among the splendors of the Louvre."
+
+"But your daughter earns enough to pay for her own clothes," said Newman.
+
+M. Nioche looked at him with weak, uncertain eyes.
+He would have liked to be able to say that his daughter's talents
+were appreciated, and that her crooked little daubs commanded
+a market; but it seemed a scandal to abuse the credulity
+of this free-handed stranger, who, without a suspicion
+or a question, had admitted him to equal social rights.
+He compromised, and declared that while it was obvious
+that Mademoiselle Noemie's reproductions of the old masters
+had only to be seen to be coveted, the prices which,
+in consideration of their altogether peculiar degree of finish,
+she felt obliged to ask for them had kept purchasers at
+a respectful distance.  "Poor little one!" said M. Nioche,
+with a sigh; "it is almost a pity that her work is so perfect!
+It would be in her interest to paint less well."
+
+"But if Mademoiselle Noemie has this devotion to her art,"
+Newman once observed, "why should you have those fears for her
+that you spoke of the other day?"
+
+M. Nioche meditated:  there was an inconsistency in his position;
+it made him chronically uncomfortable.  Though he had no desire to
+destroy the goose with the golden eggs--Newman's benevolent confidence--
+he felt a tremulous impulse to speak out all his trouble.
+"Ah, she is an artist, my dear sir, most assuredly," he declared.
+"But, to tell you the truth, she is also a franche coquette.
+I am sorry to say," he added in a moment, shaking his head
+with a world
+
+of harmless bitterness, "that she comes honestly by it.
+Her mother was one before her!"
+
+"You were not happy with your wife?"  Newman asked.
+
+M. Nioche gave half a dozen little backward jerks of his head.
+"She was my purgatory, monsieur!"
+
+"She deceived you?"
+
+"Under my nose, year after year.  I was too stupid,
+and the temptation was too great.  But I found her out at last.
+I have only been once in my life a man to be afraid of;
+I know it very well; it was in that hour!  Nevertheless I don't
+like to think of it.  I loved her--I can't tell you how much.
+She was a bad woman."
+
+"She is not living?"
+
+"She has gone to her account."
+
+"Her influence on your daughter, then," said Newman encouragingly,
+"is not to be feared."
+
+"She cared no more for her daughter than for the sole of her shoe!
+But Noemie has no need of influence.  She is sufficient to herself.
+She is stronger than I."
+
+"She doesn't obey you, eh?"
+
+"She can't obey, monsieur, since I don't command.  What would be the use?
+It would only irritate her and drive her to some coup de tete.
+She is very clever, like her mother; she would waste no time about it.
+As a child--when I was happy, or supposed I was--she studied drawing and
+painting with first-class professors, and they assured me she had a talent.
+I was delighted to believe it, and when I went into society I used to carry
+her pictures with me in a portfolio and hand them round to the company.
+I remember, once, a lady thought I was offering them for sale,
+and I took it very ill.  We don't know what we may come to!
+Then came my dark days, and my explosion with Madame Nioche.  Noemie had no
+more twenty-franc lessons; but in the course of time, when she grew older,
+and it became highly expedient that she should do something that would
+help to keep us alive, she bethought herself of her palette and brushes.
+Some of our friends in the quartier pronounced the idea fantastic:
+they recommended her to try bonnet making, to get a situation in a shop, or--
+if she was more ambitious--to advertise for a place of dame de compagnie.
+She did advertise, and an old lady wrote her a letter and bade her come
+and see her.  The old lady liked her, and offered her her living and six
+hundred francs a year; but Noemie discovered that she passed her life
+in her arm-chair and had only two visitors, her confessor and her nephew:
+the confessor very strict, and the nephew a man of fifty, with a
+broken nose and a government clerkship of two thousand francs.
+She threw her old lady over, bought a paint-box, a canvas, and a new dress,
+and went and set up her easel in the Louvre.  There in one place and another,
+she has passed the last two years; I can't say it has made us millionaires.
+But Noemie tells me that Rome was not built in a day, that she is
+making great progress, that I must leave her to her own devices.
+The fact is, without prejudice to her genius, that she has no idea
+of burying herself alive.  She likes to see the world, and to be seen.
+She says, herself, that she can't work in the dark.  With her appearance
+it is very natural.  Only, I can't help worrying and trembling
+and wondering what may happen to her there all alone, day after day,
+amid all that coming and going of strangers.  I can't be always at her side.
+I go with her in the morning, and I come to fetch her away, but she
+won't have me near her in the interval; she says I make her nervous.
+As if it didn't make me nervous to wander about all day without her!
+Ah, if anything were to happen to her!" cried M. Nioche, clenching his
+two fists and jerking back his head again, portentously.
+
+"Oh, I guess nothing will happen," said Newman.
+
+"I believe I should shoot her!" said the old man, solemnly.
+
+"Oh, we'll marry her," said Newman, "since that's how you manage it;
+and I will go and see her tomorrow at the Louvre and pick out the pictures
+she is to copy for me."
+
+M. Nioche had brought Newman a message from his daughter,
+in acceptance of his magnificent commission, the young
+lady declaring herself his most devoted servant,
+promising her most zealous endeavor, and regretting that
+the proprieties forbade her coming to thank him in person.
+The morning after the conversation just narrated, Newman reverted
+to his intention of meeting Mademoiselle Noemie at the Louvre.
+M. Nioche appeared preoccupied, and left his budget of
+anecdotes unopened; he took a great deal of snuff, and sent
+certain oblique, appealing glances toward his stalwart pupil.
+At last, when he was taking his leave, he stood a moment,
+after he had polished his hat with his calico pocket-handkerchief,
+with his small, pale eyes fixed strangely upon Newman.
+
+"What's the matter?" our hero demanded.
+
+"Excuse the solicitude of a father's heart!" said M. Nioche.
+"You inspire me with boundless confidence, but I can't help giving you
+a warning.  After all, you are a man, you are young and at liberty.
+Let me beseech you, then, to respect the innocence of Mademoiselle Nioche!"
+
+Newman had wondered what was coming, and at this he broke into a laugh.
+He was on the point of declaring that his own innocence struck
+him as the more exposed, but he contented himself with promising
+to treat the young girl with nothing less than veneration.  He found
+her waiting for him, seated upon the great divan in the Salon Carre.
+She was not in her working-day costume, but wore her bonnet and gloves
+and carried her parasol, in honor of the occasion.  These articles
+had been selected with unerring taste, and a fresher, prettier image
+of youthful alertness and blooming discretion was not to be conceived.
+She made Newman a most respectful curtsey and expressed her gratitude
+for his liberality in a wonderfully graceful little speech.
+It annoyed him to have a charming young girl stand there thanking him,
+and it made him feel uncomfortable to think that this perfect young lady,
+with her excellent manners and her finished intonation, was literally
+in his pay.  He assured her, in such French as he could muster,
+that the thing was not worth mentioning, and that he considered her
+services a great favor.
+
+"Whenever you please, then," said Mademoiselle Noemie,
+"we will pass the review."
+
+They walked slowly round the room, then passed into the others and strolled
+about for half an hour.  Mademoiselle Noemie evidently relished her situation,
+and had no desire to bring her public interview with her striking-looking
+patron to a close.  Newman perceived that prosperity agreed with her.
+The little thin-lipped, peremptory air with which she had addressed her father
+on the occasion of their former meeting had given place to the most lingering
+and caressing tones.
+
+"What sort of pictures do you desire?" she asked.
+"Sacred, or profane?"
+
+"Oh, a few of each," said Newman.  "But I want something bright and gay."
+
+"Something gay?  There is nothing very gay in this solemn old Louvre.
+But we will see what we can find.  You speak French to-day like a charm.
+My father has done wonders."
+
+"Oh, I am a bad subject," said Newman.  "I am too old to learn a language."
+
+"Too old?  Quelle folie!" cried Mademoiselle Noemie,
+with a clear, shrill laugh.  "You are a very young man.
+And how do you like my father?"
+
+"He is a very nice old gentleman.  He never laughs at my blunders."
+
+"He is very comme il faut, my papa," said Mademoiselle Noemie,
+"and as honest as the day.  Oh, an exceptional probity!
+You could trust him with millions."
+
+"Do you always obey him?" asked Newman.
+
+"Obey him?"
+
+"Do you do what he bids you?"
+
+The young girl stopped and looked at him; she had a spot of color
+in either cheek, and in her expressive French eye, which projected
+too much for perfect beauty, there was a slight gleam of audacity.
+"Why do you ask me that?" she demanded.
+
+"Because I want to know."
+
+"You think me a bad girl?"  And she gave a strange smile.
+
+Newman looked at her a moment; he saw that she was pretty,
+but he was not in the least dazzled.  He remembered poor M. Nioche's
+solicitude for her "innocence," and he laughed as his eyes met hers.
+Her face was the oddest mixture of youth and maturity, and beneath
+her candid brow her searching little smile seemed to contain a world
+of ambiguous intentions.  She was pretty enough, certainly to make her
+father nervous; but, as regards her innocence, Newman felt ready on the spot
+to affirm that she had never parted with it.  She had simply never had any;
+she had been looking at the world since she was ten years old,
+and he would have been a wise man who could tell her any secrets.
+In her long mornings at the Louvre she had not only studied Madonnas
+and St. Johns; she had kept an eye upon all the variously embodied
+human nature around her, and she had formed her conclusions.
+In a certain sense, it seemed to Newman, M. Nioche might be at rest;
+his daughter might do something very audacious, but she would never
+do anything foolish.  Newman, with his long-drawn, leisurely smile,
+and his even, unhurried utterance, was always, mentally, taking his time;
+and he asked himself, now, what she was looking at him in that way for.
+He had an idea that she would like him to confess that he did think
+her a bad girl.
+
+"Oh, no," he said at last; "it would be very bad manners in me
+to judge you that way.  I don't know you."
+
+"But my father has complained to you," said Mademoiselle Noemie.
+
+"He says you are a coquette."
+
+"He shouldn't go about saying such things to gentlemen!
+But you don't believe it."
+
+"No," said Newman gravely, "I don't believe it."
+
+She looked at him again, gave a shrug and a smile, and then
+pointed to a small Italian picture, a Marriage of St. Catherine.
+"How should you like that?" she asked.
+
+"It doesn't please me," said Newman.  "The young lady in the yellow
+dress is not pretty."
+
+"Ah, you are a great connoisseur," murmured Mademoiselle Noemie.
+
+"In pictures?  Oh, no; I know very little about them."
+
+"In pretty women, then."
+
+"In that I am hardly better."
+
+"What do you say to that, then?" the young girl asked,
+indicating a superb Italian portrait of a lady.
+"I will do it for you on a smaller scale."
+
+"On a smaller scale?  Why not as large as the original?"
+
+Mademoiselle Noemie glanced at the glowing splendor of the Venetian
+masterpiece and gave a little toss of her head.  "I don't like that woman.
+She looks stupid."
+
+"I do like her," said Newman.  "Decidedly, I must have her, as large as life.
+And just as stupid as she is there."
+
+The young girl fixed her eyes on him again, and with her mocking smile,
+"It certainly ought to be easy for me to make her look stupid!" she said.
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Newman, puzzled.
+
+She gave another little shrug.  "Seriously, then, you want
+that portrait--the golden hair, the purple satin, the pearl necklace,
+the two magnificent arms?"
+
+"Everything--just as it is."
+
+"Would nothing else do, instead?"
+
+"Oh, I want some other things, but I want that too."
+
+Mademoiselle Noemie turned away a moment, walked to the other side of
+the hall, and stood there, looking vaguely about her.  At last she came back.
+"It must be charming to be able to order pictures at such a rate.
+Venetian portraits, as large as life!  You go at it en prince.
+And you are going to travel about Europe that way?"
+
+"Yes, I intend to travel," said Newman.
+
+"Ordering, buying, spending money?"
+
+"Of course I shall spend some money."
+
+"You are very happy to have it.  And you are perfectly free?"
+
+"How do you mean, free?"
+
+"You have nothing to bother you--no family, no wife, no fiancee?"
+
+"Yes, I am tolerably free."
+
+"You are very happy," said Mademoiselle Noemie, gravely.
+
+"Je le veux bien!" said Newman, proving that he had learned more French
+than he admitted.
+
+"And how long shall you stay in Paris?" the young girl went on.
+
+"Only a few days more."
+
+"Why do you go away?"
+
+"It is getting hot, and I must go to Switzerland."
+
+"To Switzerland?  That's a fine country.  I would give my new parasol
+to see it!  Lakes and mountains, romantic valleys and icy peaks!
+Oh, I congratulate you.  Meanwhile, I shall sit here through all
+the hot summer, daubing at your pictures."
+
+"Oh, take your time about it," said Newman.  "Do them at your convenience."
+
+They walked farther and looked at a dozen other things.
+Newman pointed out what pleased him, and Mademoiselle Noemie
+generally criticised it, and proposed something else.
+Then suddenly she diverged and began to talk about
+some personal matter.
+
+"What made you speak to me the other day in the Salon Carre?"
+she abruptly asked.
+
+"I admired your picture."
+
+"But you hesitated a long time."
+
+"Oh, I do nothing rashly," said Newman.
+
+"Yes, I saw you watching me.  But I never supposed you were going to speak
+to me.  I never dreamed I should be walking about here with you to-day.
+It's very curious."
+
+"It is very natural," observed Newman.
+
+"Oh, I beg your pardon; not to me.  Coquette as you think me,
+I have never walked about in public with a gentleman before.
+What was my father thinking of, when he consented to our interview?"
+
+"He was repenting of his unjust accusations," replied Newman.
+
+Mademoiselle Noemie remained silent; at last she dropped into
+a seat.  "Well then, for those five it is fixed," she said.
+"Five copies as brilliant and beautiful as I can make them.
+We have one more to choose.  Shouldn't you like one of
+those great Rubenses--the marriage of Marie de Medicis?
+Just look at it and see how handsome it is."
+
+"Oh, yes; I should like that," said Newman.  "Finish off with that."
+
+"Finish off with that--good!"  And she laughed.  She sat a moment,
+looking at him, and then she suddenly rose and stood before him,
+with her hands hanging and clasped in front of her.
+"I don't understand you," she said with a smile.
+"I don't understand how a man can be so ignorant."
+
+"Oh, I am ignorant, certainly," said Newman, putting his hands
+into his pockets.
+
+"It's ridiculous!  I don't know how to paint."
+
+"You don't know how?"
+
+"I paint like a cat; I can't draw a straight line.
+I never sold a picture until you bought that thing the other day."
+And as she offered this surprising information she continued to smile.
+
+Newman burst into a laugh.  "Why do you tell me this?" he asked.
+
+"Because it irritates me to see a clever man blunder so.
+My pictures are grotesque."
+
+"And the one I possess--"
+
+"That one is rather worse than usual."
+
+"Well," said Newman, "I like it all the same!"
+
+She looked at him askance.  "That is a very pretty thing to say,"
+she answered; "but it is my duty to warn you before you go farther.
+This order of yours is impossible, you know.  What do you take me for?
+It is work for ten men.  You pick out the six most difficult
+pictures in the Louvre, and you expect me to go to work as if I
+were sitting down to hem a dozen pocket handkerchiefs.
+I wanted to see how far you would go."
+
+Newman looked at the young girl in some perplexity.
+In spite of the ridiculous blunder of which he stood convicted,
+he was very far from being a simpleton, and he had a lively suspicion
+that Mademoiselle Noemie's sudden frankness was not essentially
+more honest than her leaving him in error would have been.
+She was playing a game; she was not simply taking pity on
+his aesthetic verdancy.  What was it she expected to win?
+The stakes were high and the risk was great; the prize
+therefore must have been commensurate.  But even granting
+that the prize might be great, Newman could not resist
+a movement of admiration for his companion's intrepidity.
+She was throwing away with one hand, whatever she might intend
+to do with the other, a very handsome sum of money.
+
+"Are you joking," he said, "or are you serious?"
+
+"Oh, serious!" cried Mademoiselle Noemie, but with her extraordinary smile.
+
+"I know very little about pictures or now they are painted.
+If you can't do all that, of course you can't. Do what you can, then."
+
+"It will be very bad," said Mademoiselle Noemie.
+
+"Oh," said Newman, laughing, "if you are determined it shall be bad,
+of course it will.  But why do you go on painting badly?"
+
+"I can do nothing else; I have no real talent."
+
+"You are deceiving your father, then."
+
+The young girl hesitated a moment.  "He knows very well!"
+
+"No," Newman declared; "I am sure he believes in you."
+
+"He is afraid of me.  I go on painting badly, as you say,
+because I want to learn.  I like it, at any rate.
+And I like being here; it is a place to come to, every day;
+it is better than sitting in a little dark, damp room, on a court,
+or selling buttons and whalebones over a counter."
+
+"Of course it is much more amusing," said Newman.
+"But for a poor girl isn't it rather an expensive amusement?"
+
+"Oh, I am very wrong, there is no doubt about that,"
+said Mademoiselle Noemie.  "But rather than earn my living
+as same girls do--toiling with a needle, in little black holes,
+out of the world--I would throw myself into the Seine."
+
+"There is no need of that," Newman answered; "your father told
+you my offer?"
+
+"Your offer?"
+
+"He wants you to marry, and I told him I would give you a chance
+to earn your dot."
+
+"He told me all about it, and you see the account I make of it!
+Why should you take such an interest in my marriage?"
+
+"My interest was in your father.  I hold to my offer; do what you can,
+and I will buy what you paint."
+
+She stood for some time, meditating, with her eyes on the ground.
+At last, looking up, "What sort of a husband can you get for twelve
+thousand francs?" she asked.
+
+"Your father tells me he knows some very good young men."
+
+"Grocers and butchers and little maitres de cafes!
+I will not marry at all if I can't marry well."
+
+"I would advise you not to be too fastidious," said Newman.
+"That's all the advice I can give you."
+
+"I am very much vexed at what I have said!" cried the young girl.
+"It has done me no good.  But I couldn't help it."
+
+"What good did you expect it to do you?"
+
+"I couldn't help it, simply."
+
+Newman looked at her a moment.  "Well, your pictures may be bad,"
+he said, "but you are too clever for me, nevertheless.
+I don't understand you.  Good-by!" And he put out his hand.
+
+She made no response, and offered him no farewell.  She turned away
+and seated herself sidewise on a bench, leaning her head on the back
+of her hand, which clasped the rail in front of the pictures.
+Newman stood a moment and then turned on his heel and retreated.
+He had understood her better than he confessed; this singular scene
+was a practical commentary upon her father's statement that she
+was a frank coquette.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+
+
+When Newman related to Mrs. Tristram his fruitless visit
+to Madame de Cintre, she urged him not to be discouraged,
+but to carry out his plan of "seeing Europe" during the summer,
+and return to Paris in the autumn and settle down comfortably
+for the winter.  "Madame de Cintre will keep," she said;
+"she is not a woman who will marry from one day to another."
+Newman made no distinct affirmation that he would come back to Paris;
+he even talked about Rome and the Nile, and abstained from professing
+any especial interest in Madame de Cintre's continued widowhood.
+This circumstance was at variance with his habitual frankness,
+and may perhaps be regarded as characteristic of the incipient stage
+of that passion which is more particularly known as the mysterious one.
+The truth is that the expression of a pair of eyes that were at
+once brilliant and mild had become very familiar to his memory,
+and he would not easily have resigned himself to the prospect
+of never looking into them again.  He communicated to Mrs. Tristram
+a number of other facts, of greater or less importance, as you choose;
+but on this particular point he kept his own counsel.
+He took a kindly leave of M. Nioche, having assured him that,
+so far as he was concerned, the blue-cloaked Madonna herself
+might have been present at his interview with Mademoiselle Noemie;
+and left the old man nursing his breast-pocket, in an ecstasy
+which the acutest misfortune might have been defied to dissipate.
+Newman then started on his travels, with all his usual appearance
+of slow-strolling leisure, and all his essential directness
+and intensity of aim.  No man seemed less in a hurry, and yet
+no man achieved more in brief periods.  He had certain practical
+instincts which served him excellently in his trade of tourist.
+He found his way in foreign cities by divination, his memory
+was excellent when once his attention had been at all
+cordially given, and he emerged from dialogues in foreign tongues,
+of which he had, formally, not understood a word, in full
+possession of the particular fact he had desired to ascertain.
+His appetite for facts was capacious, and although many of those
+which he noted would have seemed woefully dry and colorless to
+the ordinary sentimental traveler, a careful inspection of the list
+would have shown that he had a soft spot in his imagination.
+In the charming city of Brussels--his first stopping-place after
+leaving Paris--he asked a great many questions about the street-cars,
+and took extreme satisfaction in the reappearance of this
+familiar symbol of American civilization; but he was also greatly
+struck with the beautiful Gothic tower of the Hotel de Ville,
+and wondered whether it would not be possible to "get up"
+something like it in San Francisco.  He stood for half an hour
+in the crowded square before this edifice, in imminent danger
+from carriage-wheels, listening to a toothless old cicerone mumble
+in broken English the touching history of Counts Egmont and Horn;
+and he wrote the names of these gentlemen--for reasons best known
+to himself--on the back of an old letter.
+
+At the outset, on his leaving Paris, his curiosity had not been intense;
+passive entertainment, in the Champs Elysees and at the theatres,
+seemed about as much as he need expect of himself, and although,
+as he had said to Tristram, he wanted to see the mysterious,
+satisfying BEST, he had not the Grand Tour in the least on his conscience,
+and was not given to cross-questioning the amusement of the hour.
+He believed that Europe was made for him, and not he for Europe.
+He had said that he wanted to improve his mind, but he would have felt
+a certain embarrassment, a certain shame, even--a false shame, possibly--
+if he had caught himself looking intellectually into the mirror.
+Neither in this nor in any other respect had Newman a high sense
+of responsibility; it was his prime conviction that a man's life
+should be easy, and that he should be able to resolve privilege into
+a matter of course.  The world, to his sense, was a great bazaar,
+where one might stroll about and purchase handsome things;
+but he was no more conscious, individually, of social pressure than
+he admitted the existence of such a thing as an obligatory purchase.
+He had not only a dislike, but a sort of moral mistrust,
+of uncomfortable thoughts, and it was both uncomfortable and slightly
+contemptible to feel obliged to square one's self with a standard.
+One's standard was the ideal of one's own good-humored prosperity,
+the prosperity which enabled one to give as well as take.
+To expand, without bothering about it--without shiftless timidity
+on one side, or loquacious eagerness on the other--to the full
+compass of what he would have called a "pleasant" experience,
+was Newman's most definite programme of life.  He had always hated
+to hurry to catch railroad trains, and yet he had always caught them;
+and just so an undue solicitude for "culture" seemed a sort of silly
+dawdling at the station, a proceeding properly confined to women,
+foreigners, and other unpractical persons.  All this admitted,
+Newman enjoyed his journey, when once he had fairly entered the current,
+as profoundly as the most zealous dilettante.  One's theories,
+after all, matter little; it is one's humor that is the great thing.
+Our friend was intelligent, and he could not help that.  He lounged
+through Belgium and Holland and the Rhineland, through Switzerland
+and Northern Italy, planning about nothing, but seeing everything.
+The guides and valets de place found him an excellent subject.
+He was always approachable, for he was much addicted to standing
+about in the vestibules and porticos of inns, and he availed himself
+little of the opportunities for impressive seclusion which are so
+liberally offered in Europe to gentlemen who travel with long purses.
+When an excursion, a church, a gallery, a ruin, was proposed
+to him, the first thing Newman usually did, after surveying
+his postulant in silence, from head to foot, was to sit down
+at a little table and order something to drink.  The cicerone,
+during this process, usually retreated to a respectful distance;
+otherwise I am not sure that Newman would not have bidden him
+sit down and have a glass also, and tell him as an honest fellow
+whether his church or his gallery was really worth a man's trouble.
+At last he rose and stretched his long legs, beckoned to the man
+of monuments, looked at his watch, and fixed his eye on his adversary.
+"What is it?" he asked.  "How far?"  And whatever the answer was,
+although he sometimes seemed to hesitate, he never declined.
+He stepped into an open cab, made his conductor sit beside him
+to answer questions, bade the driver go fast (he had a particular
+aversion to slow driving) and rolled, in all probability
+through a dusty suburb, to the goal of his pilgrimage.
+If the goal was a disappointment, if the church was meagre, or the ruin
+a heap of rubbish, Newman never protested or berated his cicerone;
+he looked with an impartial eye upon great monuments and small,
+made the guide recite his lesson, listened to it religiously,
+asked if there was nothing else to be seen in the neighborhood,
+and drove back again at a rattling pace.  It is to be feared
+that his perception of the difference between good architecture
+and bad was not acute, and that he might sometimes have been
+seen gazing with culpable serenity at inferior productions.
+Ugly churches were a part of his pastime in Europe, as well
+as beautiful ones, and his tour was altogether a pastime.
+But there is sometimes nothing like the imagination of these people
+who have none, and Newman, now and then, in an unguided stroll
+in a foreign city, before some lonely, sad-towered church,
+or some angular image of one who had rendered civic service
+in an unknown past, had felt a singular inward tremor.
+It was not an excitement or a perplexity; it was a placid,
+fathomless sense of diversion.
+
+He encountered by chance in Holland a young American, with whom,
+for a time, he formed a sort of traveler's partnership.
+They were men of a very different cast, but each, in his way,
+was so good a fellow that, for a few weeks at least, it seemed
+something of a pleasure to share the chances of the road.
+Newman's comrade, whose name was Babcock, was a young
+Unitarian minister, a small, spare neatly-attired man,
+with a strikingly candid physiognomy.  He was a native
+of Dorchester, Massachusetts, and had spiritual charge of a small
+congregation in another suburb of the New England metropolis.
+His digestion was weak and he lived chiefly on Graham bread
+and hominy--a regimen to which he was so much attached
+that his tour seemed to him destined to be blighted when,
+on landing on the Continent, he found that these delicacies did
+not flourish under the table d'hote system.  In Paris he had
+purchased a bag of hominy at an establishment which called itself
+an American Agency, and at which the New York illustrated papers
+were also to be procured, and he had carried it about with him,
+and shown extreme serenity and fortitude in the somewhat delicate
+position of having his hominy prepared for him and served
+at anomalous hours, at the hotels he successively visited.
+Newman had once spent a morning, in the course of business,
+at Mr. Babcock's birthplace, and, for reasons too recondite to unfold,
+his visit there always assumed in his mind a jocular cast.
+To carry out his joke, which certainly seems poor so long
+as it is not explained, he used often to address his companion
+as "Dorchester."  Fellow-travelers very soon grow intimate but it
+is highly improbable that at home these extremely dissimilar
+characters would have found any very convenient points of contact.
+They were, indeed, as different as possible.  Newman, who never
+reflected on such matters, accepted the situation with
+great equanimity, but Babcock used to meditate over it privately;
+used often, indeed, to retire to his room early in the evening
+for the express purpose of considering it conscientiously
+and impartially.  He was not sure that it was a good thing
+for him to associate with our hero, whose way of taking life
+was so little his own.  Newman was an excellent, generous fellow;
+Mr. Babcock sometimes said to himself that he was a NOBLE
+fellow, and, certainly, it was impossible not to like him.
+But would it not be desirable to try to exert an influence upon him,
+to try to quicken his moral life and sharpen his sense of duty?
+He liked everything, he accepted everything, he found amusement
+in everything; he was not discriminating, he had not a high tone.
+The young man from Dorchester accused Newman of a fault which
+he considered very grave, and which he did his best to avoid:
+what he would have called a want of "moral reaction."
+Poor Mr. Babcock was extremely fond of pictures and churches,
+and carried Mrs. Jameson's works about in his trunk;
+he delighted in aesthetic analysis, and received peculiar
+impressions from everything he saw.  But nevertheless in his
+secret soul he detested Europe, and he felt an irritating need
+to protest against Newman's gross intellectual hospitality.
+Mr. Babcock's moral malaise, I am afraid, lay deeper
+than where any definition of mine can reach it.
+He mistrusted the European temperament, he suffered from
+the European climate, he hated the European dinner-hour;
+European life seemed to him unscrupulous and impure.
+And yet he had an exquisite sense of beauty; and as beauty was often
+inextricably associated with the above displeasing conditions,
+as he wished, above all, to be just and dispassionate,
+and as he was, furthermore, extremely devoted to "culture,"
+he could not bring himself to decide that Europe was utterly bad.
+But he thought it was very bad indeed, and his quarrel
+with Newman was that this unregulated epicure had a sadly
+insufficient perception of the bad.  Babcock himself really
+knew as little about the bad, in any quarter of the world,
+as a nursing infant, his most vivid realization of evil
+had been the discovery that one of his college classmates,
+who was studying architecture in Paris had a love affair
+with a young woman who did not expect him to marry her.
+Babcock had related this incident to Newman, and our hero had
+applied an epithet of an unflattering sort to the young girl.
+The next day his companion asked him whether he was very
+sure he had used exactly the right word to characterize
+the young architect's mistress.  Newman stared and laughed.
+"There are a great many words to express that idea," he said;
+"you can take your choice!"
+
+"Oh, I mean," said Babcock, "was she possibly not to be considered
+in a different light?  Don't you think she really expected him
+to marry her?"
+
+"I am sure I don't know," said Newman.  "Very likely she did;
+I have no doubt she is a grand woman."  And he began to laugh again.
+
+"I didn't mean that either," said Babcock, "I was only afraid that I might
+have seemed yesterday not to remember--not to consider; well, I think I
+will write to Percival about it."
+
+And he had written to Percival (who answered him in a really
+impudent fashion), and he had reflected that it was somehow,
+raw and reckless in Newman to assume in that off-hand manner
+that the young woman in Paris might be "grand."  The brevity
+of Newman's judgments very often shocked and discomposed him.
+He had a way of damning people without farther appeal,
+or of pronouncing them capital company in the face of
+uncomfortable symptoms, which seemed unworthy of a man whose
+conscience had been properly cultivated.  And yet poor Babcock
+liked him, and remembered that even if he was sometimes
+perplexing and painful, this was not a reason for giving him up.
+Goethe recommended seeing human nature in the most various forms,
+and Mr. Babcock thought Goethe perfectly splendid.
+He often tried, in odd half-hours of conversation to infuse
+into Newman a little of his own spiritual starch, but Newman's
+personal texture was too loose to admit of stiffening.
+His mind could no more hold principles than a sieve can
+hold water.  He admired principles extremely, and thought
+Babcock a mighty fine little fellow for having so many.
+He accepted all that his high-strung companion offered him,
+and put them away in what he supposed to be a very safe place;
+but poor Babcock never afterwards recognized his gifts among
+the articles that Newman had in daily use.
+
+They traveled together through Germany and into Switzerland, where for
+three or four weeks they trudged over passes and lounged upon blue lakes.
+At last they crossed the Simplon and made their way to Venice.
+Mr. Babcock had become gloomy and even a trifle irritable;
+he seemed moody, absent, preoccupied; he got his plans into a tangle,
+and talked one moment of doing one thing and the next of doing another.
+Newman led his usual life, made acquaintances, took his ease in the galleries
+and churches, spent an unconscionable amount of time in strolling
+in the Piazza San Marco, bought a great many bad pictures, and for a
+fortnight enjoyed Venice grossly.  One evening, coming back to his inn,
+he found Babcock waiting for him in the little garden beside it.
+The young man walked up to him, looking very dismal, thrust out his hand,
+and said with solemnity that he was afraid they must part.  Newman expressed
+his surprise and regret, and asked why a parting had became necessary.
+"Don't be afraid I'm tired of you," he said.
+
+"You are not tired of me?" demanded Babcock, fixing him with his
+clear gray eye.
+
+"Why the deuce should I be?  You are a very plucky fellow.
+Besides, I don't grow tired of things."
+
+"We don't understand each other," said the young minister.
+
+"Don't I understand you?" cried Newman.  "Why, I hoped I did.
+But what if I don't; where's the harm?"
+
+"I don't understand YOU," said Babcock.  And he sat down and rested his head
+on his hand, and looked up mournfully at his immeasurable friend.
+
+"Oh Lord, I don't mind that!" cried Newman, with a laugh.
+
+"But it's very distressing to me.  It keeps me in a state of unrest.
+It irritates me; I can't settle anything.  I don't think it's good for me."
+
+"You worry too much; that's what's the matter with you," said Newman.
+
+"Of course it must seem so to you.  You think I take
+things too hard, and I think you take things too easily.
+We can never agree."
+
+"But we have agreed very well all along."
+
+"No, I haven't agreed," said Babcock, shaking his head.
+"I am very uncomfortable.  I ought to have separated from you
+a month ago."
+
+"Oh, horrors!  I'll agree to anything!" cried Newman.
+
+Mr. Babcock buried his head in both hands.  At last looking up,
+"I don't think you appreciate my position," he said.
+"I try to arrive at the truth about everything.  And then you
+go too fast.  For me, you are too passionate, too extravagant.
+I feel as if I ought to go over all this ground we have
+traversed again, by myself, alone.  I am afraid I have made
+a great many mistakes."
+
+"Oh, you needn't give so many reasons," said Newman.
+"You are simply tired of my company.  You have a good right to be."
+
+"No, no, I am not tired!" cried the pestered young divine.
+"It is very wrong to be tired."
+
+"I give it up!" laughed Newman.  "But of course it will never
+do to go on making mistakes.  Go your way, by all means.
+I shall miss you; but you have seen I make friends very easily.
+You will be lonely, yourself; but drop me a line, when you feel
+like it, and I will wait for you anywhere."
+
+"I think I will go back to Milan.  I am afraid I didn't do justice to Luini."
+
+"Poor Luini!" said Newman.
+
+"I mean that I am afraid I overestimated him.  I don't think
+that he is a painter of the first rank."
+
+"Luini?"  Newman exclaimed; "why, he's enchanting--he's magnificent!
+There is something in his genius that is like a beautiful woman.
+It gives one the same feeling."
+
+Mr. Babcock frowned and winced.  And it must be added that this was,
+for Newman, an unusually metaphysical flight; but in passing
+through Milan he had taken a great fancy to the painter.
+"There you are again!" said Mr. Babcock.  "Yes, we had better separate."
+And on the morrow he retraced his steps and proceeded to tone
+down his impressions of the great Lombard artist.
+
+A few days afterwards Newman received a note from his late companion
+which ran as follows:--
+
+My Dear Mr. Newman,--I am afraid that my conduct at Venice,
+a week ago, seemed to you strange and ungrateful, and I
+wish to explain my position, which, as I said at the time,
+I do not think you appreciate.  I had long had it on my mind
+to propose that we should part company, and this step was not
+really so abrupt as it seemed.  In the first place, you know,
+I am traveling in Europe on funds supplied by my congregation,
+who kindly offered me a vacation and an opportunity to enrich
+my mind with the treasures of nature and art in the Old World.
+I feel, therefore, as if I ought to use my time to the very
+best advantage.  I have a high sense of responsibility.
+You appear to care only for the pleasure of the hour,
+and you give yourself up to it with a violence which I
+confess I am not able to emulate.  I feel as if I must arrive
+at some conclusion and fix my belief on certain points.
+Art and life seem to me intensely serious things, and in our
+travels in Europe we should especially remember the immense
+seriousness of Art.  You seem to hold that if a thing amuses
+you for the moment, that is all you need ask for it, and your
+relish for mere amusement is also much higher than mine.
+You put, however, a kind of reckless confidence into your pleasure
+which at times, I confess, has seemed to me--shall I say it?--
+almost cynical.  Your way at any rate is not my way, and it
+is unwise that we should attempt any longer to pull together.
+And yet, let me add that I know there is a great deal to be said
+for your way; I have felt its attraction, in your society,
+very strongly.  But for this I should have left you long ago.
+But I was so perplexed.  I hope I have not done wrong.
+I feel as if I had a great deal of lost time to make up.
+I beg you take all this as I mean it, which, Heaven knows,
+is not invidiously.  I have a great personal esteem for you
+and hope that some day, when I have recovered my balance, we shall
+meet again.  I hope you will continue to enjoy your travels,
+only DO remember that Life and Art ARE extremely serious.
+Believe me your sincere friend and well-wisher,
+
+BENJAMIN BABCOCK
+
+P. S. I am greatly perplexed by Luini.
+
+
+This letter produced in Newman's mind a singular mixture
+of exhilaration and awe.  At first, Mr. Babcock's tender
+conscience seemed to him a capital farce, and his traveling
+back to Milan only to get into a deeper muddle appeared,
+as the reward of his pedantry, exquisitely and ludicrously just.
+Then Newman reflected that these are mighty mysteries, that possibly
+he himself was indeed that baleful and barely mentionable thing,
+a cynic, and that his manner of considering the treasures of art
+and the privileges of life was probably very base and immoral.
+Newman had a great contempt for immorality, and that evening,
+for a good half hour, as he sat watching the star-sheen on
+the warm Adriatic, he felt rebuked and depressed.  He was at a loss
+how to answer Babcock's letter.  His good nature checked his
+resenting the young minister's lofty admonitions, and his tough,
+inelastic sense of humor forbade his taking them seriously.
+He wrote no answer at all but a day or two afterward he found
+in a curiosity shop a grotesque little statuette in ivory,
+of the sixteenth century, which he sent off to Babcock without
+a commentary.  It represented a gaunt, ascetic-looking monk,
+in a tattered gown and cowl, kneeling with clasped hands and
+pulling a portentously long face.  It was a wonderfully delicate
+piece of carving, and in a moment, through one of the rents
+of his gown, you espied a fat capon hung round the monk's waist.
+In Newman's intention what did the figure symbolize?
+Did it mean that he was going to try to be as "high-toned" as the monk
+looked at first, but that he feared he should succeed no better
+than the friar, on a closer inspection, proved to have done?
+It is not supposable that he intended a satire upon Babcock's
+own asceticism, for this would have been a truly cynical stroke.
+He made his late companion, at any rate, a very valuable little present.
+
+Newman, on leaving Venice, went through the Tyrol to Vienna,
+and then returned westward, through Southern Germany.
+The autumn found him at Baden-Baden, where he spent several weeks.
+The place was charming, and he was in no hurry to depart;
+besides, he was looking about him and deciding what to do
+for the winter.  His summer had been very full, and he sat
+under the great trees beside the miniature river that trickles
+past the Baden flower-beds, he slowly rummaged it over.
+He had seen and done a great deal, enjoyed and observed
+a great deal; he felt older, and yet he felt younger too.
+He remembered Mr. Babcock and his desire to form conclusions,
+and he remembered also that he had profited very little by his
+friend's exhortation to cultivate the same respectable habit.
+Could he not scrape together a few conclusions?  Baden-Baden was
+the prettiest place he had seen yet, and orchestral music in
+the evening, under the stars, was decidedly a great institution.
+This was one of his conclusions!  But he went on to reflect
+that he had done very wisely to pull up stakes and come abroad;
+this seeing of the world was a very interesting thing.
+He had learned a great deal; he couldn't say just what,
+but he had it there under his hat-band. He had done what he wanted;
+he had seen the great things, and he had given his mind a chance
+to "improve," if it would.  He cheerfully believed that it
+had improved.  Yes, this seeing of the world was very pleasant,
+and he would willingly do a little more of it.  Thirty-six years
+old as he was, he had a handsome stretch of life before him yet,
+and he need not begin to count his weeks.  Where should he take
+the world next?  I have said he remembered the eyes of the lady
+whom he had found standing in Mrs. Tristram's drawing-room;
+four months had elapsed, and he had not forgotten them yet.
+He had looked--he had made a point of looking--into a great
+many other eyes in the interval, but the only ones he thought
+of now were Madame de Cintre's. If he wanted to see more
+of the world, should he find it in Madame de Cintre's eyes?
+He would certainly find something there, call it this world
+or the next.  Throughout these rather formless meditations
+he sometimes thought of his past life and the long array of years
+(they had begun so early) during which he had had nothing in his
+head but "enterprise."  They seemed far away now, for his present
+attitude was more than a holiday, it was almost a rupture.
+He had told Tristram that the pendulum was swinging back
+and it appeared that the backward swing had not yet ended.
+Still "enterprise," which was over in the other quarter wore
+to his mind a different aspect at different hours.  In its train
+a thousand forgotten episodes came trooping back into his memory.
+Some of them he looked complacently enough in the face;
+from some he averted his head.  They were old efforts,
+old exploits, antiquated examples of "smartness" and sharpness.
+Some of them, as he looked at them, he felt decidedly proud of;
+he admired himself as if he had been looking at another man.
+And, in fact, many of the qualities that make a great deed were there:
+the decision, the resolution, the courage, the celerity,
+the clear eye, and the strong hand.  Of certain other
+achievements it would be going too far to say that he was ashamed
+of them for Newman had never had a stomach for dirty work.
+He was blessed with a natural impulse to disfigure with a direct,
+unreasoning blow the comely visage of temptation.  And certainly,
+in no man could a want of integrity have been less excusable.
+Newman knew the crooked from the straight at a glance, and the former
+had cost him, first and last, a great many moments of lively disgust.
+But none the less some of his memories seemed to wear at
+present a rather graceless and sordid mien, and it struck him
+that if he had never done anything very ugly, he had never,
+on the other hand, done anything particularly beautiful.
+He had spent his years in the unremitting effort to add thousands
+to thousands, and, now that he stood well outside of it,
+the business of money-getting appeared tolerably dry and sterile.
+It is very well to sneer at money-getting after you have filled
+your pockets, and Newman, it may be said, should have begun
+somewhat earlier to moralize thus delicately.  To this it may be
+answered that he might have made another fortune, if he chose;
+and we ought to add that he was not exactly moralizing.
+It had come back to him simply that what he had been looking
+at all summer was a very rich and beautiful world, and that it
+had not all been made by sharp railroad men and stock-brokers.
+
+During his stay at Baden-Baden he received a letter from Mrs. Tristram,
+scolding him for the scanty tidings he had sent to his friends of the Avenue
+d'Iena, and begging to be definitely informed that he had not concocted
+any horrid scheme for wintering in outlying regions, but was coming
+back sanely and promptly to the most comfortable city in the world.
+Newman's answer ran as follows:--
+
+"I supposed you knew I was a miserable letter-writer, and didn't expect
+anything of me.  I don't think I have written twenty letters of pure
+friendship in my whole life; in America I conducted my correspondence
+altogether by telegrams.  This is a letter of pure friendship;
+you have got hold of a curiosity, and I hope you will value it.
+You want to know everything that has happened to me these three months.
+The best way to tell you, I think, would be to send you my half dozen
+guide-books, with my pencil-marks in the margin.  Wherever you find
+a scratch or a cross, or a 'Beautiful!' or a 'So true!' or a 'Too thin!'
+you may know that I have had a sensation of some sort or other.
+That has been about my history, ever since I left you.  Belgium, Holland,
+Switzerland, Germany, Italy, I have been through the whole list,
+and I don't think I am any the worse for it.  I know more about Madonnas
+and church-steeples than I supposed any man could.  I have seen some
+very pretty things, and shall perhaps talk them over this winter,
+by your fireside.  You see, my face is not altogether set against Paris.
+I have had all kinds of plans and visions, but your letter has blown most
+of them away.  'L'appetit vient en mangeant,' says the French proverb,
+and I find that the more I see of the world the more I want to see.
+Now that I am in the shafts, why shouldn't I trot to the end of the course?
+Sometimes I think of the far East, and keep rolling the names of Eastern
+cities under my tongue:  Damascus and Bagdad, Medina and Mecca.
+I spent a week last month in the company of a returned missionary,
+who told me I ought to be ashamed to be loafing about Europe when there
+are such big things to be seen out there.  I do want to explore,
+but I think I would rather explore over in the Rue de l'Universite. Do
+you ever hear from that pretty lady?  If you can get her to promise she
+will be at home the next time I call, I will go back to Paris straight.
+I am more than ever in the state of mind I told you about that evening;
+I want a first-class wife.  I have kept an eye on all the pretty girls
+I have come across this summer, but none of them came up to my notion,
+or anywhere near it.  I should have enjoyed all this a thousand times
+more if I had had the lady just mentioned by my side.  The nearest
+approach to her was a Unitarian minister from Boston, who very soon
+demanded a separation, for incompatibility of temper.  He told me I
+was low-minded, immoral, a devotee of 'art for art'--whatever that is:
+all of which greatly afflicted me, for he was really a sweet little fellow.
+But shortly afterwards I met an Englishman, with whom I struck up an
+acquaintance which at first seemed to promise well--a very bright man,
+who writes in the London papers and knows Paris nearly as well as Tristram.
+We knocked about for a week together, but he very soon gave me up
+in disgust.  I was too virtuous by half; I was too stern a moralist.
+He told me, in a friendly way, that I was cursed with a conscience;
+that I judged things like a Methodist and talked about them like an old lady.
+This was rather bewildering.  Which of my two critics was I to believe?
+I didn't worry about it and very soon made up my mind they were both idiots.
+But there is one thing in which no one will ever have the impudence
+to pretend I am wrong, that is, in being your faithful friend,
+
+                                       C. N."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+
+
+Newman gave up Damascus and Bagdad and returned to Paris before
+the autumn was over.  He established himself in some rooms selected
+for him by Tom Tristram, in accordance with the latter's estimate
+of what he called his social position.  When Newman learned that his
+social position was to be taken into account, he professed himself
+utterly incompetent, and begged Tristram to relieve him of the care.
+"I didn't know I had a social position," he said, "and if I have,
+I haven't the smallest idea what it is.  Isn't a social position
+knowing some two or three thousand people and inviting them to dinner?
+I know you and your wife and little old Mr. Nioche, who gave me French
+lessons last spring.  Can I invite you to dinner to meet each other?
+If I can, you must come to-morrow."
+
+"That is not very grateful to me," said Mrs. Tristram,
+"who introduced you last year to every creature I know."
+
+"So you did; I had quite forgotten.  But I thought you wanted me to forget,"
+said Newman, with that tone of simple deliberateness which frequently marked
+his utterance, and which an observer would not have known whether to pronounce
+a somewhat mysteriously humorous affection of ignorance or a modest aspiration
+to knowledge; "you told me you disliked them all."
+
+"Ah, the way you remember what I say is at least very flattering.
+But in future," added Mrs. Tristram, "pray forget all
+the wicked things and remember only the good ones.
+It will be easily done, and it will not fatigue your memory.
+But I forewarn you that if you trust my husband to pick out
+your rooms, you are in for something hideous."
+
+"Hideous, darling?" cried Tristram.
+
+"To-day I must say nothing wicked; otherwise I should use stronger language."
+
+"What do you think she would say, Newman?" asked Tristram.
+"If she really tried, now?  She can express displeasure,
+volubly, in two or three languages; that's what it is to
+be intellectual.  It gives her the start of me completely,
+for I can't swear, for the life of me, except in English.
+When I get mad I have to fall back on our dear old mother tongue.
+There's nothing like it, after all."
+
+Newman declared that he knew nothing about tables and chairs,
+and that he would accept, in the way of a lodging, with his eyes shut,
+anything that Tristram should offer him.  This was partly
+veracity on our hero's part, but it was also partly charity.
+He knew that to pry about and look at rooms, and make people open windows,
+and poke into sofas with his cane, and gossip with landladies, and ask
+who lived above and who below--he knew that this was of all pastimes
+the dearest to Tristram's heart, and he felt the more disposed to put
+it in his way as he was conscious that, as regards his obliging friend,
+he had suffered the warmth of ancient good-fellowship somewhat to abate.
+Besides, he had no taste for upholstery; he had even no very exquisite
+sense of comfort or convenience.  He had a relish for luxury
+and splendor, but it was satisfied by rather gross contrivances.
+He scarcely knew a hard chair from a soft one, and he possessed a talent
+for stretching his legs which quite dispensed with adventitious facilities.
+His idea of comfort was to inhabit very large rooms, have a great many
+of them, and be conscious of their possessing a number of patented
+mechanical devices--half of which he should never have occasion to use.
+The apartments should be light and brilliant and lofty; he had once
+said that he liked rooms in which you wanted to keep your hat on.
+For the rest, he was satisfied with the assurance of any respectable
+person that everything was "handsome."  Tristram accordingly secured
+for him an apartment to which this epithet might be lavishly applied.
+It was situated on the Boulevard Haussmann, on the first floor,
+and consisted of a series of rooms, gilded from floor to ceiling
+a foot thick, draped in various light shades of satin, and chiefly
+furnished with mirrors and clocks.  Newman thought them magnificent,
+thanked Tristram heartily, immediately took possession, and had one
+of his trunks standing for three months in his drawing-room.
+
+One day Mrs. Tristram told him that her beautiful friend, Madame de Cintre,
+had returned from the country; that she had met her three days before,
+coming out of the Church of St. Sulpice; she herself having journeyed
+to that distant quarter in quest of an obscure lace-mender, of whose skill
+she had heard high praise.
+
+"And how were those eyes?"  Newman asked.
+
+"Those eyes were red with weeping, if you please!" said Mrs. Tristram.
+"She had been to confession."
+
+"It doesn't tally with your account of her," said Newman,
+"that she should have sins to confess."
+
+"They were not sins; they were sufferings."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"She asked me to come and see her; I went this morning."
+
+"And what does she suffer from?"
+
+"I didn't ask her.  With her, somehow, one is very discreet.
+But I guessed, easily enough.  She suffers from her wicked old
+mother and her Grand Turk of a brother.  They persecute her.
+But I can almost forgive them, because, as I told you,
+she is a saint, and a persecution is all that she needs to bring
+out her saintliness and make her perfect."
+
+"That's a comfortable theory for her.  I hope you will never
+impart it to the old folks.  Why does she let them bully her?
+Is she not her own mistress?"
+
+"Legally, yes, I suppose; but morally, no.  In France you must
+never say nay to your mother, whatever she requires of you.
+She may be the most abominable old woman in the world,
+and make your life a purgatory; but, after all, she is ma mere,
+and you have no right to judge her.  You have simply to obey.
+The thing has a fine side to it.  Madame de Cintre bows her head
+and folds her wings."
+
+"Can't she at least make her brother leave off?"
+
+"Her brother is the chef de la famille, as they say; he is the head
+of the clan.  With those people the family is everything; you must act,
+not for your own pleasure, but for the advantage of the family."
+
+"I wonder what my family would like me to do!" exclaimed Tristram.
+
+"I wish you had one!" said his wife.
+
+"But what do they want to get out of that poor lady?"  Newman asked.
+
+"Another marriage.  They are not rich, and they want to bring
+more money into the family."
+
+"There's your chance, my boy!" said Tristram.
+
+"And Madame de Cintre objects," Newman continued.
+
+"She has been sold once; she naturally objects to being sold again.
+It appears that the first time they made rather a poor bargain;
+M. de Cintre left a scanty property."
+
+"And to whom do they want to marry her now?"
+
+"I thought it best not to ask; but you may be sure it is to some horrid
+old nabob, or to some dissipated little duke."
+
+"There's Mrs. Tristram, as large as life!" cried her husband.
+"Observe the richness of her imagination.  She has not a single question--
+it's vulgar to ask questions--and yet she knows everything.
+She has the history of Madame de Cintre's marriage at
+her fingers' ends.  She has seen the lovely Claire on her knees,
+with loosened tresses and streaming eyes, and the rest of them
+standing over her with spikes and goads and red-hot irons,
+ready to come down on her if she refuses the tipsy duke.
+The simple truth is that they made a fuss about her milliner's
+bill or refused her an opera-box."
+
+Newman looked from Tristram to his wife with a certain mistrust
+in each direction.  "Do you really mean," he asked of Mrs. Tristram,
+"that your friend is being forced into an unhappy marriage?"
+
+"I think it extremely probable.  Those people are very capable
+of that sort of thing."
+
+"It is like something in a play," said Newman; "that dark old
+house over there looks as if wicked things had been done in it,
+and might be done again."
+
+"They have a still darker old house in the country Madame de Cintre tells me,
+and there, during the summer this scheme must have been hatched."
+
+"MUST have been; mind that!" said Tristram.
+
+"After all," suggested Newman, after a silence, "she may be in trouble
+about something else."
+
+"If it is something else, then it is something worse," said Mrs. Tristram,
+with rich decision.
+
+Newman was silent a while, and seemed lost in meditation.
+"Is it possible," he asked at last, "that they do that sort
+of thing over here? that helpless women are bullied into marrying
+men they hate?"
+
+"Helpless women, all over the world, have a hard time of it,"
+said Mrs. Tristram.  "There is plenty of bullying everywhere."
+
+"A great deal of that kind of thing goes on in New York,"
+said Tristram.  "Girls are bullied or coaxed or bribed,
+or all three together, into marrying nasty fellows.
+There is no end of that always going on in the Fifth Avenue,
+and other bad things besides.  The Mysteries of the Fifth Avenue!
+Some one ought to show them up."
+
+"I don't believe it!" said Newman, very gravely.  "I don't
+believe that, in America, girls are ever subjected to compulsion.
+I don't believe there have been a dozen cases of it since
+the country began."
+
+"Listen to the voice of the spread eagle!" cried Tristram.
+
+"The spread eagle ought to use his wings," said Mrs. Tristram.
+"Fly to the rescue of Madame de Cintre!"
+
+"To her rescue?"
+
+"Pounce down, seize her in your talons, and carry her off.
+Marry her yourself."
+
+Newman, for some moments, answered nothing; but presently,
+"I should suppose she had heard enough of marrying," he said.
+"The kindest way to treat her would be to admire her, and yet
+never to speak of it.  But that sort of thing is infamous,"
+he added; "it makes me feel savage to hear of it."
+
+He heard of it, however, more than once afterward.  Mrs. Tristram
+again saw Madame de Cintre, and again found her looking very sad.
+But on these occasions there had been no tears; her beautiful
+eyes were clear and still.  "She is cold, calm, and hopeless,"
+Mrs. Tristram declared, and she added that on her mentioning that her
+friend Mr. Newman was again in Paris and was faithful in his desire
+to make Madame de Cintre's acquaintance, this lovely woman had found
+a smile in her despair, and declared that she was sorry to have missed
+his visit in the spring and that she hoped he had not lost courage.
+"I told her something about you," said Mrs. Tristram.
+
+"That's a comfort," said Newman, placidly.  "I like people
+to know about me."
+
+A few days after this, one dusky autumn afternoon, he went again
+to the Rue de l'Universite. The early evening had closed in as he
+applied for admittance at the stoutly guarded Hotel de Bellegarde.
+He was told that Madame de Cintre was at home; he crossed
+the court, entered the farther door, and was conducted through
+a vestibule, vast, dim, and cold, up a broad stone staircase with
+an ancient iron balustrade, to an apartment on the second floor.
+Announced and ushered in, he found himself in a sort of paneled boudoir,
+at one end of which a lady and gentleman were seated before the fire.
+The gentleman was smoking a cigarette; there was no light in the room
+save that of a couple of candles and the glow from the hearth.
+Both persons rose to welcome Newman, who, in the firelight,
+recognized Madame de Cintre.  She gave him her hand with a smile
+which seemed in itself an illumination, and, pointing to her companion,
+said softly, "My brother."  The gentleman offered Newman a frank,
+friendly greeting, and our hero then perceived him to be the young
+man who had spoken to him in the court of the hotel on his former
+visit and who had struck him as a good fellow.
+
+"Mrs. Tristram has spoken to me a great deal of you,"
+said Madame de Cintre gently, as she resumed her former place.
+
+Newman, after he had seated himself, began to consider what,
+in truth, was his errand.  He had an unusual, unexpected sense
+of having wandered into a strange corner of the world.
+He was not given, as a general thing, to anticipating danger,
+or forecasting disaster, and he had had no social tremors on this
+particular occasion.  He was not timid and he was not impudent.
+He felt too kindly toward himself to be the one, and too
+good-naturedly toward the rest of the world to be the other.
+But his native shrewdness sometimes placed his ease of temper
+at its mercy; with every disposition to take things simply,
+it was obliged to perceive that some things were not so simple
+as others.  He felt as one does in missing a step, in an ascent,
+where one expected to find it.  This strange, pretty woman,
+sitting in fire-side talk with her brother, in the gray depths
+of her inhospitable-looking house--what had he to say to her?
+She seemed enveloped in a sort of fantastic privacy; on what
+grounds had he pulled away the curtain?  For a moment he felt
+as if he had plunged into some medium as deep as the ocean,
+and as if he must exert himself to keep from sinking.
+Meanwhile he was looking at Madame de Cintre, and she was settling
+herself in her chair and drawing in her long dress and turning
+her face towards him.  Their eyes met; a moment afterwards she
+looked away and motioned to her brother to put a log on the fire.
+But the moment, and the glance which traversed it,
+had been sufficient to relieve Newman of the first and
+the last fit of personal embarrassment he was ever to know.
+He performed the movement which was so frequent with him,
+and which was always a sort of symbol of his taking mental
+possession of a scene--he extended his legs.  The impression
+Madame de Cintre had made upon him on their first meeting
+came back in an instant; it had been deeper than he knew.
+She was pleasing, she was interesting; he had opened a book
+and the first lines held his attention.
+
+She asked him several questions:  how lately he had seen Mrs. Tristram,
+how long he had been in Paris, how long he expected to remain there,
+how he liked it.  She spoke English without an accent, or rather
+with that distinctively British accent which, on his arrival in Europe,
+had struck Newman as an altogether foreign tongue, but which, in women,
+he had come to like extremely.  Here and there Madame de Cintre's
+utterance had a faint shade of strangeness but at the end of ten
+minutes Newman found himself waiting for these soft roughnesses.
+He enjoyed them, and he marveled to see that gross thing, error,
+brought down to so fine a point.
+
+"You have a beautiful country," said Madame de Cintre, presently.
+
+"Oh, magnificent!" said Newman.  "You ought to see it."
+
+"I shall never see it," said Madame de Cintre with a smile.
+
+"Why not?" asked Newman.
+
+"I don't travel; especially so far."
+
+"But you go away sometimes; you are not always here?"
+
+"I go away in summer, a little way, to the country."
+
+Newman wanted to ask her something more, something personal, he hardly
+knew what.  "Don't you find it rather--rather quiet here?" he said;
+"so far from the street?"  Rather "gloomy," he was going to say,
+but he reflected that that would be impolite.
+
+"Yes, it is very quiet," said Madame de Cintre; "but we like that."
+
+"Ah, you like that," repeated Newman, slowly.
+
+"Besides, I have lived here all my life."
+
+"Lived here all your life," said Newman, in the same way.
+
+"I was born here, and my father was born here before me, and my grandfather,
+and my great-grandfathers. Were they not, Valentin?" and she appealed
+to her brother.
+
+"Yes, it's a family habit to be born here!" the young man said with a laugh,
+and rose and threw the remnant of his cigarette into the fire, and then
+remained leaning against the chimney-piece. An observer would have perceived
+that he wished to take a better look at Newman, whom he covertly examined,
+while he stood stroking his mustache.
+
+"Your house is tremendously old, then," said Newman.
+
+"How old is it, brother?" asked Madame de Cintre.
+
+The young man took the two candles from the mantel-shelf, lifted
+one high in each hand, and looked up toward the cornice of the room,
+above the chimney-piece. This latter feature of the apartment
+was of white marble, and in the familiar rococo style of the
+last century; but above it was a paneling of an earlier date,
+quaintly carved, painted white, and gilded here and there.
+The white had turned to yellow, and the gilding was tarnished.
+On the top, the figures ranged themselves into a sort of shield,
+on which an armorial device was cut.  Above it, in relief,
+was a date--1627.  "There you have it,' said the young man.
+"That is old or new, according to your point of view."
+
+"Well, over here," said Newman, "one's point of view gets shifted
+round considerably."  And he threw back his head and looked about the room.
+"Your house is of a very curious style of architecture," he said.
+
+"Are you interested in architecture?" asked the young man
+at the chimney-piece.
+
+"Well, I took the trouble, this summer," said Newman, "to examine--
+as well as I can calculate--some four hundred and seventy churches.
+Do you call that interested?"
+
+"Perhaps you are interested in theology," said the young man.
+
+"Not particularly.  Are you a Roman Catholic, madam?"
+And he turned to Madame de Cintre.
+
+"Yes, sir," she answered, gravely.
+
+Newman was struck with the gravity of her tone; he threw
+back his head and began to look round the room again.
+"Had you never noticed that number up there?" he presently asked.
+
+She hesitated a moment, and then, "In former years," she said.
+
+Her brother had been watching Newman's movement.
+"Perhaps you would like to examine the house," he said.
+
+Newman slowly brought down his eyes and looked at him; he had a vague
+impression that the young man at the chimney-piece was inclined to irony.
+He was a handsome fellow, his face wore a smile, his mustaches were
+curled up at the ends, and there was a little dancing gleam in his eye.
+"Damn his French impudence!"  Newman was on the point of saying
+to himself.  "What the deuce is he grinning at?"  He glanced at
+Madame de Cintre; she was sitting with her eyes fixed on the floor.
+She raised them, they met his, and she looked at her brother.
+Newman turned again to this young man and observed that he strikingly
+resembled his sister.  This was in his favor, and our hero's first
+impression of the Count Valentin, moreover, had been agreeable.
+His mistrust expired, and he said he would be very glad to see the house.
+
+The young man gave a frank laugh, and laid his hand on one of
+the candlesticks.  "Good, good!" he exclaimed.  "Come, then."
+
+But Madame de Cintre rose quickly and grasped his arm, "Ah, Valentin!"
+she said.  "What do you mean to do?"
+
+"To show Mr. Newman the house.  It will be very amusing."
+
+She kept her hand on his arm, and turned to Newman with a smile.
+"Don't let him take you," she said; "you will not find it amusing.
+It is a musty old house, like any other."
+
+"It is full of curious things," said the count, resisting.
+"Besides, I want to do it; it is a rare chance."
+
+"You are very wicked, brother," Madame de Cintre answered.
+
+"Nothing venture, nothing have!" cried the young man.
+"Will you come?"
+
+Madame de Cintre stepped toward Newman, gently clasping her hands
+and smiling softly.  "Would you not prefer my society, here, by my fire,
+to stumbling about dark passages after my brother?"
+
+"A hundred times!" said Newman.  "We will see the house some other day."
+
+The young man put down his candlestick with mock solemnity, and,
+shaking his head, "Ah, you have defeated a great scheme, sir!" he said.
+
+"A scheme?  I don't understand," said Newman.
+
+"You would have played your part in it all the better.
+Perhaps some day I shall have a chance to explain it."
+
+"Be quiet, and ring for the tea," said Madame de Cintre.
+
+The young man obeyed, and presently a servant brought
+in the tea, placed the tray on a small table, and departed.
+Madame de Cintre, from her place, busied herself with making it.
+She had but just begun when the door was thrown open and a lady
+rushed in, making a loud rustling sound.  She stared at Newman,
+gave a little nod and a "Monsieur!" and then quickly approached
+Madame de Cintre and presented her forehead to be kissed.
+Madame de Cintre saluted her, and continued to make tea.
+The new-comer was young and pretty, it seemed to Newman;
+she wore her bonnet and cloak, and a train of royal proportions.
+She began to talk rapidly in French.  "Oh, give me some tea,
+my beautiful one, for the love of God!  I'm exhausted,
+mangled, massacred."  Newman found himself quite unable to follow her;
+she spoke much less distinctly than M. Nioche.
+
+"That is my sister-in-law," said the Count Valentin, leaning towards him.
+
+"She is very pretty," said Newman.
+
+"Exquisite," answered the young man, and this time, again, Newman suspected
+him of irony.
+
+His sister-in-law came round to the other side of the fire with her
+cup of tea in her hand, holding it out at arm's-length, so that she
+might not spill it on her dress, and uttering little cries of alarm.
+She placed the cup on the mantel-shelf and begun to unpin her veil
+and pull off her gloves, looking meanwhile at Newman.
+
+"Is there any thing I can do for you, my dear lady?" the Count Valentin asked,
+in a sort of mock-caressing tone.
+
+"Present monsieur," said his sister-in-law.
+
+The young man answered, "Mr. Newman!"
+
+"I can't courtesy to you, monsieur, or I shall spill my tea," said the lady.
+"So Claire receives strangers, like that?" she added, in a low voice,
+in French, to her brother-in-law.
+
+"Apparently!" he answered with a smile.  Newman stood
+a moment, and then he approached Madame de Cintre.
+She looked up at him as if she were thinking of something to say.
+But she seemed to think of nothing; so she simply smiled.
+He sat down near her and she handed him a cup of tea.  For a few
+moments they talked about that, and meanwhile he looked at her.
+He remembered what Mrs. Tristram had told him of her "perfection"
+and of her having, in combination, all the brilliant things
+that he dreamed of finding.  This made him observe her not only
+without mistrust, but without uneasy conjectures; the presumption,
+from the first moment he looked at her, had been in her favor.
+And yet, if she was beautiful, it was not a dazzling beauty.
+She was tall and moulded in long lines; she had thick fair hair,
+a wide forehead, and features with a sort of harmonious irregularity.
+Her clear gray eyes were strikingly expressive; they were
+both gentle and intelligent, and Newman liked them immensely;
+but they had not those depths of splendor--those many-colored rays--
+which illumine the brows of famous beauties.  Madame de Cintre
+was rather thin, and she looked younger than probably she was.
+In her whole person there was something both youthful and subdued,
+slender and yet ample, tranquil yet shy; a mixture of immaturity
+and repose, of innocence and dignity.  What had Tristram meant,
+Newman wondered, by calling her proud?  She was certainly not proud now,
+to him; or if she was, it was of no use, it was lost upon him;
+she must pile it up higher if she expected him to mind it.
+She was a beautiful woman, and it was very easy to get on with her.
+Was she a countess, a marquise, a kind of historical formation?
+Newman, who had rarely heard these words used, had never been
+at pains to attach any particular image to them; but they occurred
+to him now and seemed charged with a sort of melodious meaning.
+They signified something fair and softly bright, that had easy
+motions and spoke very agreeably.
+
+"Have you many friends in Paris; do you go out?" asked Madame de Cintre,
+who had at last thought of something to say.
+
+"Do you mean do I dance, and all that?"
+
+"Do you go dans le monde, as we say?"
+
+"I have seen a good many people.  Mrs. Tristram has taken me about.
+I do whatever she tells me."
+
+"By yourself, you are not fond of amusements?"
+
+"Oh yes, of some sorts.  I am not fond of dancing, and that sort of thing;
+I am too old and sober.  But I want to be amused; I came to Europe for that."
+
+"But you can be amused in America, too."
+
+"I couldn't; I was always at work.  But after all, that was my amusement."
+
+At this moment Madame de Bellegarde came back for another cup of tea,
+accompanied by the Count Valentin.  Madame de Cintre, when she had served her,
+began to talk again with Newman, and recalling what he had last said,
+"In your own country you were very much occupied?" she asked.
+
+"l was in business.  I have been in business since I was fifteen years old."
+
+"And what was your business?" asked Madame de Bellegarde,
+who was decidedly not so pretty as Madame de Cintre.
+
+"I have been in everything," said Newman.  "At one time I sold leather;
+at one time I manufactured wash-tubs."
+
+Madame de Bellegarde made a little grimace.  "Leather?  I don't like that.
+Wash-tubs are better.  I prefer the smell of soap.  I hope at least
+they made your fortune."  She rattled this off with the air of a woman
+who had the reputation of saying everything that came into her head,
+and with a strong French accent.
+
+Newman had spoken with cheerful seriousness, but Madame de
+Bellegarde's tone made him go on, after a meditative pause,
+with a certain light grimness of jocularity.  "No, I lost money
+on wash-tubs, but I came out pretty square on leather."
+
+"I have made up my mind, after all," said Madame de Bellegarde,
+"that the great point is--how do you call it?--to come out square.
+I am on my knees to money; I don't deny it.  If you have it, I ask
+no questions.  For that I am a real democrat--like you, monsieur.
+Madame de Cintre is very proud; but I find that one gets much more
+pleasure in this sad life if one doesn't look too close."
+
+"Just Heaven, dear madam, how you go at it," said the Count Valentin,
+lowering his voice.
+
+"He's a man one can speak to, I suppose, since my sister receives him,"
+the lady answered.  "Besides, it's very true; those are my ideas."
+
+"Ah, you call them ideas," murmured the young man.
+
+"But Mrs. Tristram told me you had been in the army--in your war,"
+said Madame de Cintre.
+
+"Yes, but that is not business!" said Newman.
+
+"Very true!" said M. de Bellegarde.  "Otherwise perhaps I
+should not be penniless."
+
+"Is it true," asked Newman in a moment, "that you are so proud?
+I had already heard it."
+
+Madame de Cintre smiled.  "Do you find me so?"
+
+"Oh," said Newman, "I am no judge.  If you are proud with me,
+you will have to tell me.  Otherwise I shall not know it."
+
+Madame de Cintre began to laugh.  "That would be pride in a
+sad position!" she said.
+
+"It would be partly," Newman went on, "because I shouldn't want to know it.
+I want you to treat me well."
+
+Madame de Cintre, whose laugh had ceased, looked at him with her head
+half averted, as if she feared what he was going to say.
+
+"Mrs. Tristram told you the literal truth," he went on; "I want
+very much to know you.  I didn't come here simply to call to-day;
+I came in the hope that you might ask me to come again."
+
+"Oh, pray come often," said Madame de Cintre.
+
+"But will you be at home?"  Newman insisted.  Even to himself he seemed
+a trifle "pushing," but he was, in truth, a trifle excited.
+
+"I hope so!" said Madame de Cintre.
+
+Newman got up.  "Well, we shall see," he said smoothing his hat
+with his coat-cuff.
+
+"Brother," said Madame de Cintre, "invite Mr. Newman to come again."
+
+The Count Valentin looked at our hero from head to foot with his peculiar
+smile, in which impudence and urbanity seemed perplexingly commingled.
+"Are you a brave man?" he asked, eying him askance.
+
+"Well, I hope so," said Newman.
+
+"I rather suspect so.  In that case, come again."
+
+"Ah, what an invitation!" murmured Madame de Cintre, with something
+painful in her smile.
+
+"Oh, I want Mr. Newman to come--particularly," said the young man.
+"It will give me great pleasure.  I shall be desolate if I
+miss one of his visits.  But I maintain he must be brave.
+A stout heart, sir!"  And he offered Newman his hand.
+
+"I shall not come to see you; I shall come to see Madame
+de Cintre," said Newman.
+
+"You will need all the more courage."
+
+"Ah, Valentin!" said Madame de Cintre, appealingly.
+
+"Decidedly," cried Madame de Bellegarde, "I am the only person
+here capable of saying something polite!  Come to see me;
+you will need no courage," she said.
+
+Newman gave a laugh which was not altogether an assent, and took his leave.
+Madame de Cintre did not take up her sister's challenge to be gracious,
+but she looked with a certain troubled air at the retreating guest.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+
+
+One evening very late, about a week after his visit
+to Madame de Cintre, Newman's servant brought him a card.
+It was that of young M. de Bellegarde.  When, a few moments later,
+he went to receive his visitor, he found him standing in the middle
+of his great gilded parlor and eying it from cornice to carpet.
+M. de Bellegarde's face, it seemed to Newman, expressed a sense
+of lively entertainment.  "What the devil is he laughing at now?"
+our hero asked himself.  But he put the question without acrimony,
+for he felt that Madame de Cintre's brother was a good fellow,
+and he had a presentiment that on this basis of good fellowship
+they were destined to understand each other.  Only, if there
+was anything to laugh at, he wished to have a glimpse of it too.
+
+"To begin with," said the young man, as he extended his hand,
+"have I come too late?"
+
+"Too late for what?" asked Newman.
+
+"To smoke a cigar with you."
+
+"You would have to come early to do that," said Newman.
+"I don't smoke."
+
+"Ah, you are a strong man!"
+
+"But I keep cigars," Newman added.  "Sit down."
+
+"Surely, I may not smoke here," said M. de Bellegarde.
+
+"What is the matter?  Is the room too small?"
+
+"It is too large.  It is like smoking in a ball-room, or a church."
+
+"That is what you were laughing at just now?"  Newman asked;
+"the size of my room?"
+
+"It is not size only," replied M. de Bellegarde, "but splendor, and harmony,
+and beauty of detail.  It was the smile of admiration."
+
+Newman looked at him a moment, and then, "So it IS very ugly?" he inquired.
+
+"Ugly, my dear sir?  It is magnificent."
+
+"That is the same thing, I suppose," said Newman.
+"Make yourself comfortable.  Your coming to see me, I take it,
+is an act of friendship.  You were not obliged to.
+Therefore, if anything around here amuses you, it will be all
+in a pleasant way.  Laugh as loud as you please; I like to see
+my visitors cheerful.  Only, I must make this request:
+that you explain the joke to me as soon as you can speak.
+I don't want to lose anything, myself."
+
+M. de Bellegarde stared, with a look of unresentful perplexity.
+He laid his hand on Newman's sleeve and seemed on the point
+of saying something, but he suddenly checked himself,
+leaned back in his chair, and puffed at his cigar.
+At last, however, breaking silence,--"Certainly," he said,
+"my coming to see you is an act of friendship.  Nevertheless I
+was in a measure obliged to do so.  My sister asked me to come,
+and a request from my sister is, for me, a law.  I was near you,
+and I observed lights in what I supposed were your rooms.
+It was not a ceremonious hour for making a call, but I was not
+sorry to do something that would show I was not performing
+a mere ceremony."
+
+"Well, here I am as large as life," said Newman, extending his legs.
+
+"I don't know what you mean," the young man went on "by giving
+me unlimited leave to laugh.  Certainly I am a great laugher,
+and it is better to laugh too much than too little.
+But it is not in order that we may laugh together--or separately--
+that I have, I may say, sought your acquaintance.
+To speak with almost impudent frankness, you interest me!"
+All this was uttered by M. de Bellegarde with the modulated smoothness
+of the man of the world, and in spite of his excellent English,
+of the Frenchman; but Newman, at the same time that he sat noting its
+harmonious flow, perceived that it was not mere mechanical urbanity.
+Decidedly, there was something in his visitor that he liked.
+M. de Bellegarde was a foreigner to his finger-tips, and if Newman
+had met him on a Western prairie he would have felt it proper
+to address him with a "How-d'ye-do, Mosseer?"  But there was
+something in his physiognomy which seemed to cast a sort of aerial
+bridge over the impassable gulf produced by difference of race.
+He was below the middle height, and robust and agile in figure.
+Valentin de Bellegarde, Newman afterwards learned, had a mortal
+dread of the robustness overtaking the agility; he was afraid
+of growing stout; he was too short, as he said, to afford a belly.
+He rode and fenced and practiced gymnastics with unremitting zeal,
+and if you greeted him with a "How well you are looking" he started
+and turned pale.  In your WELL he read a grosser monosyllable.
+He had a round head, high above the ears, a crop of hair at once
+dense and silky, a broad, low forehead, a short nose, of the ironical
+and inquiring rather than of the dogmatic or sensitive cast,
+and a mustache as delicate as that of a page in a romance.
+He resembled his sister not in feature, but in the expression of his clear,
+bright eye, completely void of introspection, and in the way he smiled.
+The great point in his face was that it was intensely alive--
+frankly, ardently, gallantly alive.  The look of it was like a bell,
+of which the handle might have been in the young man's soul:
+at a touch of the handle it rang with a loud, silver sound.
+There was something in his quick, light brown eye which assured
+you that he was not economizing his consciousness.  He was not
+living in a corner of it to spare the furniture of the rest.
+He was squarely encamped in the centre and he was keeping open house.
+When he smiled, it was like the movement of a person who in emptying
+a cup turns it upside down:  he gave you the last drop of his jollity.
+He inspired Newman with something of the same kindness that our
+hero used to feel in his earlier years for those of his companions
+who could perform strange and clever tricks--make their joints
+crack in queer places or whistle at the back of their mouths.
+
+"My sister told me," M. de Bellegarde continued, "that I ought
+to come and remove the impression that I had taken such great
+pains to produce upon you; the impression that I am a lunatic.
+Did it strike you that I behaved very oddly the other day?"
+
+"Rather so," said Newman.
+
+"So my sister tells me."  And M. de Bellegarde watched
+his host for a moment through his smoke-wreaths. "If
+that is the case, I think we had better let it stand.
+I didn't try to make you think I was a lunatic, at all;
+on the contrary, I wanted to produce a favorable impression.
+But if, after all, I made a fool of myself, it was the intention
+of Providence.  I should injure myself by protesting too much,
+for I should seem to set up a claim for wisdom which,
+in the sequel of our acquaintance, I could by no means justify.
+Set me down as a lunatic with intervals of sanity."
+
+"Oh, I guess you know what you are about," said Newman.
+
+"When I am sane, I am very sane; that I admit," M. de Bellegarde answered.
+"But I didn't come here to talk about myself.  I should like to ask you
+a few questions.  You allow me?"
+
+"Give me a specimen," said Newman.
+
+"You live here all alone?"
+
+"Absolutely.  With whom should I live?"
+
+"For the moment," said M. de Bellegarde with a smile "I am asking questions,
+not answering them.  You have come to Paris for your pleasure?"
+
+Newman was silent a while.  Then, at last, "Every one asks me that!"
+he said with his mild slowness.  "It sounds so awfully foolish."
+
+"But at any rate you had a reason."
+
+"Oh, I came for my pleasure!" said Newman.  "Though it is foolish,
+it is true."
+
+"And you are enjoying it?"
+
+Like any other good American, Newman thought it as well not to truckle
+to the foreigner.  "Oh, so-so," he answered.
+
+M. de Bellegarde puffed his cigar again in silence.
+"For myself," he said at last, "I am entirely at your service.
+Anything I can do for you I shall be very happy to do.
+Call upon me at your convenience.  Is there any one you desire
+to know--anything you wish to see?  It is a pity you should
+not enjoy Paris."
+
+"Oh, I do enjoy it!" said Newman, good-naturedly. "I'm much
+obligated to you."
+
+"Honestly speaking," M. de Bellegarde went on, "there is
+something absurd to me in hearing myself make you these offers.
+They represent a great deal of goodwill, but they represent
+little else.  You are a successful man and I am a failure,
+and it's a turning of the tables to talk as if I could lend
+you a hand."
+
+"In what way are you a failure?" asked Newman.
+
+"Oh, I'm not a tragical failure!" cried the young man with a laugh.
+"I have fallen from a height, and my fiasco has made no noise.
+You, evidently, are a success.  You have made a fortune,
+you have built up an edifice, you are a financial, commercial power,
+you can travel about the world until you have found a soft spot,
+and lie down in it with the consciousness of having earned your rest.
+Is not that true?  Well, imagine the exact reverse of all that,
+and you have me.  I have done nothing--I can do nothing!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"It's a long story.  Some day I will tell you.  Meanwhile, I'm right, eh?
+You are a success?  You have made a fortune?  It's none of my business, but,
+in short, you are rich?"
+
+"That's another thing that it sounds foolish to say," said Newman.
+"Hang it, no man is rich!"
+
+"I have heard philosophers affirm," laughed M. de Bellegarde,
+"that no man was poor; but your formula strikes me as an improvement.
+As a general thing, I confess, I don't like successful people,
+and I find clever men who have made great fortunes very offensive.
+They tread on my toes; they make me uncomfortable.  But as soon as I
+saw you, I said to myself.  'Ah, there is a man with whom I shall get on.
+He has the good-nature of success and none of the morgue;
+he has not our confoundedly irritable French vanity.'
+In short, I took a fancy to you.  We are very different, I'm sure;
+I don't believe there is a subject on which we think or feel alike.
+But I rather think we shall get on, for there is such a thing,
+you know, as being too different to quarrel."
+
+"Oh, I never quarrel," said Newman.
+
+"Never!  Sometimes it's a duty--or at least it's a pleasure.
+Oh, I have had two or three delicious quarrels in my day!"
+and M. de Bellegarde's handsome smile assumed, at the memory
+of these incidents, an almost voluptuous intensity.
+
+With the preamble embodied in his share of the foregoing fragment
+of dialogue, he paid our hero a long visit; as the two men sat
+with their heels on Newman's glowing hearth, they heard the small
+hours of the morning striking larger from a far-off belfry.
+Valentin de Bellegarde was, by his own confession, at all times
+a great chatterer, and on this occasion he was evidently in a
+particularly loquacious mood.  It was a tradition of his race
+that people of its blood always conferred a favor by their smiles,
+and as his enthusiasms were as rare as his civility was constant,
+he had a double reason for not suspecting that his friendship
+could ever be importunate.  Moreover, the flower of an ancient
+stem as he was, tradition (since I have used the word)
+had in his temperament nothing of disagreeable rigidity.
+It was muffled in sociability and urbanity, as an old dowager
+in her laces and strings of pearls.  Valentin was what is called
+in France a gentilhomme, of the purest source, and his rule of life,
+so far as it was definite, was to play the part of a gentilhomme.
+This, it seemed to him, was enough to occupy comfortably
+a young man of ordinary good parts.  But all that he was he was
+by instinct and not by theory, and the amiability of his
+character was so great that certain of the aristocratic virtues,
+which in some aspects seem rather brittle and trenchant,
+acquired in his application of them an extreme geniality.
+In his younger years he had been suspected of low tastes,
+and his mother had greatly feared he would make a slip
+in the mud of the highway and bespatter the family shield.
+He had been treated, therefore, to more than his share of schooling
+and drilling, but his instructors had not succeeded in mounting
+him upon stilts.  They could not spoil his safe spontaneity,
+and he remained the least cautious and the most lucky of young nobles.
+He had been tied with so short a rope in his youth that
+he had now a mortal grudge against family discipline.
+He had been known to say, within the limits of the family,
+that, light-headed as he was, the honor of the name was safer
+in his hands than in those of some of it's other members,
+and that if a day ever came to try it, they should see.
+His talk was an odd mixture of almost boyish garrulity and of
+the reserve and discretion of the man of the world, and he seemed
+to Newman, as afterwards young members of the Latin races often
+seemed to him, now amusingly juvenile and now appallingly mature.
+In America, Newman reflected, lads of twenty-five and thirty
+have old heads and young hearts, or at least young morals;
+here they have young heads and very aged hearts, morals the most
+grizzled and wrinkled.
+
+"What I envy you is your liberty," observed M. de Bellegarde,
+"your wide range, your freedom to come and go, your not having
+a lot of people, who take themselves awfully seriously,
+expecting something of you.  I live," he added with a sigh,
+"beneath the eyes of my admirable mother."
+
+"It is your own fault; what is to hinder your ranging?" said Newman.
+
+"There is a delightful simplicity in that remark!
+Everything is to hinder me.  To begin with, I have not a penny."
+
+"I had not a penny when I began to range."
+
+"Ah, but your poverty was your capital.  Being an American, it was
+impossible you should remain what you were born, and being born poor--
+do I understand it?--it was therefore inevitable that you should
+become rich.  You were in a position that makes one's mouth water;
+you looked round you and saw a world full of things you had only
+to step up to and take hold of.  When I was twenty, I looked
+around me and saw a world with everything ticketed 'Hands off!'
+and the deuce of it was that the ticket seemed meant only for me.
+I couldn't go into business, I couldn't make money, because I
+was a Bellegarde.  I couldn't go into politics, because I was
+a Bellegarde--the Bellegardes don't recognize the Bonapartes.
+I couldn't go into literature, because I was a dunce.
+I couldn't marry a rich girl, because no Bellegarde had ever
+married a roturiere, and it was not proper that I should begin.
+We shall have to come to it, yet.  Marriageable heiresses,
+de notre bord, are not to be had for nothing; it must be name
+for name, and fortune for fortune.  The only thing I could do
+was to go and fight for the Pope.  That I did, punctiliously,
+and received an apostolic flesh-wound at Castlefidardo.
+It did neither the Holy Father nor me any good, that I could see.
+Rome was doubtless a very amusing place in the days of Caligula,
+but it has sadly fallen off since.  I passed three years in
+the Castle of St. Angelo, and then came back to secular life."
+
+"So you have no profession--you do nothing," said Newman.
+
+"I do nothing!  I am supposed to amuse myself, and, to tell
+the truth, I have amused myself.  One can, if one knows how.
+But you can't keep it up forever.  I am good for another five years,
+perhaps, but I foresee that after that I shall lose my appetite.
+Then what shall I do?  I think I shall turn monk.  Seriously, I think
+I shall tie a rope round my waist and go into a monastery.
+It was an old custom, and the old customs were very good.
+People understood life quite as well as we do.
+They kept the pot boiling till it cracked, and then they put
+it on the shelf altogether."
+
+"Are you very religious?" asked Newman, in a tone which gave
+the inquiry a grotesque effect.
+
+M. de Bellegarde evidently appreciated the comical element in the question,
+but he looked at Newman a moment with extreme soberness.  "I am a very
+good Catholic.  I respect the Church.  I adore the blessed Virgin.
+I fear the Devil."
+
+"Well, then," said Newman, "you are very well fixed.
+You have got pleasure in the present and religion in the future;
+what do you complain of?"
+
+"It's a part of one's pleasure to complain.  There is something
+in your own circumstances that irritates me.  You are the first
+man I have ever envied.  It's singular, but so it is.
+I have known many men who, besides any factitious advantages
+that I may possess, had money and brains into the bargain;
+but somehow they have never disturbed my good-humor. But
+you have got something that I should have liked to have.
+It is not money, it is not even brains--though no doubt yours
+are excellent.  It is not your six feet of height, though I
+should have rather liked to be a couple of inches taller.
+It's a sort of air you have of being thoroughly at home
+in the world.  When I was a boy, my father told me that it was
+by such an air as that that people recognized a Bellegarde.
+He called my attention to it.  He didn't advise me to cultivate it;
+he said that as we grew up it always came of itself.
+I supposed it had come to me, because I think I have always
+had the feeling.  My place in life was made for me, and it
+seemed easy to occupy it.  But you who, as I understand it,
+have made your own place, you who, as you told us the other day,
+have manufactured wash-tubs--you strike me, somehow, as a man
+who stands at his ease, who looks at things from a height.
+I fancy you going about the world like a man traveling
+on a railroad in which he owns a large amount of stock.
+You make me feel as if I had missed something.  What is it?"
+
+"It is the proud consciousness of honest toil--of having manufactured
+a few wash-tubs," said Newman, at once jocose and serious.
+
+"Oh no; I have seen men who had done even more, men who had made not
+only wash-tubs, but soap--strong-smelling yellow soap, in great bars;
+and they never made me the least uncomfortable."
+
+"Then it's the privilege of being an American citizen," said Newman.
+"That sets a man up."
+
+"Possibly," rejoined M. de Bellegarde.  "But I am forced to say that I
+have seen a great many American citizens who didn't seem at all set
+up or in the least like large stock-holders. I never envied them.
+I rather think the thing is an accomplishment of your own."
+
+"Oh, come," said Newman, "you will make me proud!"
+
+"No, I shall not.  You have nothing to do with pride,
+or with humility--that is a part of this easy manner of yours.
+People are proud only when they have something to lose,
+and humble when they have something to gain."
+
+"I don't know what I have to lose," said Newman, "but I certainly
+have something to gain."
+
+"What is it?" asked his visitor.
+
+Newman hesitated a while.  "I will tell you when I know you better."
+
+"I hope that will be soon!  Then, if I can help you to gain it,
+I shall be happy."
+
+"Perhaps you may," said Newman.
+
+"Don't forget, then, that I am your servant," M. de Bellegarde answered;
+and shortly afterwards he took his departure.
+
+During the next three weeks Newman saw Bellegarde
+several times, and without formally swearing an eternal
+friendship the two men established a sort of comradeship.
+To Newman, Bellegarde was the ideal Frenchman, the Frenchman
+of tradition and romance, so far as our hero was concerned
+with these mystical influences.  Gallant, expansive, amusing,
+more pleased himself with the effect he produced than those
+(even when they were well pleased) for whom he produced it;
+a master of all the distinctively social virtues and a votary
+of all agreeable sensations; a devotee of something mysterious
+and sacred to which he occasionally alluded in terms more ecstatic
+even than those in which he spoke of the last pretty woman,
+and which was simply the beautiful though somewhat superannuated
+image of HONOR; he was irresistibly entertaining and enlivening,
+and he formed a character to which Newman was as capable of
+doing justice when he had once been placed in contact with it,
+as he was unlikely, in musing upon the possible mixtures
+of our human ingredients, mentally to have foreshadowed it.
+Bellegarde did not in the least cause him to modify his
+needful premise that all Frenchmen are of a frothy and
+imponderable substance; he simply reminded him that light
+materials may be beaten up into a most agreeable compound.
+No two companions could be more different, but their differences
+made a capital basis for a friendship of which the distinctive
+characteristic was that it was extremely amusing to each.
+
+Valentin de Bellegarde lived in the basement of an old house
+in the Rue d'Anjou St. Honore, and his small apartments lay
+between the court of the house and an old garden which spread
+itself behind it--one of those large, sunless humid gardens
+into which you look unexpectingly in Paris from back windows,
+wondering how among the grudging habitations they find their space.
+When Newman returned Bellegarde's visit, he hinted that HIS
+lodging was at least as much a laughing matter as his own.
+But its oddities were of a different cast from those of
+our hero's gilded saloons on the Boulevard Haussmann:
+the place was low, dusky, contracted, and crowded with curious
+bric-a-brac. Bellegarde, penniless patrician as he was,
+was an insatiable collector, and his walls were covered with
+rusty arms and ancient panels and platters, his doorways draped
+in faded tapestries, his floors muffled in the skins of beasts.
+Here and there was one of those uncomfortable tributes to elegance
+in which the upholsterer's art, in France, is so prolific;
+a curtain recess with a sheet of looking-glass in which,
+among the shadows, you could see nothing; a divan on which,
+for its festoons and furbelows, you could not sit; a fireplace
+draped, flounced, and frilled to the complete exclusion of fire.
+The young man's possessions were in picturesque disorder,
+and his apartment was pervaded by the odor of cigars,
+mingled with perfumes more inscrutable.  Newman thought it a damp,
+gloomy place to live in, and was puzzled by the obstructive
+and fragmentary character of the furniture.
+
+Bellegarde, according to the custom of his country talked very
+generously about himself, and unveiled the mysteries of his private
+history with an unsparing hand.  Inevitably, he had a vast deal
+to say about women, and he used frequently to indulge in sentimental
+and ironical apostrophes to these authors of his joys and woes.
+"Oh, the women, the women, and the things they have made me do!"
+he would exclaim with a lustrous eye.  "C'est egal, of all the follies
+and stupidities I have committed for them I would not have missed one!"
+On this subject Newman maintained an habitual reserve; to expatiate
+largely upon it had always seemed to him a proceeding vaguely
+analogous to the cooing of pigeons and the chattering of monkeys,
+and even inconsistent with a fully developed human character.
+But Bellegarde's confidences greatly amused him, and rarely
+displeased him, for the generous young Frenchman was not a cynic.
+"I really think," he had once said, "that I am not more depraved
+than most of my contemporaries.  They are tolerably depraved,
+my contemporaries!"  He said wonderfully pretty things about
+his female friends, and, numerous and various as they had been,
+declared that on the whole there was more good in them than harm.
+"But you are not to take that as advice," he added.  "As an
+authority I am very untrustworthy.  I'm prejudiced in their favor;
+I'm an IDEALIST!"  Newman listened to him with his impartial smile,
+and was glad, for his own sake, that he had fine feelings;
+but he mentally repudiated the idea of a Frenchman having discovered
+any merit in the amiable sex which he himself did not suspect.
+M. de Bellegarde, however, did not confine his conversation
+to the autobiographical channel; he questioned our hero largely
+as to the events of his own life, and Newman told him some better
+stories than any that Bellegarde carried in his budget.  He narrated
+his career, in fact, from the beginning, through all its variations,
+and whenever his companion's credulity, or his habits of gentility,
+appeared to protest, it amused him to heighten the color of the episode.
+Newman had sat with Western humorists in knots, round cast-iron stoves,
+and seen "tall" stories grow taller without toppling over, and his own
+imagination had learned the trick of piling up consistent wonders.
+Bellegarde's regular attitude at last became that of laughing self-defense;
+to maintain his reputation as an all-knowing Frenchman, he doubted
+of everything, wholesale.  The result of this was that Newman found
+it impossible to convince him of certain time-honored verities.
+
+"But the details don't matter," said M. de Bellegarde.
+"You have evidently had some surprising adventures; you have
+seen some strange sides of life, you have revolved to and fro
+over a whole continent as I walked up and down the Boulevard.
+You are a man of the world with a vengeance!  You have spent some deadly
+dull hours, and you have done some extremely disagreeable things:
+you have shoveled sand, as a boy, for supper, and you have
+eaten roast dog in a gold-diggers' camp.  You have stood
+casting up figures for ten hours at a time, and you have sat
+through Methodist sermons for the sake of looking at a pretty
+girl in another pew.  All that is rather stiff, as we say.
+But at any rate you have done something and you are something;
+you have used your will and you have made your fortune.
+You have not stupified yourself with debauchery and you
+have not mortgaged your fortune to social conveniences.
+You take things easily, and you have fewer prejudices even than I,
+who pretend to have none, but who in reality have three or four.
+Happy man, you are strong and you are free.  But what the deuce,"
+demanded the young man in conclusion, "do you propose to do with
+such advantages?  Really to use them you need a better world than this.
+There is nothing worth your while here."
+
+"Oh, I think there is something," said Newman.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Well," murmured Newman, "I will tell you some other time!"
+
+In this way our hero delayed from day to day broaching a subject
+which he had very much at heart.  Meanwhile, however, he was growing
+practically familiar with it; in other words, he had called again,
+three times, on Madame de Cintre.  On only two of these occasions
+had he found her at home, and on each of them she had other visitors.
+Her visitors were numerous and extremely loquacious,
+and they exacted much of their hostess's attention.
+She found time, however, to bestow a little of it on Newman,
+in an occasional vague smile, the very vagueness of which pleased him,
+allowing him as it did to fill it out mentally, both at the time
+and afterwards, with such meanings as most pleased him.
+He sat by without speaking, looking at the entrances and exits,
+the greetings and chatterings, of Madame de Cintre's visitors.
+He felt as if he were at the play, and as if his own speaking
+would be an interruption; sometimes he wished he had a book,
+to follow the dialogue; he half expected to see a woman in a white
+cap and pink ribbons come and offer him one for two francs.
+Some of the ladies looked at him very hard--or very soft,
+as you please; others seemed profoundly unconscious of his presence.
+The men looked only at Madame de Cintre.  This was inevitable;
+for whether one called her beautiful or not she entirely occupied
+and filled one's vision, just as an agreeable sound fills one's ear.
+Newman had but twenty distinct words with her, but he carried
+away an impression to which solemn promises could not have given
+a higher value.  She was part of the play that he was seeing acted,
+quite as much as her companions; but how she filled the stage
+and how much better she did it!  Whether she rose or seated herself;
+whether she went with her departing friends to the door and lifted
+up the heavy curtain as they passed out, and stood an instant
+looking after them and giving them the last nod; or whether she
+leaned back in her chair with her arms crossed and her eyes resting,
+listening and smiling; she gave Newman the feeling that he should
+like to have her always before him, moving slowly to and fro along
+the whole scale of expressive hospitality.  If it might be TO him,
+it would be well; if it might be FOR him, it would be still better!
+She was so tall and yet so light, so active and yet so still,
+so elegant and yet so simple, so frank and yet so mysterious!
+It was the mystery--it was what she was off the stage, as it were--
+that interested Newman most of all.  He could not have told you
+what warrant he had for talking about mysteries; if it had been
+his habit to express himself in poetic figures he might have said
+that in observing Madame de Cintre he seemed to see the vague circle
+which sometimes accompanies the partly-filled disk of the moon.
+It was not that she was reserved; on the contrary, she was as frank
+as flowing water.  But he was sure she had qualities which she
+herself did not suspect.
+
+He had abstained for several reasons from saying some of these things
+to Bellegarde.  One reason was that before proceeding to any act he was
+always circumspect, conjectural, contemplative; he had little eagerness,
+as became a man who felt that whenever he really began to move he walked
+with long steps.  And then, it simply pleased him not to speak--
+it occupied him, it excited him.  But one day Bellegarde had been dining
+with him, at a restaurant, and they had sat long over their dinner.
+On rising from it, Bellegarde proposed that, to help them through
+the rest of the evening, they should go and see Madame Dandelard.
+Madame Dandelard was a little Italian lady who had married a Frenchman
+who proved to be a rake and a brute and the torment of her life.
+Her husband had spent all her money, and then, lacking the means of obtaining
+more expensive pleasures, had taken, in his duller hours, to beating her.
+She had a blue spot somewhere, which she showed to several persons,
+including Bellegarde.  She had obtained a separation from her husband,
+collected the scraps of her fortune (they were very meagre)
+and come to live in Paris, where she was staying at a hotel garni.
+She was always looking for an apartment, and visiting, inquiringly,
+those of other people.  She was very pretty, very childlike, and she
+made very extraordinary remarks.  Bellegarde had made her acquaintance,
+and the source of his interest in her was, according to his own declaration,
+a curiosity as to what would become of her.  "She is poor, she is pretty,
+and she is silly," he said, "it seems to me she can go only one way.
+It's a pity, but it can't be helped.  I will give her six months.
+She has nothing to fear from me, but I am watching the process.
+I am curious to see just how things will go.  Yes, I know what you are
+going to say:  this horrible Paris hardens one's heart.  But it quickens
+one's wits, and it ends by teaching one a refinement of observation!
+To see this little woman's little drama play itself out, now, is, for me,
+an intellectual pleasure."
+
+"If she is going to throw herself away," Newman had said,
+"you ought to stop her."
+
+"Stop her?  How stop her?"
+
+"Talk to her; give her some good advice."
+
+Bellegarde laughed.  "Heaven deliver us both!  Imagine the situation!
+Go and advise her yourself."
+
+It was after this that Newman had gone with Bellegarde to see
+Madame Dandelard.  When they came away, Bellegarde reproached
+his companion.  "Where was your famous advice?" he asked.
+"I didn't hear a word of it."
+
+"Oh, I give it up," said Newman, simply.
+
+"Then you are as bad as I!" said Bellegarde.
+
+"No, because I don't take an 'intellectual pleasure'
+in her prospective adventures.  I don't in the least want
+to see her going down hill.  I had rather look the other way.
+But why," he asked, in a moment, "don't you get your sister
+to go and see her?"
+
+Bellegarde stared.  "Go and see Madame Dandelard--my sister?"
+
+"She might talk to her to very good purpose."
+
+Bellegarde shook his head with sudden gravity.  "My sister can't
+see that sort of person.  Madame Dandelard is nothing at all;
+they would never meet."
+
+"I should think," said Newman, "that your sister might see whom she pleased."
+And he privately resolved that after he knew her a little better he would
+ask Madame de Cintre to go and talk to the foolish little Italian lady.
+
+After his dinner with Bellegarde, on the occasion I have mentioned,
+he demurred to his companion's proposal that they should go again
+and listen to Madame Dandelard describe her sorrows and her bruises.
+
+"I have something better in mind," he said; "come home with me
+and finish the evening before my fire."
+
+Bellegarde always welcomed the prospect of a long stretch of conversation,
+and before long the two men sat watching the great blaze which scattered
+its scintillations over the high adornments of Newman's ball-room.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+
+
+"Tell me something about your sister," Newman began abruptly.
+
+Bellegarde turned and gave him a quick look.  "Now that I think of it,
+you have never yet asked me a question about her."
+
+"I know that very well."
+
+"If it is because you don't trust me, you are very right," said Bellegarde.
+"I can't talk of her rationally.  I admire her too much."
+
+"Talk of her as you can," rejoined Newman.  "Let yourself go."
+
+"Well, we are very good friends; we are such a brother and sister
+as have not been seen since Orestes and Electra.  You have seen her;
+you know what she is:  tall, thin, light, imposing, and gentle,
+half a grande dame and half an angel; a mixture of pride and humility,
+of the eagle and the dove.  She looks like a statue which had failed
+as stone, resigned itself to its grave defects, and come to life as flesh
+and blood, to wear white capes and long trains.  All I can say is that
+she really possesses every merit that her face, her glance, her smile,
+the tone of her voice, lead you to expect; it is saying a great deal.
+As a general thing, when a woman seems very charming, I should say 'Beware!'
+But in proportion as Claire seems charming you may fold your arms
+and let yourself float with the current; you are safe.  She is so good!
+I have never seen a woman half so perfect or so complete.  She has everything;
+that is all I can say about her.  There!"  Bellegarde concluded;
+"I told you I should rhapsodize."
+
+Newman was silent a while, as if he were turning over his companion's words.
+"She is very good, eh?" he repeated at last.
+
+"Divinely good!"
+
+"Kind, charitable, gentle, generous?"
+
+"Generosity itself; kindness double-distilled!"
+
+"Is she clever?"
+
+"She is the most intelligent woman I know.  Try her, some day,
+with something difficult, and you will see."
+
+"Is she fond of admiration?"
+
+"Parbleu!" cried Bellegarde; "what woman is not?"
+
+"Ah, when they are too fond of admiration they commit all kinds
+of follies to get it."
+
+"I did not say she was too fond!"  Bellegarde exclaimed.
+"Heaven forbid I should say anything so idiotic.  She is not too anything!
+If I were to say she was ugly, I should not mean she was too ugly.
+She is fond of pleasing, and if you are pleased she is grateful.
+If you are not pleased, she lets it pass and thinks the worst neither
+of you nor of herself.  I imagine, though, she hopes the saints
+in heaven are, for I am sure she is incapable of trying to please
+by any means of which they would disapprove."
+
+"Is she grave or gay?" asked Newman.
+
+"She is both; not alternately, for she is always the same.
+There is gravity in her gayety, and gayety in her gravity.
+But there is no reason why she should be particularly gay."
+
+"Is she unhappy?"
+
+"I won't say that, for unhappiness is according as one takes things,
+and Claire takes them according to some receipt communicated
+to her by the Blessed Virgin in a vision.  To be unhappy is
+to be disagreeable, which, for her, is out of the question.
+So she has arranged her circumstances so as to be happy in them."
+
+"She is a philosopher," said Newman.
+
+"No, she is simply a very nice woman."
+
+"Her circumstances, at any rate, have been disagreeable?"
+
+Bellegarde hesitated a moment--a thing he very rarely did.
+"Oh, my dear fellow, if I go into the history of my family I
+shall give you more than you bargain for."
+
+"No, on the contrary, I bargain for that," said Newman.
+
+"We shall have to appoint a special seance, then, beginning early.
+Suffice it for the present that Claire has not slept on roses.
+She made at eighteen a marriage that was expected to be brilliant,
+but that turned out like a lamp that goes out; all smoke and bad smell.
+M. de Cintre was sixty years old, and an odious old gentleman.
+He lived, however, but a short time, and after his death his family
+pounced upon his money, brought a lawsuit against his widow,
+and pushed things very hard.  Their case was a good one,
+for M. de Cintre, who had been trustee for some of his relatives,
+appeared to have been guilty of some very irregular practices.
+In the course of the suit some revelations were made as to his
+private history which my sister found so displeasing that she
+ceased to defend herself and washed her hands of the property.
+This required some pluck, for she was between two fires,
+her husband's family opposing her and her own family forcing her.
+My mother and my brother wished her to cleave to what they regarded
+as her rights.  But she resisted firmly, and at last bought
+her freedom--obtained my mother's assent to dropping the suit
+at the price of a promise."
+
+"What was the promise?"
+
+"To do anything else, for the next ten years, that was asked
+of her--anything, that is, but marry."
+
+"She had disliked her husband very much?"
+
+"No one knows how much!"
+
+"The marriage had been made in your horrible French way," Newman continued,
+"made by the two families, without her having any voice?"
+
+"It was a chapter for a novel.  She saw M. de Cintre for the first time
+a month before the wedding, after everything, to the minutest detail,
+had been arranged.  She turned white when she looked at him,
+and white remained till her wedding-day. The evening before the
+ceremony she swooned away, and she spent the whole night in sobs.
+My mother sat holding her two hands, and my brother walked up
+and down the room.  I declared it was revolting and told my sister
+publicly that if she would refuse, downright, I would stand by her.
+I was told to go about my business, and she became Comtesse de Cintre."
+
+"Your brother," said Newman, reflectively, "must be a very nice young man."
+
+"He is very nice, though he is not young.  He is upward of fifty,
+fifteen years my senior.  He has been a father to my sister and me.
+He is a very remarkable man; he has the best manners in France.
+He is extremely clever; indeed he is very learned.  He is writing
+a history of The Princesses of France Who Never Married."
+This was said by Bellegarde with extreme gravity, looking straight
+at Newman, and with an eye that betokened no mental reservation;
+or that, at least, almost betokened none.
+
+Newman perhaps discovered there what little there was, for he presently said,
+"You don't love your brother."
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Bellegarde, ceremoniously; "well-bred people
+always love their brothers."
+
+"Well, I don't love him, then!"  Newman answered.
+
+"Wait till you know him!" rejoined Bellegarde, and this time he smiled.
+
+"Is your mother also very remarkable?"  Newman asked, after a pause.
+
+"For my mother," said Bellegarde, now with intense gravity,
+"I have the highest admiration.  She is a very extraordinary woman.
+You cannot approach her without perceiving it."
+
+"She is the daughter, I believe, of an English nobleman."
+
+"Of the Earl of St. Dunstan's."
+
+"Is the Earl of St. Dunstan's a very old family?"
+
+"So-so; the sixteenth century.  It is on my father's side that we
+go back--back, back, back.  The family antiquaries themselves
+lose breath.  At last they stop, panting and fanning themselves,
+somewhere in the ninth century, under Charlemagne.
+That is where we begin."
+
+"There is no mistake about it?" said Newman.
+
+"I'm sure I hope not.  We have been mistaken at least for several centuries."
+
+"And you have always married into old families?"
+
+"As a rule; though in so long a stretch of time there have been
+some exceptions.  Three or four Bellegardes, in the seventeenth
+and eighteenth centuries, took wives out of the bourgoisie--
+married lawyers' daughters."
+
+"A lawyer's daughter; that's very bad, is it?" asked Newman.
+
+"Horrible! one of us, in the middle ages, did better:
+he married a beggar-maid, like King Cophetua.  That was really better;
+it was like marrying a bird or a monkey; one didn't have to think
+about her family at all.  Our women have always done well;
+they have never even gone into the petite noblesse.
+There is, I believe, not a case on record of a misalliance
+among the women."
+
+Newman turned this over for a while, and, then at last he said, "You offered,
+the first time you came to see me to render me any service you could.
+I told you that some time I would mention something you might do.
+Do you remember?"
+
+"Remember?  I have been counting the hours."
+
+"Very well; here's your chance.  Do what you can to make your sister
+think well of me."
+
+Bellegarde stared, with a smile.  "Why, I'm sure she thinks as well of you
+as possible, already."
+
+"An opinion founded on seeing me three or four times?
+That is putting me off with very little.  l want something more.
+I have been thinking of it a good deal, and at last I have decided
+to tell you.  I should like very much to marry Madame de Cintre."
+
+Bellegarde had been looking at him with quickened expectancy,
+and with the smile with which he had greeted Newman's allusion
+to his promised request.  At this last announcement he continued
+to gaze; but his smile went through two or three curious phases.
+It felt, apparently, a momentary impulse to broaden;
+but this it immediately checked.  Then it remained for some
+instants taking counsel with itself, at the end of which it
+decreed a retreat.  It slowly effaced itself and left a look
+of seriousness modified by the desire not to be rude.
+Extreme surprise had come into the Count Valentin's face;
+but he had reflected that it would be uncivil to leave it there.
+And yet, what the deuce was he to do with it?  He got up,
+in his agitation, and stood before the chimney-piece, still
+looking at Newman.  He was a longer time thinking what to say
+than one would have expected.
+
+"If you can't render me the service I ask," said Newman,
+"say it out!"
+
+"Let me hear it again, distinctly," said Bellegarde.
+"It's very important, you know.  I shall plead your cause
+with my sister, because you want--you want to marry her?
+That's it, eh?"
+
+"Oh, I don't say plead my cause, exactly; I shall try and do that myself.
+But say a good word for me, now and then--let her know that you think
+well of me."
+
+At this, Bellegarde gave a little light laugh.
+
+"What I want chiefly, after all," Newman went on, "is just to let you
+know what I have in mind.  I suppose that is what you expect, isn't it?
+I want to do what is customary over here.  If there is any thing
+particular to be done, let me know and I will do it.  I wouldn't
+for the world approach Madame de Cintre without all the proper forms.
+If I ought to go and tell your mother, why I will go and tell her.
+I will go and tell your brother, even.  I will go and tell any one
+you please.  As I don't know any one else, I begin by telling you.
+But that, if it is a social obligation, is a pleasure as well."
+
+"Yes, I see--I see," said Bellegarde, lightly stroking his chin.
+"You have a very right feeling about it, but I'm glad
+you have begun with me."  He paused, hesitated, and then
+turned away and walked slowly the length of the room.
+Newman got up and stood leaning against the mantel-shelf,
+with his hands in his pockets, watching Bellegarde's promenade.
+The young Frenchman came back and stopped in front of him.
+"I give it up," he said; "I will not pretend I am not surprised.
+I am--hugely!  Ouf!  It's a relief."
+
+"That sort of news is always a surprise," said Newman.
+"No matter what you have done, people are never prepared.
+But if you are so surprised, I hope at least you are pleased."
+
+"Come!" said Bellegarde.  "I am going to be tremendously frank.
+I don't know whether I am pleased or horrified."
+
+"If you are pleased, I shall be glad," said Newman, "and I
+shall be--encouraged.  If you are horrified, I shall be sorry,
+but I shall not be discouraged.  You must make the best of it."
+
+"That is quite right--that is your only possible attitude.
+You are perfectly serious?"
+
+"Am I a Frenchman, that I should not be?" asked Newman.
+"But why is it, by the bye, that you should be horrified?"
+
+Bellegarde raised his hand to the back of his head and rubbed his hair
+quickly up and down, thrusting out the tip of his tongue as he did so.
+"Why, you are not noble, for instance," he said.
+
+"The devil I am not!" exclaimed Newman.
+
+"Oh," said Bellegarde a little more seriously, "I did not know
+you had a title."
+
+"A title?  What do you mean by a title?" asked Newman.
+"A count, a duke, a marquis?  I don't know anything about that,
+I don't know who is and who is not.  But I say I am noble.
+I don't exactly know what you mean by it, but it's a fine word
+and a fine idea; I put in a claim to it."
+
+"But what have you to show, my dear fellow, what proofs?"
+
+"Anything you please!  But you don't suppose I am going to undertake
+to prove that I am noble.  It is for you to prove the contrary."
+
+"That's easily done.  You have manufactured wash-tubs."
+
+Newman stared a moment.  "Therefore I am not noble?  I don't see it.
+Tell me something I have NOT done--something I cannot do."
+
+"You cannot marry a woman like Madame de Cintre for the asking."
+
+"I believe you mean," said Newman slowly, "that I am not good enough."
+
+"Brutally speaking--yes!"
+
+Bellegarde had hesitated a moment, and while he hesitated
+Newman's attentive glance had grown somewhat eager.
+In answer to these last words he for a moment said nothing.
+He simply blushed a little.  Then he raised his eyes to the ceiling
+and stood looking at one of the rosy cherubs that was painted upon it.
+"Of course I don't expect to marry any woman for the asking,"
+he said at last; "I expect first to make myself acceptable to her.
+She must like me, to begin with.  But that I am not good enough
+to make a trial is rather a surprise."
+
+Bellegarde wore a look of mingled perplexity, sympathy, and amusement.
+"You should not hesitate, then, to go up to-morrow and ask a duchess
+to marry you?"
+
+"Not if I thought she would suit me.  But I am very fastidious;
+she might not at all."
+
+Bellegarde's amusement began to prevail.  "And you should be surprised
+if she refused you?"
+
+Newman hesitated a moment.  "It sounds conceited to say yes,
+but nevertheless I think I should.  For I should make
+a very handsome offer."
+
+"What would it be?"
+
+"Everything she wishes.  If I get hold of a woman that comes
+up to my standard, I shall think nothing too good for her.
+I have been a long time looking, and I find such women are rare.
+To combine the qualities I require seems to be difficult,
+but when the difficulty is vanquished it deserves a reward.
+My wife shall have a good position, and I'm not afraid to say
+that I shall be a good husband."
+
+"And these qualities that you require--what are they?"
+
+"Goodness, beauty, intelligence, a fine education, personal elegance--
+everything, in a word, that makes a splendid woman."
+
+"And noble birth, evidently," said Bellegarde.
+
+"Oh, throw that in, by all means, if it's there.
+The more the better!"
+
+"And my sister seems to you to have all these things?"
+
+"She is exactly what I have been looking for.  She is my dream realized."
+
+"And you would make her a very good husband?"
+
+"That is what I wanted you to tell her."
+
+Bellegarde laid his hand on his companion's arm a moment, looked at him
+with his head on one side, from head to foot, and then, with a loud laugh,
+and shaking the other hand in the air, turned away.  He walked again
+the length of the room, and again he came back and stationed himself
+in front of Newman.  "All this is very interesting--it is very curious.
+In what I said just now I was speaking, not for myself, but for my tradition,
+my superstitions.  For myself, really, your proposal tickles me.
+It startled me at first, but the more I think of it the more I see in it.
+It's no use attempting to explain anything; you won't understand me.
+After all, I don't see why you need; it's no great loss."
+
+"Oh, if there is anything more to explain, try it!  I want to proceed
+with my eyes open.  I will do my best to understand."
+
+"No," said Bellegarde, "it's disagreeable to me; I give it up.
+I liked you the first time I saw you, and I will abide by that.
+It would be quite odious for me to come talking to you as if I could
+patronize you.  I have told you before that I envy you; vous m'imposez,
+as we say.  I didn't know you much until within five minutes.
+So we will let things go, and I will say nothing to you that,
+if our positions were reversed, you would not say to me."
+
+I do not know whether in renouncing the mysterious opportunity to which
+he alluded, Bellegarde felt that he was doing something very generous.
+If so, he was not rewarded; his generosity was not appreciated.
+Newman quite failed to recognize the young Frenchman's power to wound
+his feelings, and he had now no sense of escaping or coming off easily.
+He did not thank his companion even with a glance.  "My eyes
+are open, though," he said, "so far as that you have practically told
+me that your family and your friends will turn up their noses at me.
+I have never thought much about the reasons that make it proper for
+people to turn up their noses, and so I can only decide the question
+off-hand. Looking at it in that way I can't see anything in it.
+I simply think, if you want to know, that I'm as good as the best.
+Who the best are, I don't pretend to say.  I have never thought much
+about that either.  To tell the truth, I have always had rather
+a good opinion of myself; a man who is successful can't help it.
+But I will admit that I was conceited.  What I don't say yes to is that I
+don't stand high--as high as any one else.  This is a line of speculation
+I should not have chosen, but you must remember you began it yourself.
+I should never have dreamed that I was on the defensive, or that I
+had to justify myself; but if your people will have it so, I will
+do my best."
+
+"But you offered, a while ago, to make your court as we say,
+to my mother and my brother."
+
+"Damn it!" cried Newman, "I want to be polite."
+
+"Good!" rejoined Bellegarde; "this will go far, it will be very entertaining.
+Excuse my speaking of it in that cold-blooded fashion, but the matter must,
+of necessity, be for me something of a spectacle.  It's positively exciting.
+But apart from that I sympathize with you, and I shall be actor,
+so far as I can, as well as spectator.  You are a capital fellow;
+I believe in you and I back you.  The simple fact that you appreciate
+my sister will serve as the proof I was asking for.  All men are equal--
+especially men of taste!"
+
+"Do you think," asked Newman presently, "that Madame de Cintre
+is determined not to marry?"
+
+"That is my impression.  But that is not against you;
+it's for you to make her change her mind."
+
+"I am afraid it will be hard," said Newman, gravely.
+
+"I don't think it will be easy.  In a general way I don't see why a widow
+should ever marry again.  She has gained the benefits of matrimony--
+freedom and consideration--and she has got rid of the drawbacks.
+Why should she put her head into the noose again?  Her usual motive
+is ambition:  if a man can offer her a great position, make her a princess
+or an ambassadress she may think the compensation sufficient."
+
+"And--in that way--is Madame de Cintre ambitious?"
+
+"Who knows?" said Bellegarde, with a profound shrug.
+"I don't pretend to say all that she is or all that she is not.
+I think she might be touched by the prospect of becoming
+the wife of a great man.  But in a certain way, I believe,
+whatever she does will be the IMPROBABLE.  Don't be too confident,
+but don't absolutely doubt.  Your best chance for success will be
+precisely in being, to her mind, unusual, unexpected, original.
+Don't try to be any one else; be simply yourself, out and out.
+Something or other can't fail to come of it; I am very curious
+to see what."
+
+"I am much obliged to you for your advice," said Newman.
+"And," he added with a smile, "I am glad, for your sake,
+I am going to be so amusing."
+
+"It will be more than amusing," said Bellegarde;
+"it will be inspiring.  I look at it from my point of view,
+and you from yours.  After all, anything for a change!
+And only yesterday I was yawning so as to dislocate my jaw,
+and declaring that there was nothing new under the sun!
+If it isn't new to see you come into the family as a suitor,
+I am very much mistaken.  Let me say that, my dear fellow;
+I won't call it anything else, bad or good; I will simply call it NEW"
+And overcome with a sense of the novelty thus foreshadowed,
+Valentin de Bellegarde threw himself into a deep arm-chair before
+the fire, and, with a fixed, intense smile, seemed to read a vision
+of it in the flame of the logs.  After a while he looked up.
+"Go ahead, my boy; you have my good wishes," he said.
+"But it is really a pity you don't understand me, that you
+don't know just what I am doing."
+
+"Oh," said Newman, laughing, "don't do anything wrong.
+Leave me to myself, rather, or defy me, out and out.
+I wouldn't lay any load on your conscience."
+
+Bellegarde sprang up again; he was evidently excited;
+there was a warmer spark even than usual in his eye.
+"You never will understand--you never will know," he said;
+"and if you succeed, and I turn out to have helped you,
+you will never be grateful, not as I shall deserve you should be.
+You will be an excellent fellow always, but you will not be grateful.
+But it doesn't matter, for I shall get my own fun out of it."
+And he broke into an extravagant laugh.  "You look puzzled,"
+he added; "you look almost frightened."
+
+"It IS a pity," said Newman, "that I don't understand you.
+I shall lose some very good jokes."
+
+"I told you, you remember, that we were very strange people,"
+Bellegarde went on.  "I give you warning again.  We are!
+My mother is strange, my brother is strange, and I verily
+believe that I am stranger than either.  You will even find
+my sister a little strange.  Old trees have crooked branches,
+old houses have queer cracks, old races have odd secrets.
+Remember that we are eight hundred years old!"
+
+"Very good," said Newman; "that's the sort of thing I came to Europe for.
+You come into my programme."
+
+"Touchez-la, then," said Bellegarde, putting out his hand.
+"It's a bargain:  I accept you; I espouse your cause.  It's because I
+like you, in a great measure; but that is not the only reason!"
+And he stood holding Newman's hand and looking at him askance.
+
+"What is the other one?"
+
+"I am in the Opposition.  I dislike some one else."
+
+"Your brother?" asked Newman, in his unmodulated voice.
+
+Bellegarde laid his fingers upon his lips with a whispered HUSH!
+"Old races have strange secrets!" he said.  "Put yourself into motion,
+come and see my sister, and be assured of my sympathy!"
+And on this he took his leave.
+
+Newman dropped into a chair before his fire, and sat a long time
+staring into the blaze.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+
+
+He went to see Madame de Cintre the next day, and was informed
+by the servant that she was at home.  He passed as usual up
+the large, cold staircase and through a spacious vestibule above,
+where the walls seemed all composed of small door panels,
+touched with long-faded gilding; whence he was ushered into
+the sitting-room in which he had already been received.
+It was empty, and the servant told him that Madame la Comtesse
+would presently appear.  He had time, while he waited, to wonder
+whether Bellegarde had seen his sister since the evening before,
+and whether in this case he had spoken to her of their talk.
+In this case Madame de Cintre's receiving him was an encouragement.
+He felt a certain trepidation as he reflected that she might come
+in with the knowledge of his supreme admiration and of the project
+he had built upon it in her eyes; but the feeling was not disagreeable.
+Her face could wear no look that would make it less beautiful,
+and he was sure beforehand that however she might take the proposal
+he had in reserve, she would not take it in scorn or in irony.
+He had a feeling that if she could only read the bottom of his
+heart and measure the extent of his good will toward her,
+she would be entirely kind.
+
+She came in at last, after so long an interval that he wondered whether
+she had been hesitating.  She smiled with her usual frankness, and held
+out her hand; she looked at him straight with her soft and luminous eyes,
+and said, without a tremor in her voice, that she was glad to see him
+and that she hoped he was well.  He found in her what he had found before--
+that faint perfume of a personal shyness worn away by contact with the world,
+but the more perceptible the more closely you approached her.  This lingering
+diffidence seemed to give a peculiar value to what was definite and assured
+in her manner; it made it seem like an accomplishment, a beautiful talent,
+something that one might compare to an exquisite touch in a pianist.
+It was, in fact, Madame de Cintre's "authority," as they say of artists,
+that especially impressed and fascinated Newman; he always came back
+to the feeling that when he should complete himself by taking a wife,
+that was the way he should like his wife to interpret him to the world.
+The only trouble, indeed, was that when the instrument was so perfect it
+seemed to interpose too much between you and the genius that used it.
+Madame de Cintre gave Newman the sense of an elaborate education,
+of her having passed through mysterious ceremonies and processes of culture
+in her youth, of her having been fashioned and made flexible to certain
+exalted social needs.  All this, as I have affirmed, made her seem
+rare and precious--a very expensive article, as he would have said,
+and one which a man with an ambition to have everything about him
+of the best would find it highly agreeable to possess.  But looking
+at the matter with an eye to private felicity, Newman wondered where,
+in so exquisite a compound, nature and art showed their dividing line.
+Where did the special intention separate from the habit of good manners?
+Where did urbanity end and sincerity begin?  Newman asked himself
+these questions even while he stood ready to accept the admired object
+in all its complexity; he felt that he could do so in profound security,
+and examine its mechanism afterwards, at leisure.
+
+"I am very glad to find you alone," he said.  "You know I
+have never had such good luck before."
+
+"But you have seemed before very well contented with your luck,"
+said Madame de Cintre.  "You have sat and watched my visitors
+with an air of quiet amusement.  What have you thought of them?"
+
+"Oh, I have thought the ladies were very elegant and very graceful,
+and wonderfully quick at repartee.  But what I have chiefly
+thought has been that they only helped me to admire you."
+This was not gallantry on Newman's part--an art in which he was
+quite unversed.  It was simply the instinct of the practical man,
+who had made up his mind what he wanted, and was now beginning
+to take active steps to obtain it.
+
+Madame de Cintre started slightly, and raised her eyebrows; she had
+evidently not expected so fervid a compliment.  "Oh, in that case,"
+she said with a laugh, "your finding me alone is not good luck for me.
+I hope some one will come in quickly."
+
+"I hope not," said Newman.  "I have something particular to say to you.
+Have you seen your brother?"
+
+"Yes, I saw him an hour ago."
+
+"Did he tell you that he had seen me last night?"
+
+"He said so."
+
+"And did he tell you what we had talked about?"
+
+Madame de Cintre hesitated a moment.  As Newman asked
+these questions she had grown a little pale, as if she
+regarded what was coming as necessary, but not as agreeable.
+"Did you give him a message to me?" she asked.
+
+"It was not exactly a message--I asked him to render me a service."
+
+"The service was to sing your praises, was it not?"
+And she accompanied this question with a little smile,
+as if to make it easier to herself.
+
+"Yes, that is what it really amounts to," said Newman.
+"Did he sing my praises?"
+
+"He spoke very well of you.  But when I know that it was
+by your special request, of course I must take his eulogy
+with a grain of salt."
+
+"Oh, that makes no difference," said Newman.  "Your brother would
+not have spoken well of me unless he believed what he was saying.
+He is too honest for that."
+
+"Are you very deep?" said Madame de Cintre.  "Are you trying to please
+me by praising my brother?  I confess it is a good way."
+
+"For me, any way that succeeds will be good.  I will praise your
+brother all day, if that will help me.  He is a noble little fellow.
+He has made me feel, in promising to do what he can to help me,
+that I can depend upon him."
+
+"Don't make too much of that," said Madame de Cintre.
+"He can help you very little."
+
+"Of course I must work my way myself.  I know that very well;
+I only want a chance to.  In consenting to see me, after what
+he told you, you almost seem to be giving me a chance."
+
+"I am seeing you," said Madame de Cintre, slowly and gravely,
+"because I promised my brother I would."
+
+"Blessings on your brother's head!" cried Newman.  "What I told him
+last evening was this:  that I admired you more than any woman I had
+ever seen, and that I should like immensely to make you my wife."
+He uttered these words with great directness and firmness,
+and without any sense of confusion.  He was full of his idea,
+he had completely mastered it, and he seemed to look down on Madame
+de Cintre, with all her gathered elegance, from the height of his
+bracing good conscience.  It is probable that this particular
+tone and manner were the very best he could have hit upon.
+Yet the light, just visibly forced smile with which his companion
+had listened to him died away, and she sat looking at him
+with her lips parted and her face as solemn as a tragic mask.
+There was evidently something very painful to her in the scene
+to which he was subjecting her, and yet her impatience of it found
+no angry voice.  Newman wondered whether he was hurting her;
+he could not imagine why the liberal devotion he meant to express
+should be disagreeable.  He got up and stood before her,
+leaning one hand on the chimney-piece. "I know I have seen you
+very little to say this," he said, "so little that it may make
+what I say seem disrespectful.  That is my misfortune!  I could have
+said it the first time I saw you.  Really, I had seen you before;
+I had seen you in imagination; you seemed almost an old friend.
+So what I say is not mere gallantry and compliments and nonsense--
+I can't talk that way, I don't know how, and I wouldn't, to you,
+if I could.  It's as serious as such words can be.  I feel as if I
+knew you and knew what a beautiful, admirable woman you are.
+I shall know better, perhaps, some day, but I have a general notion now.
+You are just the woman I have been looking for, except that you
+are far more perfect.  I won't make any protestations and vows,
+but you can trust me.  It is very soon, I know, to say all this;
+it is almost offensive.  But why not gain time if one can?
+And if you want time to reflect--of course you do--the sooner
+you begin, the better for me.  I don't know what you think of me;
+but there is no great mystery about me; you see what I am.
+Your brother told me that my antecedents and occupations were against me;
+that your family stands, somehow, on a higher level than I do.
+That is an idea which of course I don't understand and don't accept.
+But you don't care anything about that.  I can assure you
+that I am a very solid fellow, and that if I give my mind
+to it I can arrange things so that in a very few years I shall
+not need to waste time in explaining who I am and what I am.
+You will decide for yourself whether you like me or not.
+What there is you see before you.  I honestly believe I have
+no hidden vices or nasty tricks.  I am kind, kind, kind!
+Everything that a man can give a woman I will give you.
+I have a large fortune, a very large fortune; some day, if you
+will allow me, I will go into details.  If you want brilliancy,
+everything in the way of brilliancy that money can give you,
+you shall have.  And as regards anything you may give up,
+don't take for granted too much that its place cannot be filled.
+Leave that to me; I'll take care of you; I shall know what you need.
+Energy and ingenuity can arrange everything.  I'm a strong man!
+There, I have said what I had on my heart!  It was better
+to get it off.  I am very sorry if it's disagreeable to you;
+but think how much better it is that things should be clear.
+Don't answer me now, if you don't wish it.  Think about it,
+think about it as slowly as you please.  Of course I haven't said,
+I can't say, half I mean, especially about my admiration for you.
+But take a favorable view of me; it will only be just."
+
+During this speech, the longest that Newman had ever made,
+Madame de Cintre kept her gaze fixed upon him, and it
+expanded at the last into a sort of fascinated stare.
+When he ceased speaking she lowered her eyes and sat
+for some moments looking down and straight before her.
+Then she slowly rose to her feet, and a pair of exceptionally
+keen eyes would have perceived that she was trembling a little
+in the movement.  She still looked extremely serious.
+"I am very much obliged to you for your offer," she said.
+"It seems very strange, but I am glad you spoke without waiting
+any longer.  It is better the subject should be dismissed.
+I appreciate all you say; you do me great honor.
+But I have decided not to marry."
+
+"Oh, don't say that!" cried Newman, in a tone absolutely naif
+from its pleading and caressing cadence.  She had turned away,
+and it made her stop a moment with her back to him.
+"Think better of that.  You are too young, too beautiful, too much
+made to be happy and to make others happy.  If you are afraid
+of losing your freedom, I can assure you that this freedom here,
+this life you now lead, is a dreary bondage to what I will offer you.
+You shall do things that I don't think you have ever thought of.
+I will take you anywhere in the wide world that you propose.
+Are you unhappy?  You give me a feeling that you are unhappy.
+You have no right to be, or to be made so.  Let me come in and put
+an end to it."
+
+Madame de Cintre stood there a moment longer, looking away from him.
+If she was touched by the way he spoke, the thing was conceivable.
+His voice, always very mild and interrogative, gradually became as soft and
+as tenderly argumentative as if he had been talking to a much-loved child.
+He stood watching her, and she presently turned round again, but this
+time she did not look at him, and she spoke in a quietness in which there
+was a visible trace of effort.
+
+"There are a great many reasons why I should not marry," she said,
+"more than I can explain to you.  As for my happiness, I am very happy.
+Your offer seems strange to me, for more reasons also than I can say.
+Of course you have a perfect right to make it.  But I cannot accept it--
+it is impossible.  Please never speak of this matter again.
+If you cannot promise me this, I must ask you not to come back."
+
+"Why is it impossible?"  Newman demanded.  "You may think it is,
+at first, without its really being so.  I didn't expect you to be pleased
+at first, but I do believe that if you will think of it a good while,
+you may be satisfied."
+
+"I don't know you," said Madame de Cintre.  "Think how little
+I know you."
+
+"Very little, of course, and therefore I don't ask for your ultimatum
+on the spot.  I only ask you not to say no, and to let me hope.
+I will wait as long as you desire.  Meanwhile you can see more of me
+and know me better, look at me as a possible husband--as a candidate--
+and make up your mind."
+
+Something was going on, rapidly, in Madame de Cintre's thoughts;
+she was weighing a question there, beneath Newman's eyes, weighing it
+and deciding it.  "From the moment I don't very respectfully beg you
+to leave the house and never return," she said, "I listen to you,
+I seem to give you hope.  I HAVE listened to you--against my judgment.
+It is because you are eloquent.  If I had been told this morning that I
+should consent to consider you as a possible husband, I should have
+thought my informant a little crazy.  I AM listening to you, you see!"
+And she threw her hands out for a moment and let them drop with a gesture
+in which there was just the slightest expression of appealing weakness.
+
+"Well, as far as saying goes, I have said everything," said Newman.
+"I believe in you, without restriction, and I think all the good
+of you that it is possible to think of a human creature.
+I firmly believe that in marrying me you will be SAFE.
+As I said just now," he went on with a smile, "I have no bad ways.
+I can DO so much for you.  And if you are afraid that I am
+not what you have been accustomed to, not refined and delicate
+and punctilious, you may easily carry that too far.  I AM delicate!
+You shall see!"
+
+Madame de Cintre walked some distance away, and paused before a great plant,
+an azalea, which was flourishing in a porcelain tub before her window.
+She plucked off one of the flowers and, twisting it in her fingers,
+retraced her steps.  Then she sat down in silence, and her attitude seemed
+to be a consent that Newman should say more.
+
+"Why should you say it is impossible you should marry?" he continued.
+"The only thing that could make it really impossible would be your being
+already married.  Is it because you have been unhappy in marriage?
+That is all the more reason!  Is it because your family exert a pressure
+upon you, interfere with you, annoy you?  That is still another reason;
+you ought to be perfectly free, and marriage will make you so.
+I don't say anything against your family--understand that!" added Newman,
+with an eagerness which might have made a perspicacious observer smile.
+"Whatever way you feel toward them is the right way, and anything that you
+should wish me to do to make myself agreeable to them I will do as well
+as I know how.  Depend upon that!"
+
+Madame de Cintre rose again and came toward the fireplace, near which
+Newman was standing.  The expression of pain and embarrassment had
+passed out of her face, and it was illuminated with something which,
+this time at least, Newman need not have been perplexed whether
+to attribute to habit or to intention, to art or to nature.
+She had the air of a woman who has stepped across the frontier
+of friendship and, looking around her, finds the region vast.
+A certain checked and controlled exaltation seemed mingled with the usual
+level radiance of her glance.  "I will not refuse to see you again,"
+she said, "because much of what you have said has given me pleasure.
+But I will see you only on this condition:  that you say nothing
+more in the same way for a long time."
+
+"For how long?"
+
+"For six months.  It must be a solemn promise."
+
+"Very well, I promise."
+
+"Good-by, then," she said, and extended her hand.
+
+He held it a moment, as if he were going to say something more.
+But he only looked at her; then he took his departure.
+
+That evening, on the Boulevard, he met Valentin de Bellegarde.
+After they had exchanged greetings, Newman told him that he had seen
+Madame de Cintre a few hours before.
+
+"I know it," said Bellegarde.  "I dined in the Rue de l'Universite."
+And then, for some moments, both men were silent.
+Newman wished to ask Bellegarde what visible impression his visit
+had made and the Count Valentin had a question of his own.
+Bellegarde spoke first.
+
+"It's none of my business, but what the deuce did you say to my sister?"
+
+"I am willing to tell you," said Newman, "that I made her
+an offer of marriage."
+
+"Already!"  And the young man gave a whistle.  "'Time is money!'
+Is that what you say in America?  And Madame de Cintre?" he added,
+with an interrogative inflection.
+
+"She did not accept my offer."
+
+"She couldn't, you know, in that way."
+
+"But I'm to see her again," said Newman.
+
+"Oh, the strangeness of woman!" exclaimed Bellegarde.  Then he stopped,
+and held Newman off at arms'-length. "I look at you with respect!"
+he exclaimed.  "You have achieved what we call a personal success!
+Immediately, now, I must present you to my brother."
+
+"Whenever you please!" said Newman.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+
+
+Newman continued to see his friends the Tristrams with a good deal
+of frequency, though if you had listened to Mrs. Tristram's account
+of the matter you would have supposed that they had been cynically
+repudiated for the sake of grander acquaintance.  "We were all
+very well so long as we had no rivals--we were better than nothing.
+But now that you have become the fashion, and have your pick every
+day of three invitations to dinner, we are tossed into the corner.
+I am sure it is very good of you to come and see us once a month;
+I wonder you don't send us your cards in an envelope.  When you do, pray have
+them with black edges; it will be for the death of my last illusion."
+It was in this incisive strain that Mrs. Tristram moralized over Newman's
+so-called neglect, which was in reality a most exemplary constancy.
+Of course she was joking, but there was always something ironical
+in her jokes, as there was always something jocular in her gravity.
+
+"I know no better proof that I have treated you very well,"
+Newman had said, "than the fact that you make so free with my character.
+Familiarity breeds contempt; I have made myself too cheap.
+If I had a little proper pride I would stay away a while,
+and when you asked me to dinner say I was going to the Princess
+Borealska's. But I have not any pride where my pleasure is concerned,
+and to keep you in the humor to see me--if you must see me
+only to call me bad names--I will agree to anything you choose;
+I will admit that I am the biggest snob in Paris."  Newman, in fact,
+had declined an invitation personally given by the Princess Borealska,
+an inquiring Polish lady to whom he had been presented, on the ground
+that on that particular day he always dined at Mrs. Tristram's;
+and it was only a tenderly perverse theory of his hostess of
+the Avenue d'Iena that he was faithless to his early friendships.
+She needed the theory to explain a certain moral irritation
+by which she was often visited; though, if this explanation
+was unsound, a deeper analyst than I must give the right one.
+Having launched our hero upon the current which was bearing him
+so rapidly along, she appeared but half-pleased at its swiftness.
+She had succeeded too well; she had played her game too cleverly
+and she wished to mix up the cards.  Newman had told her,
+in due season, that her friend was "satisfactory."
+The epithet was not romantic, but Mrs. Tristram had no difficulty in
+perceiving that, in essentials, the feeling which lay beneath it was.
+Indeed, the mild, expansive brevity with which it was uttered,
+and a certain look, at once appealing and inscrutable, that issued
+from Newman's half-closed eyes as he leaned his head against
+the back of his chair, seemed to her the most eloquent attestation
+of a mature sentiment that she had ever encountered.  Newman was,
+according to the French phrase, only abounding in her own sense,
+but his temperate raptures exerted a singular effect upon the ardor
+which she herself had so freely manifested a few months before.
+She now seemed inclined to take a purely critical view of Madame
+de Cintre, and wished to have it understood that she did not in
+the least answer for her being a compendium of all the virtues.
+"No woman was ever so good as that woman seems," she said.
+"Remember what Shakespeare calls Desdemona; 'a supersubtle Venetian.'
+Madame de Cintre is a supersubtle Parisian.  She is a charming woman,
+and she has five hundred merits; but you had better keep that in mind."
+Was Mrs. Tristram simply finding out that she was jealous of her
+dear friend on the other side of the Seine, and that in undertaking
+to provide Newman with an ideal wife she had counted too much
+on her own disinterestedness?  We may be permitted to doubt it.
+The inconsistent little lady of the Avenue d'Iena had an
+insuperable need of changing her place, intellectually.
+She had a lively imagination, and she was capable, at certain times,
+of imagining the direct reverse of her most cherished beliefs,
+with a vividness more intense than that of conviction.
+She got tired of thinking aright; but there was no serious harm in it,
+as she got equally tired of thinking wrong.  In the midst of her
+mysterious perversities she had admirable flashes of justice.
+One of these occurred when Newman related to her that he had made
+a formal proposal to Madame de Cintre.  He repeated in a few words
+what he had said, and in a great many what she had answered.
+Mrs. Tristram listened with extreme interest.
+
+"But after all," said Newman, "there is nothing to congratulate me upon.
+It is not a triumph."
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Mrs. Tristram; "it is a great triumph.
+It is a great triumph that she did not silence you at the first word,
+and request you never to speak to her again."
+
+"I don't see that," observed Newman.
+
+"Of course you don't; Heaven forbid you should!
+When I told you to go on your own way and do what came into
+your head, I had no idea you would go over the ground so fast.
+I never dreamed you would offer yourself after five or six
+morning-calls. As yet, what had you done to make her like you?
+You had simply sat--not very straight--and stared at her.
+But she does like you."
+
+"That remains to be seen."
+
+"No, that is proved.  What will come of it remains to be seen.
+That you should propose to marry her, without more ado, could never
+have come into her head.  You can form very little idea of what passed
+through her mind as you spoke; if she ever really marries you,
+the affair will be characterized by the usual justice of all human
+beings towards women.  You will think you take generous views of her;
+but you will never begin to know through what a strange sea of feeling
+she passed before she accepted you.  As she stood there in front
+of you the other day, she plunged into it.  She said 'Why not?'
+to something which, a few hours earlier, had been inconceivable.
+She turned about on a thousand gathered prejudices and traditions
+as on a pivot, and looked where she had never looked hitherto.
+When I think of it--when I think of Claire de Cintre and all
+that she represents, there seems to me something very fine in it.
+When I recommended you to try your fortune with her I of course
+thought well of you, and in spite of your sins I think so still.
+But I confess I don't see quite what you are and what you have done,
+to make such a woman do this sort of thing for you."
+
+"Oh, there is something very fine in it!" said Newman
+with a laugh, repeating her words.  He took an extreme
+satisfaction in hearing that there was something fine in it.
+He had not the least doubt of it himself, but he had already
+begun to value the world's admiration of Madame de Cintre,
+as adding to the prospective glory of possession.
+
+It was immediately after this conversation that Valentin de
+Bellegarde came to conduct his friend to the Rue de l'Universite
+to present him to the other members of his family.  "You are
+already introduced," he said, "and you have begun to be talked about.
+My sister has mentioned your successive visits to my mother,
+and it was an accident that my mother was present at none of them.
+I have spoken of you as an American of immense wealth, and the best
+fellow in the world, who is looking for something very superior
+in the way of a wife."
+
+"Do you suppose," asked Newman, "that Madame de Cintre has related
+to your mother the last conversation I had with her?"
+
+"I am very certain that she has not; she will keep her own counsel.
+Meanwhile you must make your way with the rest of the family.
+Thus much is known about you:  you have made a great fortune in trade,
+you are a little eccentric, and you frankly admire our dear Claire.
+My sister-in-law, whom you remember seeing in Madame de Cintre's
+sitting-room, took, it appears, a fancy to you; she has described
+you as having beaucoup de cachet.  My mother, therefore, is curious
+to see you."
+
+"She expects to laugh at me, eh?" said Newman.
+
+"She never laughs.  If she does not like you, don't hope to purchase
+favor by being amusing.  Take warning by me!"
+
+This conversation took place in the evening, and half an hour later
+Valentin ushered his companion into an apartment of the house
+of the Rue de l'Universite into which he had not yet penetrated,
+the salon of the dowager Marquise de Bellegarde.  It was a vast,
+high room, with elaborate and ponderous mouldings, painted a
+whitish gray, along the upper portion of the walls and the ceiling;
+with a great deal of faded and carefully repaired tapestry
+in the doorways and chair-backs; a Turkey carpet in light colors,
+still soft and deep, in spite of great antiquity, on the floor,
+and portraits of each of Madame de Bellegarde's children,
+at the age of ten, suspended against an old screen of red silk.
+The room was illumined, exactly enough for conversation, by half
+a dozen candles, placed in odd corners, at a great distance apart.
+In a deep armchair, near the fire, sat an old lady in black;
+at the other end of the room another person was seated at the piano,
+playing a very expressive waltz.  In this latter person Newman
+recognized the young Marquise de Bellegarde.
+
+Valentin presented his friend, and Newman walked up
+to the old lady by the fire and shook hands with her.
+He received a rapid impression of a white, delicate, aged face,
+with a high forehead, a small mouth, and a pair of cold
+blue eyes which had kept much of the freshness of youth.
+Madame de Bellegarde looked hard at him, and returned his
+hand-shake with a sort of British positiveness which reminded
+him that she was the daughter of the Earl of St. Dunstan's. Her
+daughter-in-law stopped playing and gave him an agreeable smile.
+Newman sat down and looked about him, while Valentin went
+and kissed the hand of the young marquise.
+
+"I ought to have seen you before," said Madame de Bellegarde.
+"You have paid several visits to my daughter."
+
+"Oh, yes," said Newman, smiling; "Madame de Cintre and I are old
+friends by this time."
+
+"You have gone fast," said Madame de Bellegarde.
+
+"Not so fast as I should like," said Newman, bravely.
+
+"Oh, you are very ambitious," answered the old lady.
+
+"Yes, I confess I am," said Newman, smiling.
+
+Madame de Bellegarde looked at him with her cold fine eyes,
+and he returned her gaze, reflecting that she was
+a possible adversary and trying to take her measure.
+Their eyes remained in contact for some moments.
+Then Madame de Bellegarde looked away, and without smiling,
+"I am very ambitious, too," she said.
+
+Newman felt that taking her measure was not easy; she was a formidable,
+inscrutable little woman.  She resembled her daughter, and yet she
+was utterly unlike her.  The coloring in Madame de Cintre was the same,
+and the high delicacy of her brow and nose was hereditary.
+But her face was a larger and freer copy, and her mouth
+in especial a happy divergence from that conservative orifice,
+a little pair of lips at once plump and pinched, that looked,
+when closed, as if they could not open wider than to swallow
+a gooseberry or to emit an "Oh, dear, no!" which probably had been
+thought to give the finishing touch to the aristocratic prettiness
+of the Lady Emmeline Atheling as represented, forty years before,
+in several Books of Beauty.  Madame de Cintre's face had,
+to Newman's eye, a range of expression as delightfully vast as
+the wind-streaked, cloud-flecked distance on a Western prairie.
+But her mother's white, intense, respectable countenance, with its
+formal gaze, and its circumscribed smile, suggested a document
+signed and sealed; a thing of parchment, ink, and ruled lines.
+"She is a woman of conventions and proprieties," he said to himself
+as he looked at her; "her world is the world of things immutably decreed.
+But how she is at home in it, and what a paradise she finds it.
+She walks about in it as if it were a blooming park, a Garden of Eden;
+and when she sees 'This is genteel,' or 'This is improper,'
+written on a mile-stone she stops ecstatically, as if she
+were listening to a nightingale or smelling a rose."  Madame de
+Bellegarde wore a little black velvet hood tied under her chin,
+and she was wrapped in an old black cashmere shawl.
+
+"You are an American?" she said presently.  "I have seen several Americans."
+
+"There are several in Paris," said Newman jocosely.
+
+"Oh, really?" said Madame de Bellegarde.  "It was in England I saw these,
+or somewhere else; not in Paris.  I think it must have been in
+the Pyrenees, many years ago.  I am told your ladies are very pretty.
+One of these ladies was very pretty! such a wonderful complexion!
+She presented me a note of introduction from some one--I forgot whom--
+and she sent with it a note of her own.  I kept her letter a long
+time afterwards, it was so strangely expressed.  I used to know
+some of the phrases by heart.  But I have forgotten them now,
+it is so many years ago.  Since then I have seen no more Americans.
+I think my daughter-in-law has; she is a great gad-about, she
+sees every one."
+
+At this the younger lady came rustling forward, pinching in a
+very slender waist, and casting idly preoccupied glances over
+the front of her dress, which was apparently designed for a ball.
+She was, in a singular way, at once ugly and pretty;
+she had protuberant eyes, and lips strangely red.
+She reminded Newman of his friend, Mademoiselle Nioche; this was
+what that much-obstructed young lady would have liked to be.
+Valentin de Bellegarde walked behind her at a distance,
+hopping about to keep off the far-spreading train of her dress.
+
+"You ought to show more of your shoulders behind," he said very gravely.
+"You might as well wear a standing ruff as such a dress as that."
+
+The young woman turned her back to the mirror over the chimney-piece,
+and glanced behind her, to verify Valentin's assertion.
+The mirror descended low, and yet it reflected nothing but a
+large unclad flesh surface.  The young marquise put her hands
+behind her and gave a downward pull to the waist of her dress.
+"Like that, you mean?" she asked.
+
+"That is a little better," said Bellegarde in the same tone,
+"but it leaves a good deal to be desired."
+
+"Oh, I never go to extremes," said his sister-in-law. And then,
+turning to Madame de Bellegarde, "What were you calling me
+just now, madame?"
+
+"I called you a gad-about," said the old lady.  "But I might call
+you something else, too."
+
+"A gad-about? What an ugly word!  What does it mean?"
+
+"A very beautiful person," Newman ventured to say, seeing that it
+was in French.
+
+"That is a pretty compliment but a bad translation," said the young marquise.
+And then, looking at him a moment, "Do you dance?"
+
+"Not a step."
+
+"You are very wrong," she said, simply.  And with another look
+at her back in the mirror she turned away.
+
+"Do you like Paris?" asked the old lady, who was apparently wondering
+what was the proper way to talk to an American.
+
+"Yes, rather," said Newman.  And then he added with a
+friendly intonation, "Don't you?"
+
+"I can't say I know it.  I know my house--I know my friends--
+I don't know Paris."
+
+"Oh, you lose a great deal," said Newman, sympathetically.
+
+Madame de Bellegarde stared; it was presumably the first time
+she had been condoled with on her losses.
+
+"I am content with what I have," she said with dignity.
+
+Newman's eyes, at this moment, were wandering round the room,
+which struck him as rather sad and shabby; passing from the high casements,
+with their small, thickly-framed panes, to the sallow tints of two or
+three portraits in pastel, of the last century, which hung between them.
+He ought, obviously, to have answered that the contentment of his hostess
+was quite natural--she had a great deal; but the idea did not occur
+to him during the pause of some moments which followed.
+
+"Well, my dear mother," said Valentin, coming and leaning against
+the chimney-piece, "what do you think of my dear friend Newman?
+Is he not the excellent fellow I told you?"
+
+"My acquaintance with Mr. Newman has not gone very far,"
+said Madame de Bellegarde.  "I can as yet only appreciate
+his great politeness."
+
+"My mother is a great judge of these matters," said Valentin to Newman.
+"If you have satisfied her, it is a triumph."
+
+"I hope I shall satisfy you, some day," said Newman, looking at the old lady.
+"I have done nothing yet."
+
+"You must not listen to my son; he will bring you into trouble.
+He is a sad scatterbrain."
+
+"Oh, I like him--I like him," said Newman, genially.
+
+"He amuses you, eh?"
+
+"Yes, perfectly."
+
+"Do you hear that, Valentin?" said Madame de Bellegarde.
+"You amuse Mr. Newman."
+
+"Perhaps we shall all come to that!"  Valentin exclaimed.
+
+"You must see my other son," said Madame de Bellegarde.
+"He is much better than this one.  But he will not amuse you."
+
+"I don't know--I don't know!" murmured Valentin, reflectively.
+"But we shall very soon see.  Here comes Monsieur mon frere."
+
+The door had just opened to give ingress to a gentleman who stepped forward
+and whose face Newman remembered.  He had been the author of our hero's
+discomfiture the first time he tried to present himself to Madame de Cintre.
+Valentin de Bellegarde went to meet his brother, looked at him a moment,
+and then, taking him by the arm, led him up to Newman.
+
+"This is my excellent friend Mr. Newman," he said very blandly.
+"You must know him."
+
+"I am delighted to know Mr. Newman," said the marquis with a low bow,
+but without offering his hand.
+
+"He is the old woman at second-hand," Newman said to himself,
+as he returned M. de Bellegarde's greeting.  And this was
+the starting-point of a speculative theory, in his mind,
+that the late marquis had been a very amiable foreigner, with an
+inclination to take life easily and a sense that it was difficult
+for the husband of the stilted little lady by the fire to do so.
+But if he had taken little comfort in his wife he had taken
+much in his two younger children, who were after his own heart,
+while Madame de Bellegarde had paired with her eldest-born.
+
+"My brother has spoken to me of you," said M. de Bellegarde; "and as you
+are also acquainted with my sister, it was time we should meet."
+He turned to his mother and gallantly bent over her hand,
+touching it with his lips, and then he assumed an attitude before
+the chimney-piece. With his long, lean face, his high-bridged nose
+and his small, opaque eye he looked much like an Englishman.
+His whiskers were fair and glossy, and he had a large dimple,
+of unmistakably British origin, in the middle of his handsome chin.
+He was "distinguished" to the tips of his polished nails, and there
+was not a movement of his fine, perpendicular person that was
+not noble and majestic.  Newman had never yet been confronted
+with such an incarnation of the art of taking one's self seriously;
+he felt a sort of impulse to step backward, as you do to get a view
+of a great facade.
+
+"Urbain," said young Madame de Bellegarde, who had apparently
+been waiting for her husband to take her to her ball, "I call
+your attention to the fact that I am dressed."
+
+"That is a good idea," murmured Valentin.
+
+"I am at your orders, my dear friend," said M. de Bellegarde.
+"Only, you must allow me first the pleasure of a little conversation
+with Mr. Newman."
+
+"Oh, if you are going to a party, don't let me keep you,"
+objected Newman.  "I am very sure we shall meet again.  Indeed, if you
+would like to converse with me I will gladly name an hour."
+He was eager to make it known that he would readily answer
+all questions and satisfy all exactions.
+
+M. de Bellegarde stood in a well-balanced position before the fire,
+caressing one of his fair whiskers with one of his white hands,
+and looking at Newman, half askance, with eyes from which a particular
+ray of observation made its way through a general meaningless smile.
+"It is very kind of you to make such an offer," he said.  "If I am
+not mistaken, your occupations are such as to make your time precious.
+You are in--a-- as we say, dans les affaires."
+
+"In business, you mean?  Oh no, I have thrown business
+overboard for the present.  I am 'loafing,' as WE say.
+My time is quite my own."
+
+"Ah, you are taking a holiday," rejoined M. de Bellegarde.
+"'Loafing.'  Yes, I have heard that expression."
+
+"Mr. Newman is American," said Madame de Bellegarde.
+
+"My brother is a great ethnologist," said Valentin.
+
+"An ethnologist?" said Newman.  "Ah, you collect negroes'
+skulls, and that sort of thing."
+
+The marquis looked hard at his brother, and began to caress his
+other whisker.  Then, turning to Newman, with sustained urbanity,
+"You are traveling for your pleasure?" he asked.'
+
+"Oh, I am knocking about to pick up one thing and another.
+Of course I get a good deal of pleasure out of it."
+
+"What especially interests you?" inquired the marquis.
+
+"Well, everything interests me," said Newman.  "I am not particular.
+Manufactures are what I care most about."
+
+"That has been your specialty?"
+
+"I can't say I have any specialty.  My specialty has been to make
+the largest possible fortune in the shortest possible time."
+Newman made this last remark very deliberately; he wished to open
+the way, if it were necessary, to an authoritative statement
+of his means.
+
+M. de Bellegarde laughed agreeably.  "I hope you have succeeded," he said.
+
+"Yes, I have made a fortune in a reasonable time.
+I am not so old, you see."
+
+"Paris is a very good place to spend a fortune.
+I wish you great enjoyment of yours."  And M. de Bellegarde
+drew forth his gloves and began to put them on.
+
+Newman for a few moments watched him sliding his white hands into
+the white kid, and as he did so his feelings took a singular turn.
+M. de Bellegarde's good wishes seemed to descend out of the white
+expanse of his sublime serenity with the soft, scattered movement
+of a shower of snow-flakes. Yet Newman was not irritated;
+he did not feel that he was being patronized; he was conscious of no
+especial impulse to introduce a discord into so noble a harmony.
+Only he felt himself suddenly in personal contact with the forces
+with which his friend Valentin had told him that he would
+have to contend, and he became sensible of their intensity.
+He wished to make some answering manifestation, to stretch himself out
+at his own length, to sound a note at the uttermost end of HIS scale.
+It must be added that if this impulse was not vicious or malicious,
+it was by no means void of humorous expectancy.  Newman was quite
+as ready to give play to that loosely-adjusted smile of his,
+if his hosts should happen to be shocked, as he was far from
+deliberately planning to shock them.
+
+"Paris is a very good place for idle people," he said,
+"or it is a very good place if your family has been settled
+here for a long time, and you have made acquaintances and got
+your relations round you; or if you have got a good big house
+like this, and a wife and children and mother and sister,
+and everything comfortable.  I don't like that way of living
+all in rooms next door to each other.  But I am not an idler.
+I try to be, but I can't manage it; it goes against the grain.
+My business habits are too deep-seated. Then, I haven't any
+house to call my own, or anything in the way of a family.
+My sisters are five thousand miles away, my mother died when I
+was a youngster, and I haven't any wife; I wish I had!
+So, you see, I don't exactly know what to do with myself.
+I am not fond of books, as you are, sir, and I get tired of dining
+out and going to the opera.  I miss my business activity.
+You see, I began to earn my living when I was almost a baby,
+and until a few months ago I have never had my hand off the plow.
+Elegant leisure comes hard."
+
+This speech was followed by a profound silence of some moments,
+on the part of Newman's entertainers.  Valentin stood looking
+at him fixedly, with his hands in his pockets, and then
+he slowly, with a half-sidling motion, went out of the door.
+The marquis continued to draw on his gloves and to smile benignantly.
+
+"You began to earn your living when you were a mere baby?"
+said the marquise.
+
+"Hardly more--a small boy."
+
+"You say you are not fond of books," said M. de Bellegarde;
+"but you must do yourself the justice to remember that your
+studies were interrupted early."
+
+"That is very true; on my tenth birthday I stopped going to school.
+I thought it was a grand way to keep it.  But I picked up some
+information afterwards," said Newman, reassuringly.
+
+"You have some sisters?" asked old Madame de Bellegarde.
+
+"Yes, two sisters.  Splendid women!"
+
+"I hope that for them the hardships of life commenced less early."
+
+"They married very early, if you call that a hardship,
+as girls do in our Western country.  One of them is married
+to the owner of the largest india-rubber house in the West."
+
+"Ah, you make houses also of india-rubber?" inquired the marquise.
+
+"You can stretch them as your family increases," said young Madame
+de Bellegarde, who was muffling herself in a long white shawl.
+
+Newman indulged in a burst of hilarity, and explained that the house
+in which his brother-in-law lived was a large wooden structure,
+but that he manufactured and sold india-rubber on a colossal scale.
+
+"My children have some little india-rubber shoes which they put on when they
+go to play in the Tuileries in damp weather," said the young marquise.
+"I wonder whether your brother-in-law made them."
+
+"Very likely," said Newman; "if he did, you may be very sure
+they are well made."
+
+"Well, you must not be discouraged," said M. de Bellegarde,
+with vague urbanity.
+
+"Oh, I don't mean to be.  I have a project which gives me
+plenty to think about, and that is an occupation."  And then
+Newman was silent a moment, hesitating, yet thinking rapidly;
+he wished to make his point, and yet to do so forced him
+to speak out in a way that was disagreeable to him.
+Nevertheless he continued, addressing himself to old Madame
+de Bellegarde, "I will tell you my project; perhaps you can help me.
+I want to take a wife."
+
+"It is a very good project, but I am no matchmaker,"
+said the old lady.
+
+Newman looked at her an instant, and then, with perfect sincerity,
+"I should have thought you were," he declared.
+
+Madame de Bellegarde appeared to think him too sincere.
+She murmured something sharply in French, and fixed her eyes
+on her son.  At this moment the door of the room was thrown open,
+and with a rapid step Valentin reappeared.
+
+"I have a message for you," he said to his sister-in-law.
+"Claire bids me to request you not to start for your ball.
+She will go with you."
+
+"Claire will go with us!" cried the young marquise.
+"En voila, du nouveau!"
+
+"She has changed her mind; she decided half an hour ago, and she
+is sticking the last diamond into her hair," said Valentin.
+
+"What has taken possession of my daughter?" demanded Madame
+de Bellegarde, sternly.  "She has not been into the world these
+three years.  Does she take such a step at half an hour's notice,
+and without consulting me?"
+
+"She consulted me, dear mother, five minutes since," said Valentin,
+"and I told her that such a beautiful woman--she is beautiful, you will see--
+had no right to bury herself alive."
+
+"You should have referred Claire to her mother, my brother,"
+said M. de Bellegarde, in French.  "This is very strange."
+
+"I refer her to the whole company!" said Valentin.  "Here she comes!"
+And he went to the open door, met Madame de Cintre on
+the threshold, took her by the hand, and led her into the room.
+She was dressed in white; but a long blue cloak, which hung almost
+to her feet, was fastened across her shoulders by a silver clasp.
+She had tossed it back, however, and her long white arms were uncovered.
+In her dense, fair hair there glittered a dozen diamonds.
+She looked serious and, Newman thought, rather pale; but she glanced
+round her, and, when she saw him, smiled and put out her hand.
+He thought her tremendously handsome.  He had a chance to look
+at her full in the face, for she stood a moment in the centre of
+the room, hesitating, apparently, what she should do, without meeting
+his eyes.  Then she went up to her mother, who sat in her deep
+chair by the fire, looking at Madame de Cintre almost fiercely.
+With her back turned to the others, Madame de Cintre held her cloak
+apart to show her dress.
+
+"What do you think of me?" she asked.
+
+"I think you are audacious," said the marquise.
+"It was but three days ago, when I asked you, as a particular
+favor to myself, to go to the Duchess de Lusignan's, that you
+told me you were going nowhere and that one must be consistent.
+Is this your consistency?  Why should you distinguish Madame Robineau?
+Who is it you wish to please to-night?"
+
+"I wish to please myself, dear mother," said Madame de Cintre.
+And she bent over and kissed the old lady.
+
+"I don't like surprises, my sister," said Urbain de Bellegarde;
+"especially when one is on the point of entering a drawing-room."
+
+Newman at this juncture felt inspired to speak.
+"Oh, if you are going into a room with Madame de Cintre,
+you needn't be afraid of being noticed yourself!"
+
+M. de Bellegarde turned to his sister with a smile too intense to be easy.
+"I hope you appreciate a compliment that is paid you at your
+brother's expense," he said.  "Come, come, madame."  And offering
+Madame de Cintre his arm he led her rapidly out of the room.
+Valentin rendered the same service to young Madame de Bellegarde,
+who had apparently been reflecting on the fact that the ball
+dress of her sister-in-law was much less brilliant than her own,
+and yet had failed to derive absolute comfort from the reflection.
+With a farewell smile she sought the complement of her consolation
+in the eyes of the American visitor, and perceiving in them
+a certain mysterious brilliancy, it is not improbable that she
+may have flattered herself she had found it.
+
+Newman, left alone with old Madame de Bellegarde, stood before
+her a few moments in silence.  "Your daughter is very beautiful,"
+he said at last.
+
+"She is very strange," said Madame de Bellegarde.
+
+"I am glad to hear it," Newman rejoined, smiling.  "It makes me hope."
+
+"Hope what?"
+
+"That she will consent, some day, to marry me."
+
+The old lady slowly rose to her feet.  "That really is your project, then?"
+
+"Yes; will you favor it?"
+
+"Favor it?"  Madame de Bellegarde looked at him a moment and then
+shook her head.  "No!" she said, softly.
+
+"Will you suffer it, then?  Will you let it pass?"
+
+"You don't know what you ask.  I am a very proud and meddlesome old woman."
+
+"Well, I am very rich," said Newman.
+
+Madame de Bellegarde fixed her eyes on the floor, and Newman
+thought it probable she was weighing the reasons in favor
+of resenting the brutality of this remark.  But at last,
+looking up, she said simply, "How rich?"
+
+Newman expressed his income in a round number which had the magnificent
+sound that large aggregations of dollars put on when they are translated
+into francs.  He added a few remarks of a financial character,
+which completed a sufficiently striking presentment of his resources.
+
+Madame de Bellegarde listened in silence.  "You are
+very frank," she said finally.  "I will be the same.
+I would rather favor you, on the whole, than suffer you.
+It will be easier."
+
+"I am thankful for any terms," said Newman.  "But, for
+the present, you have suffered me long enough.  Good night!"
+And he took his leave.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+
+
+Newman, on his return to Paris, had not resumed the study
+of French conversation with M. Nioche; he found that he had
+too many other uses for his time.  M. Nioche, however, came to
+see him very promptly, having learned his whereabouts by a
+mysterious process to which his patron never obtained the key.
+The shrunken little capitalist repeated his visit more than once.
+He seemed oppressed by a humiliating sense of having been overpaid,
+and wished apparently to redeem his debt by the offer of
+grammatical and statistical information in small installments.
+He wore the same decently melancholy aspect as a few months before;
+a few months more or less of brushing could make little
+difference in the antique lustre of his coat and hat.
+But the poor old man's spirit was a trifle more threadbare;
+it seemed to have received some hard rubs during the summer
+Newman inquired with interest about Mademoiselle Noemie;
+and M. Nioche, at first, for answer, simply looked at him
+in lachrymose silence.
+
+"Don't ask me, sir," he said at last.  "I sit and watch her,
+but I can do nothing."
+
+"Do you mean that she misconducts herself?"
+
+"I don't know, I am sure.  I can't follow her.  I don't understand her.
+She has something in her head; I don't know what she is trying to do.
+She is too deep for me."
+
+"Does she continue to go to the Louvre?  Has she made any
+of those copies for me?"
+
+"She goes to the Louvre, but I see nothing of the copies.  She has
+something on her easel; I suppose it is one of the pictures you ordered.
+Such a magnificent order ought to give her fairy-fingers. But she
+is not in earnest.  I can't say anything to her; I am afraid of her.
+One evening, last summer, when I took her to walk in the Champs Elysees,
+she said some things to me that frightened me."
+
+"What were they?"
+
+"Excuse an unhappy father from telling you," said M. Nioche,
+unfolding his calico pocket-handkerchief.
+
+Newman promised himself to pay Mademoiselle Noemie another visit
+at the Louvre.  He was curious about the progress of his copies,
+but it must be added that he was still more curious about the progress
+of the young lady herself.  He went one afternoon to the great museum,
+and wandered through several of the rooms in fruitless quest of her.
+He was bending his steps to the long hall of the Italian masters,
+when suddenly he found himself face to face with Valentin de Bellegarde.
+The young Frenchman greeted him with ardor, and assured him that he was
+a godsend.  He himself was in the worst of humors and he wanted some
+one to contradict.
+
+"In a bad humor among all these beautiful things?" said Newman.
+"I thought you were so fond of pictures, especially the old black ones.
+There are two or three here that ought to keep you in spirits."
+
+"Oh, to-day," answered Valentin, "I am not in a mood for pictures,
+and the more beautiful they are the less I like them.
+Their great staring eyes and fixed positions irritate me.
+I feel as if I were at some big, dull party, in a room full
+of people I shouldn't wish to speak to.  What should I care for
+their beauty?  It's a bore, and, worse still, it's a reproach.
+I have a great many ennuis; I feel vicious."
+
+"If the Louvre has so little comfort for you, why in the world
+did you come here?"  Newman asked.
+
+"That is one of my ennuis.  I came to meet my cousin--
+a dreadful English cousin, a member of my mother's family--
+who is in Paris for a week for her husband, and who wishes
+me to point out the 'principal beauties.'  Imagine a woman
+who wears a green crape bonnet in December and has straps
+sticking out of the ankles of her interminable boots!
+My mother begged I would do something to oblige them.
+I have undertaken to play valet de place this afternoon.
+They were to have met me here at two o'clock, and I have been
+waiting for them twenty minutes.  Why doesn't she arrive?
+She has at least a pair of feet to carry her.
+I don't know whether to be furious at their playing me false,
+or delighted to have escaped them."
+
+"I think in your place I would be furious," said Newman, "because they
+may arrive yet, and then your fury will still be of use to you.
+Whereas if you were delighted and they were afterwards to turn up,
+you might not know what to do with your delight."
+
+"You give me excellent advice, and I already feel better.
+I will be furious; I will let them go to the deuce and I myself
+will go with you--unless by chance you too have a rendezvous."
+
+"It is not exactly a rendezvous," said Newman.  "But I have in fact
+come to see a person, not a picture."
+
+"A woman, presumably?"
+
+"A young lady."
+
+"Well," said Valentin, "I hope for you with all my heart that she
+is not clothed in green tulle and that her feet are not too much
+out of focus."
+
+"I don't know much about her feet, but she has very pretty hands."
+
+Valentin gave a sigh.  "And on that assurance I must part with you?"
+
+"I am not certain of finding my young lady," said Newman,
+"and I am not quite prepared to lose your company on the chance.
+It does not strike me as particularly desirable to introduce you
+to her, and yet I should rather like to have your opinion of her."
+
+"Is she pretty?"
+
+"I guess you will think so."
+
+Bellegarde passed his arm into that of his companion.
+"Conduct me to her on the instant!  I should be ashamed to make
+a pretty woman wait for my verdict."
+
+Newman suffered himself to be gently propelled in the direction
+in which he had been walking, but his step was not rapid.
+He was turning something over in his mind.  The two men passed
+into the long gallery of the Italian masters, and Newman,
+after having scanned for a moment its brilliant vista,
+turned aside into the smaller apartment devoted to the same school,
+on the left.  It contained very few persons, but at the farther
+end of it sat Mademoiselle Nioche, before her easel.
+She was not at work; her palette and brushes had been
+laid down beside her, her hands were folded in her lap,
+and she was leaning back in her chair and looking intently
+at two ladies on the other side of the hall, who, with their
+backs turned to her, had stopped before one of the pictures.
+These ladies were apparently persons of high fashion;
+they were dressed with great splendor, and their long silken
+trains and furbelows were spread over the polished floor.
+It was at their dresses Mademoiselle Noemie was looking,
+though what she was thinking of I am unable to say.
+I hazard the supposition that she was saying to herself
+that to be able to drag such a train over a polished floor
+was a felicity worth any price.  Her reflections, at any rate,
+were disturbed by the advent of Newman and his companion.
+She glanced at them quickly, and then, coloring a little,
+rose and stood before her easel.
+
+"I came here on purpose to see you," said Newman in his bad French,
+offering to shake hands.  And then, like a good American, he introduced
+Valentin formally:  "Allow me to make you acquainted with the Comte
+Valentin de Bellegarde."
+
+Valentin made a bow which must have seemed to Mademoiselle Noemie quite
+in harmony with the impressiveness of his title, but the graceful
+brevity of her own response made no concession to underbred surprise.
+She turned to Newman, putting up her hands to her hair and smoothing its
+delicately-felt roughness.  Then, rapidly, she turned the canvas that was
+on her easel over upon its face.  "You have not forgotten me?" she asked.
+
+"I shall never forget you," said Newman.  "You may be sure of that."
+
+"Oh," said the young girl, "there are a great many different
+ways of remembering a person."  And she looked straight at
+Valentin de Bellegarde, who was looking at her as a gentleman
+may when a "verdict" is expected of him.
+
+"Have you painted anything for me?" said Newman.
+"Have you been industrious?"
+
+"No, I have done nothing."  And taking up her palette,
+she began to mix her colors at hazard.
+
+"But your father tells me you have come here constantly."
+
+"I have nowhere else to go!  Here, all summer, it was cool, at least."
+
+"Being here, then," said Newman, "you might have tried something."
+
+"I told you before," she answered, softly, "that I don't know
+how to paint."
+
+"But you have something charming on your easel, now," said Valentin,
+"if you would only let me see it."
+
+She spread out her two hands, with the fingers expanded, over the back
+of the canvas--those hands which Newman had called pretty, and which,
+in spite of several paint-stains, Valentin could now admire.
+"My painting is not charming," she said.
+
+"It is the only thing about you that is not, then, mademoiselle,"
+quoth Valentin, gallantly.
+
+She took up her little canvas and silently passed it to him.
+He looked at it, and in a moment she said, "I am sure you
+are a judge."
+
+"Yes," he answered, "I am."
+
+"You know, then, that that is very bad."
+
+"Mon Dieu," said Valentin, shrugging his shoulders "let us distinguish."
+
+"You know that I ought not to attempt to paint," the young girl continued.
+
+"Frankly, then, mademoiselle, I think you ought not."
+
+She began to look at the dresses of the two splendid ladies again--
+a point on which, having risked one conjecture, I think I may risk another.
+While she was looking at the ladies she was seeing Valentin de Bellegarde.
+He, at all events, was seeing her.  He put down the roughly-besmeared canvas
+and addressed a little click with his tongue, accompanied by an elevation
+of the eyebrows, to Newman.
+
+"Where have you been all these months?" asked Mademoiselle
+Noemie of our hero.  "You took those great journeys,
+you amused yourself well?"
+
+"Oh, yes," said Newman.  "I amused myself well enough."
+
+"I am very glad," said Mademoiselle Noemie with extreme gentleness,
+and she began to dabble in her colors again.  She was singularly pretty,
+with the look of serious sympathy that she threw into her face.
+
+Valentin took advantage of her downcast eyes to telegraph again to
+his companion.  He renewed his mysterious physiognomical play, making at
+the same time a rapid tremulous movement in the air with his fingers.
+He was evidently finding Mademoiselle Noemie extremely interesting;
+the blue devils had departed, leaving the field clear.
+
+"Tell me something about your travels," murmured the young girl.
+
+"Oh, I went to Switzerland,--to Geneva and Zermatt and Zurich and all
+those places you know; and down to Venice, and all through Germany,
+and down the Rhine, and into Holland and Belgium--the regular round.
+How do you say that, in French--the regular round?"
+Newman asked of Valentin.
+
+Mademoiselle Nioche fixed her eyes an instant on Bellegarde,
+and then with a little smile, "I don't understand monsieur,"
+she said, "when he says so much at once.  Would you be so good
+as to translate?"
+
+"I would rather talk to you out of my own head," Valentin declared.
+
+"No," said Newman, gravely, still in his bad French, "you must not
+talk to Mademoiselle Nioche, because you say discouraging things.
+You ought to tell her to work, to persevere."
+
+"And we French, mademoiselle," said Valentin, "are accused
+of being false flatterers!"
+
+"I don't want any flattery, I want only the truth.
+But I know the truth."
+
+"All I say is that I suspect there are some things that you can
+do better than paint," said Valentin.
+
+"I know the truth--I know the truth," Mademoiselle Noemie repeated.
+And, dipping a brush into a clot of red paint, she drew a great horizontal
+daub across her unfinished picture.
+
+"What is that?" asked Newman.
+
+Without answering, she drew another long crimson daub,
+in a vertical direction, down the middle of her canvas, and so,
+in a moment, completed the rough indication of a cross.
+"It is the sign of the truth," she said at last.
+
+The two men looked at each other, and Valentin indulged in another flash
+of physiognomical eloquence.  "You have spoiled your picture," said Newman.
+
+"I know that very well.  It was the only thing to do with it.
+I had sat looking at it all day without touching it.
+I had begun to hate it.  It seemed to me something was
+going to happen."
+
+"I like it better that way than as it was before," said Valentin.
+"Now it is more interesting.  It tells a story.  Is it for sale?"
+
+"Everything I have is for sale," said Mademoiselle Noemie.
+
+"How much is this thing?"
+
+"Ten thousand francs," said the young girl, without a smile.
+
+"Everything that Mademoiselle Nioche may do at present is mine in advance,"
+said Newman.  "It makes part of an order I gave her some months ago.
+So you can't have this."
+
+"Monsieur will lose nothing by it," said the young girl, looking at Valentin.
+And she began to put up her utensils.
+
+"I shall have gained a charming memory," said Valentin.
+"You are going away? your day is over?"
+
+"My father is coming to fetch me," said Mademoiselle Noemie.
+
+She had hardly spoken when, through the door behind her,
+which opens on one of the great white stone staircases of the Louvre,
+M. Nioche made his appearance.  He came in with his usual even,
+patient shuffle, and he made a low salute to the two
+gentlemen who were standing before his daughter's easel.
+Newman shook his hands with muscular friendliness, and Valentin
+returned his greeting with extreme deference.  While the old man
+stood waiting for Noemie to make a parcel of her implements,
+he let his mild, oblique gaze hover toward Bellegarde, who was
+watching Mademoiselle Noemie put on her bonnet and mantle.
+Valentin was at no pains to disguise his scrutiny.
+He looked at a pretty girl as he would have listened to a piece
+of music.  Attention, in each case, was simple good manners.
+M. Nioche at last took his daughter's paint-box in one
+hand and the bedaubed canvas, after giving it a solemn,
+puzzled stare, in the other, and led the way to the door.
+Mademoiselle Noemie made the young men the salute of a duchess,
+and followed her father.
+
+"Well," said Newman, "what do you think of her?"
+
+"She is very remarkable.  Diable, diable, diable!" repeated M. de
+Bellegarde, reflectively; "she is very remarkable."
+
+"I am afraid she is a sad little adventuress," said Newman.
+
+"Not a little one--a great one.  She has the material."
+And Valentin began to walk away slowly, looking vaguely at the
+pictures on the walls, with a thoughtful illumination in his eye.
+Nothing could have appealed to his imagination more than the
+possible adventures of a young lady endowed with the "material"
+of Mademoiselle Nioche.  "She is very interesting," he went on.
+"She is a beautiful type."
+
+"A beautiful type?  What the deuce do you mean?" asked Newman.
+
+"I mean from the artistic point of view.  She is an artist,--
+outside of her painting, which obviously is execrable."
+
+"But she is not beautiful.  I don't even think her very pretty."
+
+"She is quite pretty enough for her purposes, and it is a face and figure on
+which everything tells.  If she were prettier she would be less intelligent,
+and her intelligence is half of her charm."
+
+"In what way," asked Newman, who was much amused at his
+companion's immediate philosophization of Mademoiselle Nioche,
+"does her intelligence strike you as so remarkable?"
+
+"She has taken the measure of life, and she has determined
+to BE something--to succeed at any cost.  Her painting,
+of course, is a mere trick to gain time.  She is waiting for
+her chance; she wishes to launch herself, and to do it well.
+She knows her Paris.  She is one of fifty thousand, so far
+as the mere ambition goes; but I am very sure that in the way
+of resolution and capacity she is a rarity.  And in one gift--
+perfect heartlessness--I will warrant she is unsurpassed.
+She has not as much heart as will go on the point of a needle.
+That is an immense virtue.  Yes, she is one of the celebrities
+of the future."
+
+"Heaven help us!" said Newman, "how far the artistic point
+of view may take a man!  But in this case I must request that you
+don't let it take you too far.  You have learned a wonderful
+deal about Mademoiselle Noemie in a quarter of an hour.
+Let that suffice; don't follow up your researches."
+
+"My dear fellow," cried Bellegarde with warmth, "I hope I
+have too good manners to intrude."
+
+"You are not intruding.  The girl is nothing to me.
+In fact, I rather dislike her.  But I like her poor old father,
+and for his sake I beg you to abstain from any attempt
+to verify your theories."
+
+"For the sake of that seedy old gentleman who came to fetch her?"
+demanded Valentin, stopping short.  And on Newman's assenting, "Ah no,
+ah no," he went on with a smile.  "You are quite wrong, my dear fellow;
+you needn't mind him."
+
+"I verily believe that you are accusing the poor gentleman of being
+capable of rejoicing in his daughter's dishonor."
+
+"Voyons," said Valentin; "who is he? what is he?"
+
+"He is what he looks like:  as poor as a rat, but very high-toned."
+
+"Exactly.  I noticed him perfectly; be sure I do him justice.
+He has had losses, des malheurs, as we say.
+He is very low-spirited, and his daughter is too much for him.
+He is the pink of respectability, and he has sixty years
+of honesty on his back.  All this I perfectly appreciate.
+But I know my fellow-men and my fellow-Parisians, and I will make
+a bargain with you."  Newman gave ear to his bargain and he went on.
+"He would rather his daughter were a good girl than a bad one,
+but if the worst comes to the worst, the old man will not
+do what Virginius did.  Success justifies everything.
+If Mademoiselle Noemie makes a figure, her papa will feel--
+well, we will call it relieved.  And she will make a figure.
+The old gentleman's future is assured."
+
+"I don't know what Virginius did, but M. Nioche will shoot Miss Noemie,"
+said Newman.  "After that, I suppose his future will be assured
+in some snug prison."
+
+"I am not a cynic; I am simply an observer," Valentin rejoined.
+"Mademoiselle Noemie interests me; she is extremely remarkable.
+If there is a good reason, in honor or decency, for dismissing
+her from my thoughts forever, I am perfectly willing to do it.
+Your estimate of the papa's sensibilities is a good reason until it
+is invalidated.  I promise you not to look at the young girl again
+until you tell me that you have changed your mind about the papa.
+When he has given distinct proof of being a philosopher, you will
+raise your interdict.  Do you agree to that?"
+
+"Do you mean to bribe him?"
+
+"Oh, you admit, then, that he is bribable?  No, he would ask too much,
+and it would not be exactly fair.  I mean simply to wait.
+You will continue, I suppose, to see this interesting couple,
+and you will give me the news yourself."
+
+"Well," said Newman, "if the old man turns out a humbug,
+you may do what you please.  I wash my hands of the matter.
+For the girl herself, you may be at rest.  I don't know
+what harm she may do to me, but I certainly can't hurt her.
+It seems to me," said Newman, "that you are very well matched.
+You are both hard cases, and M. Nioche and I, I believe,
+are the only virtuous men to be found in Paris."
+
+Soon after this M. de Bellegarde, in punishment for his levity,
+received a stern poke in the back from a pointed instrument.
+Turning quickly round he found the weapon to be a parasol wielded
+by a lady in green gauze bonnet.  Valentin's English cousins had been
+drifting about unpiloted, and evidently deemed that they had a grievance.
+Newman left him to their mercies, but with a boundless faith in his
+power to plead his cause.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+
+
+Three days after his introduction to the family of Madame
+de Cintre, Newman, coming in toward evening, found upon his table
+the card of the Marquis de Bellegarde.  On the following day
+he received a note informing him that the Marquise de Bellegarde
+would be grateful for the honor of his company at dinner.
+
+He went, of course, though he had to break another engagement
+to do it.  He was ushered into the room in which Madame
+de Bellegarde had received him before, and here he found
+his venerable hostess, surrounded by her entire family.
+The room was lighted only by the crackling fire,
+which illuminated the very small pink slippers of a lady who,
+seated in a low chair, was stretching out her toes before it.
+This lady was the younger Madame de Bellegarde.  Madame de
+Cintre was seated at the other end of the room, holding a little
+girl against her knee, the child of her brother Urbain,
+to whom she was apparently relating a wonderful story.
+Valentin was sitting on a puff, close to his sister-in-law,
+into whose ear he was certainly distilling the finest nonsense.
+The marquis was stationed before the fire, with his head erect
+and his hands behind him, in an attitude of formal expectancy.
+
+Old Madame de Bellegarde stood up to give Newman her greeting,
+and there was that in the way she did so which seemed
+to measure narrowly the extent of her condescension.
+"We are all alone, you see, we have asked no one else,"
+she said, austerely.
+
+"I am very glad you didn't; this is much more sociable," said Newman.
+"Good evening, sir," and he offered his hand to the marquis.
+
+M. de Bellegarde was affable, but in spite of his dignity he was restless.
+He began to pace up and down the room, he looked out of the long windows,
+he took up books and laid them down again.  Young Madame de Bellegarde gave
+Newman her hand without moving and without looking at him.
+
+"You may think that is coldness," exclaimed Valentin; "but it is not,
+it is warmth.  It shows she is treating you as an intimate.
+Now she detests me, and yet she is always looking at me."
+
+"No wonder I detest you if I am always looking at you!" cried the lady.
+"If Mr. Newman does not like my way of shaking hands, I will do it again."
+
+But this charming privilege was lost upon our hero, who was
+already making his way across the room to Madame de Cintre.
+She looked at him as she shook hands, but she went on with
+the story she was telling her little niece.  She had only two or
+three phrases to add, but they were apparently of great moment.
+She deepened her voice, smiling as she did so, and the little
+girl gazed at her with round eyes.
+
+"But in the end the young prince married the beautiful Florabella,"
+said Madame de Cintre, "and carried her off to live with him in the Land
+of the Pink Sky.  There she was so happy that she forgot all her troubles,
+and went out to drive every day of her life in an ivory coach drawn
+by five hundred white mice.  Poor Florabella," she exclaimed to Newman,
+"had suffered terribly."
+
+"She had had nothing to eat for six months," said little Blanche.
+
+"Yes, but when the six months were over, she had a
+plum-cake as big as that ottoman," said Madame de Cintre.
+"That quite set her up again."
+
+"What a checkered career!" said Newman.  "Are you very fond of children?"
+He was certain that she was, but he wished to make her say it.
+
+"I like to talk with them," she answered; "we can talk
+with them so much more seriously than with grown persons.
+That is great nonsense that I have been telling Blanche,
+but it is a great deal more serious than most of what we
+say in society."
+
+"I wish you would talk to me, then, as if I were Blanche's age,"
+said Newman, laughing.  "Were you happy at your ball,
+the other night?"
+
+"Ecstatically!"
+
+"Now you are talking the nonsense that we talk in society," said Newman.
+"I don't believe that."
+
+"It was my own fault if I was not happy.  The ball was very pretty,
+and every one very amiable."
+
+"It was on your conscience," said Newman, "that you had annoyed
+your mother and your brother."
+
+Madame de Cintre looked at him a moment without answering.
+"That is true," she replied at last.  "I had undertaken
+more than I could carry out.  I have very little courage;
+I am not a heroine."  She said this with a certain soft emphasis;
+but then, changing her tone, "I could never have gone through
+the sufferings of the beautiful Florabella," she added,
+not even for her prospective rewards.
+
+Dinner was announced, and Newman betook himself to the side
+of the old Madame de Bellegarde.  The dining-room, at the end
+of a cold corridor, was vast and sombre; the dinner was
+simple and delicately excellent.  Newman wondered whether
+Madame de Cintre had had something to do with ordering
+the repast and greatly hoped she had.  Once seated at table,
+with the various members of the ancient house of Bellegarde
+around him, he asked himself the meaning of his position.
+Was the old lady responding to his advances?  Did the fact
+that he was a solitary guest augment his credit or diminish it?
+Were they ashamed to show him to other people, or did they wish to
+give him a sign of sudden adoption into their last reserve of favor?
+Newman was on his guard; he was watchful and conjectural;
+and yet at the same time he was vaguely indifferent.
+Whether they gave him a long rope or a short one he was
+there now, and Madame de Cintre was opposite to him.
+She had a tall candlestick on each side of her;
+she would sit there for the next hour, and that was enough.
+The dinner was extremely solemn and measured; he wondered
+whether this was always the state of things in "old families."
+Madame de Bellegarde held her head very high, and fixed her eyes,
+which looked peculiarly sharp in her little, finely-wrinkled
+white face, very intently upon the table-service. The marquis
+appeared to have decided that the fine arts offered a safe subject
+of conversation, as not leading to startling personal revelations.
+Every now and then, having learned from Newman that he had been
+through the museums of Europe, he uttered some polished aphorism
+upon the flesh-tints of Rubens and the good taste of Sansovino.
+His manners seemed to indicate a fine, nervous dread that
+something disagreeable might happen if the atmosphere were
+not purified by allusions of a thoroughly superior cast.
+"What under the sun is the man afraid of?"  Newman asked himself.
+"Does he think I am going to offer to swap jack-knives with him?"
+It was useless to shut his eyes to the fact that the marquis
+was profoundly disagreeable to him.  He had never been
+a man of strong personal aversions; his nerves had not been
+at the mercy of the mystical qualities of his neighbors.
+But here was a man towards whom he was irresistibly in opposition;
+a man of forms and phrases and postures; a man full of possible
+impertinences and treacheries.  M. de Bellegarde made him feel
+as if he were standing bare-footed on a marble floor; and yet,
+to gain his desire, Newman felt perfectly able to stand.
+He wondered what Madame de Cintre thought of his being accepted,
+if accepted it was.  There was no judging from her face,
+which expressed simply the desire to be gracious in a manner
+which should require as little explicit recognition as possible.
+Young Madame de Bellegarde had always the same manners;
+she was always preoccupied, distracted, listening to everything
+and hearing nothing, looking at her dress, her rings,
+her finger-nails, seeming rather bored, and yet puzzling
+you to decide what was her ideal of social diversion.
+Newman was enlightened on this point later.  Even Valentin did
+not quite seem master of his wits; his vivacity was fitful
+and forced, yet Newman observed that in the lapses of his talk
+he appeared excited.  His eyes had an intenser spark than usual.
+The effect of all this was that Newman, for the first time
+in his life, was not himself; that he measured his movements,
+and counted his words, and resolved that if the occasion
+demanded that he should appear to have swallowed a ramrod,
+he would meet the emergency.
+
+After dinner M. de Bellegarde proposed to his guest that they
+should go into the smoking-room, and he led the way toward a small,
+somewhat musty apartment, the walls of which were ornamented
+with old hangings of stamped leather and trophies of rusty arms.
+Newman refused a cigar, but he established himself upon one
+of the divans, while the marquis puffed his own weed before
+the fire-place, and Valentin sat looking through the light fumes
+of a cigarette from one to the other.
+
+"I can't keep quiet any longer," said Valentin, at last.
+"I must tell you the news and congratulate you.
+My brother seems unable to come to the point; he revolves
+around his announcement like the priest around the altar.
+You are accepted as a candidate for the hand of our sister."
+
+"Valentin, be a little proper!" murmured the marquis, with a look of the most
+delicate irritation contracting the bridge of his high nose.
+
+"There has been a family council," the young man continued;
+"my mother and Urbain have put their heads together,
+and even my testimony has not been altogether excluded.
+My mother and the marquis sat at a table covered with green cloth;
+my sister-in-law and I were on a bench against the wall.
+It was like a committee at the Corps Legislatif.
+We were called up, one after the other, to testify.
+We spoke of you very handsomely.  Madame de Bellegarde said
+that if she had not been told who you were, she would have taken
+you for a duke--an American duke, the Duke of California.
+I said that I could warrant you grateful for the smallest favors--
+modest, humble, unassuming.  I was sure that you would know
+your own place, always, and never give us occasion to remind
+you of certain differences.  After all, you couldn't help it
+if you were not a duke.  There were none in your country;
+but if there had been, it was certain that, smart and active
+as you are, you would have got the pick of the titles.
+At this point I was ordered to sit down, but I think I made
+an impression in your favor."
+
+M. de Bellegarde looked at his brother with dangerous coldness,
+and gave a smile as thin as the edge of a knife.  Then he removed
+a spark of cigar-ash from the sleeve of his coat; he fixed his eyes
+for a while on the cornice of the room, and at last he inserted
+one of his white hands into the breast of his waistcoat.
+"I must apologize to you for the deplorable levity of my brother,"
+he said, "and I must notify you that this is probably not the last
+time that his want of tact will cause you serious embarrassment."
+
+"No, I confess I have no tact," said Valentin.  "Is your embarrassment
+really painful, Newman?  The marquis will put you right again;
+his own touch is deliciously delicate."
+
+"Valentin, I am sorry to say," the marquis continued,
+"has never possessed the tone, the manner, that belongs to a
+young man in his position.  It has been a great affliction
+to his mother, who is very fond of the old traditions.
+But you must remember that he speaks for no one but himself."
+
+"Oh, I don't mind him, sir," said Newman, good-humoredly. "I
+know what he amounts to."
+
+"In the good old times," said Valentin, "marquises and counts used to have
+their appointed fools and jesters, to crack jokes for them.  Nowadays we
+see a great strapping democrat keeping a count about him to play the fool.
+It's a good situation, but I certainly am very degenerate."
+
+M. de Bellegarde fixed his eyes for some time on the floor.
+"My mother informed me," he said presently, "of the announcement
+that you made to her the other evening."
+
+"That I desired to marry your sister?" said Newman.
+
+"That you wished to arrange a marriage," said the marquis, slowly,
+"with my sister, the Comtesse de Cintre.  The proposal was serious,
+and required, on my mother's part, a great deal of reflection.
+She naturally took me into her counsels, and I gave my most zealous
+attention to the subject.  There was a great deal to be considered;
+more than you appear to imagine.  We have viewed the question
+on all its faces, we have weighed one thing against another.
+Our conclusion has been that we favor your suit.
+My mother has desired me to inform you of our decision.
+She will have the honor of saying a few words to you on
+the subject, herself.  Meanwhile, by us, the heads of the family,
+you are accepted."
+
+Newman got up and came nearer to the marquis.  "You will do nothing
+to hinder me, and all you can to help me, eh?"
+
+"I will recommend my sister to accept you."
+
+Newman passed his hand over his face, and pressed it for
+a moment upon his eyes.  This promise had a great sound,
+and yet the pleasure he took in it was embittered by his having
+to stand there so and receive his passport from M. de Bellegarde.
+The idea of having this gentleman mixed up with his wooing
+and wedding was more and more disagreeable to him.
+But Newman had resolved to go through the mill, as he imagined it,
+and he would not cry out at the first turn of the wheel.
+He was silent a while, and then he said, with a certain dryness
+which Valentin told him afterwards had a very grand air,
+"I am much obliged to you."
+
+"I take note of the promise," said Valentin, "I register the vow."
+
+M. de Bellegarde began to gaze at the cornice again; he apparently
+had something more to say.  "I must do my mother the justice,"
+he resumed, "I must do myself the justice, to say that our decision
+was not easy.  Such an arrangement was not what we had expected.
+The idea that my sister should marry a gentleman--ah--in business
+was something of a novelty."
+
+"So I told you, you know," said Valentin raising his finger at Newman.
+
+"The novelty has not quite worn away, I confess," the marquis went on;
+"perhaps it never will, entirely.  But possibly that is not altogether
+to be regretted," and he gave his thin smile again.  "It may be that
+the time has come when we should make some concession to novelty.
+There had been no novelties in our house for a great many years.
+I made the observation to my mother, and she did me the honor to admit
+that it was worthy of attention."
+
+"My dear brother," interrupted Valentin, "is not your memory just
+here leading you the least bit astray?  Our mother is, I may say,
+distinguished for her small respect of abstract reasoning.  Are you
+very sure that she replied to your striking proposition in the gracious
+manner you describe?  You know how terribly incisive she is sometimes.
+Didn't she, rather, do you the honor to say, 'A fiddlestick for your phrases!
+There are better reasons than that'?"
+
+"Other reasons were discussed," said the marquis, without looking at Valentin,
+but with an audible tremor in his voice; "some of them possibly were better.
+We are conservative, Mr. Newman, but we are not also bigots.  We judged
+the matter liberally.  We have no doubt that everything will be comfortable."
+
+Newman had stood listening to these remarks with his arms folded and his
+eyes fastened upon M. de Bellegarde, "Comfortable?" he said, with a sort
+of grim flatness of intonation.  "Why shouldn't we be comfortable?
+If you are not, it will be your own fault; I have everything to make ME so."
+
+"My brother means that with the lapse of time you may get used to the change"--
+and Valentin paused, to light another cigarette.
+
+"What change?" asked Newman in the same tone.
+
+"Urbain," said Valentin, very gravely, "I am afraid that Mr. Newman does
+not quite realize the change.  We ought to insist upon that."
+
+"My brother goes too far," said M. de Bellegarde.
+"It is his fatal want of tact again.  It is my mother's wish,
+and mine, that no such allusions should be made.
+Pray never make them yourself.  We prefer to assume that
+the person accepted as the possible husband of my sister is one
+of ourselves, and that he should have no explanations to make.
+With a little discretion on both sides, everything, I think,
+will be easy.  That is exactly what I wished to say--
+that we quite understand what we have undertaken, and that you
+may depend upon our adhering to our resolution."
+
+Valentin shook his hands in the air and then buried his face in them.
+"I have less tact than I might have, no doubt; but oh,
+my brother, if you knew what you yourself were saying!"
+And he went off into a long laugh.
+
+M. de Bellegarde's face flushed a little, but he held his head higher,
+as if to repudiate this concession to vulgar perturbability.
+"I am sure you understand me," he said to Newman.
+
+"Oh no, I don't understand you at all," said Newman.
+"But you needn't mind that.  I don't care.  In fact, I think
+I had better not understand you.  I might not like it.
+That wouldn't suit me at all, you know.  I want to marry
+your sister, that's all; to do it as quickly as possible,
+and to find fault with nothing.  I don't care how I do it.
+I am not marrying you, you know, sir.  I have got my leave,
+and that is all I want."
+
+"You had better receive the last word from my mother,"
+said the marquis.
+
+"Very good; I will go and get it," said Newman; and he prepared
+to return to the drawing-room.
+
+M. de Bellegarde made a motion for him to pass first, and when
+Newman had gone out he shut himself into the room with Valentin.
+Newman had been a trifle bewildered by the audacious irony
+of the younger brother, and he had not needed its aid to point
+the moral of M. de Bellegarde's transcendent patronage.
+He had wit enough to appreciate the force of that civility
+which consists in calling your attention to the impertinences
+it spares you.  But he had felt warmly the delicate sympathy
+with himself that underlay Valentin's fraternal irreverence,
+and he was most unwilling that his friend should pay a tax upon it.
+He paused a moment in the corridor, after he had gone a few steps,
+expecting to hear the resonance of M. de Bellegarde's displeasure;
+but he detected only a perfect stillness.  The stillness
+itself seemed a trifle portentous; he reflected however that
+he had no right to stand listening, and he made his way back
+to the salon.  In his absence several persons had come in.
+They were scattered about the room in groups, two or three of them
+having passed into a small boudoir, next to the drawing-room,
+which had now been lighted and opened.  Old Madame de Bellegarde
+was in her place by the fire, talking to a very old gentleman
+in a wig and a profuse white neck cloth of the fashion of 1820.
+Madame de Cintre was bending a listening head to the historic
+confidences of an old lady who was presumably the wife
+of the old gentleman in the neckcloth, an old lady in a red
+satin dress and an ermine cape, who wore across her forehead
+a band with a topaz set in it.  Young Madame de Bellegarde,
+when Newman came in, left some people among whom she was sitting,
+and took the place that she had occupied before dinner.
+Then she gave a little push to the puff that stood near her,
+and by a glance at Newman seemed to indicate that she had placed
+it in position for him.  He went and took possession of it;
+the marquis's wife amused and puzzled him.
+
+"I know your secret," she said, in her bad but charming English;
+"you need make no mystery of it.  You wish to marry my sister-in-law.
+C'est un beau choix.  A man like you ought to marry a tall, thin woman.
+You must know that I have spoken in your favor; you owe me a famous taper!"
+
+"You have spoken to Madame de Cintre?" said Newman.
+
+"Oh no, not that.  You may think it strange, but my sister-in-law and I are
+not so intimate as that.  No; I spoke to my husband and my mother-in-law;
+I said I was sure we could do what we chose with you."
+
+"I am much, obliged to you," said Newman, laughing; "but you can't."
+
+"I know that very well; I didn't believe a word of it.
+But I wanted you to come into the house; I thought we
+should be friends."
+
+"I am very sure of it," said Newman.
+
+"Don't be too sure.  If you like Madame de Cintre so much,
+perhaps you will not like me.  We are as different as blue and pink.
+But you and I have something in common.  I have come into this
+family by marriage; you want to come into it in the same way."
+
+"Oh no, I don't!" interrupted Newman.  "I only want to take Madame
+de Cintre out of it."
+
+"Well, to cast your nets you have to go into the water.
+Our positions are alike; we shall be able to compare notes.
+What do you think of my husband?  It's a strange question, isn't it?
+But I shall ask you some stranger ones yet."
+
+"Perhaps a stranger one will be easier to answer," said Newman.
+"You might try me."
+
+"Oh, you get off very well; the old Comte de la Rochefidele,
+yonder, couldn't do it better.  I told them that if we only
+gave you a chance you would be a perfect talon rouge.  I know
+something about men.  Besides, you and I belong to the same camp.
+I am a ferocious democrat.  By birth I am vieille roche; a good
+little bit of the history of France is the history of my family.
+Oh, you never heard of us, of course!  Ce que c'est que la gloire!
+We are much better than the Bellegardes, at any rate.
+But I don't care a pin for my pedigree; I want to belong to my time.
+I'm a revolutionist, a radical, a child of the age!
+I am sure I go beyond you.  I like clever people, wherever they
+come from, and I take my amusement wherever I find it.
+I don't pout at the Empire; here all the world pouts at the Empire.
+Of course I have to mind what I say; but I expect to take my
+revenge with you."  Madame de Bellegarde discoursed for some
+time longer in this sympathetic strain, with an eager abundance
+which seemed to indicate that her opportunities for revealing
+her esoteric philosophy were indeed rare.  She hoped that Newman
+would never be afraid of her, however he might be with the others,
+for, really, she went very far indeed.  "Strong people"--
+le gens forts--were in her opinion equal, all the world over.
+Newman listened to her with an attention at once beguiled and irritated.
+He wondered what the deuce she, too, was driving at, with her hope
+that he would not be afraid of her and her protestations of equality.
+In so far as he could understand her, she was wrong; a silly,
+rattling woman was certainly not the equal of a sensible man,
+preoccupied with an ambitious passion.  Madame de Bellegarde
+stopped suddenly, and looked at him sharply, shaking her fan.
+"I see you don't believe me," she said, "you are too much on your guard.
+You will not form an alliance, offensive or defensive?
+You are very wrong; I could help you."
+
+Newman answered that he was very grateful and that he would certainly ask
+for help; she should see.  "But first of all," he said, "I must help myself."
+And he went to join Madame de Cintre.
+
+"I have been telling Madame de la Rochefidele that you are
+an American," she said, as he came up.  "It interests her greatly.
+Her father went over with the French troops to help you
+in your battles in the last century, and she has always,
+in consequence, wanted greatly to see an American.
+But she has never succeeded till to-night. You are the first--
+to her knowledge--that she has ever looked at."
+
+Madame de la Rochefidele had an aged, cadaverous face,
+with a falling of the lower jaw which prevented her from
+bringing her lips together, and reduced her conversations
+to a series of impressive but inarticulate gutturals.
+She raised an antique eyeglass, elaborately mounted
+in chased silver, and looked at Newman from head to foot.
+Then she said something to which he listened deferentially,
+but which he completely failed to understand.
+
+"Madame de la Rochefidele says that she is convinced that she must
+have seen Americans without knowing it," Madame de Cintre explained.
+Newman thought it probable she had seen a great many things
+without knowing it; and the old lady, again addressing herself
+to utterance, declared--as interpreted by Madame de Cintre--
+that she wished she had known it.
+
+At this moment the old gentleman who had been talking to the elder
+Madame de Bellegarde drew near, leading the marquise on his arm.
+His wife pointed out Newman to him, apparently explaining his
+remarkable origin.  M. de la Rochefidele, whose old age was rosy
+and rotund, spoke very neatly and clearly, almost as prettily,
+Newman thought, as M. Nioche.  When he had been enlightened,
+he turned to Newman with an inimitable elderly grace.
+
+"Monsieur is by no means the first American that I have seen," he said.
+"Almost the first person I ever saw--to notice him--was an American."
+
+"Ah?" said Newman, sympathetically.
+
+"The great Dr. Franklin," said M. de la Rochefidele.
+"Of course I was very young.  He was received very well
+in our monde."
+
+"Not better than Mr. Newman," said Madame de Bellegarde.
+"I beg he will offer his arm into the other room.
+I could have offered no higher privilege to Dr. Franklin."
+
+Newman, complying with Madame de Bellegarde's request, perceived that
+her two sons had returned to the drawing-room. He scanned their
+faces an instant for traces of the scene that had followed his
+separation from them, but the marquise seemed neither more nor
+less frigidly grand than usual, and Valentin was kissing ladies'
+hands with at least his habitual air of self-abandonment to the act.
+Madame de Bellegarde gave a glance at her eldest son, and by the time
+she had crossed the threshold of her boudoir he was at her side.
+The room was now empty and offered a sufficient degree of privacy.
+The old lady disengaged herself from Newman's arm and rested her hand
+on the arm of the marquis; and in this position she stood a moment,
+holding her head high and biting her small under-lip. I am afraid
+the picture was lost upon Newman, but Madame de Bellegarde was,
+in fact, at this moment a striking image of the dignity which--
+even in the case of a little time-shrunken old lady--may reside
+in the habit of unquestioned authority and the absoluteness of a
+social theory favorable to yourself.
+
+"My son has spoken to you as I desired," she said, "and you understand
+that we shall not interfere.  The rest will lie with yourself."
+
+"M. de Bellegarde told me several things I didn't understand,"
+said Newman, "but I made out that.  You will leave me open field.
+I am much obliged."
+
+"I wish to add a word that my son probably did not feel at liberty to say,"
+the marquise rejoined.  "I must say it for my own peace of mind.
+We are stretching a point; we are doing you a great favor."
+
+"Oh, your son said it very well; didn't you?" said Newman.
+
+"Not so well as my mother," declared the marquis.
+
+"I can only repeat--I am much obliged."
+
+"It is proper I should tell you," Madame de Bellegarde went on,
+"that I am very proud, and that I hold my head very high.
+I may be wrong, but I am too old to change.
+At least I know it, and I don't pretend to anything else.
+Don't flatter yourself that my daughter is not proud.
+She is proud in her own way--a somewhat different way from mine.
+You will have to make your terms with that.  Even Valentin
+is proud, if you touch the right spot--or the wrong one.
+Urbain is proud; that you see for yourself.  Sometimes I
+think he is a little too proud; but I wouldn't change him.
+He is the best of my children; he cleaves to his old mother.
+But I have said enough to show you that we are all proud together.
+It is well that you should know the sort of people you
+have come among."
+
+"Well," said Newman, "I can only say, in return, that I am NOT proud;
+I shan't mind you!  But you speak as if you intended to be very disagreeable."
+
+"I shall not enjoy having my daughter marry you, and I shall not pretend
+to enjoy it.  If you don't mind that, so much the better."
+
+"If you stick to your own side of the contract we shall
+not quarrel; that is all I ask of you," said Newman.
+"Keep your hands off, and give me an open field.
+I am very much in earnest, and there is not the slightest
+danger of my getting discouraged or backing out.
+You will have me constantly before your eyes; if you don't
+like it, I am sorry for you.  I will do for your daughter,
+if she will accept me everything that a man can do for a woman.
+I am happy to tell you that, as a promise--a pledge.
+I consider that on your side you make me an equal pledge.
+You will not back out, eh?"
+
+"I don't know what you mean by 'backing out,' " said the marquise.
+"It suggests a movement of which I think no Bellegarde has
+ever been guilty."
+
+"Our word is our word," said Urbain.  "We have given it."
+
+"Well, now," said Newman, "I am very glad you are so proud.
+It makes me believe that you will keep it."
+
+The marquise was silent a moment, and then, suddenly, "I shall
+always be polite to you, Mr. Newman," she declared, "but, decidedly,
+I shall never like you."
+
+"Don't be too sure," said Newman, laughing.
+
+"I am so sure that I will ask you to take me back to my arm-chair without the
+least fear of having my sentiments modified by the service you render me."
+And Madame de Bellegarde took his arm, and returned to the salon and to
+her customary place.
+
+M. de la Rochefidele and his wife were preparing to take their leave,
+and Madame de Cintre's interview with the mumbling old lady was at an end.
+She stood looking about her, asking herself, apparently to whom she
+should next speak, when Newman came up to her.
+
+"Your mother has given me leave--very solemnly--to come here often," he said.
+"I mean to come often."
+
+"I shall be glad to see you," she answered, simply.  And then, in a moment.
+"You probably think it very strange that there should be such a solemnity--
+as you say--about your coming."
+
+"Well, yes; I do, rather."
+
+"Do you remember what my brother Valentin said, the first time
+you came to see me--that we were a strange, strange family?"
+
+"It was not the first time I came, but the second," said Newman.
+
+"Very true.  Valentin annoyed me at the time, but now I know you better,
+I may tell you he was right.  If you come often, you will see!"
+and Madame de Cintre turned away.
+
+Newman watched her a while, talking with other people,
+and then he took his leave.  He shook hands last with Valentin
+de Bellegarde, who came out with him to the top of the staircase.
+"Well, you have got your permit," said Valentin.
+"I hope you liked the process."
+
+"I like your sister, more than ever.  But don't worry your
+brother any more for my sake," Newman added.  "I don't mind him.
+I am afraid he came down on you in the smoking-room, after
+I went out."
+
+"When my brother comes down on me," said Valentin, "he falls hard.
+I have a peculiar way of receiving him.  I must say," he continued,
+"that they came up to the mark much sooner than I expected.
+I don't understand it, they must have had to turn the screw pretty tight.
+It's a tribute to your millions."
+
+"Well, it's the most precious one they have ever received," said Newman.
+
+He was turning away when Valentin stopped him, looking at him with
+a brilliant, softly-cynical glance.  "I should like to know whether,
+within a few days, you have seen your venerable friend M. Nioche."
+
+"He was yesterday at my rooms," Newman answered.
+
+"What did he tell you?"
+
+"Nothing particular."
+
+"You didn't see the muzzle of a pistol sticking out of his pocket?"
+
+"What are you driving at?"  Newman demanded.  "I thought he seemed
+rather cheerful for him."
+
+Valentin broke into a laugh.  "I am delighted to hear it!
+I win my bet.  Mademoiselle Noemie has thrown her cap over
+the mill, as we say.  She has left the paternal domicile.
+She is launched!  And M. Nioche is rather cheerful--FOR HIM!
+Don't brandish your tomahawk at that rate; I have not seen
+her nor communicated with her since that day at the Louvre.
+Andromeda has found another Perseus than I. My information is exact;
+on such matters it always is.  I suppose that now you will
+raise your protest."
+
+"My protest be hanged!" murmured Newman, disgustedly.
+
+But his tone found no echo in that in which Valentin,
+with his hand on the door, to return to his mother's apartment,
+exclaimed, "But I shall see her now!  She is very remarkable--
+she is very remarkable!"
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+
+
+Newman kept his promise, or his menace, of going often to
+the Rue de l'Universite, and during the next six weeks he saw
+Madame de Cintre more times than he could have numbered.
+He flattered himself that he was not in love, but his biographer
+may be supposed to know better.  He claimed, at least,
+none of the exemptions and emoluments of the romantic passion.
+Love, he believed, made a fool of a man, and his present emotion
+was not folly but wisdom; wisdom sound, serene, well-directed.
+What he felt was an intense, all-consuming tenderness,
+which had for its object an extraordinarily graceful
+and delicate, and at the same time impressive, woman who
+lived in a large gray house on the left bank of the Seine.
+This tenderness turned very often into a positive heart-ache;
+a sign in which, certainly, Newman ought to have read
+the appellation which science has conferred upon his sentiment.
+When the heart has a heavy weight upon it, it hardly matters
+whether the weight be of gold or of lead; when, at any rate,
+happiness passes into that place in which it becomes identical
+with pain, a man may admit that the reign of wisdom is
+temporarily suspended.  Newman wished Madame de Cintre so well
+that nothing he could think of doing for her in the future rose
+to the high standard which his present mood had set itself.
+She seemed to him so felicitous a product of nature and circumstance
+that his invention, musing on future combinations, was constantly
+catching its breath with the fear of stumbling into some brutal
+compression or mutilation of her beautiful personal harmony.
+This is what I mean by Newman's tenderness:  Madame de Cintre
+pleased him so, exactly as she was, that his desire to interpose
+between her and the troubles of life had the quality of a young
+mother's eagerness to protect the sleep of her first-born child.
+Newman was simply charmed, and he handled his charm as if
+it were a music-box which would stop if one shook it.
+There can be no better proof of the hankering epicure that
+is hidden in every man's temperament, waiting for a signal
+from some divine confederate that he may safely peep out.
+Newman at last was enjoying, purely, freely, deeply.
+Certain of Madame de Cintre's personal qualities--the luminous
+sweetness of her eyes, the delicate mobility of her face,
+the deep liquidity of her voice--filled all his consciousness.
+A rose-crowned Greek of old, gazing at a marble goddess
+with his whole bright intellect resting satisfied in the act,
+could not have been a more complete embodiment of the wisdom
+that loses itself in the enjoyment of quiet harmonies.
+
+He made no violent love to her--no sentimental speeches.
+He never trespassed on what she had made him understand was for
+the present forbidden ground.  But he had, nevertheless, a comfortable
+sense that she knew better from day to day how much he admired her.
+Though in general he was no great talker, he talked much,
+and he succeeded perfectly in making her say many things.
+He was not afraid of boring her, either by his discourse
+or by his silence; and whether or no he did occasionally
+bore her, it is probable that on the whole she liked him
+only the better for his absense of embarrassed scruples.
+Her visitors, coming in often while Newman sat there,
+found a tall, lean, silent man in a half-lounging attitude,
+who laughed out sometimes when no one had meant to be droll,
+and remained grave in the presence of calculated witticisms,
+for appreciation of which he had apparently not the proper culture.
+
+It must be confessed that the number of subjects upon which Newman
+had no ideas was extremely large, and it must be added that as regards
+those subjects upon which he was without ideas he was also perfectly
+without words.  He had little of the small change of conversation,
+and his stock of ready-made formulas and phrases was the scantiest.
+On the other hand he had plenty of attention to bestow, and his
+estimate of the importance of a topic did not depend upon the number
+of clever things he could say about it.  He himself was almost
+never bored, and there was no man with whom it would have been
+a greater mistake to suppose that silence meant displeasure.
+What it was that entertained him during some of his speechless
+sessions I must, however, confess myself unable to determine.
+We know in a general way that a great many things which were old
+stories to a great many people had the charm of novelty to him,
+but a complete list of his new impressions would probably contain
+a number of surprises for us.  He told Madame de Cintre a hundred
+long stories; he explained to her, in talking of the United States,
+the working of various local institutions and mercantile customs.
+Judging by the sequel she was interested, but one would not have
+been sure of it beforehand.  As regards her own talk, Newman was
+very sure himself that she herself enjoyed it:  this was as a sort
+of amendment to the portrait that Mrs. Tristram had drawn of her.
+He discovered that she had naturally an abundance of gayety.
+He had been right at first in saying she was shy; her shyness,
+in a woman whose circumstances and tranquil beauty afforded every
+facility for well-mannered hardihood, was only a charm the more.
+For Newman it had lasted some time, and even when it went it left
+something behind it which for a while performed the same office.
+Was this the tearful secret of which Mrs. Tristram had had a glimpse,
+and of which, as of her friend's reserve, her high-breeding,
+and her profundity, she had given a sketch of which the
+outlines were, perhaps, rather too heavy?  Newman supposed so,
+but he found himself wondering less every day what Madame de
+Cintre's secrets might be, and more convinced that secrets were,
+in themselves, hateful things to her.  She was a woman for the light,
+not for the shade; and her natural line was not picturesque reserve
+and mysterious melancholy, but frank, joyous, brilliant action,
+with just so much meditation as was necessary, and not a grain more.
+To this, apparently, he had succeeded in bringing her back.
+He felt, himself, that he was an antidote to oppressive secrets;
+what he offered her was, in fact, above all things a vast,
+sunny immunity from the need of having any.
+
+He often passed his evenings, when Madame de Cintre had so appointed it,
+at the chilly fireside of Madame de Bellegarde, contenting himself
+with looking across the room, through narrowed eyelids, at his mistress,
+who always made a point, before her family, of talking to some one else.
+Madame de Bellegarde sat by the fire conversing neatly and coldly
+with whomsoever approached her, and glancing round the room with her
+slowly-restless eye, the effect of which, when it lighted upon him,
+was to Newman's sense identical with that of a sudden spurt of damp air.
+When he shook hands with her he always asked her with a laugh whether
+she could "stand him" another evening, and she replied, without a laugh,
+that thank God she had always been able to do her duty.  Newman, talking once
+of the marquise to Mrs. Tristram, said that after all it was very easy
+to get on with her; it always was easy to get on with out-and-out rascals.
+
+"And is it by that elegant term," said Mrs. Tristram, "that you
+designate the Marquise de Bellegarde?"
+
+"Well," said Newman, "she is wicked, she is an old sinner."
+
+"What is her crime?" asked Mrs. Tristram.
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if she had murdered some one--all from a sense
+of duty, of course."
+
+"How can you be so dreadful?" sighed Mrs. Tristram.
+
+"I am not dreadful.  I am speaking of her favorably."
+
+"Pray what will you say when you want to be severe?"
+
+"I shall keep my severity for some one else--for the marquis.
+There's a man I can't swallow, mix the drink as I will."
+
+"And what has HE done?"
+
+"I can't quite make out; it is something dreadfully bad,
+something mean and underhand, and not redeemed by audacity,
+as his mother's misdemeanors may have been.  If he has never
+committed murder, he has at least turned his back and looked
+the other way while some one else was committing it."
+
+In spite of this invidious hypothesis, which must be taken
+for nothing more than an example of the capricious play
+of "American humor," Newman did his best to maintain an easy
+and friendly style of communication with M. de Bellegarde.
+So long as he was in personal contact with people he disliked
+extremely to have anything to forgive them, and he was capable
+of a good deal of unsuspected imaginative effort (for the sake
+of his own personal comfort) to assume for the time that they
+were good fellows.  He did his best to treat the marquis
+as one; he believed honestly, moreover, that he could not,
+in reason, be such a confounded fool as he seemed.
+Newman's familiarity was never importunate; his sense of human
+equality was not an aggressive taste or an aesthetic theory,
+but something as natural and organic as a physical
+appetite which had never been put on a scanty allowance
+and consequently was innocent of ungraceful eagerness.
+His tranquil unsuspectingness of the relativity of his own place
+in the social scale was probably irritating to M. de Bellegarde,
+who saw himself reflected in the mind of his potential brother-in-law
+in a crude and colorless form, unpleasantly dissimilar to the
+impressive image projected upon his own intellectual mirror.
+He never forgot himself for an instant, and replied to what he must
+have considered Newman's "advances" with mechanical politeness.
+Newman, who was constantly forgetting himself, and indulging
+in an unlimited amount of irresponsible inquiry and conjecture,
+now and then found himself confronted by the conscious,
+ironical smile of his host.  What the deuce M. de
+Bellegarde was smiling at he was at a loss to divine.
+M. de Bellegarde's smile may be supposed to have been,
+for himself, a compromise between a great many emotions.
+So long as he smiled he was polite, and it was proper he should
+be polite.  A smile, moreover, committed him to nothing more
+than politeness, and left the degree of politeness agreeably vague.
+A smile, too, was neither dissent--which was too serious--
+nor agreement, which might have brought on terrible complications.
+And then a smile covered his own personal dignity, which in this
+critical situation he was resolved to keep immaculate; it was quite
+enough that the glory of his house should pass into eclipse.
+Between him and Newman, his whole manner seemed to declare
+there could be no interchange of opinion; he was holding
+his breath so as not to inhale the odor of democracy.
+Newman was far from being versed in European politics,
+but he liked to have a general idea of what was going
+on about him, and he accordingly asked M. de Bellegarde
+several times what he thought of public affairs.
+M. de Bellegarde answered with suave concision that he thought
+as ill of them as possible, that they were going from bad to worse,
+and that the age was rotten to its core.  This gave Newman,
+for the moment, an almost kindly feeling for the marquis;
+he pitied a man for whom the world was so cheerless a place,
+and the next time he saw M. de Bellegarde he attempted to call
+his attention to some of the brilliant features of the time.
+The marquis presently replied that he had but a single
+political conviction, which was enough for him:
+he believed in the divine right of Henry of Bourbon,
+Fifth of his name, to the throne of France.  Newman stared,
+and after this he ceased to talk politics with M. de Bellegarde.
+He was not horrified nor scandalized, he was not even amused;
+he felt as he should have felt if he had discovered
+in M. de Bellegarde a taste for certain oddities of diet;
+an appetite, for instance, for fishbones or nutshells.
+Under these circumstances, of course, he would never have
+broached dietary questions with him.
+
+One afternoon, on his calling on Madame de Cintre, Newman was
+requested by the servant to wait a few moments, as his hostess
+was not at liberty.  He walked about the room a while, taking up
+her books, smelling her flowers, and looking at her prints
+and photographs (which he thought prodigiously pretty), and at
+last he heard the opening of a door to which his back was turned.
+On the threshold stood an old woman whom he remembered
+to have met several times in entering and leaving the house.
+She was tall and straight and dressed in black, and she wore
+a cap which, if Newman had been initiated into such mysteries,
+would have been a sufficient assurance that she was not a Frenchwoman;
+a cap of pure British composition.  She had a pale, decent,
+depressed-looking face, and a clear, dull, English eye.
+She looked at Newman a moment, both intently and timidly,
+and then she dropped a short, straight English curtsey.
+
+"Madame de Cintre begs you will kindly wait," she said.
+"She has just come in; she will soon have finished dressing."
+
+"Oh, I will wait as long as she wants," said Newman.
+"Pray tell her not to hurry."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said the woman, softly; and then, instead of retiring
+with her message, she advanced into the room.  She looked about her
+for a moment, and presently went to a table and began to arrange certain
+books and knick-knacks. Newman was struck with the high respectability
+of her appearance; he was afraid to address her as a servant.
+She busied herself for some moments with putting the table in order
+and pulling the curtains straight, while Newman walked slowly to and fro.
+He perceived at last from her reflection in the mirror, as he was passing
+that her hands were idle and that she was looking at him intently.
+She evidently wished to say something, and Newman, perceiving it,
+helped her to begin.
+
+"You are English?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, sir, please," she answered, quickly and softly;
+"I was born in Wiltshire."
+
+"And what do you think of Paris?"
+
+"Oh, I don't think of Paris, sir," she said in the same tone.
+"It is so long since I have been here."
+
+"Ah, you have been here very long?"
+
+"It is more than forty years, sir.  I came over with Lady Emmeline."
+
+"You mean with old Madame de Bellegarde?"
+
+"Yes, sir.  I came with her when she was married.
+I was my lady's own woman."
+
+"And you have been with her ever since?"
+
+"I have been in the house ever since.  My lady has taken a younger person.
+You see I am very old.  I do nothing regular now.  But I keep about."
+
+"You look very strong and well," said Newman, observing the erectness
+of her figure, and a certain venerable rosiness in her cheek.
+
+"Thank God I am not ill, sir; I hope I know my duty
+too well to go panting and coughing about the house.
+But I am an old woman, sir, and it is as an old woman that I
+venture to speak to you."
+
+"Oh, speak out," said Newman, curiously.  "You needn't be afraid of me."
+
+"Yes, sir.  I think you are kind.  I have seen you before."
+
+"On the stairs, you mean?"
+
+"Yes, sir.  When you have been coming to see the countess.
+I have taken the liberty of noticing that you come often."
+
+"Oh yes; I come very often," said Newman, laughing.  "You need
+not have been wide-awake to notice that."
+
+"I have noticed it with pleasure, sir," said the ancient tire-woman, gravely.
+And she stood looking at Newman with a strange expression of face.
+The old instinct of deference and humility was there; the habit of decent
+self-effacement and knowledge of her "own place."  But there mingled
+with it a certain mild audacity, born of the occasion and of a sense,
+probably, of Newman's unprecedented approachableness, and, beyond this,
+a vague indifference to the old proprieties; as if my lady's own woman
+had at last begun to reflect that, since my lady had taken another person,
+she had a slight reversionary property in herself.
+
+"You take a great interest in the family?" said Newman.
+
+"A deep interest, sir.  Especially in the countess."
+
+"I am glad of that," said Newman.  And in a moment he added,
+smiling, "So do I!"
+
+"So I suppose, sir.  We can't help noticing these things and having our ideas;
+can we, sir?"
+
+"You mean as a servant?" said Newman.
+
+"Ah, there it is, sir.  I am afraid that when I let my
+thoughts meddle with such matters I am no longer a servant.
+But I am so devoted to the countess; if she were my own child I
+couldn't love her more.  That is how I come to be so bold, sir.
+They say you want to marry her."
+
+Newman eyed his interlocutress and satisfied himself that she was not
+a gossip, but a zealot; she looked anxious, appealing, discreet.
+"It is quite true," he said.  "I want to marry Madame de Cintre."
+
+"And to take her away to America?"
+
+"I will take her wherever she wants to go."
+
+"The farther away the better, sir!" exclaimed the old woman,
+with sudden intensity.  But she checked herself, and, taking up
+a paper-weight in mosaic, began to polish it with her black apron.
+"I don't mean anything against the house or the family, sir.
+But I think a great change would do the poor countess good.
+It is very sad here."
+
+"Yes, it's not very lively," said Newman.  "But Madame de Cintre
+is gay herself."
+
+"She is everything that is good.  You will not be vexed to hear
+that she has been gayer for a couple of months past than she
+had been in many a day before."
+
+Newman was delighted to gather this testimony to the prosperity
+of his suit, but he repressed all violent marks of elation.
+"Has Madame de Cintre been in bad spirits before this?" he asked.
+
+"Poor lady, she had good reason.  M. de Cintre was no husband for a sweet
+young lady like that.  And then, as I say, it has been a sad house.
+It is better, in my humble opinion, that she were out of it.  So, if you
+will excuse me for saying so, I hope she will marry you."
+
+"I hope she will!" said Newman.
+
+"But you must not lose courage, sir, if she doesn't
+make up her mind at once.  That is what I wanted to beg
+of you, sir.  Don't give it up, sir.  You will not take it
+ill if I say it's a great risk for any lady at any time;
+all the more when she has got rid of one bad bargain.
+But if she can marry a good, kind, respectable gentleman,
+I think she had better make up her mind to it.  They speak
+very well of you, sir, in the house, and, if you will allow me
+to say so, I like your face.  You have a very different appearance
+from the late count, he wasn't five feet high.  And they say
+your fortune is beyond everything.  There's no harm in that.
+So I beseech you to be patient, sir,, and bide your time.
+If I don't say this to you, sir, perhaps no one will.
+Of course it is not for me to make any promises.  I can answer
+for nothing.  But I think your chance is not so bad, sir.
+I am nothing but a weary old woman in my quiet corner, but one
+woman understands another, and I think I make out the countess.
+I received her in my arms when she came into the world
+and her first wedding day was the saddest of my life.
+She owes it to me to show me another and a brighter one.
+If you will hold firm, sir--and you look as if you would--
+I think we may see it."
+
+"I am much obliged to you for your encouragement," said Newman, heartily.
+"One can't have too much.  I mean to hold firm.  And if Madame de Cintre
+marries me you must come and live with her."
+
+The old woman looked at him strangely, with her soft, lifeless eyes.
+"It may seem a heartless thing to say, sir, when one has been forty years
+in a house, but I may tell you that I should like to leave this place."
+
+"Why, it's just the time to say it," said Newman, fervently.
+"After forty years one wants a change."
+
+"You are very kind, sir;" and this faithful servant
+dropped another curtsey and seemed disposed to retire.
+But she lingered a moment and gave a timid, joyless smile.
+Newman was disappointed, and his fingers stole half shyly half
+irritably into his waistcoat-pocket. His informant noticed
+the movement.  "Thank God I am not a Frenchwoman," she said.
+"If I were, I would tell you with a brazen simper, old as I am,
+that if you please, monsieur, my information is worth something.
+Let me tell you so in my own decent English way.
+It IS worth something."
+
+"How much, please?" said Newman.
+
+"Simply this:  a promise not to hint to the countess that I
+have said these things."
+
+"If that is all, you have it," said Newman.
+
+"That is all, sir.  Thank you, sir.  Good day, sir."  And having once more
+slid down telescope-wise into her scanty petticoats, the old woman departed.
+At the same moment Madame de Cintre came in by an opposite door.
+She noticed the movement of the other portiere and asked Newman who had
+been entertaining him.
+
+"The British female!" said Newman.  "An old lady in a black dress and a cap,
+who curtsies up and down, and expresses herself ever so well."
+
+"An old lady who curtsies and expresses herself?.... Ah,
+you mean poor Mrs. Bread.  I happen to know that you have made
+a conquest of her."
+
+"Mrs. Cake, she ought to be called," said Newman.  "She is very sweet.
+She is a delicious old woman."
+
+Madame de Cintre looked at him a moment.  "What can she have said to you?
+She is an excellent creature, but we think her rather dismal."
+
+"I suppose," Newman answered presently, "that I like her
+because she has lived near you so long.  Since your birth,
+she told me."
+
+"Yes," said Madame de Cintre, simply; "she is very faithful;
+I can trust her."
+
+Newman had never made any reflections to this lady upon her mother
+and her brother Urbain; had given no hint of the impression
+they made upon him.  But, as if she had guessed his thoughts,
+she seemed careful to avoid all occasion for making him speak
+of them.  She never alluded to her mother's domestic decrees;
+she never quoted the opinions of the marquis.
+They had talked, however, of Valentin, and she had made
+no secret of her extreme affection for her younger brother.
+Newman listened sometimes with a certain harmless jealousy;
+he would have liked to divert some of her tender allusions
+to his own credit.  Once Madame de Cintre told him with a
+little air of triumph about something that Valentin had done
+which she thought very much to his honor.  It was a service
+he had rendered to an old friend of the family; something more
+"serious" than Valentin was usually supposed capable of being.
+Newman said he was glad to hear of it, and then began
+to talk about something which lay upon his own heart.
+Madame de Cintre listened, but after a while she said,
+"I don't like the way you speak of my brother Valentin."
+Hereupon Newman, surprised, said that he had never spoken
+of him but kindly.
+
+"It is too kindly," said Madame de Cintre.  "It is a kindness
+that costs nothing; it is the kindness you show to a child.
+It is as if you didn't respect him."
+
+"Respect him?  Why I think I do."
+
+"You think?  If you are not sure, it is no respect."
+
+"Do you respect him?" said Newman.  "If you do, I do."
+
+"If one loves a person, that is a question one is not bound to answer,"
+said Madame de Cintre.
+
+"You should not have asked it of me, then.  I am very fond
+of your brother."
+
+"He amuses you.  But you would not like to resemble him."
+
+"I shouldn't like to resemble any one.  It is hard enough work
+resembling one's self."
+
+"What do you mean," asked Madame de Cintre, "by resembling one's self?"
+
+"Why, doing what is expected of one.  Doing one's duty."
+
+"But that is only when one is very good."
+
+"Well, a great many people are good," said Newman.
+"Valentin is quite good enough for me."
+
+Madame de Cintre was silent for a short time.  "He is not good enough for me,"
+she said at last.  "I wish he would do something."
+
+"What can he do?" asked Newman.
+
+"Nothing.  Yet he is very clever."
+
+"It is a proof of cleverness," said Newman, "to be happy
+without doing anything."
+
+"I don't think Valentin is happy, in reality.  He is clever, generous, brave;
+but what is there to show for it?  To me there is something sad
+in his life, and sometimes I have a sort of foreboding about him.
+I don't know why, but I fancy he will have some great trouble--
+perhaps an unhappy end."
+
+"Oh, leave him to me," said Newman, jovially.  "I will watch
+over him and keep harm away."
+
+One evening, in Madame de Bellegarde's salon, the conversation
+had flagged most sensibly.  The marquis walked up and down
+in silence, like a sentinel at the door of some smooth-fronted
+citadel of the proprieties; his mother sat staring at the fire;
+young Madame de Bellegarde worked at an enormous band of tapestry.
+Usually there were three or four visitors, but on this occasion
+a violent storm sufficiently accounted for the absence of even
+the most devoted habitues.  In the long silences the howling
+of the wind and the beating of the rain were distinctly audible.
+Newman sat perfectly still, watching the clock, determined to
+stay till the stroke of eleven, but not a moment longer.
+Madame de Cintre had turned her back to the circle, and had been
+standing for some time within the uplifted curtain of a window,
+with her forehead against the pane, gazing out into the deluged darkness.
+Suddenly she turned round toward her sister-in-law.
+
+"For Heaven's sake," she said, with peculiar eagerness,
+"go to the piano and play something."
+
+Madame de Bellegarde held up her tapestry and pointed
+to a little white flower.  "Don't ask me to leave this.
+I am in the midst of a masterpiece.  My flower is going
+to smell very sweet; I am putting in the smell with this
+gold-colored silk.  I am holding my breath; I can't leave off.
+Play something yourself."
+
+"It is absurd for me to play when you are present," said Madame de Cintre.
+But the next moment she went to the piano and began to strike the keys
+with vehemence.  She played for some time, rapidly and brilliantly;
+when she stopped, Newman went to the piano and asked her to begin again.
+She shook her head, and, on his insisting, she said, "I have not been playing
+for you; I have been playing for myself."  She went back to the window again
+and looked out, and shortly afterwards left the room.  When Newman took leave,
+Urbain de Bellegarde accompanied him, as he always did, just three steps
+down the staircase.  At the bottom stood a servant with his overcoat.
+He had just put it on when he saw Madame de Cintre coming towards him
+across the vestibule.
+
+"Shall you be at home on Friday?"  Newman asked.
+
+She looked at him a moment before answering his question.
+"You don't like my mother and my brother," she said.
+
+He hesitated a moment, and then he said softly, "No."
+
+She laid her hand on the balustrade and prepared to ascend the stairs,
+fixing her eyes on the first step.
+
+"Yes, I shall be at home on Friday," and she passed up
+the wide dusky staircase.
+
+On the Friday, as soon as he came in, she asked him to please
+to tell her why he disliked her family.
+
+"Dislike your family?" he exclaimed.  "That has a horrid sound.
+I didn't say so, did I?  I didn't mean it, if I did."
+
+"I wish you would tell me what you think of them," said Madame de Cintre.
+
+"I don't think of any of them but you."
+
+"That is because you dislike them.  Speak the truth;
+you can't offend me."
+
+"Well, I don't exactly love your brother," said Newman.
+"I remember now.  But what is the use of my saying so?
+I had forgotten it."
+
+"You are too good-natured," said Madame de Cintre gravely.
+Then, as if to avoid the appearance of inviting him to speak ill
+of the marquis, she turned away, motioning him to sit down.
+
+But he remained standing before her and said presently,
+"What is of much more importance is that they don't like me."
+
+"No--they don't," she said.
+
+"And don't you think they are wrong?"  Newman asked.
+"I don't believe I am a man to dislike."
+
+"I suppose that a man who may be liked may also be disliked.
+And my brother--my mother," she added, "have not made you angry?"
+
+"Yes, sometimes."
+
+"You have never shown it."
+
+"So much the better."
+
+"Yes, so much the better.  They think they have treated you very well."
+
+"I have no doubt they might have handled me much more roughly," said Newman.
+"I am much obliged to them.  Honestly."
+
+"You are generous," said Madame de Cintre.  "It's a disagreeable position."
+
+"For them, you mean.  Not for me."
+
+"For me," said Madame de Cintre.
+
+"Not when their sins are forgiven!" said Newman.
+"They don't think I am as good as they are.  I do.
+But we shan't quarrel about it."
+
+"I can't even agree with you without saying something that has
+a disagreeable sound.  The presumption was against you.
+That you probably don't understand."
+
+Newman sat down and looked at her for some time.
+"I don't think I really understand it.  But when you say it,
+I believe it."
+
+"That's a poor reason," said Madame de Cintre, smiling.
+
+"No, it's a very good one.  You have a high spirit, a high standard;
+but with you it's all natural and unaffected; you don't seem
+to have stuck your head into a vise, as if you were sitting for
+the photograph of propriety.  You think of me as a fellow who has
+had no idea in life but to make money and drive sharp bargains.
+That's a fair description of me, but it is not the whole story.
+A man ought to care for something else, though I don't know exactly what.
+I cared for money-making, but I never cared particularly for the money.
+There was nothing else to do, and it was impossible to be idle.
+I have been very easy to others, and to myself.  I have done
+most of the things that people asked me--I don't mean rascals.
+As regards your mother and your brother," Newman added, "there is
+only one point upon which I feel that I might quarrel with them.
+I don't ask them to sing my praises to you, but I ask them to let
+you alone.  If I thought they talked ill of me to you, I should come
+down upon them."
+
+"They have let me alone, as you say.  They have not talked ill of you."
+
+"In that case," cried Newman, "I declare they are only too good
+for this world!"
+
+Madame de Cintre appeared to find something startling in his exclamation.
+She would, perhaps, have replied, but at this moment the door was
+thrown open and Urbain de Bellegarde stepped across the threshold.
+He appeared surprised at finding Newman, but his surprise was but
+a momentary shadow across the surface of an unwonted joviality.
+Newman had never seen the marquis so exhilarated; his pale,
+unlighted countenance had a sort of thin transfiguration.
+He held open the door for some one else to enter, and presently
+appeared old Madame de Bellegarde, leaning on the arm of a
+gentleman whom Newman had not seen before.  He had already risen,
+and Madame de Cintre rose, as she always did before her mother.
+The marquis, who had greeted Newman almost genially, stood apart,
+slowly rubbing his hands.  His mother came forward with her companion.
+She gave a majestic little nod at Newman, and then she released
+the strange gentleman, that he might make his bow to her daughter.
+
+"My daughter," she said, "I have brought you an unknown relative,
+Lord Deepmere.  Lord Deepmere is our cousin, but he has
+done only to-day what he ought to have done long ago--
+come to make our acquaintance."
+
+Madame de Cintre smiled, and offered Lord Deepmere her hand.
+"It is very extraordinary," said this noble laggard, "but this
+is the first time that I have ever been in Paris for more than
+three or four weeks."
+
+"And how long have you been here now?" asked Madame de Cintre.
+
+"Oh, for the last two months," said Lord Deepmere.
+
+These two remarks might have constituted an impertinence; but a glance
+at Lord Deepmere's face would have satisfied you, as it apparently
+satisfied Madame de Cintre, that they constituted only a naivete.
+When his companions were seated, Newman, who was out of the conversation,
+occupied himself with observing the newcomer.  Observation, however,
+as regards Lord Deepmere's person; had no great range.
+He was a small, meagre man, of some three and thirty years of age,
+with a bald head, a short nose and no front teeth in the upper jaw;
+he had round, candid blue eyes, and several pimples on his chin.
+He was evidently very shy, and he laughed a great deal, catching his breath
+with an odd, startling sound, as the most convenient imitation of repose.
+His physiognomy denoted great simplicity, a certain amount of brutality,
+and probable failure in the past to profit by rare educational advantages.
+He remarked that Paris was awfully jolly, but that for real,
+thorough-paced entertainment it was nothing to Dublin.
+He even preferred Dublin to London.  Had Madame de Cintre
+ever been to Dublin?  They must all come over there some day,
+and he would show them some Irish sport.  He always went to Ireland
+for the fishing, and he came to Paris for the new Offenbach things.
+They always brought them out in Dublin, but he couldn't wait.
+He had been nine times to hear La Pomme de Paris.  Madame de Cintre,
+leaning back, with her arms folded, looked at Lord Deepmere with
+a more visibly puzzled face than she usually showed to society.
+Madame de Bellegarde, on the other hand, wore a fixed smile.
+The marquis said that among light operas his favorite was the Gazza Ladra.
+The marquise then began a series of inquiries about the duke and
+the cardinal, the old countess and Lady Barbara, after listening
+to which, and to Lord Deepmere's somewhat irreverent responses,
+for a quarter of an hour, Newman rose to take his leave.
+The marquis went with him three steps into the hall.
+
+"Is he Irish?" asked Newman, nodding in the direction of the visitor.
+
+"His mother was the daughter of Lord Finucane," said the marquis;
+"he has great Irish estates.  Lady Bridget, in the complete
+absence of male heirs, either direct or collateral--
+a most extraordinary circumstance--came in for everything.
+But Lord Deepmere's title is English and his English property
+is immense.  He is a charming young man."
+
+Newman answered nothing, but he detained the marquis as the latter was
+beginning gracefully to recede.  "It is a good time for me to thank you,"
+he said, "for sticking so punctiliously to our bargain, for doing so much
+to help me on with your sister."
+
+The marquis stared.  "Really, I have done nothing that I can
+boast of," he said.
+
+"Oh don't be modest," Newman answered, laughing.  "I can't
+flatter myself that I am doing so well simply by my own merit.
+And thank your mother for me, too!"  And he turned away,
+leaving M. de Bellegarde looking after him.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+
+
+The next time Newman came to the Rue de l'Universite
+he had the good fortune to find Madame de Cintre alone.
+He had come with a definite intention, and he lost no time
+in executing it.  She wore, moreover, a look which he eagerly
+interpreted as expectancy.
+
+"I have been coming to see you for six months, now," he said,
+"and I have never spoken to you a second time of marriage.
+That was what you asked me; I obeyed.  Could any man
+have done better?"
+
+"You have acted with great delicacy," said Madame de Cintre.
+
+"Well, I'm going to change, now," said Newman.  "I don't mean that I
+am going to be indelicate; but I'm going to go back to where I began.
+I AM back there.  I have been all round the circle.
+Or rather, I have never been away from here.  I have never ceased
+to want what I wanted then.  Only now I am more sure of it,
+if possible; I am more sure of myself, and more sure of you.
+I know you better, though I don't know anything I didn't believe
+three months ago.  You are everything--you are beyond everything--
+I can imagine or desire.  You know me now; you MUST know me.
+I won't say that you have seen the best--but you have seen the worst.
+I hope you have been thinking all this while.  You must have seen
+that I was only waiting; you can't suppose that I was changing.
+What will you say to me, now?  Say that everything is clear
+and reasonable, and that I have been very patient and considerate,
+and deserve my reward.  And then give me your hand.
+Madame de Cintre do that.  Do it."
+
+"I knew you were only waiting," she said; "and I was very sure
+this day would come.  I have thought about it a great deal.
+At first I was half afraid of it.  But I am not afraid of it now."
+She paused a moment, and then she added, "It's a relief."
+
+She was sitting on a low chair, and Newman was on an ottoman, near her.
+He leaned a little and took her hand, which for an instant she let
+him keep.  "That means that I have not waited for nothing," he said.
+She looked at him for a moment, and he saw her eyes fill with tears.
+"With me," he went on, "you will be as safe--as safe"--and even in his
+ardor he hesitated a moment for a comparison--"as safe," he said,
+with a kind of simple solemnity, "as in your father's arms."
+
+Still she looked at him and her tears increased.
+Then, abruptly, she buried her face on the cushioned arm
+of the sofa beside her chair, and broke into noiseless sobs.
+"I am weak--I am weak," he heard her say.
+
+"All the more reason why you should give yourself up to me,"
+he answered.  "Why are you troubled?  There is nothing but happiness.
+Is that so hard to believe?"
+
+"To you everything seems so simple," she said, raising her head.
+"But things are not so.  I like you extremely.  I liked you six
+months ago, and now I am sure of it, as you say you are sure.
+But it is not easy, simply for that, to decide to marry you.
+There are a great many things to think about."
+
+"There ought to be only one thing to think about--that we love each other,"
+said Newman.  And as she remained silent he quickly added, "Very good,
+if you can't accept that, don't tell me so."
+
+"I should be very glad to think of nothing," she said at last;
+"not to think at all; only to shut both my eyes and give myself up.
+But I can't. I'm cold, I'm old, I'm a coward; I never supposed
+I should marry again, and it seems to me very strange l should
+ever have listened to you.  When I used to think, as a girl,
+of what I should do if I were to marry freely, by my own choice,
+I thought of a very different man from you."
+
+"That's nothing against me," said Newman with an immense smile;
+"your taste was not formed."
+
+His smile made Madame de Cintre smile.  "Have you formed it?" she asked.
+And then she said, in a different tone, "Where do you wish to live?"
+
+"Anywhere in the wide world you like.  We can easily settle that."
+
+"I don't know why I ask you," she presently continued.
+"I care very little.  I think if I were to marry you I could
+live almost anywhere.  You have some false ideas about me;
+you think that I need a great many things--that I must
+have a brilliant, worldly life.  I am sure you are prepared
+to take a great deal of trouble to give me such things.
+But that is very arbitrary; I have done nothing to prove that."
+She paused again, looking at him, and her mingled sound and
+silence were so sweet to him that he had no wish to hurry her,
+any more than he would have had a wish to hurry a golden sunrise.
+"Your being so different, which at first seemed a difficulty,
+a trouble, began one day to seem to me a pleasure,
+a great pleasure.  I was glad you were different.
+And yet if I had said so, no one would have understood me;
+I don't mean simply to my family."
+
+"They would have said I was a queer monster, eh?" said Newman.
+
+"They would have said I could never be happy with you--
+you were too different; and I would have said it was just
+BECAUSE you were so different that I might be happy.
+But they would have given better reasons than I. My only reason"--
+and she paused again.
+
+But this time, in the midst of his golden sunrise, Newman felt the impulse
+to grasp at a rosy cloud.  "Your only reason is that you love me!"
+he murmured with an eloquent gesture, and for want of a better reason
+Madame de Cintre reconciled herself to this one.
+
+Newman came back the next day, and in the vestibule,
+as he entered the house, he encountered his friend Mrs. Bread.
+She was wandering about in honorable idleness, and when his eyes
+fell upon her she delivered him one of her curtsies.  Then turning
+to the servant who had admitted him, she said, with the combined
+majesty of her native superiority and of a rugged English accent,
+"You may retire; I will have the honor of conducting monsieur.
+In spite of this combination, however, it appeared to Newman
+that her voice had a slight quaver, as if the tone of command
+were not habitual to it.  The man gave her an impertinent stare,
+but he walked slowly away, and she led Newman up-stairs. At half
+its course the staircase gave a bend, forming a little platform.
+In the angle of the wall stood an indifferent statue of an
+eighteenth-century nymph, simpering, sallow, and cracked.
+Here Mrs. Bread stopped and looked with shy kindness at her companion.
+
+"I know the good news, sir," she murmured.
+
+"You have a good right to be first to know it," said Newman.
+"You have taken such a friendly interest."
+
+Mrs. Bread turned away and began to blow the dust off the statue,
+as if this might be mockery.
+
+"I suppose you want to congratulate me," said Newman.
+"I am greatly obliged."  And then he added, "You gave me much
+pleasure the other day."
+
+She turned around, apparently reassured.  "You are not to think
+that I have been told anything," she said; "I have only guessed.
+But when I looked at you, as you came in, I was sure I
+had guessed aright."
+
+"You are very sharp," said Newman.  "I am sure that in your quiet
+way you see everything."
+
+"I am not a fool, sir, thank God.  I have guessed something else beside,"
+said Mrs. Bread.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"I needn't tell you that, sir; I don't think you would believe it.
+At any rate it wouldn't please you."
+
+"Oh, tell me nothing but what will please me," laughed Newman.
+"That is the way you began."
+
+"Well, sir, I suppose you won't be vexed to hear that the sooner
+everything is over the better."
+
+"The sooner we are married, you mean?  The better for me, certainly."
+
+"The better for every one."
+
+"The better for you, perhaps.  You know you are coming to live
+with us," said Newman.
+
+"I'm extremely obliged to you, sir, but it is not of myself I was thinking.
+I only wanted, if I might take the liberty, to recommend you to lose no time."
+
+"Whom are you afraid of?"
+
+Mrs. Bread looked up the staircase and then down and then she looked
+at the undusted nymph, as if she possibly had sentient ears.
+"I am afraid of every one," she said.
+
+"What an uncomfortable state of mind!" said Newman.
+"Does 'every one' wish to prevent my marriage?"
+
+"I am afraid of already having said too much," Mrs. Bread replied.
+"I won't take it back, but I won't say any more."  And she took her way
+up the staircase again and led him into Madame de Cintre's salon.
+
+Newman indulged in a brief and silent imprecation when he found that Madame
+de Cintre was not alone.  With her sat her mother, and in the middle
+of the room stood young Madame de Bellegarde, in her bonnet and mantle.
+The old marquise, who was leaning back in her chair with a hand clasping
+the knob of each arm, looked at him fixedly without moving.  She seemed
+barely conscious of his greeting; she appeared to be musing intently.
+Newman said to himself that her daughter had been announcing her
+engagement and that the old lady found the morsel hard to swallow.
+But Madame de Cintre, as she gave him her hand gave him also a look
+by which she appeared to mean that he should understand something.
+Was it a warning or a request?  Did she wish to enjoin speech or silence?
+He was puzzled, and young Madame de Bellegarde's pretty grin gave
+him no information.
+
+"I have not told my mother," said Madame de Cintre abruptly,
+looking at him.
+
+"Told me what?" demanded the marquise.  "You tell me too little;
+you should tell me everything."
+
+"That is what I do," said Madame Urbain, with a little laugh.
+
+"Let ME tell your mother," said Newman.
+
+The old lady stared at him again, and then turned to her daughter.
+"You are going to marry him?" she cried, softly.
+
+"Oui ma mere," said Madame de Cintre.
+
+"Your daughter has consented, to my great happiness," said Newman.
+
+"And when was this arrangement made?" asked Madame de Bellegarde.
+"I seem to be picking up the news by chance!"
+
+"My suspense came to an end yesterday," said Newman.
+
+"And how long was mine to have lasted?" said the marquise to her daughter.
+She spoke without irritation; with a sort of cold, noble displeasure.
+
+Madame de Cintre stood silent, with her eyes on the ground.
+"It is over now," she said.
+
+"Where is my son--where is Urbain?" asked the marquise.
+"Send for your brother and inform him."
+
+Young Madame de Bellegarde laid her hand on the bell-rope. "He was
+to make some visits with me, and I was to go and knock--very softly,
+very softly--at the door of his study.  But he can come to me!"
+She pulled the bell, and in a few moments Mrs. Bread appeared,
+with a face of calm inquiry.
+
+"Send for your brother," said the old lady.
+
+But Newman felt an irresistible impulse to speak, and to speak in a
+certain way.  "Tell the marquis we want him," he said to Mrs. Bread,
+who quietly retired.
+
+Young Madame de Bellegarde went to her sister-in-law and embraced her.
+Then she turned to Newman, with an intense smile.  "She is charming.
+I congratulate you."
+
+"I congratulate you, sir," said Madame de Bellegarde, with extreme solemnity.
+"My daughter is an extraordinarily good woman.  She may have faults,
+but I don't know them."
+
+"My mother does not often make jokes," said Madame de Cintre;
+"but when she does they are terrible."
+
+"She is ravishing," the Marquise Urbain resumed,
+looking at her sister-in-law, with her head on one side.
+"Yes, I congratulate you."
+
+Madame de Cintre turned away, and, taking up a piece of tapestry,
+began to ply the needle.  Some minutes of silence elapsed,
+which were interrupted by the arrival of M. de Bellegarde.
+He came in with his hat in his hand, gloved, and was followed by his
+brother Valentin, who appeared to have just entered the house.
+M. de Bellegarde looked around the circle and greeted Newman
+with his usual finely-measured courtesy.  Valentin saluted
+his mother and his sisters, and, as he shook hands with Newman,
+gave him a glance of acute interrogation.
+
+"Arrivez donc, messieurs!" cried young Madame de Bellegarde.
+"We have great news for you."
+
+"Speak to your brother, my daughter," said the old lady.
+
+Madame de Cintre had been looking at her tapestry.
+She raised her eyes to her brother.  "I have accepted Mr. Newman."
+
+"Your sister has consented," said Newman.  "You see after all,
+I knew what I was about."
+
+"I am charmed!" said M. de Bellegarde, with superior benignity.
+
+"So am I," said Valentin to Newman.  "The marquis and I
+are charmed.  I can't marry, myself, but I can understand it.
+I can't stand on my head, but I can applaud a clever acrobat.
+My dear sister, I bless your union."
+
+The marquis stood looking for a while into the crown of his hat.
+"We have been prepared," he said at last "but it is inevitable
+that in face of the event one should experience a certain emotion."
+And he gave a most unhilarious smile.
+
+"I feel no emotion that I was not perfectly prepared for,"
+said his mother.
+
+"I can't say that for myself," said Newman, smiling but differently
+from the marquis.  "I am happier than I expected to be.
+I suppose it's the sight of your happiness!"
+
+"Don't exaggerate that," said Madame de Bellegarde,
+getting up and laying her hand upon her daughter's arm.
+"You can't expect an honest old woman to thank you for taking
+away her beautiful, only daughter."
+
+"You forgot me, dear madame," said the young marquise demurely.
+
+"Yes, she is very beautiful," said Newman.
+
+"And when is the wedding, pray?" asked young Madame de Bellegarde;
+"I must have a month to think over a dress."
+
+"That must be discussed," said the marquise.
+
+"Oh, we will discuss it, and let you know!"  Newman exclaimed.
+
+"I have no doubt we shall agree," said Urbain.
+
+"If you don't agree with Madame de Cintre, you will be very unreasonable."
+
+"Come, come, Urbain," said young Madame de Bellegarde,
+"I must go straight to my tailor's."
+
+The old lady had been standing with her hand on her daughter's arm,
+looking at her fixedly.  She gave a little sigh, and murmured,
+"No, I did NOT expect it!  You are a fortunate man," she added,
+turning to Newman, with an expressive nod.
+
+"Oh, I know that!" he answered.  "I feel tremendously proud.
+I feel like crying it on the housetops,--like stopping people
+in the street to tell them."
+
+Madame de Bellegarde narrowed her lips.  "Pray don't," she said.
+
+"The more people that know it, the better," Newman declared.
+"I haven't yet announced it here, but I telegraphed it this
+morning to America."
+
+"Telegraphed it to America?" the old lady murmured.
+
+"To New York, to St. Louis, and to San Francisco; those are
+the principal cities, you know.  To-morrow I shall tell
+my friends here."
+
+"Have you many?" asked Madame de Bellegarde, in a tone of which I
+am afraid that Newman but partly measured the impertinence.
+
+"Enough to bring me a great many hand-shakes and congratulations.
+To say nothing," he added, in a moment, "of those I shall receive
+from your friends."
+
+"They will not use the telegraph," said the marquise, taking her departure.
+
+M. de Bellegarde, whose wife, her imagination having apparently taken
+flight to the tailor's, was fluttering her silken wings in emulation,
+shook hands with Newman, and said with a more persuasive accent
+than the latter had ever heard him use, "You may count upon me."
+Then his wife led him away.
+
+Valentin stood looking from his sister to our hero.
+"I hope you both reflected seriously," he said.
+
+Madame de Cintre smiled.  "We have neither your powers of reflection
+nor your depth of seriousness; but we have done our best."
+
+"Well, I have a great regard for each of you," Valentin continued.
+"You are charming young people.  But I am not satisfied, on the whole,
+that you belong to that small and superior class--that exquisite
+group composed of persons who are worthy to remain unmarried.
+These are rare souls; they are the salt of the earth.  But I don't
+mean to be invidious; the marrying people are often very nice."
+
+"Valentin holds that women should marry, and that men should not,"
+said Madame de Cintre.  "I don't know how he arranges it."
+
+"I arrange it by adoring you, my sister," said Valentin ardently.
+"Good-by."
+
+"Adore some one whom you can marry," said Newman.
+"I will arrange that for you some day.  I foresee that I am
+going to turn apostle."
+
+Valentin was on the threshold; he looked back a moment with a face
+that had turned grave.  "I adore some one I can't marry!" he said.
+And he dropped the portiere and departed.
+
+"They don't like it," said Newman, standing alone before Madame de Cintre.
+
+"No," she said, after a moment; "they don't like it."
+
+"Well, now, do you mind that?" asked Newman.
+
+"Yes!" she said, after another interval.
+
+"That's a mistake."
+
+"I can't help it.  I should prefer that my mother were pleased."
+
+"Why the deuce," demanded Newman, "is she not pleased?
+She gave you leave to marry me."
+
+"Very true; I don't understand it.  And yet I do 'mind it,' as you say.
+You will call it superstitious."
+
+"That will depend upon how much you let it bother you.
+Then I shall call it an awful bore."
+
+"I will keep it to myself," said Madame de Cintre, "It shall not bother you."
+And then they talked of their marriage-day, and Madame de Cintre assented
+unreservedly to Newman's desire to have it fixed for an early date.
+
+Newman's telegrams were answered with interest.
+Having dispatched but three electric missives, he received
+no less than eight gratulatory bulletins in return.
+He put them into his pocket-book, and the next time he encountered
+old Madame de Bellegarde drew them forth and displayed them to her.
+This, it must be confessed, was a slightly malicious stroke;
+the reader must judge in what degree the offense was venial.
+Newman knew that the marquise disliked his telegrams, though he could
+see no sufficient reason for it.  Madame de Cintre, on the other hand,
+liked them, and, most of them being of a humorous cast,
+laughed at them immoderately, and inquired into the character
+of their authors.  Newman, now that his prize was gained,
+felt a peculiar desire that his triumph should be manifest.
+He more than suspected that the Bellegardes were keeping
+quiet about it, and allowing it, in their select circle,
+but a limited resonance; and it pleased him to think that
+if he were to take the trouble he might, as he phrased it,
+break all the windows.  No man likes being repudiated,
+and yet Newman, if he was not flattered, was not exactly offended.
+He had not this good excuse for his somewhat aggressive impulse
+to promulgate his felicity; his sentiment was of another quality.
+He wanted for once to make the heads of the house of Bellegarde
+FEEL him; he knew not when he should have another chance.
+He had had for the past six months a sense of the old lady
+and her son looking straight over his head, and he was now
+resolved that they should toe a mark which he would give
+himself the satisfaction of drawing.
+
+"It is like seeing a bottle emptied when the wine is poured too slowly,"
+he said to Mrs. Tristram.  "They make me want to joggle their elbows
+and force them to spill their wine."
+
+To this Mrs. Tristram answered that he had better leave them alone and let
+them do things in their own way.  "You must make allowances for them,"
+she said.  "It is natural enough that they should hang fire a little.
+They thought they accepted you when you made your application;
+but they are not people of imagination, they could not project
+themselves into the future, and now they will have to begin again.
+But they are people of honor, and they will do whatever is necessary."
+
+Newman spent a few moments in narrow-eyed meditation.
+"I am not hard on them," he presently said, "and to prove it
+I will invite them all to a festival."
+
+"To a festival?"
+
+"You have been laughing at my great gilded rooms all winter;
+I will show you that they are good for something.
+I will give a party.  What is the grandest thing one can do here?
+I will hire all the great singers from the opera, and all
+the first people from the Theatre Francais, and I will
+give an entertainment."
+
+"And whom will you invite?"
+
+"You, first of all.  And then the old lady and her son.
+And then every one among her friends whom I have met
+at her house or elsewhere, every one who has shown me
+the minimum of politeness, every duke of them and his wife.
+And then all my friends, without exception:  Miss Kitty Upjohn,
+Miss Dora Finch, General Packard, C. P Hatch, and all the rest.
+And every one shall know what it is about, that is,
+to celebrate my engagement to the Countess de Cintre.
+What do you think of the idea?"
+
+"I think it is odious!" said Mrs. Tristram.  And then in a moment:
+"I think it is delicious!"
+
+The very next evening Newman repaired to Madame de Bellegarde's salon.
+where he found her surrounded by her children, and invited her to honor
+his poor dwelling by her presence on a certain evening a fortnight distant.
+
+The marquise stared a moment.  "My dear sir," she cried,
+"what do you want to do to me?"
+
+"To make you acquainted with a few people, and then to place you in a very
+easy chair and ask you to listen to Madame Frezzolini's singing."
+
+"You mean to give a concert?"
+
+"Something of that sort."
+
+"And to have a crowd of people?"
+
+"All my friends, and I hope some of yours and your daughter's.
+I want to celebrate my engagement."
+
+It seemed to Newman that Madame de Bellegarde turned pale.
+She opened her fan, a fine old painted fan of the last century,
+and looked at the picture, which represented a fete champetre--
+a lady with a guitar, singing, and a group of dancers round
+a garlanded Hermes.
+
+"We go out so little," murmured the marquis, "since my poor father's death."
+
+"But MY dear father is still alive, my friend," said his wife.
+"I am only waiting for my invitation to accept it,"
+and she glanced with amiable confidence at Newman.
+"It will be magnificent; I am very sure of that."
+
+I am sorry to say, to the discredit of Newman's gallantry,
+that this lady's invitation was not then and there bestowed;
+he was giving all his attention to the old marquise.
+She looked up at last, smiling.  "I can't think of letting you
+offer me a fete," she said, "until I have offered you one.
+We want to present you to our friends; we will invite them all.
+We have it very much at heart.  We must do things in order.
+Come to me about the 25th; I will let you know the exact
+day immediately.  We shall not have any one so fine as
+Madame Frezzolini, but we shall have some very good people.
+After that you may talk of your own fete."  The old lady
+spoke with a certain quick eagerness, smiling more agreeably
+as she went on.
+
+It seemed to Newman a handsome proposal, and such proposals always
+touched the sources of his good-nature. He said to Madame de Bellegarde
+that he should be glad to come on the 25th or any other day, and that it
+mattered very little whether he met his friends at her house or at his own.
+I have said that Newman was observant, but it must be admitted that on
+this occasion he failed to notice a certain delicate glance which passed
+between Madame de Bellegarde and the marquis, and which we may presume
+to have been a commentary upon the innocence displayed in that latter
+clause of his speech.
+
+Valentin de Bellegarde walked away with Newman that evening,
+and when they had left the Rue de l'Universite some distance behind
+them he said reflectively, "My mother is very strong--very strong."
+Then in answer to an interrogative movement of Newman's he continued,
+"She was driven to the wall, but you would never have thought it.
+Her fete of the 25th was an invention of the moment.
+She had no idea whatever of giving a fete, but finding it the only
+issue from your proposal, she looked straight at the dose--
+excuse the expression--and bolted it, as you saw, without winking.
+She is very strong."
+
+"Dear me!" said Newman, divided between relish and compassion.
+"I don't care a straw for her fete, I am willing to take the will
+for the deed."
+
+"No, no," said Valentin, with a little inconsequent touch of family pride.
+"The thing will be done now, and done handsomely."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+
+
+Valentin de Bellegarde's announcement of the secession of Mademoiselle
+Nioche from her father's domicile and his irreverent reflections
+upon the attitude of this anxious parent in so grave a catastrophe,
+received a practical commentary in the fact that M. Nioche was slow
+to seek another interview with his late pupil.  It had cost Newman
+some disgust to be forced to assent to Valentin's somewhat cynical
+interpretation of the old man's philosophy, and, though circumstances
+seemed to indicate that he had not given himself up to a noble despair,
+Newman thought it very possible he might be suffering more keenly
+than was apparent.  M. Nioche had been in the habit of paying him
+a respectful little visit every two or three weeks and his absence
+might be a proof quite as much of extreme depression as of a desire
+to conceal the success with which he had patched up his sorrow.
+Newman presently learned from Valentin several details touching this
+new phase of Mademoiselle Noemie's career.
+
+"I told you she was remarkable," this unshrinking observer declared,
+"and the way she has managed this performance proves it.  She has
+had other chances, but she was resolved to take none but the best.
+She did you the honor to think for a while that you might be such a chance.
+You were not; so she gathered up her patience and waited a while longer.
+At last her occasion came along, and she made her move with her eyes
+wide open.  I am very sure she had no innocence to lose, but she had
+all her respectability.  Dubious little damsel as you thought her,
+she had kept a firm hold of that; nothing could be proved against her,
+and she was determined not to let her reputation go till she had
+got her equivalent.  About her equivalent she had high ideas.
+Apparently her ideal has been satisfied.  It is fifty years old,
+bald-headed, and deaf, but it is very easy about money."
+
+"And where in the world," asked Newman, "did you pick up
+this valuable information?"
+
+"In conversation.  Remember my frivolous habits.
+In conversation with a young woman engaged in the humble trade
+of glove-cleaner, who keeps a small shop in the Rue St. Roch.
+M. Nioche lives in the same house, up six pair of stairs,
+across the court, in and out of whose ill-swept doorway
+Miss Noemie has been flitting for the last five years.
+The little glove-cleaner was an old acquaintance;
+she used to be the friend of a friend of mine, who has married
+and dropped such friends.  I often saw her in his society.
+As soon as I espied her behind her clear little window-pane, I
+recollected her.  I had on a spotlessly fresh pair of gloves,
+but I went in and held up my hands, and said to her,
+'Dear mademoiselle, what will you ask me for cleaning these?'
+'Dear count,' she answered immediately, 'I will clean them
+for you for nothing.'  She had instantly recognized me,
+and I had to hear her history for the last six years.
+But after that, I put her upon that of her neighbors.
+She knows and admires Noemie, and she told me what I
+have just repeated."
+
+A month elapsed without M. Nioche reappearing, and Newman,
+who every morning read two or three suicides in the "Figaro,"
+began to suspect that, mortification proving stubborn, he had
+sought a balm for his wounded pride in the waters of the Seine.
+He had a note of M. Nioche's address in his pocket-book,
+and finding himself one day in the quartier, he determined
+in so far as he might to clear up his doubts.  He repaired
+to the house in the Rue St. Roch which bore the recorded number,
+and observed in a neighboring basement, behind a dangling
+row of neatly inflated gloves, the attentive physiognomy
+of Bellegarde's informant--a sallow person in a dressing-gown--
+peering into the street as if she were expecting that amiable
+nobleman to pass again.  But it was not to her that Newman applied;
+he simply asked of the portress if M. Nioche were at home.
+The portress replied, as the portress invariably replies,
+that her lodger had gone out barely three minutes before;
+but then, through the little square hole of her lodge-window
+taking the measure of Newman's fortunes, and seeing them,
+by an unspecified process, refresh the dry places
+of servitude to occupants of fifth floors on courts,
+she added that M. Nioche would have had just time to reach
+the Cafe de la Patrie, round the second corner to the left,
+at which establishment he regularly spent his afternoons.
+Newman thanked her for the information, took the second
+turning to the left, and arrived at the Cafe de la Patrie.
+He felt a momentary hesitation to go in; was it not rather
+mean to "follow up" poor old Nioche at that rate?
+But there passed across his vision an image of a haggard little
+septuagenarian taking measured sips of a glass of sugar and water
+and finding them quite impotent to sweeten his desolation.
+He opened the door and entered, perceiving nothing at first
+but a dense cloud of tobacco smoke.  Across this, however,
+in a corner, he presently descried the figure of M. Nioche,
+stirring the contents of a deep glass, with a lady seated
+in front of him.  The lady's back was turned to Newman,
+but M. Nioche very soon perceived and recognized his visitor.
+Newman had gone toward him, and the old man rose slowly,
+gazing at him with a more blighted expression even than usual.
+
+"If you are drinking hot punch," said Newman, "I suppose you are not dead.
+That's all right.  Don't move."
+
+M. Nioche stood staring, with a fallen jaw, not daring to put out his hand.
+The lady, who sat facing him, turned round in her place and glanced upward
+with a spirited toss of her head, displaying the agreeable features
+of his daughter.  She looked at Newman sharply, to see how he was looking
+at her, then--I don't know what she discovered--she said graciously, "How d'
+ye do, monsieur? won't you come into our little corner?"
+
+"Did you come--did you come after ME?" asked M. Nioche very softly.
+
+"I went to your house to see what had become of you.
+I thought you might be sick," said Newman.
+
+"It is very good of you, as always," said the old man.
+"No, I am not well.  Yes, I am SEEK."
+
+"Ask monsieur to sit down," said Mademoiselle Nioche.
+"Garcon, bring a chair."
+
+"Will you do us the honor to SEAT?" said M. Nioche, timorously, and with
+a double foreignness of accent.
+
+Newman said to himself that he had better see the thing out and he took
+a chair at the end of the table, with Mademoiselle Nioche on his
+left and her father on the other side.  "You will take something,
+of course," said Miss Noemie, who was sipping a glass of madeira.
+Newman said that he believed not, and then she turned to her papa
+with a smile.  "What an honor, eh? he has come only for us."
+M. Nioche drained his pungent glass at a long draught,
+and looked out from eyes more lachrymose in consequence.
+"But you didn't come for me, eh?"  Mademoiselle Noemie went on.
+"You didn't expect to find me here?"
+
+Newman observed the change in her appearance.  She was very elegant
+and prettier than before; she looked a year or two older, and it was
+noticeable that, to the eye, she had only gained in respectability.
+She looked "lady-like." She was dressed in quiet colors, and wore her
+expensively unobtrusive toilet with a grace that might have come from
+years of practice.  Her present self-possession and aplomb struck Newman
+as really infernal, and he inclined to agree with Valentin de Bellegarde
+that the young lady was very remarkable.  "No, to tell the truth,
+I didn't come for you," he said, "and I didn't expect to find you.
+I was told," he added in a moment "that you had left your father."
+
+"Quelle horreur!" cried Mademoiselle Nioche with a smile.
+"Does one leave one's father?  You have the proof of the contrary."
+
+"Yes, convincing proof," said Newman glancing at M. Nioche.
+The old man caught his glance obliquely, with his faded,
+deprecating eye, and then, lifting his empty glass,
+pretended to drink again.
+
+"Who told you that?"  Noemie demanded.  "I know very well.
+It was M. de Bellegarde.  Why don't you say yes?
+You are not polite."
+
+"I am embarrassed," said Newman.
+
+"I set you a better example.  I know M. de Bellegarde told you.
+He knows a great deal about me--or he thinks he does.  He has taken
+a great deal of trouble to find out, but half of it isn't true.
+In the first place, I haven't left my father; I am much too fond of him.
+Isn't it so, little father?  M. de Bellegarde is a charming young man;
+it is impossible to be cleverer.  I know a good deal about him too;
+you can tell him that when you next see him."
+
+"No," said Newman, with a sturdy grin; "I won't carry any messages for you."
+
+"Just as you please," said Mademoiselle Nioche, "I don't
+depend upon you, nor does M. de Bellegarde either.
+He is very much interested in me; he can be left to his own devices.
+He is a contrast to you."
+
+"Oh, he is a great contrast to me, I have no doubt" said Newman.
+"But I don't exactly know how you mean it."
+
+"I mean it in this way.  First of all, he never offered to help me
+to a dot and a husband."  And Mademoiselle Nioche paused, smiling.
+"I won't say that is in his favor, for I do you justice.
+What led you, by the way, to make me such a queer offer?
+You didn't care for me."
+
+"Oh yes, I did," said Newman.
+
+"How so?"
+
+"It would have given me real pleasure to see you married
+to a respectable young fellow."
+
+"With six thousand francs of income!" cried Mademoiselle Nioche.
+"Do you call that caring for me?  I'm afraid you know little about women.
+You were not galant; you were not what you might have been."
+
+Newman flushed a trifle fiercely.  "Come!" he exclaimed "that's
+rather strong.  I had no idea I had been so shabby."
+
+Mademoiselle Nioche smiled as she took up her muff.
+"It is something, at any rate, to have made you angry."
+
+Her father had leaned both his elbows on the table,
+and his head, bent forward, was supported in his hands,
+the thin white fingers of which were pressed over his ears.
+In his position he was staring fixedly at the bottom of
+his empty glass, and Newman supposed he was not hearing.
+Mademoiselle Noemie buttoned her furred jacket and pushed back
+her chair, casting a glance charged with the consciousness
+of an expensive appearance first down over her flounces and then
+up at Newman.
+
+"You had better have remained an honest girl," Newman said, quietly.
+
+M. Nioche continued to stare at the bottom of his glass,
+and his daughter got up, still bravely smiling.
+"You mean that I look so much like one?  That's more than most
+women do nowadays.  Don't judge me yet a while," she added.
+"I mean to succeed; that's what I mean to do.  I leave you;
+I don't mean to be seen in cafes, for one thing.  I can't think
+what you want of my poor father; he's very comfortable now.
+It isn't his fault, either.  Au revoir, little father."
+And she tapped the old man on the head with her muff.
+Then she stopped a minute, looking at Newman.  "Tell M. de Bellegarde,
+when he wants news of me, to come and get it from ME!"
+And she turned and departed, the white-aproned waiter,
+with a bow, holding the door wide open for her.
+
+M. Nioche sat motionless, and Newman hardly knew what to say to him.
+The old man looked dismally foolish.  "So you determined not to shoot her,
+after all," Newman said, presently.
+
+M. Nioche, without moving, raised his eyes and gave him a long,
+peculiar look.  It seemed to confess everything, and yet not to ask for pity,
+nor to pretend, on the other hand, to a rugged ability to do without it.
+It might have expressed the state of mind of an innocuous insect,
+flat in shape and conscious of the impending pressure of a boot-sole,
+and reflecting that he was perhaps too flat to be crushed.  M. Nioche's
+gaze was a profession of moral flatness.  "You despise me terribly,"
+he said, in the weakest possible voice.
+
+"Oh no," said Newman, "it is none of my business.
+It's a good plan to take things easily."
+
+"I made you too many fine speeches," M. Nioche added.
+"I meant them at the time."
+
+"I am sure I am very glad you didn't shoot her," said Newman.
+"I was afraid you might have shot yourself.  That is why I came
+to look you up."  And he began to button his coat.
+
+"Neither," said M. Nioche.  "You despise me, and I can't explain to you.
+I hoped I shouldn't see you again."
+
+"Why, that's rather shabby," said Newman.  "You shouldn't drop
+your friends that way.  Besides, the last time you came to see
+me I thought you particularly jolly."
+
+"Yes, I remember," said M. Nioche, musingly; "I was in a fever.
+I didn't know what I said, what I did.  It was delirium."
+
+"Ah, well, you are quieter now."
+
+M. Nioche was silent a moment.  "As quiet as the grave,"
+he whispered softly.
+
+"Are you very unhappy?"
+
+M. Nioche rubbed his forehead slowly, and even pushed back his
+wig a little, looking askance at his empty glass.  "Yes--yes.
+But that's an old story.  I have always been unhappy.  My daughter
+does what she will with me.  I take what she gives me, good or bad.
+I have no spirit, and when you have no spirit you must keep quiet.
+I shan't trouble you any more."
+
+"Well," said Newman, rather disgusted at the smooth operation
+of the old man's philosophy, "that's as you please."
+
+M. Nioche seemed to have been prepared to be despised but nevertheless
+he made a feeble movement of appeal from Newman's faint praise.
+"After all," he said, "she is my daughter, and I can still look after her.
+If she will do wrong, why she will.  But there are many different paths,
+there are degrees.  I can give her the benefit--give her the benefit"--
+and M. Nioche paused, staring vaguely at Newman, who began to suspect
+that his brain had softened--"the benefit of my experience,"
+M. Nioche added.
+
+"Your experience?" inquired Newman, both amused and amazed.
+
+"My experience of business," said M. Nioche, gravely.
+
+"Ah, yes," said Newman, laughing, "that will be a great advantage to her!"
+And then he said good-by, and offered the poor, foolish old man his hand.
+
+M. Nioche took it and leaned back against the wall, holding it a moment
+and looking up at him.  "I suppose you think my wits are going,"
+he said.  "Very likely; I have always a pain in my head.
+That's why I can't explain, I can't tell you.  And she's so strong,
+she makes me walk as she will, anywhere!  But there's this--
+there's this."  And he stopped, still staring up at Newman.
+His little white eyes expanded and glittered for a moment
+like those of a cat in the dark.  "It's not as it seems.
+I haven't forgiven her.  Oh, no!"
+
+"That's right; don't," said Newman.  "She's a bad case."
+
+"It's horrible, it's horrible," said M. Nioche; "but do you
+want to know the truth?  I hate her!  I take what she gives me,
+and I hate her more.  To-day she brought me three hundred francs;
+they are here in my waistcoat pocket.  Now I hate her almost cruelly.
+No, I haven't forgiven her."
+
+"Why did you accept the money?"  Newman asked.
+
+"If I hadn't," said M. Nioche, "I should have hated her still more.
+That's what misery is.  No, I haven't forgiven her."
+
+"Take care you don't hurt her!" said Newman, laughing again.
+And with this he took his leave.  As he passed along
+the glazed side of the cafe, on reaching the street, he saw
+the old man motioning the waiter, with a melancholy gesture,
+to replenish his glass.
+
+One day, a week after his visit to the Cafe de la Patrie, he called
+upon Valentin de Bellegarde, and by good fortune found him at home.
+Newman spoke of his interview with M. Nioche and his daughter,
+and said he was afraid Valentin had judged the old man correctly.
+He had found the couple hobnobbing together in all amity;
+the old gentleman's rigor was purely theoretic.  Newman confessed
+that he was disappointed; he should have expected to see M. Nioche
+take high ground.
+
+"High ground, my dear fellow," said Valentin, laughing; "there is
+no high ground for him to take.  The only perceptible eminence in
+M. Nioche's horizon is Montmartre, which is not an edifying quarter.
+You can't go mountaineering in a flat country."
+
+"He remarked, indeed," said Newman, "that he has not forgiven her.
+But she'll never find it out."
+
+"We must do him the justice to suppose he doesn't like the thing,"
+Valentin rejoined.  "Mademoiselle Nioche is like the great artists
+whose biographies we read, who at the beginning of their career have
+suffered opposition in the domestic circle.  Their vocation has not
+been recognized by their families, but the world has done it justice.
+Mademoiselle Nioche has a vocation."
+
+"Oh, come," said Newman, impatiently, "you take the little
+baggage too seriously."
+
+"I know I do; but when one has nothing to think about,
+one must think of little baggages.  I suppose it is better
+to be serious about light things than not to be serious at all.
+This little baggage entertains me."
+
+"Oh, she has discovered that.  She knows you have been hunting her up
+and asking questions about her.  She is very much tickled by it.
+That's rather annoying."
+
+"Annoying, my dear fellow," laughed Valentin; "not the least!"
+
+"Hanged if I should want to have a greedy little adventuress like that know
+I was giving myself such pains about her!" said Newman.
+
+"A pretty woman is always worth one's pains," objected Valentin.
+"Mademoiselle Nioche is welcome to be tickled by my curiosity,
+and to know that I am tickled that she is tickled.
+She is not so much tickled, by the way."
+
+"You had better go and tell her," Newman rejoined.
+"She gave me a message for you of some such drift."
+
+"Bless your quiet imagination," said Valentin, "I have been to see her--
+three times in five days.  She is a charming hostess; we talk
+of Shakespeare and the musical glasses.  She is extremely clever
+and a very curious type; not at all coarse or wanting to be coarse;
+determined not to be.  She means to take very good care of herself.
+She is extremely perfect; she is as hard and clear-cut as some little
+figure of a sea-nymph in an antique intaglio, and I will warrant that she
+has not a grain more of sentiment or heart than if she was scooped
+out of a big amethyst.  You can't scratch her even with a diamond.
+Extremely pretty,--really, when you know her, she is wonderfully pretty,--
+intelligent, determined, ambitious, unscrupulous, capable of
+looking at a man strangled without changing color, she is upon
+my honor, extremely entertaining."
+
+"It's a fine list of attractions," said Newman; "they would serve
+as a police-detective's description of a favorite criminal.
+I should sum them up by another word than 'entertaining.'  "
+
+"Why, that is just the word to use.  I don't say she is laudable
+or lovable.  I don't want her as my wife or my sister.
+But she is a very curious and ingenious piece of machinery;
+I like to see it in operation."
+
+"Well, I have seen some very curious machines too," said Newman;
+"and once, in a needle factory, I saw a gentleman from the city,
+who had stopped too near one of them, picked up as neatly
+as if he had been prodded by a fork, swallowed down straight,
+and ground into small pieces."
+
+Reentering his domicile, late in the evening, three days
+after Madame de Bellegarde had made her bargain with him--
+the expression is sufficiently correct--touching the entertainment
+at which she was to present him to the world, he found on his table
+a card of goodly dimensions bearing an announcement that this
+lady would be at home on the 27th of the month, at ten o'clock
+in the evening.  He stuck it into the frame of his mirror
+and eyed it with some complacency; it seemed an agreeable emblem
+of triumph, documentary evidence that his prize was gained.
+Stretched out in a chair, he was looking at it lovingly,
+when Valentin de Bellegarde was shown into the room.
+Valentin's glance presently followed the direction of Newman's,
+and he perceived his mother's invitation.
+
+"And what have they put into the corner?" he asked.
+"Not the customary 'music,' 'dancing,' or 'tableaux vivants'?
+They ought at least to put 'An American.'"
+
+"Oh, there are to be several of us," said Newman.
+"Mrs. Tristram told me to-day that she had received a card
+and sent an acceptance."
+
+"Ah, then, with Mrs. Tristram and her husband you will have support.
+My mother might have put on her card 'Three Americans.'  But I suspect you
+will not lack amusement.  You will see a great many of the best people
+in France.  I mean the long pedigrees and the high noses, and all that.
+Some of them are awful idiots; I advise you to take them up cautiously."
+
+"Oh, I guess I shall like them," said Newman.
+"I am prepared to like every one and everything in these days;
+I am in high good-humor."
+
+Valentin looked at him a moment in silence and then dropped himself
+into a chair with an unwonted air of weariness.
+
+"Happy man!" he said with a sigh.  "Take care you don't become offensive."
+
+"If any one chooses to take offense, he may.  I have a
+good conscience," said Newman.
+
+"So you are really in love with my sister."
+
+"Yes, sir!" said Newman, after a pause.
+
+"And she also?"
+
+"I guess she likes me," said Newman.
+
+"What is the witchcraft you have used?"  Valentin asked.
+"How do YOU make love?"
+
+"Oh, I haven't any general rules," said Newman.
+"In any way that seems acceptable."
+
+"I suspect that, if one knew it," said Valentin, laughing, "you are
+a terrible customer.  You walk in seven-league boots."
+
+"There is something the matter with you to-night,"
+Newman said in response to this.  "You are vicious.
+Spare me all discordant sounds until after my marriage.
+Then, when I have settled down for life, I shall be better
+able to take things as they come."
+
+"And when does your marriage take place?"
+
+"About six weeks hence."
+
+Valentin was silent a while, and then he said, "And you feel
+very confident about the future?"
+
+"Confident.  I knew what I wanted, exactly, and I know what I have got."
+
+"You are sure you are going to be happy?"
+
+"Sure?" said Newman.  "So foolish a question deserves a foolish answer.  Yes!"
+
+"You are not afraid of anything?"
+
+"What should I be afraid of?  You can't hurt me unless you
+kill me by some violent means.  That I should indeed consider
+a tremendous sell.  I want to live and I mean to live.
+I can't die of illness, I am too ridiculously tough;
+and the time for dying of old age won't come round yet a while.
+I can't lose my wife, I shall take too good care of her.
+I may lose my money, or a large part of it; but that
+won't matter, for I shall make twice as much again.
+So what have I to be afraid of?"
+
+"You are not afraid it may be rather a mistake for an American
+man of business to marry a French countess?"
+
+"For the countess, possibly; but not for the man of business, if you mean me!
+But my countess shall not be disappointed; I answer for her happiness!"
+And as if he felt the impulse to celebrate his happy certitude by a bonfire,
+he got up to throw a couple of logs upon the already blazing hearth.
+Valentin watched for a few moments the quickened flame, and then,
+with his head leaning on his hand, gave a melancholy sigh.
+"Got a headache?"  Newman asked.
+
+"Je suis triste," said Valentin, with Gallic simplicity.
+
+"You are sad, eh?  It is about the lady you said the other night
+that you adored and that you couldn't marry?"
+
+"Did I really say that?  It seemed to me afterwards that
+the words had escaped me.  Before Claire it was bad taste.
+But I felt gloomy as I spoke, and I feel gloomy still.
+Why did you ever introduce me to that girl?"
+
+"Oh, it's Noemie, is it?  Lord deliver us!  You don't mean to say
+you are lovesick about her?"
+
+"Lovesick, no; it's not a grand passion.  But the cold-blooded little
+demon sticks in my thoughts; she has bitten me with those even little
+teeth of hers; I feel as if I might turn rabid and do something
+crazy in consequence.  It's very low, it's disgustingly low.
+She's the most mercenary little jade in Europe.  Yet she really
+affects my peace of mind; she is always running in my head.
+It's a striking contrast to your noble and virtuous attachment--
+a vile contrast!  It is rather pitiful that it should be the best
+I am able to do for myself at my present respectable age.
+I am a nice young man, eh, en somme?  You can't warrant my future,
+as you do your own."
+
+"Drop that girl, short," said Newman; "don't go near her again,
+and your future will do.  Come over to America and I will get
+you a place in a bank."
+
+"It is easy to say drop her," said Valentin, with a light laugh.
+"You can't drop a pretty woman like that.  One must be polite,
+even with Noemie.  Besides, I'll not have her suppose I am
+afraid of her."
+
+"So, between politeness and vanity, you will get deeper into the mud?
+Keep them both for something better.  Remember, too, that I didn't
+want to introduce you to her:  you insisted.  I had a sort of uneasy
+feeling about it."
+
+"Oh, I don't reproach you," said Valentin.  "Heaven forbid!
+I wouldn't for the world have missed knowing her.
+She is really extraordinary.  The way she has already spread her
+wings is amazing.  I don't know when a woman has amused me more.
+But excuse me," he added in an instant; "she doesn't amuse you,
+at second hand, and the subject is an impure one.
+Let us talk of something else."  Valentin introduced another topic,
+but within five minutes Newman observed that, by a bold transition,
+he had reverted to Mademoiselle Nioche, and was giving
+pictures of her manners and quoting specimens of her mots.
+These were very witty, and, for a young woman who six months before
+had been painting the most artless madonnas, startlingly cynical.
+But at last, abruptly, he stopped, became thoughtful, and for some
+time afterwards said nothing.  When he rose to go it was evident
+that his thoughts were still running upon Mademoiselle Nioche.
+"Yes, she's a frightful little monster!" he said.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+
+
+The next ten days were the happiest that Newman had ever known.
+He saw Madame de Cintre every day, and never saw either old Madame
+de Bellegarde or the elder of his prospective brothers-in-law.
+Madame de Cintre at last seemed to think it becoming to apologize
+for their never being present.  "They are much taken up,"
+she said, "with doing the honors of Paris to Lord Deepmere."
+There was a smile in her gravity as she made this declaration,
+and it deepened as she added, "He is our seventh cousin, you know,
+and blood is thicker than water.  And then, he is so interesting!"
+And with this she laughed.
+
+Newman met young Madame de Bellegarde two or three times,
+always roaming about with graceful vagueness, as if in search
+of an unattainable ideal of amusement.  She always reminded
+him of a painted perfume-bottle with a crack in it; but he had
+grown to have a kindly feeling for her, based on the fact
+of her owing conjugal allegiance to Urbain de Bellegarde.
+He pitied M. de Bellegarde's wife, especially since she was
+a silly, thirstily-smiling little brunette, with a suggestion
+of an unregulated heart.  The small marquise sometimes looked
+at him with an intensity too marked not to be innocent,
+for coquetry is more finely shaded.  She apparently wanted to ask
+him something or tell him something; he wondered what it was.
+But he was shy of giving her an opportunity, because, if her
+communication bore upon the aridity of her matrimonial lot,
+he was at a loss to see how he could help her.  He had
+a fancy, however, of her coming up to him some day and saying
+(after looking around behind her) with a little passionate hiss,
+"I know you detest my husband; let me have the pleasure of assuring
+you for once that you are right.  Pity a poor woman who is married
+to a clock-image in papier-mache!" Possessing, however, in default
+of a competent knowledge of the principles of etiquette,
+a very downright sense of the "meanness" of certain actions,
+it seemed to him to belong to his position to keep on his guard;
+he was not going to put it into the power of these people
+to say that in their house he had done anything unpleasant.
+As it was, Madame de Bellegarde used to give him news of the dress
+she meant to wear at his wedding, and which had not yet,
+in her creative imagination, in spite of many interviews
+with the tailor, resolved itself into its composite totality.
+"I told you pale blue bows on the sleeves, at the elbows,"
+she said.  "But to-day I don't see my blue bows at all.
+I don't know what has become of them.  To-day I see pink--
+a tender pink.  And then I pass through strange, dull phases
+in which neither blue nor pink says anything to me.
+And yet I must have the bows."
+
+"Have them green or yellow," said Newman.
+
+"Malheureux!" the little marquise would cry.  "Green bows would
+break your marriage--your children would be illegitimate!"
+
+Madame de Cintre was calmly happy before the world,
+and Newman had the felicity of fancying that before him,
+when the world was absent, she was almost agitatedly happy.
+She said very tender things.  "I take no pleasure in you.
+You never give me a chance to scold you, to correct you.
+I bargained for that, I expected to enjoy it.  But you
+won't do anything dreadful; you are dismally inoffensive.
+It is very stupid; there is no excitement for me; I might
+as well be marrying some one else."
+
+"I am afraid it's the worst I can do," Newman would say in answer
+to this.  "Kindly overlook the deficiency."  He assured her that he,
+at least, would never scold her; she was perfectly satisfactory.
+"If you only knew," he said, "how exactly you are what I coveted!
+And I am beginning to understand why I coveted it;
+the having it makes all the difference that I expected.
+Never was a man so pleased with his good fortune.
+You have been holding your head for a week past just as I wanted
+my wife to hold hers.  You say just the things I want her to say.
+You walk about the room just as I want her to walk.
+You have just the taste in dress that I want her to have.
+In short, you come up to the mark, and, I can tell you,
+my mark was high."
+
+These observations seemed to make Madame de Cintre rather grave.
+At last she said, "Depend upon it, I don't come up to the mark;
+your mark is too high.  I am not all that you suppose; I am
+a much smaller affair.  She is a magnificent woman, your ideal.
+Pray, how did she come to such perfection?"
+
+"She was never anything else," Newman said.
+
+"I really believe," Madame de Cintre went on, "that she is better
+than my own ideal.  Do you know that is a very handsome compliment?
+Well, sir, I will make her my own!"
+
+Mrs. Tristram came to see her dear Claire after Newman had announced
+his engagement, and she told our hero the next day that his good
+fortune was simply absurd.  "For the ridiculous part of it is,"
+she said, "that you are evidently going to be as happy as if you
+were marrying Miss Smith or Miss Thompson.  I call it a brilliant
+match for you, but you get brilliancy without paying any tax upon it.
+Those things are usually a compromise, but here you have everything,
+and nothing crowds anything else out.  You will be brilliantly happy
+as well."  Newman thanked her for her pleasant, encouraging way
+of saying things; no woman could encourage or discourage better.
+Tristram's way of saying things was different; he had been taken
+by his wife to call upon Madame de Cintre, and he gave an account
+of the expedition.
+
+"You don't catch me giving an opinion on your countess this time,"
+he said; "I put my foot in it once.  That's a d--d underhand
+thing to do, by the way--coming round to sound a fellow upon
+the woman you are going to marry.  You deserve anything you get.
+Then of course you rush and tell her, and she takes care to make
+it pleasant for the poor spiteful wretch the first time he calls.
+I will do you the justice to say, however, that you don't seem to have
+told Madame de Cintre; or if you have she's uncommonly magnanimous.
+She was very nice; she was tremendously polite.
+She and Lizzie sat on the sofa, pressing each other's hands
+and calling each other chere belle, and Madame de Cintre sent
+me with every third word a magnificent smile, as if to give me
+to understand that I too was a handsome dear.  She quite made up
+for past neglect, I assure you; she was very pleasant and sociable.
+Only in an evil hour it came into her head to say that she must
+present us to her mother--her mother wished to know your friends.
+I didn't want to know her mother, and I was on the point of
+telling Lizzie to go in alone and let me wait for her outside.
+But Lizzie, with her usual infernal ingenuity,
+guessed my purpose and reduced me by a glance of her eye.
+So they marched off arm in arm, and I followed as I could.
+We found the old lady in her arm-chair, twiddling her
+aristocratic thumbs.  She looked at Lizzie from head to foot;
+but at that game Lizzie, to do her justice, was a match for her.
+My wife told her we were great friends of Mr. Newman.
+The marquise started a moment, and then said, 'Oh, Mr. Newman!
+My daughter has made up her mind to marry a Mr. Newman.'
+Then Madame de Cintre began to fondle Lizzie again,
+and said it was this dear lady that had planned the match
+and brought them together.  'Oh, 'tis you I have to thank for
+my American son-in-law,' the old lady said to Mrs. Tristram.
+'It was a very clever thought of yours.  Be sure of my gratitude.'
+And then she began to look at me and presently said,
+'Pray, are you engaged in some species of manufacture?'
+I wanted to say that I manufactured broom-sticks for old
+witches to ride on, but Lizzie got in ahead of me.
+'My husband, Madame la Marquise,' she said, 'belongs to
+that unfortunate class of persons who have no profession
+and no business, and do very little good in the world.'
+To get her poke at the old woman she didn't care where she shoved me.
+'Dear me,' said the marquise, 'we all have our duties.'
+'I am sorry mine compel me to take leave of you,' said Lizzie.
+And we bundled out again.  But you have a mother-in-law,
+in all the force of the term."
+
+"Oh," said Newman, "my mother-in-law desires nothing better
+than to let me alone."
+
+Betimes, on the evening of the 27th, he went to Madame de Bellegarde's ball.
+The old house in the Rue de l'Universite looked strangely brilliant.
+In the circle of light projected from the outer gate a detachment
+of the populace stood watching the carriages roll in; the court was
+illumined with flaring torches and the portico carpeted with crimson.
+When Newman arrived there were but a few people present.
+The marquise and her two daughters were at the top of the staircase,
+where the sallow old nymph in the angle peeped out from a bower of plants.
+Madame de Bellegarde, in purple and fine laces, looked like an old
+lady painted by Vandyke; Madame de Cintre was dressed in white.
+The old lady greeted Newman with majestic formality, and looking
+round her, called several of the persons who were standing near.
+They were elderly gentlemen, of what Valentin de Bellegarde had designated
+as the high-nosed category; two or three of them wore cordons and stars.
+They approached with measured alertness, and the marquise said that she
+wished to present them to Mr. Newman, who was going to marry her daughter.
+Then she introduced successively three dukes, three counts, and a baron.
+These gentlemen bowed and smiled most agreeably, and Newman indulged
+in a series of impartial hand-shakes, accompanied by a "Happy to make
+your acquaintance, sir."  He looked at Madame de Cintre, but she was
+not looking at him.  If his personal self-consciousness had been of a
+nature to make him constantly refer to her, as the critic before whom,
+in company, he played his part, he might have found it a flattering
+proof of her confidence that he never caught her eyes resting upon him.
+It is a reflection Newman did not make, but we nevertheless risk it,
+that in spite of this circumstance she probably saw every movement
+of his little finger.  Young Madame de Bellegarde was dressed in an
+audacious toilet of crimson crape, bestrewn with huge silver moons--
+thin crescent and full disks.
+
+"You don't say anything about my dress," she said to Newman.
+
+"I feel," he answered, "as if I were looking at you through a telescope.
+It is very strange."
+
+"If it is strange it matches the occasion.  But I am not a heavenly body."
+
+"I never saw the sky at midnight that particular shade
+of crimson," said Newman.
+
+"That is my originality; any one could have chosen blue.
+My sister-in-law would have chosen a lovely shade of blue, with a dozen
+little delicate moons.  But I think crimson is much more amusing.
+And I give my idea, which is moonshine."
+
+"Moonshine and bloodshed," said Newman.
+
+"A murder by moonlight," laughed Madame de Bellegarde.
+"What a delicious idea for a toilet!  To make it complete,
+there is the silver dagger, you see, stuck into my hair.
+But here comes Lord Deepmere," she added in a moment.
+"I must find out what he thinks of it."  Lord Deepmere came up,
+looking very red in the face, and laughing.  "Lord Deepmere
+can't decide which he prefers, my sister-in-law or me,"
+said Madame de Bellegarde.  "He likes Claire because she
+is his cousin, and me because I am not.  But he has no right
+to make love to Claire, whereas I am perfectly disponible.
+It is very wrong to make love to a woman who is engaged,
+but it is very wrong not to make love to a woman who is married."
+
+"Oh, it's very jolly making love to married women," said Lord Deepmere,
+"because they can't ask you to marry them."
+
+"Is that what the others do, the spinsters?"  Newman inquired.
+
+"Oh dear, yes," said Lord Deepmere; "in England all the girls
+ask a fellow to marry them."
+
+"And a fellow brutally refuses," said Madame de Bellegarde.
+
+"Why, really, you know, a fellow can't marry any girl that asks him,"
+said his lordship.
+
+"Your cousin won't ask you.  She is going to marry Mr. Newman."
+
+"Oh, that's a very different thing!" laughed Lord Deepmere.
+
+"You would have accepted HER, I suppose.  That makes me hope
+that after all you prefer me."
+
+"Oh, when things are nice I never prefer one to the other,"
+said the young Englishman.  "I take them all."
+
+"Ah, what a horror!  I won't be taken in that way; I must be kept apart,"
+cried Madame de Bellegarde.  "Mr. Newman is much better; he knows
+how to choose.  Oh, he chooses as if he were threading a needle.
+He prefers Madame de Cintre to any conceivable creature or thing."
+
+"Well, you can't help my being her cousin," said Lord Deepmere to Newman,
+with candid hilarity.
+
+"Oh, no, I can't help that," said Newman, laughing back;
+"neither can she!"
+
+"And you can't help my dancing with her," said Lord Deepmere,
+with sturdy simplicity.
+
+"I could prevent that only by dancing with her myself," said Newman.
+"But unfortunately I don't know how to dance."
+
+"Oh, you may dance without knowing how; may you not, milord?" said Madame
+de Bellegarde.  But to this Lord Deepmere replied that a fellow ought
+to know how to dance if he didn't want to make an ass of himself;
+and at this moment Urbain de Bellegarde joined the group, slow-stepping and
+with his hands behind him.
+
+"This is a very splendid entertainment," said Newman, cheerfully.
+"The old house looks very bright."
+
+"If YOU are pleased, we are content," said the marquis,
+lifting his shoulders and bending them forward.
+
+"Oh, I suspect every one is pleased," said Newman.
+"How can they help being pleased when the first thing they see
+as they come in is your sister, standing there as beautiful
+as an angel?"
+
+"Yes, she is very beautiful," rejoined the marquis, solemnly.
+"But that is not so great a source of satisfaction to other people,
+naturally, as to you."
+
+"Yes, I am satisfied, marquis, I am satisfied," said Newman,
+with his protracted enunciation.  "And now tell me," he added,
+looking round, "who some of your friends are."
+
+M. de Bellegarde looked about him in silence, with his head bent and his
+hand raised to his lower lip, which he slowly rubbed.  A stream of people
+had been pouring into the salon in which Newman stood with his host,
+the rooms were filling up and the spectacle had become brilliant.
+It borrowed its splendor chiefly from the shining shoulders and profuse
+jewels of the women, and from the voluminous elegance of their dresses.
+There were no uniforms, as Madame de Bellegarde's door was inexorably closed
+against the myrmidons of the upstart power which then ruled the fortunes
+of France, and the great company of smiling and chattering faces was not
+graced by any very frequent suggestions of harmonious beauty.  It is
+a pity, nevertheless, that Newman had not been a physiognomist, for a great
+many of the faces were irregularly agreeable, expressive, and suggestive.
+If the occasion had been different they would hardly have pleased him;
+he would have thought the women not pretty enough and the men too smirking;
+but he was now in a humor to receive none but agreeable impressions,
+and he looked no more narrowly than to perceive that every one was brilliant,
+and to feel that the sun of their brilliancy was a part of his credit.
+"I will present you to some people," said M. de Bellegarde after a while.
+"I will make a point of it, in fact.  You will allow me?"
+
+"Oh, I will shake hands with any one you want," said Newman.
+"Your mother just introduced me to half a dozen old gentlemen.
+Take care you don't pick up the same parties again."
+
+"Who are the gentlemen to whom my mother presented you?"
+
+"Upon my word, I forgot them," said Newman, laughing.
+"The people here look very much alike."
+
+"I suspect they have not forgotten you," said the marquis.
+And he began to walk through the rooms.  Newman, to keep near
+him in the crowd, took his arm; after which for some time,
+the marquis walked straight along, in silence.  At last,
+reaching the farther end of the suite of reception-rooms,
+Newman found himself in the presence of a lady of
+monstrous proportions, seated in a very capacious arm-chair,
+with several persons standing in a semicircle round her.
+This little group had divided as the marquis came up,
+and M. de Bellegarde stepped forward and stood for an instant
+silent and obsequious, with his hat raised to his lips,
+as Newman had seen some gentlemen stand in churches as soon
+as they entered their pews.  The lady, indeed, bore a very fair
+likeness to a reverend effigy in some idolatrous shrine.
+She was monumentally stout and imperturbably serene.
+Her aspect was to Newman almost formidable; he had a troubled
+consciousness of a triple chin, a small piercing eye, a vast
+expanse of uncovered bosom, a nodding and twinkling tiara of plumes
+and gems, and an immense circumference of satin petticoat.
+With her little circle of beholders this remarkable woman
+reminded him of the Fat Lady at a fair.  She fixed her small,
+unwinking eyes at the new-comers.
+
+"Dear duchess," said the marquis, "let me present you our
+good friend Mr. Newman, of whom you have heard us speak.
+Wishing to make Mr. Newman known to those who are dear to us,
+I could not possibly fail to begin with you."
+
+"Charmed, dear friend; charmed, monsieur," said the duchess
+in a voice which, though small and shrill, was not disagreeable,
+while Newman executed his obeisance.  "I came on purpose
+to see monsieur.  I hope he appreciates the compliment.
+You have only to look at me to do so, sir," she continued,
+sweeping her person with a much-encompassing glance.
+Newman hardly knew what to say, though it seemed that to a duchess
+who joked about her corpulence one might say almost anything.
+On hearing that the duchess had come on purpose to see Newman,
+the gentlemen who surrounded her turned a little and looked at him
+with sympathetic curiosity.  The marquis with supernatural gravity
+mentioned to him the name of each, while the gentleman who bore
+it bowed; they were all what are called in France beaux noms.
+"I wanted extremely to see you," the duchess went on.
+"C'est positif.  In the first place, I am very fond of the person you
+are going to marry; she is the most charming creature in France.
+Mind you treat her well, or you shall hear some news of me.
+But you look as if you were good.  I am told you are very remarkable.
+I have heard all sorts of extraordinary things about you.
+Voyons, are they true?"
+
+"I don't know what you can have heard," said Newman.
+
+"Oh, you have your legende.  We have heard that you
+have had a career the most checkered, the most bizarre.
+What is that about your having founded a city some ten years
+ago in the great West, a city which contains to-day half
+a million of inhabitants?  Isn't it half a million, messieurs?
+You are exclusive proprietor of this flourishing settlement,
+and are consequently fabulously rich, and you would be richer
+still if you didn't grant lands and houses free of rent to all
+newcomers who will pledge themselves never to smoke cigars.
+At this game, in three years, we are told, you are going
+to be made president of America."
+
+The duchess recited this amazing "legend" with a smooth self-possession
+which gave the speech to Newman's mind, the air of being a bit of amusing
+dialogue in a play, delivered by a veteran comic actress.  Before she
+had ceased speaking he had burst into loud, irrepressible laughter.
+"Dear duchess, dear duchess," the marquis began to murmur, soothingly.
+Two or three persons came to the door of the room to see who was laughing
+at the duchess.  But the lady continued with the soft, serene assurance
+of a person who, as a duchess, was certain of being listened to, and,
+as a garrulous woman, was independent of the pulse of her auditors.
+"But I know you are very remarkable.  You must be, to have endeared yourself
+to this good marquis and to his admirable world.  They are very exacting.
+I myself am not very sure at this hour of really possessing it.
+Eh, Bellegarde?  To please you, I see, one must be an American millionaire.
+But your real triumph, my dear sir, is pleasing the countess; she is
+as difficult as a princess in a fairy tale.  Your success is a miracle.
+What is your secret?  I don't ask you to reveal it before all these gentlemen,
+but come and see me some day and give me a specimen of your talents."
+
+"The secret is with Madame de Cintre," said Newman.
+"You must ask her for it.  It consists in her having a great
+deal of charity."
+
+"Very pretty!" said the duchess.  "That's a very nice specimen,
+to begin with.  What, Bellegarde, are you already taking monsieur away?"
+
+"I have a duty to perform, dear friend," said the marquis,
+pointing to the other groups.
+
+"Ah, for you I know what that means.  Well, I have seen monsieur;
+that is what I wanted.  He can't persuade me that he isn't
+very clever.  Farewell."
+
+As Newman passed on with his host, he asked who the duchess was.
+"The greatest lady in France," said the marquis.
+M. de Bellegarde then presented his prospective brother-in-law
+to some twenty other persons of both sexes, selected apparently
+for their typically august character.  In some cases this character
+was written in good round hand upon the countenance of the wearer;
+in others Newman was thankful for such help as his companion's
+impressively brief intimation contributed to the discovery of it.
+There were large, majestic men, and small demonstrative men;
+there were ugly ladies in yellow lace and quaint jewels,
+and pretty ladies with white shoulders from which jewels and every
+thing else were absent.  Every one gave Newman extreme attention,
+every one smiled, every one was charmed to make his acquaintance,
+every one looked at him with that soft hardness of good society
+which puts out its hand but keeps its fingers closed over
+the coin.  If the marquis was going about as a bear-leader,
+if the fiction of Beauty and the Beast was supposed to have
+found its companion-piece, the general impression appeared
+to be that the bear was a very fair imitation of humanity.
+Newman found his reception among the marquis's friends
+very "pleasant;" he could not have said more for it.
+It was pleasant to be treated with so much explicit politeness;
+it was pleasant to hear neatly turned civilities, with a flavor
+of wit, uttered from beneath carefully-shaped mustaches;
+it was pleasant to see clever Frenchwomen--they all seemed clever--
+turn their backs to their partners to get a good look at the
+strange American whom Claire de Cintre was to marry, and reward
+the object of the exhibition with a charming smile.  At last,
+as he turned away from a battery of smiles and other amenities,
+Newman caught the eye of the marquis looking at him heavily;
+and thereupon, for a single instant, he checked himself.
+"Am I behaving like a d--d fool?" he asked himself.
+"Am I stepping about like a terrier on his hind legs?"
+At this moment he perceived Mrs. Tristram at the other side
+of the room, and he waved his hand in farewell to M. de
+Bellegarde and made his way toward her.
+
+"Am I holding my head too high?" he asked.  "Do I look as if I
+had the lower end of a pulley fastened to my chin?"
+
+"You look like all happy men, very ridiculous," said Mrs. Tristram.
+"It's the usual thing, neither better nor worse.  I have been watching
+you for the last ten minutes, and I have been watching M. de Bellegarde.
+He doesn't like it."
+
+"The more credit to him for putting it through," replied Newman.
+"But I shall be generous.  I shan't trouble him any more.
+But I am very happy.  I can't stand still here.
+Please to take my arm and we will go for a walk."
+
+He led Mrs. Tristram through all the rooms.  There were a great
+many of them, and, decorated for the occasion and filled with a
+stately crowd, their somewhat tarnished nobleness recovered its lustre.
+Mrs. Tristram, looking about her, dropped a series of softly-incisive
+comments upon her fellow-guests. But Newman made vague answers;
+he hardly heard her, his thoughts were elsewhere.  They were lost
+in a cheerful sense of success, of attainment and victory.
+His momentary care as to whether he looked like a fool
+passed away, leaving him simply with a rich contentment.
+He had got what he wanted.  The savor of success had always been highly
+agreeable to him, and it had been his fortune to know it often.
+But it had never before been so sweet, been associated with
+so much that was brilliant and suggestive and entertaining.
+The lights, the flowers, the music, the crowd, the splendid women,
+the jewels, the strangeness even of the universal murmur of a
+clever foreign tongue were all a vivid symbol and assurance
+of his having grasped his purpose and forced along his groove.
+If Newman's smile was larger than usual, it was not tickled
+vanity that pulled the strings; he had no wish to be shown
+with the finger or to achieve a personal success.  If he could
+have looked down at the scene, invisible, from a hole in the roof,
+he would have enjoyed it quite as much.  It would have spoken to him
+about his own prosperity and deepened that easy feeling about life
+to which, sooner or later, he made all experience contribute.
+Just now the cup seemed full.
+
+"It is a very pretty party," said Mrs. Tristram, after they had walked
+a while.  "I have seen nothing objectionable except my husband leaning against
+the wall and talking to an individual whom I suppose he takes for a duke,
+but whom I more than suspect to be the functionary who attends to the lamps.
+Do you think you could separate them?  Knock over a lamp!"
+
+I doubt whether Newman, who saw no harm in Tristram's conversing with an
+ingenious mechanic, would have complied with this request; but at this
+moment Valentin de Bellegarde drew near.  Newman, some weeks previously,
+had presented Madame de Cintre's youngest brother to Mrs. Tristram,
+for whose merits Valentin professed a discriminating relish and to whom
+he had paid several visits.
+
+"Did you ever read Keats's Belle Dame sans Merci?" asked Mrs. Tristram.
+"You remind me of the hero of the ballad:--
+
+     'Oh, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
+      Alone and palely loitering?'"
+
+"If I am alone, it is because I have been deprived of your society,"
+said Valentin.  "Besides it is good manners for no man
+except Newman to look happy.  This is all to his address.
+It is not for you and me to go before the curtain."
+
+"You promised me last spring," said Newman to Mrs. Tristram,
+"that six months from that time I should get into a monstrous rage.
+It seems to me the time's up, and yet the nearest I can come
+to doing anything rough now is to offer you a cafe glace."
+
+"I told you we should do things grandly," said Valentin.
+"I don't allude to the cafes glaces.  But every one is here,
+and my sister told me just now that Urbain had been adorable."
+
+"He's a good fellow, he's a good fellow," said Newman.
+"I love him as a brother.  That reminds me that I ought to go
+and say something polite to your mother."
+
+"Let it be something very polite indeed," said Valentin.
+"It may be the last time you will feel so much like it!"
+
+Newman walked away, almost disposed to clasp old Madame de Bellegarde round
+the waist.  He passed through several rooms and at last found the old
+marquise in the first saloon, seated on a sofa, with her young kinsman,
+Lord Deepmere, beside her.  The young man looked somewhat bored;
+his hands were thrust into his pockets and his eyes were fixed upon
+the toes of his shoes, his feet being thrust out in front of him.
+Madame de Bellegarde appeared to have been talking to him with some
+intensity and to be waiting for an answer to what she had said,
+or for some sign of the effect of her words.  Her hands were folded
+in her lap, and she was looking at his lordship's simple physiognomy
+with an air of politely suppressed irritation.
+
+Lord Deepmere looked up as Newman approached, met his eyes,
+and changed color.
+
+"I am afraid I disturb an interesting interview," said Newman.
+
+Madame de Bellegarde rose, and her companion rising at the same time,
+she put her hand into his arm.  She answered nothing for an instant,
+and then, as he remained silent, she said with a smile, "It would
+be polite for Lord Deepmere to say it was very interesting."
+
+"Oh, I'm not polite!" cried his lordship.  "But it was interesting."
+
+"Madame de Bellegarde was giving you some good advice, eh?" said Newman;
+"toning you down a little?"
+
+"I was giving him some excellent advice," said the marquise,
+fixing her fresh, cold eyes upon our hero.  "It's for him
+to take it."
+
+"Take it, sir--take it," Newman exclaimed.  "Any advice the marquise
+gives you to-night must be good.  For to-night, marquise, you must
+speak from a cheerful, comfortable spirit, and that makes good advice.
+You see everything going on so brightly and successfully round you.
+Your party is magnificent; it was a very happy thought.
+It is much better than that thing of mine would have been."
+
+"If you are pleased I am satisfied," said Madame de Bellegarde.
+"My desire was to please you."
+
+"Do you want to please me a little more?" said Newman.  "Just drop our
+lordly friend; I am sure he wants to be off and shake his heels a little.
+Then take my arm and walk through the rooms."
+
+"My desire was to please you," the old lady repeated.
+And she liberated Lord Deepmere, Newman rather wondering
+at her docility.  "If this young man is wise," she added,
+"he will go and find my daughter and ask her to dance."
+
+"I have been indorsing your advice," said Newman, bending over
+her and laughing, "I suppose I must swallow that!"
+
+Lord Deepmere wiped his forehead and departed, and Madame de Bellegarde
+took Newman's arm.  "Yes, it's a very pleasant, sociable entertainment,"
+the latter declared, as they proceeded on their circuit.
+"Every one seems to know every one and to be glad to see every one.
+The marquis has made me acquainted with ever so many people, and I feel
+quite like one of the family.  It's an occasion," Newman continued,
+wanting to say something thoroughly kind and comfortable, "that I
+shall always remember, and remember very pleasantly."
+
+"I think it is an occasion that we shall none of us forget,"
+said the marquise, with her pure, neat enunciation.
+
+People made way for her as she passed, others turned round and looked
+at her, and she received a great many greetings and pressings of
+the hand, all of which she accepted with the most delicate dignity.
+But though she smiled upon every one, she said nothing until she
+reached the last of the rooms, where she found her elder son.
+Then, "This is enough, sir," she declared with measured softness to Newman,
+and turned to the marquis.  He put out both his hands and took both hers,
+drawing her to a seat with an air of the tenderest veneration.
+It was a most harmonious family group, and Newman discreetly retired.
+He moved through the rooms for some time longer, circulating freely,
+overtopping most people by his great height, renewing acquaintance
+with some of the groups to which Urbain de Bellegarde had presented him,
+and expending generally the surplus of his equanimity.  He continued to find
+it all extremely agreeable; but the most agreeable things have an end,
+and the revelry on this occasion began to deepen to a close.  The music
+was sounding its ultimate strains and people were looking for the marquise,
+to make their farewells.  There seemed to be some difficulty in finding her,
+and Newman heard a report that she had left the ball, feeling faint.
+"She has succumbed to the emotions of the evening," he heard a lady say.
+"Poor, dear marquise; I can imagine all that they may have been for her!"
+But he learned immediately afterwards that she had recovered herself
+and was seated in an armchair near the doorway, receiving parting
+compliments from great ladies who insisted upon her not rising.
+He himself set out in quest of Madame de Cintre.  He had seen her move
+past him many times in the rapid circles of a waltz, but in accordance
+with her explicit instructions he had exchanged no words with her since
+the beginning of the evening.  The whole house having been thrown open,
+the apartments of the rez-de-chaussee were also accessible, though a smaller
+number of persons had gathered there.  Newman wandered through them,
+observing a few scattered couples to whom this comparative seclusion appeared
+grateful and reached a small conservatory which opened into the garden.
+The end of the conservatory was formed by a clear sheet of glass,
+unmasked by plants, and admitting the winter starlight so directly that
+a person standing there would seem to have passed into the open air.
+Two persons stood there now, a lady and a gentleman; the lady Newman,
+from within the room and although she had turned her back to it,
+immediately recognized as Madame de Cintre.  He hesitated as to whether
+he would advance, but as he did so she looked round, feeling apparently
+that he was there.  She rested her eyes on him a moment and then turned
+again to her companion.
+
+"It is almost a pity not to tell Mr. Newman," she said softly,
+but in a tone that Newman could hear.
+
+"Tell him if you like!" the gentleman answered, in the voice
+of Lord Deepmere.
+
+"Oh, tell me by all means!" said Newman advancing.
+
+Lord Deepmere, he observed, was very red in the face, and he had twisted
+his gloves into a tight cord as if he had been squeezing them dry.
+These, presumably, were tokens of violent emotion, and it seemed
+to Newman that the traces of corresponding agitation were visible in
+Madame de Cintre's face.  The two had been talking with much vivacity.
+"What I should tell you is only to my lord's credit," said Madame de Cintre,
+smiling frankly enough.
+
+"He wouldn't like it any better for that!" said my lord,
+with his awkward laugh.
+
+"Come; what's the mystery?"  Newman demanded.  "Clear it up.
+I don't like mysteries."
+
+"We must have some things we don't like, and go without some we do,"
+said the ruddy young nobleman, laughing still.
+
+"It's to Lord Deepmere's credit, but it is not to every one's,"
+said Madam de Cintre.  "So I shall say nothing about it.
+You may be sure," she added; and she put out her hand to
+the Englishman, who took it half shyly, half impetuously.
+"And now go and dance!" she said.
+
+"Oh yes, I feel awfully like dancing!" he answered.  "I shall
+go and get tipsy."  And he walked away with a gloomy guffaw.
+
+"What has happened between you?"  Newman asked.
+
+"I can't tell you--now," said Madame de Cintre.
+"Nothing that need make you unhappy."
+
+"Has the little Englishman been trying to make love to you?"
+
+She hesitated, and then she uttered a grave "No! he's a very
+honest little fellow."
+
+"But you are agitated.  Something is the matter."
+
+"Nothing, I repeat, that need make you unhappy.  My agitation is over.
+Some day I will tell you what it was; not now.  I can't now!"
+
+"Well, I confess," remarked Newman, "I don't want to hear
+anything unpleasant.  I am satisfied with everything--
+most of all with you.  I have seen all the ladies and talked
+with a great many of them; but I am satisfied with you."
+Madame de Cintre covered him for a moment with her large,
+soft glance, and then turned her eyes away into the starry night.
+So they stood silent a moment, side by side.  "Say you are
+satisfied with me," said Newman.
+
+He had to wait a moment for the answer; but it came at last,
+low yet distinct:  "I am very happy."
+
+It was presently followed by a few words from another source,
+which made them both turn round.  "I am sadly afraid Madame de
+Cintre will take a chill.  I have ventured to bring a shawl."
+Mrs. Bread stood there softly solicitous, holding a white drapery
+in her hand.
+
+"Thank you," said Madame de Cintre, "the sight of those cold
+stars gives one a sense of frost.  I won't take your shawl,
+but we will go back into the house."
+
+She passed back and Newman followed her, Mrs. Bread standing
+respectfully aside to make way for them.  Newman paused an instant
+before the old woman, and she glanced up at him with a silent greeting.
+"Oh, yes," he said, "you must come and live with us."
+
+"Well then, sir, if you will," she answered, "you have not seen
+the last of me!"
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+
+
+Newman was fond of music and went often to the opera.  A couple of evenings
+after Madame de Bellegarde's ball he sat listening to "Don Giovanni,"
+having in honor of this work, which he had never yet seen represented,
+come to occupy his orchestra-chair before the rising of the curtain.
+Frequently he took a large box and invited a party of his compatriots;
+this was a mode of recreation to which he was much addicted.
+He liked making up parties of his friends and conducting them to the theatre,
+and taking them to drive on high drags or to dine at remote restaurants.
+He liked doing things which involved his paying for people; the vulgar
+truth is that he enjoyed "treating" them.  This was not because he was
+what is called purse-proud; handling money in public was on the contrary
+positively disagreeable to him; he had a sort of personal modesty about it,
+akin to what he would have felt about making a toilet before spectators.
+But just as it was a gratification to him to be handsomely dressed, just so
+it was a private satisfaction to him (he enjoyed it very clandestinely)
+to have interposed, pecuniarily, in a scheme of pleasure.
+To set a large group of people in motion and transport them to a distance,
+to have special conveyances, to charter railway-carriages and steamboats,
+harmonized with his relish for bold processes, and made hospitality seem
+more active and more to the purpose.  A few evenings before the occasion
+of which I speak he had invited several ladies and gentlemen to the opera
+to listen to Madame Alboni--a party which included Miss Dora Finch.
+It befell, however, that Miss Dora Finch, sitting near Newman in the box,
+discoursed brilliantly, not only during the entr'actes, but during many of
+the finest portions of the performance, so that Newman had really come away
+with an irritated sense that Madame Alboni had a thin, shrill voice, and that
+her musical phrase was much garnished with a laugh of the giggling order.
+After this he promised himself to go for a while to the opera alone.
+
+When the curtain had fallen upon the first act of "Don Giovanni"
+he turned round in his place to observe the house.  Presently, in one
+of the boxes, he perceived Urbain de Bellegarde and his wife.
+The little marquise was sweeping the house very busily with a glass,
+and Newman, supposing that she saw him, determined to go and bid
+her good evening.  M. de Bellegarde was leaning against a column,
+motionless, looking straight in front of him, with one hand in the breast
+of his white waistcoat and the other resting his hat on his thigh.
+Newman was about to leave his place when he noticed in that obscure region
+devoted to the small boxes which in France are called, not inaptly,
+"bathing-tubs," a face which even the dim light and the distance could
+not make wholly indistinct.  It was the face of a young and pretty woman,
+and it was surmounted with a coiffure of pink roses and diamonds.
+This person was looking round the house, and her fan was moving to and fro
+with the most practiced grace; when she lowered it, Newman perceived
+a pair of plump white shoulders and the edge of a rose-colored dress.
+Beside her, very close to the shoulders and talking, apparently with
+an earnestness which it pleased her scantily to heed, sat a young man
+with a red face and a very low shirt-collar. A moment's gazing left
+Newman with no doubts; the pretty young woman was Noemie Nioche.
+He looked hard into the depths of the box, thinking her father might
+perhaps be in attendance, but from what he could see the young man's
+eloquence had no other auditor.  Newman at last made his way out,
+and in doing so he passed beneath the baignoire of Mademoiselle Noemie.
+She saw him as he approached and gave him a nod and smile which seemed
+meant as an assurance that she was still a good-natured girl, in spite
+of her enviable rise in the world.  Newman passed into the foyer
+and walked through it.  Suddenly he paused in front of a gentleman
+seated on one of the divans.  The gentleman's elbows were on his knees;
+he was leaning forward and staring at the pavement, lost apparently
+in meditations of a somewhat gloomy cast.  But in spite of his bent
+head Newman recognized him, and in a moment sat down beside him.
+Then the gentleman looked up and displayed the expressive countenance
+of Valentin de Bellegarde.
+
+"What in the world are you thinking of so hard?" asked Newman.
+
+"A subject that requires hard thinking to do it justice," said Valentin.
+"My immeasurable idiocy."
+
+"What is the matter now?"
+
+"The matter now is that I am a man again, and no more a fool than usual.
+But I came within an inch of taking that girl au serieux."
+
+"You mean the young lady below stairs, in a baignoire in a
+pink dress?" said Newman.
+
+"Did you notice what a brilliant kind of pink it was?"
+Valentin inquired, by way of answer.  "It makes her look
+as white as new milk."
+
+"White or black, as you please.  But you have stopped going to see her?"
+
+"Oh, bless you, no.  Why should I stop?  I have changed, but she hasn't,"
+said Valentin.  "I see she is a vulgar little wretch, after all.
+But she is as amusing as ever, and one MUST be amused."
+
+"Well, I am glad she strikes you so unpleasantly," Newman rejoiced.
+"I suppose you have swallowed all those fine words you used about
+her the other night.  You compared her to a sapphire, or a topaz,
+or an amethyst--some precious stone; what was it?"
+
+"I don't remember," said Valentin, "it may have been to a carbuncle!
+But she won't make a fool of me now.  She has no real charm.
+It's an awfully low thing to make a mistake about a person
+of that sort."
+
+"I congratulate you," Newman declared, "upon the scales having
+fallen from your eyes.  It's a great triumph; it ought to make
+you feel better."
+
+"Yes, it makes me feel better!" said Valentin, gayly.  Then, checking himself,
+he looked askance at Newman.  "I rather think you are laughing at me.
+If you were not one of the family I would take it up."
+
+"Oh, no, I'm not laughing, any more than I am one of the family.
+You make me feel badly.  You are too clever a fellow, you are made
+of too good stuff, to spend your time in ups and downs over that
+class of goods.  The idea of splitting hairs about Miss Nioche!
+It seems to me awfully foolish.  You say you have given up taking
+her seriously; but you take her seriously so long as you take
+her at all."
+
+Valentin turned round in his place and looked a while
+at Newman, wrinkling his forehead and rubbing his knees.
+"Vous parlez d'or. But she has wonderfully pretty arms.
+Would you believe I didn't know it till this evening?"
+
+"But she is a vulgar little wretch, remember, all the same," said Newman.
+
+"Yes; the other day she had the bad taste to begin to abuse her father,
+to his face, in my presence.  I shouldn't have expected it of her;
+it was a disappointment; heigho!"
+
+"Why, she cares no more for her father than for her door-mat," said Newman.
+"I discovered that the first time I saw her."
+
+"Oh, that's another affair; she may think of the poor old beggar
+what she pleases.  But it was low in her to call him bad names;
+it quite threw me off.  It was about a frilled petticoat that he was
+to have fetched from the washer-woman's; he appeared to have neglected
+this graceful duty.  She almost boxed his ears.  He stood there staring
+at her with his little blank eyes and smoothing his old hat with his
+coat-tail. At last he turned round and went out without a word.
+Then I told her it was in very bad taste to speak so to one's papa.
+She said she should be so thankful to me if I would mention it to her
+whenever her taste was at fault; she had immense confidence in mine.
+I told her I couldn't have the bother of forming her manners;
+I had had an idea they were already formed, after the best models.
+She had disappointed me.  But I shall get over it," said Valentin, gayly.
+
+"Oh, time's a great consoler!"  Newman answered with humorous sobriety.
+He was silent a moment, and then he added, in another tone, "I wish you
+would think of what I said to you the other day.  Come over to America
+with us, and I will put you in the way of doing some business.
+You have a very good head, if you will only use it."
+
+Valentin made a genial grimace.  "My head is much obliged to you.
+Do you mean the place in a bank?"
+
+"There are several places, but I suppose you would consider the bank
+the most aristocratic."
+
+Valentin burst into a laugh.  "My dear fellow, at night all cats are gray!
+When one derogates there are no degrees."
+
+Newman answered nothing for a minute.  Then, "I think you will find
+there are degrees in success," he said with a certain dryness.
+
+Valentin had leaned forward again, with his elbows on his knees,
+and he was scratching the pavement with his stick.
+At last he said, looking up, "Do you really think I ought
+to do something?"
+
+Newman laid his hand on his companion's arm and looked at him
+a moment through sagaciously-narrowed eyelids.  "Try it and see.
+You are not good enough for it, but we will stretch a point."
+
+"Do you really think I can make some money?  I should like to see
+how it feels to have a little."
+
+"Do what I tell you, and you shall be rich," said Newman.
+"Think of it."  And he looked at his watch and prepared to resume
+his way to Madame de Bellegarde's box.
+
+"Upon my word I will think of it," said Valentin.  "I will go and listen
+to Mozart another half hour--I can always think better to music--
+and profoundly meditate upon it."
+
+The marquis was with his wife when Newman entered their box;
+he was bland, remote, and correct as usual; or, as it seemed
+to Newman, even more than usual.
+
+"What do you think of the opera?" asked our hero.
+"What do you think of the Don?"
+
+"We all know what Mozart is," said the marquis; "our impressions don't
+date from this evening.  Mozart is youth, freshness, brilliancy, facility--
+a little too great facility, perhaps.  But the execution is here and
+there deplorably rough."
+
+"I am very curious to see how it ends," said Newman.
+
+"You speak as if it were a feuilleton in the 'Figaro,' " observed
+the marquis.  "You have surely seen the opera before?"
+
+"Never," said Newman.  "I am sure I should have remembered it.
+Donna Elvira reminds me of Madame de Cintre; I don't mean
+in her circumstances, but in the music she sings."
+
+"It is a very nice distinction," laughed the marquis lightly.
+"There is no great possibility, I imagine, of Madame de
+Cintre being forsaken."
+
+"Not much!" said Newman.  "But what becomes of the Don?"
+
+"The devil comes down--or comes up," said Madame de Bellegarde,
+"and carries him off.  I suppose Zerlina reminds you of me."
+
+"I will go to the foyer for a few moments," said the marquis, "and give
+you a chance to say that the commander--the man of stone--resembles me."
+And he passed out of the box.
+
+The little marquise stared an instant at the velvet ledge
+of the balcony, and then murmured, "Not a man of stone,
+a man of wood."  Newman had taken her husband's empty chair.
+She made no protest, and then she turned suddenly and laid her
+closed fan upon his arm.  "I am very glad you came in," she said.
+"I want to ask you a favor.  I wanted to do so on Thursday,
+at my mother-in-law's ball, but you would give me no chance.
+You were in such very good spirits that I thought you might grant
+my little favor then; not that you look particularly doleful now.
+It is something you must promise me; now is the time to take you;
+after you are married you will be good for nothing.  Come, promise!"
+
+"I never sign a paper without reading it first," said Newman.
+"Show me your document."
+
+"No, you must sign with your eyes shut; I will hold your hand.
+Come, before you put your head into the noose.  You ought to be
+thankful to me for giving you a chance to do something amusing."
+
+"If it is so amusing," said Newman, "it will be in even better
+season after I am married."
+
+"In other words," cried Madame de Bellegarde, "you will not do it at all.
+You will be afraid of your wife."
+
+"Oh, if the thing is intrinsically improper," said Newman, "I won't
+go into it.  If it is not, I will do it after my marriage."
+
+"You talk like a treatise on logic, and English logic into the bargain!"
+exclaimed Madame de Bellegarde.  "Promise, then, after you are married.
+After all, I shall enjoy keeping you to it."
+
+"Well, then, after I am married," said Newman serenely.
+
+The little marquise hesitated a moment, looking at him, and he
+wondered what was coming.  "I suppose you know what my life is,"
+she presently said.  "I have no pleasure, I see nothing,
+I do nothing.  I live in Paris as I might live at Poitiers.
+My mother-in-law calls me--what is the pretty word?--
+a gad-about? accuses me of going to unheard-of places,
+and thinks it ought to be joy enough for me to sit
+at home and count over my ancestors on my fingers.
+But why should I bother about my ancestors?  I am sure they
+never bothered about me.  I don't propose to live with a green
+shade on my eyes; I hold that things were made to look at.
+My husband, you know, has principles, and the first on
+the list is that the Tuileries are dreadfully vulgar.
+If the Tuileries are vulgar, his principles are tiresome.
+If I chose I might have principles quite as well as he.
+If they grew on one's family tree I should only have to
+give mine a shake to bring down a shower of the finest.
+At any rate, I prefer clever Bonapartes to stupid Bourbons."
+
+"Oh, I see; you want to go to court," said Newman, vaguely conjecturing
+that she might wish him to appeal to the United States legation to smooth
+her way to the imperial halls.
+
+The marquise gave a little sharp laugh.  "You are a thousand
+miles away.  I will take care of the Tuileries myself;
+the day I decide to go they will be very glad to have me.
+Sooner or later I shall dance in an imperial quadrille.
+I know what you are going to say:  'How will you dare?'
+But I SHALL dare.  I am afraid of my husband;
+he is soft, smooth, irreproachable; everything that you know;
+but I am afraid of him--horribly afraid of him.
+And yet I shall arrive at the Tuileries.  But that will not
+be this winter, nor perhaps next, and meantime I must live.
+For the moment, I want to go somewhere else; it's my dream.
+I want to go to the Bal Bullier."
+
+"To the Bal Bullier?" repeated Newman, for whom the words
+at first meant nothing.
+
+"The ball in the Latin Quarter, where the students dance with
+their mistresses.  Don't tell me you have not heard of it."
+
+"Oh yes," said Newman; "I have heard of it; I remember now.
+I have even been there.  And you want to go there?"
+
+"It is silly, it is low, it is anything you please.  But I want to go.
+Some of my friends have been, and they say it is awfully drole.
+My friends go everywhere; it is only I who sit moping at home."
+
+"It seems to me you are not at home now," said Newman,
+"and I shouldn't exactly say you were moping."
+
+"I am bored to death.  I have been to the opera twice a week
+for the last eight years.  Whenever I ask for anything my mouth
+is stopped with that:  Pray, madam, haven't you an opera box?
+Could a woman of taste want more?  In the first place,
+my opera box was down in my contrat; they have to give it to me.
+To-night, for instance, I should have preferred a thousand times
+to go to the Palais Royal.  But my husband won't go to the Palais
+Royal because the ladies of the court go there so much.
+You may imagine, then, whether he would take me to Bullier's;
+he says it is a mere imitation--and a bad one--of what
+they do at the Princess Kleinfuss's. But as I don't go
+to the Princess Kleinfuss's, the next best thing is to go
+to Bullier's. It is my dream, at any rate, it's a fixed idea.
+All I ask of you is to give me your arm; you are less
+compromising than any one else.  I don't know why, but you are.
+I can arrange it.  I shall risk something, but that is my
+own affair.  Besides, fortune favors the bold.  Don't refuse me;
+it is my dream!"
+
+Newman gave a loud laugh.  It seemed to him hardly worth while to be
+the wife of the Marquis de Bellegarde, a daughter of the crusaders,
+heiress of six centuries of glories and traditions, to have centred
+one's aspirations upon the sight of a couple of hundred young ladies
+kicking off young men's hats.  It struck him as a theme for the moralist;
+but he had no time to moralize upon it.  The curtain rose again;
+M. de Bellegarde returned, and Newman went back to his seat.
+
+He observed that Valentin de Bellegarde had taken his place
+in the baignoire of Mademoiselle Nioche, behind this young lady
+and her companion, where he was visible only if one carefully
+looked for him.  In the next act Newman met him in the lobby
+and asked him if he had reflected upon possible emigration.
+"If you really meant to meditate," he said, "you might have
+chosen a better place for it."
+
+"Oh, the place was not bad," said Valentin.  "I was not
+thinking of that girl.  I listened to the music, and,
+without thinking of the play or looking at the stage, I turned
+over your proposal.  At first it seemed quite fantastic.
+And then a certain fiddle in the orchestra--I could distinguish it--
+began to say as it scraped away, 'Why not, why not?'
+And then, in that rapid movement, all the fiddles took it
+up and the conductor's stick seemed to beat it in the air:
+'Why not, why not?'  I'm sure I can't say!  I don't see why not.
+I don't see why I shouldn't do something.  It appears to me really
+a very bright idea.  This sort of thing is certainly very stale.
+And then I could come back with a trunk full of dollars.
+Besides, I might possibly find it amusing.  They call me a raffine;
+who knows but that I might discover an unsuspected charm
+in shop-keeping? It would really have a certain romantic,
+picturesque side; it would look well in my biography.
+It would look as if I were a strong man, a first-rate man,
+a man who dominated circumstances."
+
+"Never mind how it would look," said Newman.
+"It always looks well to have half a million of dollars.
+There is no reason why you shouldn't have them if you will mind
+what I tell you--I alone--and not talk to other parties."
+He passed his arm into that of his companion, and the two walked
+for some time up and down one of the less frequented corridors.
+Newman's imagination began to glow with the idea of converting
+his bright, impracticable friend into a first-class man
+of business.  He felt for the moment a sort of spiritual zeal,
+the zeal of the propagandist.  Its ardor was in part
+the result of that general discomfort which the sight of all
+uninvested capital produced in him; so fine an intelligence
+as Bellegarde's ought to be dedicated to high uses.
+The highest uses known to Newman's experience were certain
+transcendent sagacities in the handling of railway stock.
+And then his zeal was quickened by his personal kindness
+for Valentin; he had a sort of pity for him which he was well aware
+he never could have made the Comte de Bellegarde understand.
+He never lost a sense of its being pitiable that Valentin
+should think it a large life to revolve in varnished boots
+between the Rue d'Anjou and the Rue de l'Universite, taking
+the Boulevard des Italiens on the way, when over there
+in America one's promenade was a continent, and one's
+Boulevard stretched from New York to San Francisco.
+It mortified him, moreover, to think that Valentin lacked money;
+there was a painful grotesqueness in it.  It affected him
+as the ignorance of a companion, otherwise without reproach,
+touching some rudimentary branch of learning would have done.
+There were things that one knew about as a matter of course,
+he would have said in such a case.  Just so, if one pretended
+to be easy in the world, one had money as a matter of course,
+one had made it!  There was something almost ridiculously
+anomalous to Newman in the sight of lively pretensions
+unaccompanied by large investments in railroads; though I may
+add that he would not have maintained that such investments
+were in themselves a proper ground for pretensions.
+"I will make you do something," he said to Valentin;
+"I will put you through.  I know half a dozen things in which we
+can make a place for you.  You will see some lively work.
+It will take you a little while to get used to the life,
+but you will work in before long, and at the end of six months--
+after you have done a thing or two on your own account--
+you will like it.  And then it will be very pleasant for you,
+having your sister over there.  It will be pleasant for her to
+have you, too.  Yes, Valentin," continued Newman, pressing his
+friend's arm genially, "I think I see just the opening for you.
+Keep quiet and I'll push you right in."
+
+Newman pursued this favoring strain for some time longer.
+The two men strolled about for a quarter of an hour.
+Valentin listened and questioned, many of his questions making
+Newman laugh loud at the naivete of his ignorance of the vulgar
+processes of money-getting; smiling himself, too, half ironical
+and half curious.  And yet he was serious; he was fascinated
+by Newman's plain prose version of the legend of El Dorado.
+It is true, however, that though to accept an "opening"
+in an American mercantile house might be a bold, original,
+and in its consequences extremely agreeable thing to do,
+he did not quite see himself objectively doing it.
+So that when the bell rang to indicate the close of the entr'acte,
+there was a certain mock-heroism in his saying, with his
+brilliant smile, "Well, then, put me through; push me in!
+I make myself over to you.  Dip me into the pot and turn
+me into gold."
+
+They had passed into the corridor which encircled the row of baignoires,
+and Valentin stopped in front of the dusky little box in which Mademoiselle
+Nioche had bestowed herself, laying his hand on the doorknob.
+"Oh, come, are you going back there?" asked Newman.
+
+"Mon Dieu, oui," said Valentin.
+
+"Haven't you another place?"
+
+"Yes, I have my usual place, in the stalls."
+
+"You had better go and occupy it, then."
+
+"I see her very well from there, too, added Valentin, serenely,
+"and to-night she is worth seeing.  But," he added in a moment,
+"I have a particular reason for going back just now."
+
+"Oh, I give you up," said Newman.  "You are infatuated!"
+
+"No, it is only this.  There is a young man in the box whom I
+shall annoy by going in, and I want to annoy him."
+
+"I am sorry to hear it," said Newman.  "Can't you leave
+the poor fellow alone?"
+
+"No, he has given me cause.  The box is not his.
+Noemie came in alone and installed herself.  I went and spoke
+to her, and in a few moments she asked me to go and get
+her fan from the pocket of her cloak, which the ouvreuse
+had carried off.  In my absence this gentleman came in and
+took the chair beside Noemie in which I had been sitting.
+My reappearance disgusted him, and he had the grossness
+to show it.  He came within an ace of being impertinent.
+I don't know who he is; he is some vulgar wretch.
+I can't think where she picks up such acquaintances.
+He has been drinking, too, but he knows what he is about.
+Just now, in the second act, he was unmannerly again.
+I shall put in another appearance for ten minutes--time enough
+to give him an opportunity to commit himself, if he feels inclined.
+I really can't let the brute suppose that he is keeping me
+out of the box."
+
+"My dear fellow," said Newman, remonstrantly, "what child's play!
+You are not going to pick a quarrel about that girl, I hope."
+
+"That girl has nothing to do with it, and I have no intention
+of picking a quarrel.  I am not a bully nor a fire-eater. I
+simply wish to make a point that a gentleman must."
+
+"Oh, damn your point!" said Newman.  "That is the trouble with you Frenchmen;
+you must be always making points.  Well," he added, "be short.
+But if you are going in for this kind of thing, we must ship you off
+to America in advance."
+
+"Very good," Valentin answered, "whenever you please.
+But if I go to America, I must not let this gentleman suppose
+that it is to run away from him."
+
+And they separated.  At the end of the act Newman observed that Valentin
+was still in the baignoire.  He strolled into the corridor again,
+expecting to meet him, and when he was within a few yards of
+Mademoiselle Nioche's box saw his friend pass out, accompanied by
+the young man who had been seated beside its fair occupant.
+The two gentlemen walked with some quickness of step to a distant part
+of the lobby, where Newman perceived them stop and stand talking.
+The manner of each was perfectly quiet, but the stranger,
+who looked flushed, had begun to wipe his face very emphatically with his
+pocket-handkerchief. By this time Newman was abreast of the baignoire;
+the door had been left ajar, and he could see a pink dress inside.
+He immediately went in.  Mademoiselle Nioche turned and greeted him
+with a brilliant smile.
+
+"Ah, you have at last decided to come and see me?" she exclaimed.
+"You just save your politeness.  You find me in a fine moment.
+Sit down."  There was a very becoming little flush in her cheek,
+and her eye had a noticeable spark.  You would have said that she
+had received some very good news.
+
+"Something has happened here!" said Newman, without sitting down.
+
+"You find me in a very fine moment," she repeated.  "Two gentlemen--
+one of them is M. de Bellegarde, the pleasure of whose acquaintance
+I owe to you--have just had words about your humble servant.
+Very big words too.  They can't come off without crossing swords.
+A duel--that will give me a push!" cried Mademoiselle Noemie clapping
+her little hands.  "C'est ca qui pose une femme!"
+
+"You don't mean to say that Bellegarde is going to fight about YOU!"
+exclaimed Newman, disgustedly.
+
+"Nothing else!" and she looked at him with a hard little smile.
+"No, no, you are not galant!  And if you prevent this affair I
+shall owe you a grudge--and pay my debt!"
+
+Newman uttered an imprecation which, though brief--it consisted
+simply of the interjection "Oh!" followed by a geographical,
+or more correctly, perhaps a theological noun in four letters--
+had better not be transferred to these pages.  He turned his back
+without more ceremony upon the pink dress and went out of the box.
+In the corridor he found Valentin and his companion walking towards him.
+The latter was thrusting a card into his waistcoat pocket.
+Mademoiselle Noemie's jealous votary was a tall, robust young man
+with a thick nose, a prominent blue eye, a Germanic physiognomy,
+and a massive watch-chain. When they reached the box,
+Valentin with an emphasized bow made way for him to pass in first.
+Newman touched Valentin's arm as a sign that he wished to speak with him,
+and Bellegarde answered that he would be with him in an instant.
+Valentin entered the box after the robust young man, but a couple
+of minutes afterwards he reappeared, largely smiling.
+
+"She is immensely tickled," he said.  "She says we will make her fortune.
+I don't want to be fatuous, but I think it is very possible."
+
+"So you are going to fight?" said Newman.
+
+"My dear fellow, don't look so mortally disgusted.  It was not my choice.
+The thing is all arranged."
+
+"I told you so!" groaned Newman.
+
+"I told HIM so," said Valentin, smiling.
+
+"What did he do to you?"
+
+"My good friend, it doesn't matter what.  He used an expression--
+I took it up."
+
+"But I insist upon knowing; I can't, as your elder brother,
+have you rushing into this sort of nonsense."
+
+"I am very much obliged to you," said Valentin.  "I have nothing to conceal,
+but I can't go into particulars now and here."
+
+"We will leave this place, then.  You can tell me outside."
+
+"Oh no, I can't leave this place, why should I hurry away?
+I will go to my orchestra-stall and sit out the opera."
+
+"You will not enjoy it; you will be preoccupied."
+
+Valentin looked at him a moment, colored a little, smiled, and patted him
+on the arm.  "You are delightfully simple!  Before an affair a man is quiet.
+The quietest thing I can do is to go straight to my place."
+
+"Ah," said Newman, "you want her to see you there--you and your quietness.
+I am not so simple!  It is a poor business."
+
+Valentin remained, and the two men, in their respective places,
+sat out the rest of the performance, which was also enjoyed by
+Mademoiselle Nioche and her truculent admirer.  At the end Newman
+joined Valentin again, and they went into the street together.
+Valentin shook his head at his friend's proposal that he should get
+into Newman's own vehicle, and stopped on the edge of the pavement.
+"I must go off alone," he said; "I must look up a couple of friends
+who will take charge of this matter."
+
+"I will take charge of it," Newman declared.  "Put it into my hands."
+
+"You are very kind, but that is hardly possible.  In the first place, you are,
+as you said just now, almost my brother; you are about to marry my sister.
+That alone disqualifies you; it casts doubts on your impartiality.
+And if it didn't, it would be enough for me that I strongly suspect you
+of disapproving of the affair.  You would try to prevent a meeting."
+
+"Of course I should," said Newman.  "Whoever your friends are,
+I hope they will do that."
+
+"Unquestionably they will.  They will urge that excuses be made,
+proper excuses.  But you would be too good-natured. You won't do."
+
+Newman was silent a moment.  He was keenly annoyed,
+but he saw it was useless to attempt interference.
+"When is this precious performance to come off?" he asked.
+
+"The sooner the better," said Valentin.  "The day after to-morrow, I hope."
+
+"Well," said Newman, "I have certainly a claim to know the facts.
+I can't consent to shut my eyes to the matter."
+
+"I shall be most happy to tell you the facts," said Valentin.
+"They are very simple, and it will be quickly done.
+But now everything depends on my putting my hands
+on my friends without delay.  I will jump into a cab;
+you had better drive to my room and wait for me there.
+I will turn up at the end of an hour."
+
+Newman assented protestingly, let his friend go, and then betook himself
+to the picturesque little apartment in the Rue d'Anjou. It was more
+than an hour before Valentin returned, but when he did so he was able
+to announce that he had found one of his desired friends, and that this
+gentleman had taken upon himself the care of securing an associate.
+Newman had been sitting without lights by Valentin's faded fire,
+upon which he had thrown a log; the blaze played over the richly-encumbered
+little sitting-room and produced fantastic gleams and shadows.
+He listened in silence to Valentin's account of what had passed
+between him and the gentleman whose card he had in his pocket--
+M. Stanislas Kapp, of Strasbourg--after his return to Mademoiselle
+Nioche's box.  This hospitable young lady had espied an acquaintance
+on the other side of the house, and had expressed her displeasure
+at his not having the civility to come and pay her a visit.
+"Oh, let him alone!"  M. Stanislas Kapp had hereupon exclaimed.
+"There are too many people in the box already."  And he had fixed
+his eyes with a demonstrative stare upon M. de Bellegarde.
+Valentin had promptly retorted that if there were too many people
+in the box it was easy for M. Kapp to diminish the number.
+"I shall be most happy to open the door for YOU!"  M. Kapp exclaimed.
+"I shall be delighted to fling you into the pit!"  Valentin had answered.
+"Oh, do make a rumpus and get into the papers!"  Miss Noemie had
+gleefully ejaculated.  "M. Kapp, turn him out; or, M. de Bellegarde,
+pitch him into the pit, into the orchestra--anywhere!
+I don't care who does which, so long as you make a scene."
+Valentin answered that they would make no scene, but that the
+gentleman would be so good as to step into the corridor with him.
+In the corridor, after a brief further exchange of words, there had
+been an exchange of cards.  M. Stanislas Kapp was very stiff.
+He evidently meant to force his offence home.
+
+"The man, no doubt, was insolent," Newman said; "but if you hadn't
+gone back into the box the thing wouldn't have happened."
+
+"Why, don't you see," Valentin replied, "that the event
+proves the extreme propriety of my going back into the box?
+M. Kapp wished to provoke me; he was awaiting his chance.
+In such a case--that is, when he has been, so to speak,
+notified--a man must be on hand to receive the provocation.
+My not returning would simply have been tantamount to my saying
+to M. Stanislas Kapp, 'Oh, if you are going to be disagreeable'"--
+
+" 'You must manage it by yourself; damned if I'll help you!'
+That would have been a thoroughly sensible thing to say.
+The only attraction for you seems to have been the prospect
+of M. Kapp's impertinence," Newman went on.  "You told me you
+were not going back for that girl."
+
+"Oh, don't mention that girl any more," murmured Valentin.
+"She's a bore."
+
+"With all my heart.  But if that is the way you feel about her,
+why couldn't you let her alone?"
+
+Valentin shook his head with a fine smile.  "I don't think
+you quite understand, and I don't believe I can make you.
+She understood the situation; she knew what was in the air;
+she was watching us."
+
+"A cat may look at a king!  What difference does that make?"
+
+"Why, a man can't back down before a woman."
+
+"I don't call her a woman.  You said yourself she was a stone," cried Newman.
+
+"Well," Valentin rejoined, "there is no disputing about tastes.
+It's a matter of feeling; it's measured by one's sense of honor."
+
+"Oh, confound your sense of honor!" cried Newman.
+
+"It is vain talking," said Valentin; "words have passed,
+and the thing is settled."
+
+Newman turned away, taking his hat.  Then pausing with his hand on the door,
+"What are you going to use?" he asked.
+
+"That is for M. Stanislas Kapp, as the challenged party, to decide.
+My own choice would be a short, light sword.  I handle it well.
+I'm an indifferent shot."
+
+Newman had put on his hat; he pushed it back, gently scratching
+his forehead, high up.  "I wish it were pistols," he said.
+"I could show you how to lodge a bullet!"
+
+Valentin broke into a laugh.  "What is it some English poet
+says about consistency?  It's a flower or a star, or a jewel.
+Yours has the beauty of all three!"  But he agreed to see
+Newman again on the morrow, after the details of his meeting
+with M. Stanislas Kapp should have been arranged.
+
+In the course of the day Newman received three lines from him,
+saying that it had been decided that he should cross the frontier,
+with his adversary, and that he was to take the night express to Geneva.
+He should have time, however, to dine with Newman.  In the afternoon
+Newman called upon Madame de Cintre, but his visit was brief.
+She was as gracious and sympathetic as he had ever found her, but she
+was sad, and she confessed, on Newman's charging her with her red eyes,
+that she had been crying.  Valentin had been with her a couple of
+hours before, and his visit had left her with a painful impression.
+He had laughed and gossiped, he had brought her no bad news,
+he had only been, in his manner, rather more affectionate than usual.
+His fraternal tenderness had touched her, and on his departure she
+had burst into tears.  She had felt as if something strange and sad
+were going to happen; she had tried to reason away the fancy,
+and the effort had only given her a headache.  Newman, of course,
+was perforce tongue-tied about Valentin's projected duel,
+and his dramatic talent was not equal to satirizing Madame de
+Cintre's presentiment as pointedly as perfect security demanded.
+Before he went away he asked Madame de Cintre whether Valentin
+had seen his mother.
+
+"Yes," she said, "but he didn't make her cry."
+
+It was in Newman's own apartment that Valentin dined, having brought
+his portmanteau, so that he might adjourn directly to the railway.
+M. Stanislas Kapp had positively declined to make excuses,
+and he, on his side, obviously, had none to offer.
+Valentin had found out with whom he was dealing.  M. Stanislas
+Kapp was the son of and heir of a rich brewer of Strasbourg,
+a youth of a sanguineous--and sanguinary--temperament.
+He was making ducks and drakes of the paternal brewery,
+and although he passed in a general way for a good fellow,
+he had already been observed to be quarrelsome after dinner.
+"Que voulez-vous?" said Valentin.  "Brought up on beer,
+he can't stand champagne."  He had chosen pistols.
+Valentin, at dinner, had an excellent appetite; he made a point,
+in view of his long journey, of eating more than usual.
+He took the liberty of suggesting to Newman a slight
+modification in the composition of a certain fish-sauce;
+he thought it would be worth mentioning to the cook.  But Newman
+had no thoughts for fish-sauce; he felt thoroughly discontented.
+As he sat and watched his amiable and clever companion going
+through his excellent repast with the delicate deliberation of
+hereditary epicurism, the folly of so charming a fellow traveling
+off to expose his agreeable young life for the sake of M. Stanislas
+and Mademoiselle Noemie struck him with intolerable force.
+He had grown fond of Valentin, he felt now how fond;
+and his sense of helplessness only increased his irritation.
+
+"Well, this sort of thing may be all very well,"
+he cried at last, "but I declare I don't see it.
+I can't stop you, perhaps, but at least I can protest.
+I do protest, violently."
+
+"My dear fellow, don't make a scene," said Valentin.
+"Scenes in these cases are in very bad taste."
+
+"Your duel itself is a scene," said Newman; "that's all it is!
+It's a wretched theatrical affair.  Why don't you take a band
+of music with you outright?  It's d--d barbarous and it's d--d
+corrupt, both."
+
+"Oh, I can't begin, at this time of day, to defend the theory of dueling,"
+said Valentin.  "It is our custom, and I think it is a good thing.
+Quite apart from the goodness of the cause in which a duel may be fought,
+it has a kind of picturesque charm which in this age of vile prose seems
+to me greatly to recommend it.  It's a remnant of a higher-tempered time;
+one ought to cling to it.  Depend upon it, a duel is never amiss."
+
+"I don't know what you mean by a higher-tempered time,"
+said Newman.  "Because your great-grandfather was an ass,
+is that any reason why you should be?  For my part I think we
+had better let our temper take care of itself; it generally seems
+to me quite high enough; I am not afraid of being too meek.
+If your great-grandfather were to make himself unpleasant to me,
+I think I could manage him yet."
+
+"My dear friend," said Valentin, smiling, "you can't invent
+anything that will take the place of satisfaction for an insult.
+To demand it and to give it are equally excellent arrangements."
+
+"Do you call this sort of thing satisfaction?"  Newman asked.
+"Does it satisfy you to receive a present of the carcass of that
+coarse fop? does it gratify you to make him a present of yours?
+If a man hits you, hit him back; if a man libels you, haul him up."
+
+"Haul him up, into court?  Oh, that is very nasty!" said Valentin.
+
+"The nastiness is his--not yours.  And for that matter, what you
+are doing is not particularly nice.  You are too good for it.
+I don't say you are the most useful man in the world, or the cleverest,
+or the most amiable.  But you are too good to go and get your throat
+cut for a prostitute."
+
+Valentin flushed a little, but he laughed.  "I shan't get my throat cut
+if I can help it.  Moreover, one's honor hasn't two different measures.
+It only knows that it is hurt; it doesn't ask when, or how, or where."
+
+"The more fool it is!" said Newman.
+
+Valentin ceased to laugh; he looked grave.  "I beg you not to say
+any more," he said.  "If you do I shall almost fancy you don't
+care about--about"--and he paused.
+
+"About what?"
+
+"About that matter--about one's honor."
+
+"Fancy what you please," said Newman.  "Fancy while you are at it
+that I care about YOU--though you are not worth it.  But come back
+without damage," he added in a moment, "and I will forgive you.
+And then," he continued, as Valentin was going, "I will ship you
+straight off to America."
+
+"Well," answered Valentin, "if I am to turn over a new page,
+this may figure as a tail-piece to the old."  And then he lit
+another cigar and departed.
+
+"Blast that girl!" said Newman as the door closed upon Valentin.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+
+
+Newman went the next morning to see Madame de Cintre, timing his visit
+so as to arrive after the noonday breakfast.  In the court of the hotel,
+before the portico, stood Madame de Bellegarde's old square carriage.
+The servant who opened the door answered Newman's inquiry with a slightly
+embarrassed and hesitating murmur, and at the same moment Mrs. Bread
+appeared in the background, dim-visaged as usual, and wearing a large
+black bonnet and shawl.
+
+"What is the matter?" asked Newman.  "Is Madame la Comtesse
+at home, or not?"
+
+Mrs. Bread advanced, fixing her eyes upon him:  he observed
+that she held a sealed letter, very delicately, in her fingers.
+"The countess has left a message for you, sir; she has left this,"
+said Mrs. Bread, holding out the letter, which Newman took.
+
+"Left it?  Is she out?  Is she gone away?"
+
+"She is going away, sir; she is leaving town," said Mrs. Bread.
+
+"Leaving town!" exclaimed Newman.  "What has happened?"
+
+"It is not for me to say, sir," said Mrs. Bread, with her eyes on the ground.
+"But I thought it would come."
+
+"What would come, pray?"  Newman demanded.  He had broken the seal
+of the letter, but he still questioned.  "She is in the house?
+She is visible?"
+
+"I don't think she expected you this morning," the old waiting-woman replied.
+"She was to leave immediately."
+
+"Where is she going?"
+
+"To Fleurieres."
+
+"To Fleurieres?  But surely I can see her?"
+
+Mrs. Bread hesitated a moment, and then clasping together her two hands,
+"I will take you!" she said.  And she led the way upstairs.  At the top
+of the staircase she paused and fixed her dry, sad eyes upon Newman.
+"Be very easy with her," she said; "she is most unhappy!"  Then she
+went on to Madame de Cintre's apartment; Newman, perplexed and alarmed,
+followed her rapidly.  Mrs. Bread threw open the door, and Newman
+pushed back the curtain at the farther side of its deep embrasure.
+In the middle of the room stood Madame de Cintre; her face was pale
+and she was dressed for traveling.  Behind her, before the fire-place,
+stood Urbain de Bellegarde, looking at his finger-nails; near the marquis
+sat his mother, buried in an arm-chair, and with her eyes immediately
+fixing themselves upon Newman.  He felt, as soon as he entered the room,
+that he was in the presence of something evil; he was startled and pained,
+as he would have been by a threatening cry in the stillness of the night.
+He walked straight to Madame de Cintre and seized her by the hand.
+
+"What is the matter?" he asked, commandingly; "what is happening?"
+
+Urbain de Bellegarde stared, then left his place and came
+and leaned upon his mother's chair, behind.  Newman's sudden
+irruption had evidently discomposed both mother and son.
+Madame de Cintre stood silent, with her eyes resting upon Newman's.
+She had often looked at him with all her soul, as it seemed to him;
+but in this present gaze there was a sort of bottomless depth.
+She was in distress; it was the most touching thing he had ever seen.
+His heart rose into his throat, and he was on the point of turning
+to her companions, with an angry challenge; but she checked him,
+pressing the hand that held her own.
+
+"Something very grave has happened," she said.  "I cannot marry you."
+
+Newman dropped her hand and stood staring, first at her and then
+at the others.  "Why not?" he asked, as quietly as possible.
+
+Madame de Cintre almost smiled, but the attempt was strange.
+"You must ask my mother, you must ask my brother."
+
+"Why can't she marry me?" said Newman, looking at them.
+
+Madame de Bellegarde did not move in her place, but she was
+as pale as her daughter.  The marquis looked down at her.
+She said nothing for some moments, but she kept her keen,
+clear eyes upon Newman, bravely.  The marquis drew himself up
+and looked at the ceiling.  "It's impossible!" he said softly.
+
+"It's improper," said Madame de Bellegarde.
+
+Newman began to laugh.  "Oh, you are fooling!" he exclaimed.
+
+"My sister, you have no time; you are losing your train,"
+said the marquis.
+
+"Come, is he mad?" asked Newman.
+
+"No; don't think that," said Madame de Cintre.  "But I am going away."
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"To the country, to Fleurieres; to be alone."
+
+"To leave me?" said Newman, slowly.
+
+"I can't see you, now," said Madame de Cintre.
+
+"NOW--why not?"
+
+"I am ashamed," said Madame de Cintre, simply.
+
+Newman turned toward the marquis.  "What have you done to her--
+what does it mean?" he asked with the same effort at calmness,
+the fruit of his constant practice in taking things easily.
+He was excited, but excitement with him was only an intenser deliberateness;
+it was the swimmer stripped.
+
+"It means that I have given you up," said Madame de Cintre.
+"It means that."
+
+Her face was too charged with tragic expression not fully to confirm
+her words.  Newman was profoundly shocked, but he felt as yet no resentment
+against her.  He was amazed, bewildered, and the presence of the old marquise
+and her son seemed to smite his eyes like the glare of a watchman's lantern.
+"Can't I see you alone?" he asked.
+
+"It would be only more painful.  I hoped I should not see you--
+I should escape.  I wrote to you.  Good-by." And she put out
+her hand again.
+
+Newman put both his own into his pockets.  "I will go with you," he said.
+
+She laid her two hands on his arm.  "Will you grant me a last request?"
+and as she looked at him, urging this, her eyes filled with tears.
+"Let me go alone--let me go in peace.  I can't call it peace--it's death.
+But let me bury myself.  So--good-by."
+
+Newman passed his hand into his hair and stood slowly
+rubbing his head and looking through his keenly-narrowed
+eyes from one to the other of the three persons before him.
+His lips were compressed, and the two lines which had formed
+themselves beside his mouth might have made it appear at a first
+glance that he was smiling.  I have said that his excitement was
+an intenser deliberateness, and now he looked grimly deliberate.
+"It seems very much as if you had interfered, marquis,"
+he said slowly.  "I thought you said you wouldn't interfere.
+I know you don't like me; but that doesn't make any difference.
+I thought you promised me you wouldn't interfere.
+I thought you swore on your honor that you wouldn't interfere.
+Don't you remember, marquis?"
+
+The marquis lifted his eyebrows; but he was apparently determined to be
+even more urbane than usual.  He rested his two hands upon the back of his
+mother's chair and bent forward, as if he were leaning over the edge of a
+pulpit or a lecture-desk. He did not smile, but he looked softly grave.
+"Excuse me, sir," he said, "I assured you that I would not influence
+my sister's decision.  I adhered, to the letter, to my engagement.
+Did I not, sister?"
+
+"Don't appeal, my son," said the marquise, "your word is sufficient."
+
+"Yes--she accepted me," said Newman.  "That is very true, I can't deny that.
+At least," he added, in a different tone, turning to Madame de Cintre,
+"you DID accept me?"
+
+Something in the tone seemed to move her strongly.
+She turned away, burying her face in her hands.
+
+"But you have interfered now, haven't you?" inquired Newman
+of the marquis.
+
+"Neither then nor now have I attempted to influence my sister.
+I used no persuasion then, I have used no persuasion to-day."
+
+"And what have you used?"
+
+"We have used authority," said Madame de Bellegarde in a rich,
+bell-like voice.
+
+"Ah, you have used authority," Newman exclaimed.  "They have
+used authority," he went on, turning to Madame de Cintre.
+"What is it? how did they use it?"
+
+"My mother commanded," said Madame de Cintre.
+
+"Commanded you to give me up--I see.  And you obey--I see.
+But why do you obey?" asked Newman.
+
+Madame de Cintre looked across at the old marquise;
+her eyes slowly measured her from head to foot.
+"I am afraid of my mother," she said.
+
+Madame de Bellegarde rose with a certain quickness, crying, "This is
+a most indecent scene!"
+
+"I have no wish to prolong it," said Madame de Cintre;
+and turning to the door she put out her hand again.
+"If you can pity me a little, let me go alone."
+
+Newman shook her hand quietly and firmly.  "I'll come down there," he said.
+The portiere dropped behind her, and Newman sank with a long breath
+into the nearest chair.  He leaned back in it, resting his hands on
+the knobs of the arms and looking at Madame de Bellegarde and Urbain.
+There was a long silence.  They stood side by side, with their heads
+high and their handsome eyebrows arched.
+
+"So you make a distinction?"  Newman said at last.
+"You make a distinction between persuading and commanding?
+It's very neat.  But the distinction is in favor of commanding.
+That rather spoils it."
+
+"We have not the least objection to defining our position,"
+said M. de Bellegarde.  "We understand that it should not at first
+appear to you quite clear.  We rather expected, indeed, that you
+should not do us justice."
+
+"Oh, I'll do you justice," said Newman.  "Don't be afraid.
+Please proceed."
+
+The marquise laid her hand on her son's arm, as if to deprecate
+the attempt to define their position.  "It is quite useless,"
+she said, "to try and arrange this matter so as to make
+it agreeable to you.  It can never be agreeable to you.
+It is a disappointment, and disappointments are unpleasant.
+I thought it over carefully and tried to arrange it better;
+but I only gave myself a headache and lost my sleep.
+Say what we will, you will think yourself ill-treated,
+and you will publish your wrongs among your friends.
+But we are not afraid of that.  Besides, your friends are not
+our friends, and it will not matter.  Think of us as you please.
+I only beg you not to be violent.  I have never in my life
+been present at a violent scene of any kind, and at my age I
+can't be expected to begin."
+
+"Is THAT all you have got to say?" asked Newman, slowly rising
+out of his chair.  "That's a poor show for a clever lady
+like you, marquise.  Come, try again."
+
+"My mother goes to the point, with her usual honesty and intrepidity,"
+said the marquis, toying with his watch-guard. "But it is
+perhaps well to say a little more.  We of course quite repudiate
+the charge of having broken faith with you.  We left you
+entirely at liberty to make yourself agreeable to my sister.
+We left her quite at liberty to entertain your proposal.
+When she accepted you we said nothing.  We therefore quite observed
+our promise.  It was only at a later stage of the affair, and on
+quite a different basis, as it were, that we determined to speak.
+It would have been better, perhaps, if we had spoken before.
+But really, you see, nothing has yet been done."
+
+"Nothing has yet been done?"  Newman repeated the words, unconscious of their
+comical effect.  He had lost the sense of what the marquis was saying;
+M. de Bellegarde's superior style was a mere humming in his ears.  All that
+he understood, in his deep and simple indignation, was that the matter was
+not a violent joke, and that the people before him were perfectly serious.
+"Do you suppose I can take this?" he asked.  "Do you suppose it can matter
+to me what you say?  Do you suppose I can seriously listen to you?
+You are simply crazy!"
+
+Madame de Bellegarde gave a rap with her fan in the palm of her hand.
+"If you don't take it you can leave it, sir.  It matters very little
+what you do.  My daughter has given you up."
+
+"She doesn't mean it," Newman declared after a moment.
+
+"I think I can assure you that she does," said the marquis.
+
+"Poor woman, what damnable thing have you done to her?" cried Newman.
+
+"Gently, gently!" murmured M. de Bellegarde.
+
+"She told you," said the old lady.  "I commanded her."
+
+Newman shook his head, heavily.  "This sort of thing can't be,
+you know," he said.  "A man can't be used in this fashion.
+You have got no right; you have got no power."
+
+"My power," said Madame de Bellegarde, "is in my children's obedience."
+
+"In their fear, your daughter said.  There is something very
+strange in it.  Why should your daughter be afraid of you?"
+added Newman, after looking a moment at the old lady.
+"There is some foul play."
+
+The marquise met his gaze without flinching, and as if she did not
+hear or heed what he said.  "I did my best," she said, quietly.
+"I could endure it no longer."
+
+"It was a bold experiment!" said the marquis.
+
+Newman felt disposed to walk to him, clutch his neck with his
+fingers and press his windpipe with his thumb.  "I needn't tell
+you how you strike me," he said; "of course you know that.
+But I should think you would be afraid of your friends--
+all those people you introduced me to the other night.
+There were some very nice people among them; you may depend
+upon it there were some honest men and women."
+
+"Our friends approve us," said M. de Bellegarde, "there is
+not a family among them that would have acted otherwise.
+And however that may be, we take the cue from no one.
+The Bellegardes have been used to set the example not to
+wait for it."
+
+"You would have waited long before any one would have set you such
+an example as this," exclaimed Newman.  "Have I done anything wrong?"
+he demanded.  "Have I given you reason to change your opinion?
+Have you found out anything against me?  I can't imagine."
+
+"Our opinion," said Madame de Bellegarde, "is quite the same as
+at first--exactly.  We have no ill-will towards yourself; we are very far
+from accusing you of misconduct.  Since your relations with us began
+you have been, I frankly confess, less--less peculiar than I expected.
+It is not your disposition that we object to, it is your antecedents.
+We really cannot reconcile ourselves to a commercial person.
+We fancied in an evil hour that we could; it was a great misfortune.
+We determined to persevere to the end, and to give you every advantage.  I was
+resolved that you should have no reason to accuse me of want of loyalty.
+We let the thing certainly go very far; we introduced you to our friends.
+To tell the truth, it was that, I think, that broke me down.
+I succumbed to the scene that took place on Thursday night in these rooms.
+You must excuse me if what I say is disagreeable to you, but we cannot
+release ourselves without an explanation."
+
+"There can be no better proof of our good faith," said the marquis, "than our
+committing ourselves to you in the eyes of the world the other evening.
+We endeavored to bind ourselves--to tie our hands, as it were."
+
+"But it was that," added his mother, "that opened our eyes
+and broke our bonds.  We should have been most uncomfortable!
+You know," she added in a moment, "that you were forewarned.
+I told you we were very proud."
+
+Newman took up his hat and began mechanically to smooth it;
+the very fierceness of his scorn kept him from speaking.
+"You are not proud enough," he observed at last.
+
+"In all this matter," said the marquis, smiling, "I really see
+nothing but our humility."
+
+"Let us have no more discussion than is necessary," resumed Madame
+de Bellegarde.  "My daughter told you everything when she said she
+gave you up."
+
+"I am not satisfied about your daughter," said Newman; "I want to know
+what you did to her.  It is all very easy talking about authority
+and saying you commanded her.  She didn't accept me blindly,
+and she wouldn't have given me up blindly.  Not that I believe
+yet she has really given me up; she will talk it over with me.
+But you have frightened her, you have bullied her, you have HURT her.
+What was it you did to her?"
+
+"I did very little! said Madame de Bellegarde, in a tone which gave
+Newman a chill when he afterwards remembered it.
+
+"Let me remind you that we offered you these explanations,"
+the marquis observed, "with the express understanding that you
+should abstain from violence of language."
+
+"I am not violent," Newman answered, "it is you who are violent!
+But I don't know that I have much more to say to you.
+What you expect of me, apparently, is to go my way, thanking you
+for favors received, and promising never to trouble you again."
+
+"We expect of you to act like a clever man," said Madame de Bellegarde.
+"You have shown yourself that already, and what we have done is
+altogether based upon your being so.  When one must submit, one must.
+Since my daughter absolutely withdraws, what will be the use of your
+making a noise?"
+
+"It remains to be seen whether your daughter absolutely withdraws.
+Your daughter and I are still very good friends; nothing is changed in that.
+As I say, I will talk it over with her."
+
+"That will be of no use," said the old lady.  "I know my daughter well
+enough to know that words spoken as she just now spoke to you are final.
+Besides, she has promised me."
+
+"I have no doubt her promise is worth a great deal more than your own,"
+said Newman; "nevertheless I don't give her up."
+
+"Just as you please!  But if she won't even see you,--and she won't,--
+your constancy must remain purely Platonic."
+
+Poor Newman was feigning a greater confidence than he felt.
+Madame de Cintre's strange intensity had in fact struck a chill
+to his heart; her face, still impressed upon his vision,
+had been a terribly vivid image of renunciation.  He felt sick,
+and suddenly helpless.  He turned away and stood for a moment
+with his hand on the door; then he faced about and after
+the briefest hesitation broke out with a different accent.
+"Come, think of what this must be to me, and let her alone!
+Why should you object to me so--what's the matter with me?
+I can't hurt you.  I wouldn't if I could.  I'm the most unobjectionable
+fellow in the world.  What if I am a commercial person?
+What under the sun do you mean?  A commercial person?
+I will be any sort of a person you want.  I never talked to you
+about business.  Let her go, and I will ask no questions.
+I will take her away, and you shall never see me or hear
+of me again.  I will stay in America if you like.
+I'll sign a paper promising never to come back to Europe!
+All I want is not to lose her!"
+
+Madame de Bellegarde and her son exchanged a glance of lucid irony,
+and Urbain said, "My dear sir, what you propose is hardly an improvement.
+We have not the slightest objection to seeing you, as an amiable foreigner,
+and we have every reason for not wishing to be eternally separated from
+my sister.  We object to the marriage; and in that way," and M. de Bellegarde
+gave a small, thin laugh, "she would be more married than ever."
+
+"Well, then," said Newman, "where is this place of yours--Fleurieres?
+I know it is near some old city on a hill."
+
+"Precisely.  Poitiers is on a hill," said Madame de Bellegarde.
+"I don't know how old it is.  We are not afraid to tell you."
+
+"It is Poitiers, is it?  Very good," said Newman.
+"I shall immediately follow Madame de Cintre."
+
+"The trains after this hour won't serve you," said Urbain.
+
+"I shall hire a special train!"
+
+"That will be a very silly waste of money," said Madame de Bellegarde.
+
+"It will be time enough to talk about waste three days hence,"
+Newman answered; and clapping his hat on his head, he departed.
+
+He did not immediately start for Fleurieres; he was too stunned and
+wounded for consecutive action.  He simply walked; he walked straight
+before him, following the river, till he got out of the enceinte
+of Paris.  He had a burning, tingling sense of personal outrage.
+He had never in his life received so absolute a check; he had never
+been pulled up, or, as he would have said, "let down," so short;
+and he found the sensation intolerable; he strode along, tapping the
+trees and lamp-posts fiercely with his stick and inwardly raging.
+To lose Madame de Cintre after he had taken such jubilant and triumphant
+possession of her was as great an affront to his pride as it was an injury
+to his happiness.  And to lose her by the interference and the dictation
+of others, by an impudent old woman and a pretentious fop stepping
+in with their "authority"! It was too preposterous, it was too pitiful.
+Upon what he deemed the unblushing treachery of the Bellegardes Newman
+wasted little thought; he consigned it, once for all, to eternal perdition.
+But the treachery of Madame de Cintre herself amazed and confounded him;
+there was a key to the mystery, of course, but he groped for it in vain.
+Only three days had elapsed since she stood beside him in the starlight,
+beautiful and tranquil as the trust with which he had inspired her,
+and told him that she was happy in the prospect of their marriage.
+What was the meaning of the change? of what infernal potion had she tasted?
+Poor Newman had a terrible apprehension that she had really changed.
+His very admiration for her attached the idea of force and weight
+to her rupture.  But he did not rail at her as false, for he was sure
+she was unhappy.  In his walk he had crossed one of the bridges of
+the Seine, and he still followed, unheedingly, the long, unbroken quay.
+He had left Paris behind him, and he was almost in the country; he was
+in the pleasant suburb of Auteuil.  He stopped at last, looked around him
+without seeing or caring for its pleasantness, and then slowly turned and at
+a slower pace retraced his steps.  When he came abreast of the fantastic
+embankment known as the Trocadero, he reflected, through his throbbing pain,
+that he was near Mrs. Tristram's dwelling, and that Mrs. Tristram,
+on particular occasions, had much of a woman's kindness in her utterance.
+He felt that he needed to pour out his ire and he took the road to her house.
+Mrs. Tristram was at home and alone, and as soon as she had looked at him,
+on his entering the room, she told him that she knew what he had come for.
+Newman sat down heavily, in silence, looking at her.
+
+"They have backed out!" she said.  "Well, you may think
+it strange, but I felt something the other night in the air."
+Presently he told her his story; she listened, with her
+eyes fixed on him.  When he had finished she said quietly,
+"They want her to marry Lord Deepmere."  Newman stared.
+He did not know that she knew anything about Lord Deepmere.
+"But I don't think she will," Mrs. Tristram added.
+
+"SHE marry that poor little cub!" cried Newman.  "Oh, Lord!
+And yet, why did she refuse me?"
+
+"But that isn't the only thing," said Mrs. Tristram.  "They really couldn't
+endure you any longer.  They had overrated their courage.  I must say,
+to give the devil his due, that there is something rather fine in that.
+It was your commercial quality in the abstract they couldn't swallow.
+That is really aristocratic.  They wanted your money, but they have given
+you up for an idea."
+
+Newman frowned most ruefully, and took up his hat again.  "I thought
+you would encourage me!" he said, with almost childlike sadness.
+
+"Excuse me," she answered very gently.  "I feel none the less
+sorry for you, especially as I am at the bottom of your troubles.
+I have not forgotten that I suggested the marriage to you.
+I don't believe that Madame de Cintre has any intention of marrying
+Lord Deepmere.  It is true he is not younger than she, as he looks.
+He is thirty-three years old; I looked in the Peerage.
+But no--I can't believe her so horribly, cruelly false."
+
+"Please say nothing against her," said Newman.
+
+"Poor woman, she IS cruel.  But of course you will go after her
+and you will plead powerfully.  Do you know that as you are now,"
+Mrs. Tristram pursued, with characteristic audacity of comment,
+"you are extremely eloquent, even without speaking?
+To resist you a woman must have a very fixed idea in her head.
+I wish I had done you a wrong, that you might come to me
+in that fine fashion!  But go to Madame de Cintre at
+any rate, and tell her that she is a puzzle even to me.
+I am very curious to see how far family discipline will go."
+
+Newman sat a while longer, leaning his elbows on his knees
+and his head in his hands, and Mrs. Tristram continued to temper
+charity with philosophy and compassion with criticism.
+At last she inquired, "And what does the Count Valentin say to it?"
+Newman started; he had not thought of Valentin and his errand
+on the Swiss frontier since the morning.  The reflection made
+him restless again, and he took his leave.  He went straight
+to his apartment, where, upon the table of the vestibule,
+he found a telegram.  It ran (with the date and place) as follows:
+"I am seriously ill; please to come to me as soon as possible.
+V. B." Newman groaned at this miserable news, and at the necessity
+of deferring his journey to the Chateau de Fleurieres.
+But he wrote to Madame de Cintre these few lines; they were
+all he had time for:--
+
+"I don't give you up, and I don't really believe you give me up.
+I don't understand it, but we shall clear it up together.
+I can't follow you to-day, as I am called to see
+a friend at a distance who is very ill, perhaps dying.
+But I shall come to you as soon as I can leave my friend.
+Why shouldn't I say that he is your brother?  C. N."
+
+After this he had only time to catch the night express to Geneva.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+
+
+Newman possessed a remarkable talent for sitting still when it was necessary,
+and he had an opportunity to use it on his journey to Switzerland.
+The successive hours of the night brought him no sleep, but he sat
+motionless in his corner of the railway-carriage, with his eyes closed,
+and the most observant of his fellow-travelers might have envied him
+his apparent slumber.  Toward morning slumber really came, as an effect
+of mental rather than of physical fatigue.  He slept for a couple of hours,
+and at last, waking, found his eyes resting upon one of the snow-powdered
+peaks of the Jura, behind which the sky was just reddening with the dawn.
+But he saw neither the cold mountain nor the warm sky; his consciousness
+began to throb again, on the very instant, with a sense of his wrong.
+He got out of the train half an hour before it reached Geneva, in the cold
+morning twilight, at the station indicated in Valentin's telegram.
+A drowsy station-master was on the platform with a lantern, and the hood
+of his overcoat over his head, and near him stood a gentleman who advanced
+to meet Newman.  This personage was a man of forty, with a tall lean figure,
+a sallow face, a dark eye, a neat mustache, and a pair of fresh gloves.
+He took off his hat, looking very grave, and pronounced Newman's name.
+Our hero assented and said, "You are M. de Bellegarde's friend?"
+
+"I unite with you in claiming that sad honor," said the gentleman.
+"I had placed myself at M. de Bellegarde's service in this melancholy
+affair, together with M. de Grosjoyaux, who is now at his bedside.
+M. de Grosjoyaux, I believe, has had the honor of meeting you in Paris,
+but as he is a better nurse than I he remained with our poor friend.
+Bellegarde has been eagerly expecting you."
+
+"And how is Bellegarde?" said Newman.  "He was badly hit?"
+
+"The doctor has condemned him; we brought a surgeon with us.
+But he will die in the best sentiments.  I sent last evening for
+the cure of the nearest French village, who spent an hour with him.
+The cure was quite satisfied."
+
+"Heaven forgive us!" groaned Newman.  "I would rather the doctor
+were satisfied!  And can he see me--shall he know me?"
+
+"When I left him, half an hour ago, he had fallen asleep after
+a feverish, wakeful night.  But we shall see."  And Newman's companion
+proceeded to lead the way out of the station to the village,
+explaining as he went that the little party was lodged in the humblest
+of Swiss inns, where, however, they had succeeded in making M. de
+Bellegarde much more comfortable than could at first have been expected.
+"We are old companions in arms," said Valentin's second; "it is not
+the first time that one of us has helped the other to lie easily.
+It is a very nasty wound, and the nastiest thing about it is that
+Bellegarde's adversary was not shot.  He put his bullet where he could.
+It took it into its head to walk straight into Bellegarde's left side,
+just below the heart."
+
+As they picked their way in the gray, deceptive dawn, between the
+manure-heaps of the village street, Newman's new acquaintance
+narrated the particulars of the duel.  The conditions of the meeting
+had been that if the first exchange of shots should fail to
+satisfy one of the two gentlemen, a second should take place.
+Valentin's first bullet had done exactly what Newman's
+companion was convinced he had intended it to do; it had grazed
+the arm of M. Stanislas Kapp, just scratching the flesh.
+M. Kapp's own projectile, meanwhile, had passed at ten good
+inches from the person of Valentin.  The representatives
+of M. Stanislas had demanded another shot, which was granted.
+Valentin had then fired aside and the young Alsatian had done
+effective execution.  "I saw, when we met him on the ground,"
+said Newman's informant, "that he was not going to be commode.
+It is a kind of bovine temperament."  Valentin had immediately
+been installed at the inn, and M. Stanislas and his friends
+had withdrawn to regions unknown.  The police authorities
+of the canton had waited upon the party at the inn, had been
+extremely majestic, and had drawn up a long proces-verbal;
+but it was probable that they would wink at so very gentlemanly
+a bit of bloodshed.  Newman asked whether a message had not
+been sent to Valentin's family, and learned that up to a late
+hour on the preceding evening Valentin had opposed it.
+He had refused to believe his wound was dangerous.
+But after his interview with the cure he had consented,
+and a telegram had been dispatched to his mother.
+"But the marquise had better hurry!" said Newman's conductor.
+
+"Well, it's an abominable affair!" said Newman.  "That's all I have to say!"
+To say this, at least, in a tone of infinite disgust was an irresistible need.
+
+"Ah, you don't approve?" questioned his conductor, with curious urbanity.
+
+"Approve?" cried Newman.  "I wish that when I had him there,
+night before last, I had locked him up in my cabinet de toilette!"
+
+Valentin's late second opened his eyes, and shook his head up and
+down two or three times, gravely, with a little flute-like whistle.
+But they had reached the inn, and a stout maid-servant in a
+night-cap was at the door with a lantern, to take Newman's
+traveling-bag from the porter who trudged behind him.
+Valentin was lodged on the ground-floor at the back of the house,
+and Newman's companion went along a stone-faced passage and softly
+opened a door.  Then he beckoned to Newman, who advanced and looked
+into the room, which was lighted by a single shaded candle.
+Beside the fire sat M. de Grosjoyaux asleep in his dressing-gown--
+a little plump, fair man whom Newman had seen several times
+in Valentin's company.  On the bed lay Valentin, pale and still,
+with his eyes closed--a figure very shocking to Newman,
+who had seen it hitherto awake to its finger tips.
+M. de Grosjoyaux's colleague pointed to an open door beyond,
+and whispered that the doctor was within, keeping guard.
+So long as Valentin slept, or seemed to sleep, of course Newman
+could not approach him; so our hero withdrew for the present,
+committing himself to the care of the half-waked bonne.
+She took him to a room above-stairs, and introduced him
+to a bed on which a magnified bolster, in yellow calico,
+figured as a counterpane.  Newman lay down, and, in spite
+of his counterpane, slept for three or four hours.
+When he awoke, the morning was advanced and the sun was filling
+his window, and he heard, outside of it, the clucking of hens.
+While he was dressing there came to his door a messenger
+from M. de Grosjoyaux and his companion proposing that
+he should breakfast with them.  Presently he went down-stairs
+to the little stone-paved dining-room, where the maid-servant,
+who had taken off her night-cap, was serving the repast.
+M. de Grosjoyaux was there, surprisingly fresh for a
+gentleman who had been playing sick-nurse half the night,
+rubbing his hands and watching the breakfast table attentively.
+Newman renewed acquaintance with him, and learned that Valentin was
+still sleeping; the surgeon, who had had a fairly tranquil night,
+was at present sitting with him.  Before M. de Grosjoyaux's
+associate reappeared, Newman learned that his name was M. Ledoux,
+and that Bellegarde's acquaintance with him dated from
+the days when they served together in the Pontifical Zouaves.
+M. Ledoux was the nephew of a distinguished Ultramontane bishop.
+At last the bishop's nephew came in with a toilet in which an
+ingenious attempt at harmony with the peculiar situation was visible,
+and with a gravity tempered by a decent deference to the best
+breakfast that the Croix Helvetique had ever set forth.
+Valentin's servant, who was allowed only in scanty measure
+the honor of watching with his master, had been lending a light
+Parisian hand in the kitchen.  The two Frenchmen did their best
+to prove that if circumstances might overshadow, they could
+not really obscure, the national talent for conversation,
+and M. Ledoux delivered a neat little eulogy on poor Bellegarde,
+whom he pronounced the most charming Englishman he had ever known.
+
+"Do you call him an Englishman?"  Newman asked.
+
+M. Ledoux smiled a moment and then made an epigram.  "C'est plus
+qu'un Anglais--c'est un Anglomane!"  Newman said soberly that he had
+never noticed it; and M. de Grosjoyaux remarked that it was really
+too soon to deliver a funeral oration upon poor Bellegarde.
+"Evidently," said M. Ledoux.  "But I couldn't help observing this
+morning to Mr. Newman that when a man has taken such excellent measures
+for his salvation as our dear friend did last evening, it seems almost
+a pity he should put it in peril again by returning to the world."
+M. Ledoux was a great Catholic, and Newman thought him a queer mixture.
+His countenance, by daylight, had a sort of amiably saturnine cast;
+he had a very large thin nose, and looked like a Spanish picture.
+He appeared to think dueling a very perfect arrangement, provided, if one
+should get hit, one could promptly see the priest.  He seemed to take
+a great satisfaction in Valentin's interview with the cure, and yet
+his conversation did not at all indicate a sanctimonious habit of mind.
+M. Ledoux had evidently a high sense of the becoming, and was
+prepared to be urbane and tasteful on all points.  He was always
+furnished with a smile (which pushed his mustache up under his nose)
+and an explanation.  Savoir-vivre--knowing how to live--was his specialty,
+in which he included knowing how to die; but, as Newman reflected,
+with a good deal of dumb irritation, he seemed disposed to delegate
+to others the application of his learning on this latter point.
+M. de Grosjoyaux was of quite another complexion, and appeared to regard
+his friend's theological unction as the sign of an inaccessibly
+superior mind.  He was evidently doing his utmost, with a kind
+of jovial tenderness, to make life agreeable to Valentin to the last,
+and help him as little as possible to miss the Boulevard des Italiens;
+but what chiefly occupied his mind was the mystery of a bungling
+brewer's son making so neat a shot.  He himself could snuff a candle,
+etc., and yet he confessed that he could not have done better than this.
+He hastened to add that on the present occasion he would have made
+a point of not doing so well.  It was not an occasion for that sort
+of murderous work, que diable!  He would have picked out some quiet
+fleshy spot and just tapped it with a harmless ball.  M. Stanislas
+Kapp had been deplorably heavy-handed; but really, when the world
+had come to that pass that one granted a meeting to a brewer's son!...
+This was M. de Grosjoyaux's nearest approach to a generalization.
+He kept looking through the window, over the shoulder of M. Ledoux,
+at a slender tree which stood at the end of a lane, opposite to the inn,
+and seemed to be measuring its distance from his extended arm
+and secretly wishing that, since the subject had been introduced,
+propriety did not forbid a little speculative pistol-practice.
+
+Newman was in no humor to enjoy good company.  He could
+neither eat nor talk; his soul was sore with grief and anger,
+and the weight of his double sorrow was intolerable.
+He sat with his eyes fixed upon his plate, counting the minutes,
+wishing at one moment that Valentin would see him
+and leave him free to go in quest of Madame de Cintre
+and his lost happiness, and mentally calling himself a vile
+brute the next, for the impatient egotism of the wish.
+He was very poor company, himself, and even his acute
+preoccupation and his general lack of the habit of pondering
+the impression he produced did not prevent him from reflecting
+that his companions must be puzzled to see how poor Bellegarde
+came to take such a fancy to this taciturn Yankee that he must
+needs have him at his death-bed. After breakfast he strolled
+forth alone into the village and looked at the fountain,
+the geese, the open barn doors, the brown, bent old women,
+showing their hugely darned stocking-heels at the ends of their
+slowly-clicking sabots, and the beautiful view of snowy Alps
+and purple Jura at either end of the little street.  The day
+was brilliant; early spring was in the air and in the sunshine,
+and the winter's damp was trickling out of the cottage eaves.
+It was birth and brightness for all nature, even for chirping
+chickens and waddling goslings, and it was to be death and
+burial for poor, foolish, generous, delightful Bellegarde.
+Newman walked as far as the village church, and went
+into the small grave-yard beside it, where he sat down and
+looked at the awkward tablets which were planted around.
+They were all sordid and hideous, and Newman could
+feel nothing but the hardness and coldness of death.
+He got up and came back to the inn, where he found M. Ledoux
+having coffee and a cigarette at a little green table
+which he had caused to be carried into the small garden.
+Newman, learning that the doctor was still sitting with Valentin,
+asked M. Ledoux if he might not be allowed to relieve him;
+he had a great desire to be useful to his poor friend.
+This was easily arranged; the doctor was very glad to go to bed.
+He was a youthful and rather jaunty practitioner, but he had a
+clever face, and the ribbon of the Legion of Honor in his buttonhole;
+Newman listened attentively to the instructions he gave him
+before retiring, and took mechanically from his hand a small
+volume which the surgeon recommended as a help to wakefulness,
+and which turned out to be an old copy of "Faublas."
+Valentin was still lying with his eyes closed, and there was
+no visible change in his condition.  Newman sat down near him,
+and for a long time narrowly watched him.  Then his eyes
+wandered away with his thoughts upon his own situation,
+and rested upon the chain of the Alps, disclosed by the drawing
+of the scant white cotton curtain of the window, through which
+the sunshine passed and lay in squares upon the red-tiled floor.
+He tried to interweave his reflections with hope, but he only
+half succeeded.  What had happened to him seemed to have,
+in its violence and audacity, the force of a real calamity--
+the strength and insolence of Destiny herself.  It was unnatural
+and monstrous, and he had no arms against it.  At last a sound
+struck upon the stillness, and he heard Valentin's voice.
+
+"It can't be about me you are pulling that long face!"  He found,
+when he turned, that Valentin was lying in the same position;
+but his eyes were open, and he was even trying to smile.
+It was with a very slender strength that he returned the pressure
+of Newman's hand.  "I have been watching you for a quarter of an hour,"
+Valentin went on; "you have been looking as black as thunder.
+You are greatly disgusted with me, I see.  Well, of course!
+So am I!"
+
+"Oh, I shall not scold you," said Newman.  "I feel too badly.
+And how are you getting on?"
+
+"Oh, I'm getting off!  They have quite settled that; haven't they?"
+
+"That's for you to settle; you can get well if you try,"
+said Newman, with resolute cheerfulness.
+
+"My dear fellow, how can I try?  Trying is violent exercise,
+and that sort of thing isn't in order for a man with a hole
+in his side as big as your hat, that begins to bleed
+if he moves a hair's-breadth. I knew you would come,"
+he continued; "I knew I should wake up and find you here;
+so I'm not surprised.  But last night I was very impatient.
+I didn't see how I could keep still until you came.
+It was a matter of keeping still, just like this; as still
+as a mummy in his case.  You talk about trying; I tried that!
+Well, here I am yet--these twenty hours.  It seems like twenty days."
+Bellegarde talked slowly and feebly, but distinctly enough.
+It was visible, however, that he was in extreme pain,
+and at last he closed his eyes.  Newman begged him to remain
+silent and spare himself; the doctor had left urgent orders.
+"Oh," said Valentin, "let us eat and drink, for to-morrow--to-morrow"--
+and he paused again.  "No, not to-morrow, perhaps, but today.
+I can't eat and drink, but I can talk.  What's to be gained,
+at this pass, by renun--renunciation?  I mustn't use such big words.
+I was always a chatterer; Lord, how I have talked in my day!"
+
+"That's a reason for keeping quiet now," said Newman.
+"We know how well you talk, you know."
+
+But Valentin, without heeding him, went on in the same weak, dying drawl.
+"I wanted to see you because you have seen my sister.  Does she know--
+will she come?"
+
+Newman was embarrassed.  "Yes, by this time she must know."
+
+"Didn't you tell her?"  Valentin asked.  And then,
+in a moment, "Didn't you bring me any message from her?"
+His eyes rested upon Newman's with a certain soft keenness.
+
+"I didn't see her after I got your telegram," said Newman.
+"I wrote to her."
+
+"And she sent you no answer?"
+
+Newman was obliged to reply that Madame de Cintre had left Paris.
+"She went yesterday to Fleurieres."
+
+"Yesterday--to Fleurieres?  Why did she go to Fleurieres?
+What day is this?  What day was yesterday?  Ah, then I shan't
+see her," said Valentin, sadly.  "Fleurieres is too far!"
+And then he closed his eyes again.  Newman sat silent,
+summoning pious invention to his aid, but he was relieved
+at finding that Valentin was apparently too weak to reason
+or to be curious.  Bellegarde, however, presently went on.
+"And my mother--and my brother--will they come?
+Are they at Fleurieres?"
+
+"They were in Paris, but I didn't see them, either," Newman answered.
+"If they received your telegram in time, they will have started this morning.
+Otherwise they will be obliged to wait for the night-express, and they
+will arrive at the same hour as I did."
+
+"They won't thank me--they won't thank me," Valentin murmured.
+"They will pass an atrocious night, and Urbain doesn't
+like the early morning air.  I don't remember ever in my
+life to have seen him before noon--before breakfast.
+No one ever saw him.  We don't know how he is then.
+Perhaps he's different.  Who knows?  Posterity, perhaps, will know.
+That's the time he works, in his cabinet, at the history
+of the Princesses.  But I had to send for them--hadn't I?
+And then I want to see my mother sit there where you sit,
+and say good-by to her.  Perhaps, after all, I don't know her,
+and she will have some surprise for me.  Don't think you
+know her yet, yourself; perhaps she may surprise YOU.
+But if I can't see Claire, I don't care for anything.
+I have been thinking of it--and in my dreams, too.
+Why did she go to Fleurieres to-day? She never told me.
+What has happened?  Ah, she ought to have guessed I was here--
+this way.  It is the first time in her life she ever
+disappointed me.  Poor Claire!"
+
+"You know we are not man and wife quite yet,--your sister and I,"
+said Newman.  "She doesn't yet account to me for all her actions."
+And, after a fashion, he smiled.
+
+Valentin looked at him a moment.  "Have you quarreled?"
+
+"Never, never, never!"  Newman exclaimed.
+
+"How happily you say that!" said Valentin.  "You are going
+to be happy--VA!"  In answer to this stroke of irony,
+none the less powerful for being so unconscious, all poor
+Newman could do was to give a helpless and transparent stare.
+Valentin continued to fix him with his own rather over-bright gaze,
+and presently he said, "But something is the matter with you.
+I watched you just now; you haven't a bridegroom's face."
+
+"My dear fellow," said Newman, "how can I show YOU a bridegroom's face?
+If you think I enjoy seeing you lie there and not being able to help you"--
+
+"Why, you are just the man to be cheerful; don't forfeit your rights!
+I'm a proof of your wisdom.  When was a man ever gloomy when
+he could say, 'I told you so?'  You told me so, you know.
+You did what you could about it.  You said some very good things;
+I have thought them over.  But, my dear friend, I was right, all the same.
+This is the regular way."
+
+"I didn't do what I ought," said Newman.  "I ought to have
+done something else."
+
+"For instance?"
+
+"Oh, something or other.  I ought to have treated you as a small boy."
+
+"Well, I'm a very small boy, now," said Valentin.
+"I'm rather less than an infant.  An infant is helpless,
+but it's generally voted promising.  I'm not promising, eh?
+Society can't lose a less valuable member."
+
+Newman was strongly moved.  He got up and turned his back upon his
+friend and walked away to the window, where he stood looking out,
+but only vaguely seeing.  "No, I don't like the look of your back,"
+Valentin continued.  "I have always been an observer of backs;
+yours is quite out of sorts."
+
+Newman returned to his bedside and begged him to be quiet.
+"Be quiet and get well," he said.  "That's what you must do.
+Get well and help me."
+
+"I told you you were in trouble!  How can I help you?"  Valentin asked.
+
+"I'll let you know when you are better.  You were always curious;
+there is something to get well for!"  Newman answered,
+with resolute animation.
+
+Valentin closed his eyes and lay a long time without speaking.
+He seemed even to have fallen asleep.  But at the end of half an hour
+he began to talk again.  "I am rather sorry about that place in the bank.
+Who knows but what I might have become another Rothschild?
+But I wasn't meant for a banker; bankers are not so easy to kill.
+Don't you think I have been very easy to kill?  It's not like a serious man.
+It's really very mortifying.  It's like telling your hostess you must go,
+when you count upon her begging you to stay, and then finding she
+does no such thing.  'Really--so soon?  You've only just come!'
+Life doesn't make me any such polite little speech."
+
+Newman for some time said nothing, but at last he broke out.
+"It's a bad case--it's a bad case--it's the worst case I ever met.
+I don't want to say anything unpleasant, but I can't help it.
+I've seen men dying before--and I've seen men shot.
+But it always seemed more natural; they were not so clever
+as you.  Damnation--damnation!  You might have done something
+better than this.  It's about the meanest winding-up of a man's
+affairs that I can imagine!"
+
+Valentin feebly waved his hand to and fro.  "Don't insist--don't insist!
+It is mean--decidedly mean.  For you see at the bottom--down at the bottom,
+in a little place as small as the end of a wine-funnel--I agree with you!"
+
+A few moments after this the doctor put his head through the half-opened
+door and, perceiving that Valentin was awake, came in and felt his pulse.
+He shook his head and declared that he had talked too much--
+ten times too much.  "Nonsense!" said Valentin; "a man sentenced
+to death can never talk too much.  Have you never read an account
+of an execution in a newspaper?  Don't they always set a lot of people
+at the prisoner--lawyers, reporters, priests--to make him talk?
+But it's not Mr. Newman's fault; he sits there as mum as a death's-head."
+
+The doctor observed that it was time his patient's wound should be
+dressed again; MM.  de Grosjoyaux and Ledoux, who had already witnessed
+this delicate operation, taking Newman's place as assistants.
+Newman withdrew and learned from his fellow-watchers that
+they had received a telegram from Urbain de Bellegarde to
+the effect that their message had been delivered in the Rue de
+l'Universite too late to allow him to take the morning train,
+but that he would start with his mother in the evening.
+Newman wandered away into the village again, and walked about
+restlessly for two or three hours.  The day seemed terribly long.
+At dusk he came back and dined with the doctor and M. Ledoux.
+The dressing of Valentin's wound had been a very critical operation;
+the doctor didn't really see how he was to endure a repetition of it.
+He then declared that he must beg of Mr. Newman to deny himself
+for the present the satisfaction of sitting with M. de Bellegarde;
+more than any one else, apparently, he had the flattering
+but inconvenient privilege of exciting him.  M. Ledoux, at this,
+swallowed a glass of wine in silence; he must have been wondering
+what the deuce Bellegarde found so exciting in the American.
+
+Newman, after dinner, went up to his room, where he sat
+for a long time staring at his lighted candle, and thinking
+that Valentin was dying down-stairs. Late, when the candle
+had burnt low, there came a soft rap at his door.
+The doctor stood there with a candlestick and a shrug.
+
+"He must amuse himself, still!" said Valentin's medical adviser.
+"He insists upon seeing you, and I am afraid you must come.
+I think at this rate, that he will hardly outlast the night."
+
+Newman went back to Valentin's room, which he found lighted
+by a taper on the hearth.  Valentin begged him to light a candle.
+"I want to see your face," he said.  "They say you excite me," he went on,
+as Newman complied with this request, "and I confess I do feel excited.
+But it isn't you--it's my own thoughts.  I have been thinking--thinking.
+Sit down there, and let me look at you again."  Newman seated himself,
+folded his arms, and bent a heavy gaze upon his friend.
+He seemed to be playing a part, mechanically, in a lugubrious comedy.
+Valentin looked at him for some time.  "Yes, this morning I was right;
+you have something on your mind heavier than Valentin de Bellegarde.
+Come, I'm a dying man and it's indecent to deceive me.
+Something happened after I left Paris.  It was not for nothing that
+my sister started off at this season of the year for Fleurieres.
+Why was it?  It sticks in my crop.  I have been thinking it over,
+and if you don't tell me I shall guess."
+
+"I had better not tell you," said Newman.  "It won't do you any good."
+
+"If you think it will do me any good not to tell me, you are
+very much mistaken.  There is trouble about your marriage."
+
+"Yes," said Newman.  "There is trouble about my marriage."
+
+"Good!"  And Valentin was silent again.  "They have stopped it."
+
+"They have stopped it," said Newman.  Now that he had spoken out,
+he found a satisfaction in it which deepened as he went on.
+"Your mother and brother have broken faith.  They have decided
+that it can't take place.  They have decided that I am not
+good enough, after all.  They have taken back their word.
+Since you insist, there it is!"
+
+Valentin gave a sort of groan, lifted his hands a moment,
+and then let them drop.
+
+"I am sorry not to have anything better to tell you about them,"
+Newman pursued.  "But it's not my fault.  I was, indeed, very unhappy
+when your telegram reached me; I was quite upside down.
+You may imagine whether I feel any better now."
+
+Valentin moaned gaspingly, as if his wound were throbbing.
+"Broken faith, broken faith!" he murmured.  "And my sister--
+my sister?"
+
+"Your sister is very unhappy; she has consented to give me up.
+I don't know why.  I don't know what they have done to her;
+it must be something pretty bad.  In justice to her you ought
+to know it.  They have made her suffer.  I haven't seen her alone,
+but only before them!  We had an interview yesterday morning.
+They came out, flat, in so many words.  They told me to go
+about my business.  It seems to me a very bad case.
+I'm angry, I'm sore, I'm sick."
+
+Valentin lay there staring, with his eyes more brilliantly lighted,
+his lips soundlessly parted, and a flush of color in his pale face.
+Newman had never before uttered so many words in the plaintive key,
+but now, in speaking to Valentin in the poor fellow's extremity,
+he had a feeling that he was making his complaint somewhere
+within the presence of the power that men pray to in trouble;
+he felt his outgush of resentment as a sort of spiritual privilege.
+
+"And Claire,"--said Bellegarde,--"Claire? She has given you up?"
+
+"I don't really believe it," said Newman.
+
+"No. Don't believe it, don't believe it.  She is gaining time; excuse her."
+
+"I pity her!" said Newman.
+
+"Poor Claire!" murmured Valentin.  "But they--but they"--and he paused again.
+"You saw them; they dismissed you, face to face?"
+
+"Face to face.  They were very explicit."
+
+"What did they say?"
+
+"They said they couldn't stand a commercial person."
+
+Valentin put out his hand and laid it upon Newman's arm.
+"And about their promise--their engagement with you?"
+
+"They made a distinction.  They said it was to hold good only until
+Madame de Cintre accepted me."
+
+Valentin lay staring a while, and his flush died away.
+"Don't tell me any more," he said at last.  "I'm ashamed."
+
+"You?  You are the soul of honor," said Newman simply.
+
+Valentin groaned and turned away his head.  For some time nothing
+more was said.  Then Valentin turned back again and found
+a certain force to press Newman's arm.  "It's very bad--very bad.
+When my people--when my race--come to that, it is time for me
+to withdraw.  I believe in my sister; she will explain.
+Excuse her.  If she can't--if she can't, forgive her.
+She has suffered.  But for the others it is very bad--very bad.
+You take it very hard?  No, it's a shame to make you say so."
+He closed his eyes and again there was a silence.  Newman felt
+almost awed; he had evoked a more solemn spirit than he expected.
+Presently Valentin looked at him again, removing his hand
+from his arm.  "I apologize," he said.  "Do you understand?
+Here on my death-bed. I apologize for my family.  For my mother.
+For my brother.  For the ancient house of Bellegarde.
+Voila!" he added, softly.
+
+Newman for an answer took his hand and pressed it
+with a world of kindness.  Valentin remained quiet,
+and at the end of half an hour the doctor softly came in.
+Behind him, through the half-open door, Newman saw the two
+questioning faces of MM.  de Grosjoyaux and Ledoux.
+The doctor laid his hand on Valentin's wrist and sat looking at him.
+He gave no sign and the two gentlemen came in, M. Ledoux having
+first beckoned to some one outside.  This was M. le cure,
+who carried in his hand an object unknown to Newman, and covered
+with a white napkin.  M. le cure was short, round, and red:
+he advanced, pulling off his little black cap to Newman,
+and deposited his burden on the table; and then he sat down
+in the best arm-chair, with his hands folded across his person.
+The other gentlemen had exchanged glances which expressed
+unanimity as to the timeliness of their presence.
+But for a long time Valentin neither spoke nor moved.
+It was Newman's belief, afterwards, that M. le cure went to sleep.
+At last abruptly, Valentin pronounced Newman's name.
+His friend went to him, and he said in French, "You are not alone.
+I want to speak to you alone."  Newman looked at the doctor,
+and the doctor looked at the cure, who looked back at him;
+and then the doctor and the cure, together, gave a shrug.
+"Alone--for five minutes," Valentin repeated.  "Please leave us."
+
+The cure took up his burden again and led the way out,
+followed by his companions.  Newman closed the door behind them
+and came back to Valentin's bedside.  Bellegarde had watched
+all this intently.
+
+"It's very bad, it's very bad," he said, after Newman had seated himself
+close to him.  "The more I think of it the worse it is."
+
+"Oh, don't think of it," said Newman.
+
+But Valentin went on, without heeding him.  "Even if they should come
+round again, the shame--the baseness--is there."
+
+"Oh, they won't come round!" said Newman.
+
+"Well, you can make them."
+
+"Make them?"
+
+"I can tell you something--a great secret--an immense secret.
+You can use it against them--frighten them, force them."
+
+"A secret!"  Newman repeated.  The idea of letting Valentin,
+on his death-bed, confide him an "immense secret" shocked him,
+for the moment, and made him draw back.  It seemed an illicit
+way of arriving at information, and even had a vague analogy
+with listening at a key-hole. Then, suddenly, the thought
+of "forcing" Madame de Bellegarde and her son became attractive,
+and Newman bent his head closer to Valentin's lips.
+For some time, however, the dying man said nothing more.  He only lay
+and looked at his friend with his kindled, expanded, troubled eye,
+and Newman began to believe that he had spoken in delirium.
+But at last he said,--
+
+"There was something done--something done at Fleurieres.
+It was foul play.  My father--something happened to him.
+I don't know; I have been ashamed--afraid to know.
+But I know there is something.  My mother knows--Urbain knows."
+
+"Something happened to your father?" said Newman, urgently.
+
+Valentin looked at him, still more wide-eyed. "He didn't get well."
+
+"Get well of what?"
+
+But the immense effort which Valentin had made, first to decide to utter
+these words and then to bring them out, appeared to have taken his
+last strength.  He lapsed again into silence, and Newman sat watching him.
+"Do you understand?" he began again, presently.  "At Fleurieres.
+You can find out.  Mrs. Bread knows.  Tell her I begged you to ask her.
+Then tell them that, and see.  It may help you.  If not, tell, every one.
+It will--it will"--here Valentin's voice sank to the feeblest murmur--"it
+will avenge you!"
+
+The words died away in a long, soft groan.  Newman stood up,
+deeply impressed, not knowing what to say; his heart was beating violently.
+"Thank you," he said at last.  "I am much obliged."  But Valentin
+seemed not to hear him, he remained silent, and his silence continued.
+At last Newman went and opened the door.  M. le cure reentered, bearing his
+sacred vessel and followed by the three gentlemen and by Valentin's servant.
+It was almost processional.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+
+
+Valentin de Bellegarde died, tranquilly, just as the cold, faint March dawn
+began to illumine the faces of the little knot of friends gathered about
+his bedside.  An hour afterwards Newman left the inn and drove to Geneva;
+he was naturally unwilling to be present at the arrival of Madame de
+Bellegarde and her first-born. At Geneva, for the moment, he remained.  He was
+like a man who has had a fall and wants to sit still and count his bruises.
+He instantly wrote to Madame de Cintre, relating to her the circumstances
+of her brother's death--with certain exceptions--and asking her what was
+the earliest moment at which he might hope that she would consent to see him.
+M. Ledoux had told him that he had reason to know that Valentin's will--
+Bellegarde had a great deal of elegant personal property to dispose of--
+contained a request that he should be buried near his father in the
+church-yard of Fleurieres, and Newman intended that the state of his own
+relations with the family should not deprive him of the satisfaction
+of helping to pay the last earthly honors to the best fellow in the world.
+He reflected that Valentin's friendship was older than Urbain's enmity,
+and that at a funeral it was easy to escape notice.  Madame de Cintre's
+answer to his letter enabled him to time his arrival at Fleurieres.
+This answer was very brief; it ran as follows:--
+
+"I thank you for your letter, and for your being with Valentin.
+It is a most inexpressible sorrow to me that I was not.
+To see you will be nothing but a distress to me; there is
+no need, therefore, to wait for what you call brighter days.
+It is all one now, and I shall have no brighter days.
+Come when you please; only notify me first.  My brother is
+to be buried here on Friday, and my family is to remain here.
+C. de C."
+
+As soon as he received this letter Newman went straight
+to Paris and to Poitiers.  The journey took him far southward,
+through green Touraine and across the far-shining Loire, into a
+country where the early spring deepened about him as he went.
+But he had never made a journey during which he heeded
+less what he would have called the lay of the land.
+He obtained lodging at the inn at Poitiers, and the next morning
+drove in a couple of hours to the village of Fleurieres.
+But here, preoccupied though he was, he could not fail to notice
+the picturesqueness of the place.  It was what the French call
+a petit bourg; it lay at the base of a sort of huge mound on
+the summit of which stood the crumbling ruins of a feudal castle,
+much of whose sturdy material, as well as that of the wall which
+dropped along the hill to inclose the clustered houses defensively,
+had been absorbed into the very substance of the village.
+The church was simply the former chapel of the castle, fronting upon
+its grass-grown court, which, however, was of generous enough width
+to have given up its quaintest corner to a little graveyard.
+Here the very headstones themselves seemed to sleep, as they
+slanted into the grass; the patient elbow of the rampart held
+them together on one side, and in front, far beneath their
+mossy lids, the green plains and blue distances stretched away.
+The way to church, up the hill, was impracticable to vehicles.
+It was lined with peasants, two or three rows deep, who stood
+watching old Madame de Bellegarde slowly ascend it, on the arm
+of her elder son, behind the pall-bearers of the other.
+Newman chose to lurk among the common mourners who murmured "Madame
+la Comtesse" as a tall figure veiled in black passed before them.
+He stood in the dusky little church while the service was
+going forward, but at the dismal tomb-side he turned away and walked
+down the hill.  He went back to Poitiers, and spent two days
+in which patience and impatience were singularly commingled.
+On the third day he sent Madame de Cintre a note,
+saying that he would call upon her in the afternoon, and in
+accordance with this he again took his way to Fleurieres.
+He left his vehicle at the tavern in the village street,
+and obeyed the simple instructions which were given him for
+finding the chateau.
+
+"It is just beyond there," said the landlord, and pointed
+to the tree-tops of the park, above the opposite houses.
+Newman followed the first cross-road to the right--
+it was bordered with mouldy cottages--and in a few moments saw
+before him the peaked roofs of the towers.  Advancing farther,
+he found himself before a vast iron gate, rusty and closed;
+here he paused a moment, looking through the bars.
+The chateau was near the road; this was at once its merit
+and its defect; but its aspect was extremely impressive.
+Newman learned afterwards, from a guide-book of the province,
+that it dated from the time of Henry IV.  It presented to the wide,
+paved area which preceded it and which was edged with shabby
+farm-buildings an immense facade of dark time-stained brick,
+flanked by two low wings, each of which terminated in a little
+Dutch-looking pavilion capped with a fantastic roof.
+Two towers rose behind, and behind the towers was a mass of elms
+and beeches, now just faintly green.  But the great feature was
+a wide, green river which washed the foundations of the chateau.
+The building rose from an island in the circling stream,
+so that this formed a perfect moat spanned by a two-arched
+bridge without a parapet.  The dull brick walls, which here
+and there made a grand, straight sweep; the ugly little cupolas
+of the wings, the deep-set windows, the long, steep pinnacles
+of mossy slate, all mirrored themselves in the tranquil river.
+Newman rang at the gate, and was almost frightened at the tone
+with which a big rusty bell above his head replied to him.
+An old woman came out from the gate-house and opened
+the creaking portal just wide enough for him to pass,
+and he went in, across the dry, bare court and the little
+cracked white slabs of the causeway on the moat.
+At the door of the chateau he waited for some moments, and this
+gave him a chance to observe that Fleurieres was not "kept up,"
+and to reflect that it was a melancholy place of residence.
+"It looks," said Newman to himself--and I give the comparison
+for what it is worth--"like a Chinese penitentiary."
+At last the door was opened by a servant whom he remembered
+to have seen in the Rue de l'Universite. The man's dull face
+brightened as he perceived our hero, for Newman, for indefinable
+reasons, enjoyed the confidence of the liveried gentry.
+The footman led the way across a great central vestibule,
+with a pyramid of plants in tubs in the middle of glass doors
+all around, to what appeared to be the principal drawing-room
+of the chateau.  Newman crossed the threshold of a room
+of superb proportions, which made him feel at first like a
+tourist with a guide-book and a cicerone awaiting a fee.
+But when his guide had left him alone, with the observation
+that he would call Madame la Comtesse, Newman perceived
+that the salon contained little that was remarkable save
+a dark ceiling with curiously carved rafters, some curtains
+of elaborate, antiquated tapestry, and a dark oaken floor,
+polished like a mirror.  He waited some minutes, walking up
+and down; but at length, as he turned at the end of the room,
+he saw that Madame de Cintre had come in by a distant door.
+She wore a black dress, and she stood looking at him.
+As the length of the immense room lay between them he had time
+to look at her before they met in the middle of it.
+
+He was dismayed at the change in her appearance.
+Pale, heavy-browed, almost haggard with a sort of monastic rigidity
+in her dress, she had little but her pure features in common
+with the woman whose radiant good grace he had hitherto admired.
+She let her eyes rest on his own, and she let him take her hand;
+but her eyes looked like two rainy autumn moons, and her touch
+was portentously lifeless.
+
+"I was at your brother's funeral," Newman said.  "Then I waited three days.
+But I could wait no longer."
+
+"Nothing can be lost or gained by waiting," said Madame de Cintre.
+"But it was very considerate of you to wait, wronged as you have been."
+
+"I'm glad you think I have been wronged," said Newman,
+with that oddly humorous accent with which he often uttered
+words of the gravest meaning.
+
+"Do I need to say so?" she asked.  "I don't think I
+have wronged, seriously, many persons; certainly not consciously.
+To you, to whom I have done this hard and cruel thing,
+the only reparation I can make is to say, 'I know it, I feel it!'
+The reparation is pitifully small!"
+
+"Oh, it's a great step forward!" said Newman, with a
+gracious smile of encouragement.  He pushed a chair
+towards her and held it, looking at her urgently.
+She sat down, mechanically, and he seated himself near her;
+but in a moment he got up, restlessly, and stood before her.
+She remained seated, like a troubled creature who had passed
+through the stage of restlessness.
+
+"I say nothing is to be gained by my seeing you," she went on,
+"and yet I am very glad you came.  Now I can tell you what I feel.
+It is a selfish pleasure, but it is one of the last I shall have."
+And she paused, with her great misty eyes fixed upon him.  "I know how I
+have deceived and injured you; I know how cruel and cowardly I have been.
+I see it as vividly as you do--I feel it to the ends of my fingers."
+And she unclasped her hands, which were locked together in her lap,
+lifted them, and dropped them at her side.  "Anything that you may
+have said of me in your angriest passion is nothing to what I have
+said to myself."
+
+"In my angriest passion," said Newman, "I have said nothing hard of you.
+The very worst thing I have said of you yet is that you are the loveliest
+of women."  And he seated himself before her again, abruptly.
+
+She flushed a little, but even her flush was pale.
+"That is because you think I will come back.  But I will not
+come back.  It is in that hope you have come here, I know;
+I am very sorry for you.  I would do almost anything for you.
+To say that, after what I have done, seems simply impudent;
+but what can I say that will not seem impudent?  To wrong you
+and apologize--that is easy enough.  I should not have wronged you."
+She stopped a moment, looking at him, and motioned him
+to let her go on.  "I ought never to have listened to you
+at first; that was the wrong.  No good could come of it.
+I felt it, and yet I listened; that was your fault.
+I liked you too much; I believed in you."
+
+"And don't you believe in me now?"
+
+"More than ever.  But now it doesn't matter.  I have given you up."
+
+Newman gave a powerful thump with his clenched fist upon his knee.
+"Why, why, why?" he cried.  "Give me a reason--a decent reason.
+You are not a child--you are not a minor, nor an idiot.
+You are not obliged to drop me because your mother told you to.
+Such a reason isn't worthy of you."
+
+"I know that; it's not worthy of me.  But it's the only one I have to give.
+After all," said Madame de Cintre, throwing out her hands, "think me an idiot
+and forget me!  That will be the simplest way."
+
+Newman got up and walked away with a crushing sense that his cause
+was lost, and yet with an equal inability to give up fighting.
+He went to one of the great windows, and looked out at the stiffly
+embanked river and the formal gardens which lay beyond it.
+When he turned round, Madame de Cintre had risen;
+she stood there silent and passive.  "You are not frank,"
+said Newman; "you are not honest.  Instead of saying that you
+are imbecile, you should say that other people are wicked.
+Your mother and your brother have been false and cruel;
+they have been so to me, and I am sure they have been so to you.
+Why do you try to shield them?  Why do you sacrifice me to them?
+I'm not false; I'm not cruel.  You don't know what you give up;
+I can tell you that--you don't. They bully you and plot
+about you; and I--I"--And he paused, holding out his hands.
+She turned away and began to leave him.  "You told me the other day
+that you were afraid of your mother," he said, following her.
+"What did you mean?"
+
+Madame de Cintre shook her head.  "I remember; I was sorry afterwards."
+
+"You were sorry when she came down and put on the thumb-screws.
+In God's name what IS it she does to you?"
+
+"Nothing.  Nothing that you can understand.  And now that I have given you up,
+I must not complain of her to you."
+
+"That's no reasoning!" cried Newman.  "Complain of her, on the contrary.
+Tell me all about it, frankly and trustfully, as you ought, and we will talk
+it over so satisfactorily that you won't give me up."
+
+Madame de Cintre looked down some moments, fixedly; and then,
+raising her eyes, she said, "One good at least has come of this:
+I have made you judge me more fairly.  You thought of me in a way that
+did me great honor; I don't know why you had taken it into your head.
+But it left me no loophole for escape--no chance to be the common,
+weak creature I am.  It was not my fault; I warned you from the first.
+But I ought to have warned you more.  I ought to have convinced you
+that I was doomed to disappoint you.  But I WAS, in a way, too proud.
+You see what my superiority amounts to, I hope!" she went on, raising her
+voice with a tremor which even then and there Newman thought beautiful.
+"I am too proud to be honest, I am not too proud to be faithless.
+I am timid and cold and selfish.  I am afraid of being uncomfortable."
+
+"And you call marrying me uncomfortable!" said Newman staring.
+
+Madame de Cintre blushed a little and seemed to say that if begging
+his pardon in words was impudent, she might at least thus mutely
+express her perfect comprehension of his finding her conduct odious.
+"It is not marrying you; it is doing all that would go with it.
+It's the rupture, the defiance, the insisting upon being happy in my own way.
+What right have I to be happy when--when"--And she paused.
+
+"When what?" said Newman.
+
+"When others have been most unhappy!"
+
+"What others?"  Newman asked.  "What have you to do with any others but me?
+Besides you said just now that you wanted happiness, and that you should find
+it by obeying your mother.  You contradict yourself."
+
+"Yes, I contradict myself; that shows you that I am not even intelligent."
+
+"You are laughing at me!" cried Newman.  "You are mocking me!"
+
+She looked at him intently, and an observer might have said
+that she was asking herself whether she might not most quickly
+end their common pain by confessing that she was mocking him.
+"No; I am not," she presently said.
+
+"Granting that you are not intelligent," he went on, "that you are weak,
+that you are common, that you are nothing that I have believed you were--
+what I ask of you is not heroic effort, it is a very common effort.
+There is a great deal on my side to make it easy.  The simple truth
+is that you don't care enough about me to make it."
+
+"I am cold," said Madame de Cintre, "I am as cold as that flowing river."
+
+Newman gave a great rap on the floor with his stick, and a long,
+grim laugh.  "Good, good!" he cried.  "You go altogether too far--
+you overshoot the mark.  There isn't a woman in the world
+as bad as you would make yourself out.  I see your game;
+it's what I said.  You are blackening yourself to whiten others.
+You don't want to give me up, at all; you like me--you like me.
+I know you do; you have shown it, and I have felt it.
+After that, you may be as cold as you please!  They have bullied you,
+I say; they have tortured you.  It's an outrage, and I insist
+upon saving you from the extravagance of your own generosity.
+Would you chop off your hand if your mother requested it?"
+
+Madame de Cintre looked a little frightened.  "I spoke of my mother
+too blindly, the other day.  I am my own mistress, by law and by
+her approval.  She can do nothing to me; she has done nothing.
+She has never alluded to those hard words I used about her."
+
+"She has made you feel them, I'll promise you!" said Newman.
+
+"It's my conscience that makes me feel them."
+
+"Your conscience seems to me to be rather mixed!"
+exclaimed Newman, passionately.
+
+"It has been in great trouble, but now it is very clear,"
+said Madame de Cintre.  "I don't give you up for any worldly
+advantage or for any worldly happiness."
+
+"Oh, you don't give me up for Lord Deepmere, I know," said Newman.
+"I won't pretend, even to provoke you, that I think that.
+But that's what your mother and your brother wanted,
+and your mother, at that villainous ball of hers--I liked it
+at the time, but the very thought of it now makes me rabid--
+tried to push him on to make up to you."
+
+"Who told you this?" said Madame de Cintre softly.
+
+"Not Valentin.  I observed it.  I guessed it.  I didn't know at the time
+that I was observing it, but it stuck in my memory.  And afterwards,
+you recollect, I saw Lord Deepmere with you in the conservatory.
+You said then that you would tell me at another time what he had
+said to you."
+
+"That was before--before THIS," said Madame de Cintre.
+
+"It doesn't matter," said Newman; "and, besides, I think I know.
+He's an honest little Englishman.  He came and told you what
+your mother was up to--that she wanted him to supplant me;
+not being a commercial person.  If he would make you an offer
+she would undertake to bring you over and give me the slip.
+Lord Deepmere isn't very intellectual, so she had to spell it out to him.
+He said he admired you 'no end,' and that he wanted you to know it;
+but he didn't like being mixed up with that sort of underhand work,
+and he came to you and told tales.  That was about the amount of it,
+wasn't it?  And then you said you were perfectly happy."
+
+"I don't see why we should talk of Lord Deepmere," said Madame de Cintre.
+"It was not for that you came here.  And about my mother, it doesn't
+matter what you suspect and what you know.  When once my mind has
+been made up, as it is now, I should not discuss these things.
+Discussing anything, now, is very idle.  We must try and live each as we can.
+I believe you will be happy again; even, sometimes, when you think of me.
+When you do so, think this--that it was not easy, and that I did
+the best I could.  I have things to reckon with that you don't know.
+I mean I have feelings.  I must do as they force me--I must, I must.
+They would haunt me otherwise," she cried, with vehemence;
+"they would kill me!"
+
+"I know what your feelings are:  they are superstitions!
+They are the feeling that, after all, though I AM a good fellow,
+I have been in business; the feeling that your mother's
+looks are law and your brother's words are gospel; that you
+all hang together, and that it's a part of the everlasting
+proprieties that they should have a hand in everything you do.
+It makes my blood boil.  That is cold; you are right.
+And what I feel here," and Newman struck his heart and became
+more poetical than he knew, "is a glowing fire!"
+
+A spectator less preoccupied than Madame de Cintre's
+distracted wooer would have felt sure from the first that her
+appealing calm of manner was the result of violent effort,
+in spite of which the tide of agitation was rapidly rising.
+On these last words of Newman's it overflowed, though at
+first she spoke low, for fear of her voice betraying her.
+"No. I was not right--I am not cold!  I believe that if I am
+doing what seems so bad, it is not mere weakness and falseness.
+Mr. Newman, it's like a religion.  I can't tell you--I can't!
+It's cruel of you to insist.  I don't see why I shouldn't
+ask you to believe me--and pity me.  It's like a religion.
+There's a curse upon the house; I don't know what--
+I don't know why--don't ask me.  We must all bear it.
+I have been too selfish; I wanted to escape from it.
+You offered me a great chance--besides my liking you.
+It seemed good to change completely, to break, to go away.
+And then I admired you.  But I can't--it has overtaken
+and come back to me."  Her self-control had now completely
+abandoned her, and her words were broken with long sobs.
+"Why do such dreadful things happen to us--why is my brother
+Valentin killed, like a beast in the midst of his youth and
+his gayety and his brightness and all that we loved him for?
+Why are there things I can't ask about--that I am afraid to know?
+Why are there places I can't look at, sounds I can't hear?
+Why is it given to me to choose, to decide, in a case
+so hard and so terrible as this?  I am not meant for that--
+I am not made for boldness and defiance.  I was made
+to be happy in a quiet, natural way."  At this Newman gave
+a most expressive groan, but Madame de Cintre went on.
+"I was made to do gladly and gratefully what is expected of me.
+My mother has always been very good to me; that's all I can say.
+I must not judge her; I must not criticize her.  If I did,
+it would come back to me.  I can't change!"
+
+"No," said Newman, bitterly; "I must change--if I break in two
+in the effort!"
+
+"You are different.  You are a man; you will get over it.
+You have all kinds of consolation.  You were born--you were trained,
+to changes.  Besides--besides, I shall always think of you."
+
+"I don't care for that!" cried Newman.  "You are cruel--you are
+terribly cruel.  God forgive you!  You may have the best reasons
+and the finest feelings in the world; that makes no difference.
+You are a mystery to me; I don't see how such hardness can go
+with such loveliness."
+
+Madame de Cintre fixed him a moment with her swimming eyes.
+"You believe I am hard, then?"
+
+Newman answered her look, and then broke out, "You are a perfect,
+faultless creature!  Stay by me!"
+
+"Of course I am hard," she went on.  "Whenever we give pain
+we are hard.  And we MUST give pain; that's the world,--
+the hateful, miserable world!  Ah!" and she gave a long, deep sigh,
+"I can't even say I am glad to have known you--though I am.
+That too is to wrong you.  I can say nothing that is not cruel.
+Therefore let us part, without more of this.  Good-by!" And she
+put out her hand.
+
+Newman stood and looked at it without taking it, and raised his
+eyes to her face.  He felt, himself, like shedding tears of rage.
+"What are you going to do?" he asked.  "Where are you going?"
+
+"Where I shall give no more pain and suspect no more evil.
+I am going out of the world."
+
+"Out of the world?"
+
+"I am going into a convent."
+
+"Into a convent!"  Newman repeated the words with the deepest dismay;
+it was as if she had said she was going into an hospital.
+"Into a convent--YOU!"
+
+"I told you that it was not for my worldly advantage or pleasure
+I was leaving you."
+
+But still Newman hardly understood.  "You are going to be a nun,"
+he went on, "in a cell--for life--with a gown and white veil?"
+
+"A nun--a Carmelite nun," said Madame de Cintre.  "For life,
+with God's leave."
+
+The idea struck Newman as too dark and horrible for belief, and made him
+feel as he would have done if she had told him that she was going to
+mutilate her beautiful face, or drink some potion that would make her mad.
+He clasped his hands and began to tremble, visibly.
+
+"Madame de Cintre, don't, don't!" he said.  "I beseech you!
+On my knees, if you like, I'll beseech you."
+
+She laid her hand upon his arm, with a tender, pitying,
+almost reassuring gesture.  "You don't understand,"
+she said.  "You have wrong ideas.  It's nothing horrible.
+It is only peace and safety.  It is to be out of the world,
+where such troubles as this come to the innocent, to the best.
+And for life--that's the blessing of it!  They can't begin again."
+
+Newman dropped into a chair and sat looking at her with a long,
+inarticulate murmur.  That this superb woman, in whom he had
+seen all human grace and household force, should turn from him
+and all the brightness that he offered her--him and his future
+and his fortune and his fidelity--to muffle herself in ascetic
+rags and entomb herself in a cell was a confounding combination
+of the inexorable and the grotesque.  As the image deepened
+before him the grotesque seemed to expand and overspread it;
+it was a reduction to the absurd of the trial to which he was subjected.
+"You--you a nun!" he exclaimed; "you with your beauty defaced--
+you behind locks and bars!  Never, never, if I can prevent it!"
+And he sprang to his feet with a violent laugh.
+
+"You can't prevent it," said Madame de Cintre, "and it ought--
+a little--to satisfy you.  Do you suppose I will go on living
+in the world, still beside you, and yet not with you?
+It is all arranged.  Good-by, good-by."
+
+This time he took her hand, took it in both his own.  "Forever?" he said.
+Her lips made an inaudible movement and his own uttered a deep imprecation.
+She closed her eyes, as if with the pain of hearing it; then he drew
+her towards him and clasped her to his breast.  He kissed her white face;
+for an instant she resisted and for a moment she submitted; then, with force,
+she disengaged herself and hurried away over the long shining floor.
+The next moment the door closed behind her.
+
+Newman made his way out as he could.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+
+
+There is a pretty public walk at Poitiers, laid out upon
+the crest of the high hill around which the little city clusters,
+planted with thick trees and looking down upon the fertile fields
+in which the old English princes fought for their right and held it.
+Newman paced up and down this quiet promenade for the greater part
+of the next day and let his eyes wander over the historic prospect;
+but he would have been sadly at a loss to tell you afterwards
+whether the latter was made up of coal-fields or of vineyards.
+He was wholly given up to his grievance, or which reflection
+by no means diminished the weight.  He feared that Madame
+de Cintre was irretrievably lost; and yet, as he would have
+said himself, he didn't see his way clear to giving her up.
+He found it impossible to turn his back upon Fleurieres
+and its inhabitants; it seemed to him that some germ of hope
+or reparation must lurk there somewhere, if he could only stretch
+his arm out far enough to pluck it.  It was as if he had his hand
+on a door-knob and were closing his clenched fist upon it:
+he had thumped, he had called, he had pressed the door
+with his powerful knee and shaken it with all his strength,
+and dead, damning silence had answered him.  And yet something
+held him there--something hardened the grasp of his fingers.
+Newman's satisfaction had been too intense, his whole plan too
+deliberate and mature, his prospect of happiness too rich and
+comprehensive for this fine moral fabric to crumble at a stroke.
+The very foundation seemed fatally injured, and yet he felt
+a stubborn desire still to try to save the edifice.
+He was filled with a sorer sense of wrong than he had ever known,
+or than he had supposed it possible he should know.
+To accept his injury and walk away without looking behind him
+was a stretch of good-nature of which he found himself incapable.
+He looked behind him intently and continually,
+and what he saw there did not assuage his resentment.
+He saw himself trustful, generous, liberal, patient, easy,
+pocketing frequent irritation and furnishing unlimited modesty.
+To have eaten humble pie, to have been snubbed and patronized
+and satirized and have consented to take it as one of
+the conditions of the bargain--to have done this, and done
+it all for nothing, surely gave one a right to protest.
+And to be turned off because one was a commercial person!
+As if he had ever talked or dreamt of the commercial
+since his connection with the Bellegardes began--
+as if he had made the least circumstance of the commercial--
+as if he would not have consented to confound the commercial
+fifty times a day, if it might have increased by a hair's
+breadth the chance of the Bellegardes' not playing him a trick!
+Granted that being commercial was fair ground for having a trick
+played upon one, how little they knew about the class so designed
+and its enterprising way of not standing upon trifles!
+It was in the light of his injury that the weight of Newman's
+past endurance seemed so heavy; his actual irritation had not
+been so great, merged as it was in his vision of the cloudless
+blue that overarched his immediate wooing.  But now his sense
+of outrage was deep, rancorous, and ever present; he felt that
+he was a good fellow wronged.  As for Madame de Cintre's conduct,
+it struck him with a kind of awe, and the fact that he was
+powerless to understand it or feel the reality of its motives
+only deepened the force with which he had attached himself to her.
+He had never let the fact of her Catholicism trouble him;
+Catholicism to him was nothing but a name, and to express
+a mistrust of the form in which her religious feelings
+had moulded themselves would have seemed to him on his own
+part a rather pretentious affectation of Protestant zeal.
+If such superb white flowers as that could bloom in Catholic soil,
+the soil was not insalubrious.  But it was one thing
+to be a Catholic, and another to turn nun--on your hand!
+There was something lugubriously comical in the way Newman's
+thoroughly contemporaneous optimism was confronted with this
+dusky old-world expedient.  To see a woman made for him and for
+motherhood to his children juggled away in this tragic travesty--
+it was a thing to rub one's eyes over, a nightmare, an illusion,
+a hoax.  But the hours passed away without disproving the thing,
+and leaving him only the after-sense of the vehemence with which
+he had embraced Madame de Cintre.  He remembered her words
+and her looks; he turned them over and tried to shake the mystery
+out of them and to infuse them with an endurable meaning.
+What had she meant by her feeling being a kind of religion?
+It was the religion simply of the family laws, the religion
+of which her implacable little mother was the high priestess.
+Twist the thing about as her generosity would, the one
+certain fact was that they had used force against her.
+Her generosity had tried to screen them, but Newman's heart rose
+into his throat at the thought that they should go scot-free.
+
+The twenty-four hours wore themselves away, and the next morning
+Newman sprang to his feet with the resolution to return to
+Fleurieres and demand another interview with Madame de Bellegarde
+and her son.  He lost no time in putting it into practice.
+As he rolled swiftly over the excellent road in the little
+caleche furnished him at the inn at Poitiers, he drew forth,
+as it were, from the very safe place in his mind to which he had
+consigned it, the last information given him by poor Valentin.
+Valentin had told him he could do something with it,
+and Newman thought it would be well to have it at hand.
+This was of course not the first time, lately, that Newman
+had given it his attention.  It was information in the rough,--
+it was dark and puzzling; but Newman was neither helpless nor afraid.
+Valentin had evidently meant to put him in possession of a
+powerful instrument, though he could not be said to have placed
+the handle very securely within his grasp.  But if he had not really
+told him the secret, he had at least given him the clew to it--
+a clew of which that queer old Mrs. Bread held the other end.
+Mrs. Bread had always looked to Newman as if she knew secrets;
+and as he apparently enjoyed her esteem, he suspected
+she might be induced to share her knowledge with him.
+So long as there was only Mrs. Bread to deal with, he felt easy.
+As to what there was to find out, he had only one fear--
+that it might not be bad enough.  Then, when the image
+of the marquise and her son rose before him again,
+standing side by side, the old woman's hand in Urbain's arm,
+and the same cold, unsociable fixedness in the eyes of each,
+he cried out to himself that the fear was groundless.
+There was blood in the secret at the very last!  He arrived at
+Fleurieres almost in a state of elation; he had satisfied himself,
+logically, that in the presence of his threat of exposure they would,
+as he mentally phrased it, rattle down like unwound buckets.
+He remembered indeed that he must first catch his hare--
+first ascertain what there was to expose; but after that,
+why shouldn't his happiness be as good as new again?
+Mother and son would drop their lovely victim in terror
+and take to hiding, and Madame de Cintre, left to herself,
+would surely come back to him.  Give her a chance
+and she would rise to the surface, return to the light.
+How could she fail to perceive that his house would be much
+the most comfortable sort of convent?
+
+Newman, as he had done before, left his conveyance at the inn
+and walked the short remaining distance to the chateau.
+When he reached the gate, however, a singular feeling took
+possession of him--a feeling which, strange as it may seem,
+had its source in its unfathomable good nature.  He stood there
+a while, looking through the bars at the large, time-stained face
+of the edifice, and wondering to what crime it was that the dark
+old house, with its flowery name, had given convenient occasion.
+It had given occasion, first and last, to tyrannies and
+sufferings enough, Newman said to himself; it was an evil-looking
+place to live in.  Then, suddenly, came the reflection--
+What a horrible rubbish-heap of iniquity to fumble in!  The attitude
+of inquisitor turned its ignobler face, and with the same movement
+Newman declared that the Bellegardes should have another chance.
+He would appeal once more directly to their sense of fairness,
+and not to their fear, and if they should be accessible to reason,
+he need know nothing worse about them than what he already knew.
+That was bad enough.
+
+The gate-keeper let him in through the same stiff crevice as before,
+and he passed through the court and over the little rustic bridge
+on the moat.  The door was opened before he had reached it,
+and, as if to put his clemency to rout with the suggestion
+of a richer opportunity, Mrs. Bread stood there awaiting him.
+Her face, as usual, looked as hopelessly blank as the tide-smoothed
+sea-sand, and her black garments seemed of an intenser sable.
+Newman had already learned that her strange inexpressiveness could
+be a vehicle for emotion, and he was not surprised at the muffled
+vivacity with which she whispered, "I thought you would try again, sir.
+I was looking out for you."
+
+"I am glad to see you," said Newman; "I think you are my friend."
+
+Mrs. Bread looked at him opaquely.  "I wish you well sir;
+but it's vain wishing now."
+
+"You know, then, how they have treated me?"
+
+"Oh, sir," said Mrs. Bread, dryly, "I know everything."
+
+Newman hesitated a moment.  "Everything?"
+
+Mrs. Bread gave him a glance somewhat more lucent.
+"I know at least too much, sir."
+
+"One can never know too much.  I congratulate you.
+I have come to see Madame de Bellegarde and her son," Newman added.
+"Are they at home?  If they are not, I will wait."
+
+"My lady is always at home," Mrs. Bread replied, "and the marquis
+is mostly with her."
+
+"Please then tell them--one or the other, or both--that I am
+here and that I desire to see them."
+
+Mrs. Bread hesitated.  "May I take a great liberty, sir?"
+
+"You have never taken a liberty but you have justified it,"
+said Newman, with diplomatic urbanity.
+
+Mrs. Bread dropped her wrinkled eyelids as if she were curtseying;
+but the curtsey stopped there; the occasion was too grave.
+"You have come to plead with them again, sir?  Perhaps you don't
+know this--that Madame de Cintre returned this morning to Paris."
+
+"Ah, she's gone!"  And Newman, groaning, smote the pavement
+with his stick.
+
+"She has gone straight to the convent--the Carmelites they call it.
+I see you know, sir.  My lady and the marquis take it very ill.
+It was only last night she told them."
+
+"Ah, she had kept it back, then?" cried Newman.  "Good, good!
+And they are very fierce?"
+
+"They are not pleased," said Mrs. Bread.  "But they may well dislike it.
+They tell me it's most dreadful, sir; of all the nuns in Christendom
+the Carmelites are the worst.  You may say they are really not human, sir;
+they make you give up everything--forever.  And to think of HER there!
+If I was one that cried, sir, I could cry."
+
+Newman looked at her an instant.  "We mustn't cry, Mrs. Bread; we must act.
+Go and call them!"  And he made a movement to enter farther.
+
+But Mrs. Bread gently checked him.  "May I take another liberty?
+I am told you were with my dearest Mr. Valentin,
+in his last hours.  If you would tell me a word about him!
+The poor count was my own boy, sir; for the first year of his
+life he was hardly out of my arms; I taught him to speak.
+And the count spoke so well, sir!  He always spoke well to
+his poor old Bread.  When he grew up and took his pleasure
+he always had a kind word for me.  And to die in that wild way!
+They have a story that he fought with a wine-merchant. I can't
+believe that, sir!  And was he in great pain?"
+
+"You are a wise, kind old woman, Mrs. Bread," said Newman.
+"I hoped I might see you with my own children in your arms.
+Perhaps I shall, yet."  And he put out his hand.  Mrs. Bread
+looked for a moment at his open palm, and then, as if fascinated
+by the novelty of the gesture, extended her own ladylike fingers.
+Newman held her hand firmly and deliberately, fixing his eyes upon her.
+"You want to know all about Mr. Valentin?" he said.
+
+"It would be a sad pleasure, sir."
+
+"I can tell you everything.  Can you sometimes leave this place?"
+
+"The chateau, sir?  I really don't know.  I never tried."
+
+"Try, then; try hard.  Try this evening, at dusk.  Come to me
+in the old ruin there on the hill, in the court before the church.
+I will wait for you there; I have something very important to tell you.
+An old woman like you can do as she pleases."
+
+Mrs. Bread stared, wondering, with parted lips.
+"Is it from the count, sir?" she asked.
+
+"From the count--from his death-bed," said Newman.
+
+"I will come, then.  I will be bold, for once, for HIM."
+
+She led Newman into the great drawing-room with which he had
+already made acquaintance, and retired to execute his commands.
+Newman waited a long time; at last he was on the point of
+ringing and repeating his request.  He was looking round him
+for a bell when the marquis came in with his mother on his arm.
+It will be seen that Newman had a logical mind when I
+say that he declared to himself, in perfect good faith,
+as a result of Valentin's dark hints, that his adversaries
+looked grossly wicked.  "There is no mistake about it now,"
+he said to himself as they advanced.  "They're a bad lot;
+they have pulled off the mask."  Madame de Bellegarde and her son
+certainly bore in their faces the signs of extreme perturbation;
+they looked like people who had passed a sleepless night.
+Confronted, moreover, with an annoyance which they hoped they
+had disposed of, it was not natural that they should have any
+very tender glances to bestow upon Newman.  He stood before them,
+and such eye-beams as they found available they leveled at him;
+Newman feeling as if the door of a sepulchre had suddenly
+been opened, and the damp darkness were being exhaled.
+
+"You see I have come back," he said.  "I have come to try again."
+
+"It would be ridiculous," said M. de Bellegarde, "to pretend that we are glad
+to see you or that we don't question the taste of your visit."
+
+"Oh, don't talk about taste," said Newman, with a laugh, "or that will
+bring us round to yours!  If I consulted my taste I certainly shouldn't
+come to see you.  Besides, I will make as short work as you please.
+Promise me to raise the blockade--to set Madame de Cintre at liberty--
+and I will retire instantly."
+
+"We hesitated as to whether we would see you," said Madame
+de Bellegarde; "and we were on the point of declining the honor.
+But it seemed to me that we should act with civility,
+as we have always done, and I wished to have the satisfaction
+of informing you that there are certain weaknesses that people
+of our way of feeling can be guilty of but once."
+
+"You may be weak but once, but you will be audacious many times, madam,''
+Newman answered.  "I didn't come however, for conversational purposes.
+I came to say this, simply:  that if you will write immediately
+to your daughter that you withdraw your opposition to her marriage,
+I will take care of the rest.  You don't want her to turn nun--
+you know more about the horrors of it than I do.  Marrying a commercial
+person is better than that.  Give me a letter to her, signed and sealed,
+saying you retract and that she may marry me with your blessing,
+and I will take it to her at the convent and bring her out.
+There's your chance--I call those easy terms."
+
+"We look at the matter otherwise, you know.
+We call them very hard terms," said Urbain de Bellegarde.
+They had all remained standing rigidly in the middle of the room.
+"I think my mother will tell you that she would rather her
+daughter should become Soeur Catherine than Mrs. Newman."
+
+But the old lady, with the serenity of supreme power,
+let her son make her epigrams for her.  She only smiled,
+almost sweetly, shaking her head and repeating, "But once,
+Mr. Newman; but once!"
+
+Nothing that Newman had ever seen or heard gave him such a sense
+of marble hardness as this movement and the tone that accompanied it.
+"Could anything compel you?" he asked.  "Do you know of anything
+that would force you?"
+
+"This language, sir," said the marquis, "addressed to people
+in bereavement and grief is beyond all qualification."
+
+"In most cases," Newman answered, "your objection would have
+some weight, even admitting that Madame de Cintre's present intentions
+make time precious.  But I have thought of what you speak of,
+and I have come here to-day without scruple simply because I
+consider your brother and you two very different parties.
+I see no connection between you.  Your brother was ashamed of you.
+Lying there wounded and dying, the poor fellow apologized to me
+for your conduct.  He apologized to me for that of his mother."
+
+For a moment the effect of these words was as if Newman had struck
+a physical blow.  A quick flush leaped into the faces of Madame de
+Bellegarde and her son, and they exchanged a glance like a twinkle
+of steel.  Urbain uttered two words which Newman but half heard,
+but of which the sense came to him as it were in the reverberation
+of the sound, "Le miserable!"
+
+"You show little respect for the living," said Madame de Bellegarde,
+"but at least respect the dead.  Don't profane--don't insult--
+the memory of my innocent son."
+
+"I speak the simple truth," Newman declared, "and I speak it for a purpose.
+I repeat it--distinctly.  Your son was utterly disgusted--
+your son apologized."
+
+Urbain de Bellegarde was frowning portentously, and Newman supposed he was
+frowning at poor Valentin's invidious image.  Taken by surprise, his scant
+affection for his brother had made a momentary concession to dishonor.
+But not for an appreciable instant did his mother lower her flag.
+"You are immensely mistaken, sir," she said.  "My son was sometimes light,
+but he was never indecent.  He died faithful to his name."
+
+"You simply misunderstood him," said the marquis, beginning to rally.
+"You affirm the impossible!"
+
+"Oh, I don't care for poor Valentin's apology," said Newman.
+"It was far more painful than pleasant to me.  This atrocious
+thing was not his fault; he never hurt me, or any one else;
+he was the soul of honor.  But it shows how he took it."
+
+"If you wish to prove that my poor brother, in his
+last moments, was out of his head, we can only say that under
+the melancholy circumstances nothing was more possible.
+But confine yourself to that."
+
+"He was quite in his right mind," said Newman, with gentle but
+dangerous doggedness; "I have never seen him so bright and clever.
+It was terrible to see that witty, capable fellow dying such a death.
+You know I was very fond of your brother.  And I have further proof
+of his sanity," Newman concluded.
+
+The marquise gathered herself together majestically.
+"This is too gross!" she cried.  "We decline to accept
+your story, sir--we repudiate it.  Urbain, open the door."
+She turned away, with an imperious motion to her son,
+and passed rapidly down the length of the room.
+The marquis went with her and held the door open.
+Newman was left standing.
+
+He lifted his finger, as a sign to M. de Bellegarde,
+who closed the door behind his mother and stood waiting.
+Newman slowly advanced, more silent, for the moment, than life.
+The two men stood face to face.  Then Newman had a singular sensation;
+he felt his sense of injury almost brimming over into jocularity.
+"Come," he said, "you don't treat me well; at least admit that."
+
+M. de Bellegarde looked at him from head to foot, and then, in the
+most delicate, best-bred voice, "I detest you, personally," he said.
+
+"That's the way I feel to you, but for politeness sake I
+don't say it," said Newman.  "It's singular I should want
+so much to be your brother-in-law, but I can't give it up.
+Let me try once more."  And he paused a moment.
+"You have a secret--you have a skeleton in the closet."
+M. de Bellegarde continued to look at him hard, but Newman
+could not see whether his eyes betrayed anything; the look
+of his eyes was always so strange.  Newman paused again,
+and then went on.  "You and your mother have committed a crime."
+At this M. de Bellegarde's eyes certainly did change;
+they seemed to flicker, like blown candles.  Newman could
+see that he was profoundly startled; but there was something
+admirable in his self-control.
+
+"Continue," said M. de Bellegarde.
+
+Newman lifted a finger and made it waver a little in the air.
+"Need I continue?  You are trembling."
+
+"Pray where did you obtain this interesting information?"
+M. de Bellegarde asked, very softly.
+
+"I shall be strictly accurate," said Newman.  "I won't pretend
+to know more than I do.  At present that is all I know.
+You have done something that you must hide, something that would
+damn you if it were known, something that would disgrace the name
+you are so proud of.  I don't know what it is, but I can find out.
+Persist in your present course and I WILL find out.  Change it,
+let your sister go in peace, and I will leave you alone.
+It's a bargain?"
+
+The marquis almost succeeded in looking untroubled; the breaking up of the ice
+in his handsome countenance was an operation that was necessarily gradual.
+But Newman's mildly-syllabled argumentation seemed to press, and press,
+and presently he averted his eyes.  He stood some moments, reflecting.
+
+"My brother told you this," he said, looking up.
+
+Newman hesitated a moment.  "Yes, your brother told me."
+
+The marquis smiled, handsomely.  "Didn't I say that he was out of his mind?"
+
+"He was out of his mind if I don't find out.  He was very much
+in it if I do."
+
+M. de Bellegarde gave a shrug.  "Eh, sir, find out or not,
+as you please."
+
+"I don't frighten you?" demanded Newman.
+
+"That's for you to judge."
+
+"No, it's for you to judge, at your leisure.  Think it over,
+feel yourself all round.  I will give you an hour or two.
+I can't give you more, for how do we know how fast they may be
+making Madame de Cintre a nun?  Talk it over with your mother;
+let her judge whether she is frightened.  I don't believe she
+is as easily frightened, in general, as you; but you will see.
+I will go and wait in the village, at the inn, and I beg you
+to let me know as soon as possible.  Say by three o'clock. A
+simple YES or NO on paper will do.  Only, you know, in case of a
+yes I shall expect you, this time, to stick to your bargain."
+And with this Newman opened the door and let himself out.
+The marquis did not move, and Newman, retiring, gave him
+another look.  "At the inn, in the village," he repeated.
+Then he turned away altogether and passed out of the house.
+
+He was extremely excited by what he had been doing, for it was
+inevitable that there should be a certain emotion in calling up
+the spectre of dishonor before a family a thousand years old.
+But he went back to the inn and contrived to wait there,
+deliberately, for the next two hours.  He thought it more than
+probable that Urbain de Bellegarde would give no sign; for an answer
+to his challenge, in either sense, would be a confession of guilt.
+What he most expected was silence--in other words defiance.
+But he prayed that, as he imagined it, his shot might bring them down.
+It did bring, by three o'clock, a note, delivered by a footman;
+a note addressed in Urbain de Bellegarde's handsome English hand.
+It ran as follows:--
+
+"I cannot deny myself the satisfaction of letting you know that I return
+to Paris, to-morrow, with my mother, in order that we may see my sister
+and confirm her in the resolution which is the most effectual reply
+to your audacious pertinacity.
+
+                         HENRI-URBAIN DE BELLEGARDE."
+
+Newman put the letter into his pocket, and continued
+his walk up and down the inn-parlor. He had spent most
+of his time, for the past week, in walking up and down.
+He continued to measure the length of the little salle
+of the Armes de Prance until the day began to wane,
+when he went out to keep his rendezvous with Mrs. Bread.
+The path which led up the hill to the ruin was easy to find,
+and Newman in a short time had followed it to the top.
+He passed beneath the rugged arch of the castle wall,
+and looked about him in the early dusk for an old woman in black.
+The castle yard was empty, but the door of the church was open.
+Newman went into the little nave and of course found a deeper dusk
+than without.  A couple of tapers, however, twinkled on the altar and
+just enabled him to perceive a figure seated by one of the pillars.
+Closer inspection helped him to recognize Mrs. Bread, in spite
+of the fact that she was dressed with unwonted splendor.
+She wore a large black silk bonnet, with imposing bows of crape,
+and an old black satin dress disposed itself in vaguely
+lustrous folds about her person.  She had judged it proper
+to the occasion to appear in her stateliest apparel.
+She had been sitting with her eyes fixed upon the ground,
+but when Newman passed before her she looked up at him,
+and then she rose.
+
+"Are you a Catholic, Mrs. Bread?" he asked.
+
+"No, sir; I'm a good Church-of-England woman, very Low," she answered.
+"But I thought I should be safer in here than outside.
+I was never out in the evening before, sir."
+
+"We shall be safer," said Newman, "where no one can hear us."
+And he led the way back into the castle court and then
+followed a path beside the church, which he was sure must
+lead into another part of the ruin.  He was not deceived.
+It wandered along the crest of the hill and terminated
+before a fragment of wall pierced by a rough aperture
+which had once been a door.  Through this aperture Newman
+passed and found himself in a nook peculiarly favorable
+to quiet conversation, as probably many an earnest couple,
+otherwise assorted than our friends, had assured themselves.
+The hill sloped abruptly away, and on the remnant of its
+crest were scattered two or three fragments of stone.
+Beneath, over the plain, lay the gathered twilight, through which,
+in the near distance, gleamed two or three lights from the chateau.
+Mrs. Bread rustled slowly after her guide, and Newman,
+satisfying himself that one of the fallen stones was steady,
+proposed to her to sit upon it.  She cautiously complied,
+and he placed himself upon another, near her.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+
+
+I am very much obliged to you for coming," Newman said.
+"I hope it won't get you into trouble."
+
+"I don't think I shall be missed.  My lady, in these days,
+is not fond of having me about her."  This was said with a certain
+fluttered eagerness which increased Newman's sense of having
+inspired the old woman with confidence.
+
+"From the first, you know," he answered, "you took an interest in
+my prospects.  You were on my side.  That gratified me, I assure you.
+And now that you know what they have done to me, I am sure you are
+with me all the more."
+
+"They have not done well--I must say it," said Mrs. Bread.
+"But you mustn't blame the poor countess; they pressed her hard."
+
+"I would give a million of dollars to know what they did
+to her!" cried Newman.
+
+Mrs. Bread sat with a dull, oblique gaze fixed upon the lights of
+the chateau.  "They worked on her feelings; they knew that was the way.
+She is a delicate creature.  They made her feel wicked.
+She is only too good."
+
+"Ah, they made her feel wicked," said Newman, slowly; and then
+he repeated it.  "They made her feel wicked,--they made her feel wicked."
+The words seemed to him for the moment a vivid description
+of infernal ingenuity.
+
+"It was because she was so good that she gave up--poor sweet lady!"
+added Mrs. Bread.
+
+"But she was better to them than to me," said Newman.
+
+"She was afraid," said Mrs. Bread, very confidently;
+"she has always been afraid, or at least for a long time.
+That was the real trouble, sir.  She was like a fair peach,
+I may say, with just one little speck.  She had one little sad spot.
+You pushed her into the sunshine, sir, and it almost disappeared.
+Then they pulled her back into the shade and in a moment
+it began to spread.  Before we knew it she was gone.
+She was a delicate creature."
+
+This singular attestation of Madame de Cintre's delicacy,
+for all its singularity, set Newman's wound aching afresh.
+"I see," he presently said; "she knew something bad
+about her mother."
+
+"No, sir, she knew nothing," said Mrs. Bread, holding her head very stiff
+and keeping her eyes fixed upon the glimmering windows of the chateau.
+
+"She guessed something, then, or suspected it."
+
+"She was afraid to know," said Mrs. Bread.
+
+"But YOU know, at any rate," said Newman.
+
+She slowly turned her vague eyes upon Newman, squeezing her
+hands together in her lap.  "You are not quite faithful, sir.
+I thought it was to tell me about Mr. Valentin you asked me
+to come here."
+
+"Oh, the more we talk of Mr. Valentin the better," said Newman.
+"That's exactly what I want.  I was with him, as I told you, in his
+last hour.  He was in a great deal of pain, but he was quite himself.
+You know what that means; he was bright and lively and clever."
+
+"Oh, he would always be clever, sir," said Mrs. Bread.
+"And did he know of your trouble?"
+
+"Yes, he guessed it of himself."
+
+"And what did he say to it?"
+
+"He said it was a disgrace to his name--but it was not the first."
+
+"Lord, Lord!" murmured Mrs. Bread.
+
+"He said that his mother and his brother had once put their heads
+together and invented something even worse."
+
+"You shouldn't have listened to that, sir."
+
+"Perhaps not.  But I DID listen, and I don't forget it.
+Now I want to know what it is they did."
+
+Mrs. Bread gave a soft moan.  "And you have enticed me up into this
+strange place to tell you?"
+
+"Don't be alarmed," said Newman.  "I won't say a word that shall be
+disagreeable to you.  Tell me as it suits you, and when it suits you.
+Only remember that it was Mr. Valentin's last wish that you should."
+
+"Did he say that?"
+
+"He said it with his last breath--'Tell Mrs. Bread I told you to ask her.'"
+
+"Why didn't he tell you himself?"
+
+"It was too long a story for a dying man; he had no breath left in his body.
+He could only say that he wanted me to know--that, wronged as I was,
+it was my right to know."
+
+"But how will it help you, sir?" said Mrs. Bread.
+
+"That's for me to decide.  Mr. Valentin believed it would,
+and that's why he told me.  Your name was almost the last
+word he spoke."
+
+Mrs. Bread was evidently awe-struck by this statement;
+she shook her clasped hands slowly up and down.
+"Excuse me, sir," she said, "if I take a great liberty.
+Is it the solemn truth you are speaking?  I MUST ask you that;
+must I not, sir?"
+
+"There's no offense.  It is the solemn truth; I solemnly swear it.
+Mr. Valentin himself would certainly have told me more if he had been able."
+
+"Oh, sir, if he knew more!"
+
+"Don't you suppose he did?"
+
+"There's no saying what he knew about anything," said Mrs. Bread,
+with a mild head-shake. "He was so mightily clever.
+He could make you believe he knew things that he didn't, and
+that he didn't know others that he had better not have known."
+
+"I suspect he knew something about his brother that kept the marquis
+civil to him," Newman propounded; "he made the marquis feel him.
+What he wanted now was to put me in his place; he wanted to give me
+a chance to make the marquis feel ME."
+
+"Mercy on us!" cried the old waiting-woman, "how wicked we all are!"
+
+"I don't know," said Newman; "some of us are wicked, certainly.
+I am very angry, I am very sore, and I am very bitter, but I
+don't know that I am wicked.  I have been cruelly injured.
+They have hurt me, and I want to hurt them.  I don't deny that;
+on the contrary, I tell you plainly that it is the use I want
+to make of your secret."
+
+Mrs. Bread seemed to hold her breath.  "You want to publish them--
+you want to shame them?"
+
+"I want to bring them down,--down, down, down!  I want to turn
+the tables upon them--I want to mortify them as they mortified me.
+They took me up into a high place and made me stand there for all
+the world to see me, and then they stole behind me and pushed me
+into this bottomless pit, where I lie howling and gnashing my teeth!
+I made a fool of myself before all their friends; but I shall make
+something worse of them."
+
+This passionate sally, which Newman uttered with the greater
+fervor that it was the first time he had had a chance to say all
+this aloud, kindled two small sparks in Mrs. Bread's fixed eyes.
+"I suppose you have a right to your anger, sir; but think
+of the dishonor you will draw down on Madame de Cintre."
+
+"Madame de Cintre is buried alive," cried Newman.
+"What are honor or dishonor to her?  The door of the tomb
+is at this moment closing behind her."
+
+"Yes, it's most awful," moaned Mrs. Bread.
+
+"She has moved off, like her brother Valentin, to give me room to work.
+It's as if it were done on purpose."
+
+"Surely," said Mrs. Bread, apparently impressed by the ingenuity
+of this reflection.  She was silent for some moments; then she added,
+"And would you bring my lady before the courts?"
+
+"The courts care nothing for my lady," Newman replied.
+"If she has committed a crime, she will be nothing for the courts
+but a wicked old woman."
+
+"And will they hang her, Sir?"
+
+"That depends upon what she has done."  And Newman eyed Mrs. Bread intently.
+
+"It would break up the family most terribly, sir!"
+
+"It's time such a family should be broken up!" said Newman,
+with a laugh.
+
+"And me at my age out of place, sir!" sighed Mrs. Bread.
+
+"Oh, I will take care of you!  You shall come and live with me.
+You shall be my housekeeper, or anything you like.
+I will pension you for life."
+
+"Dear, dear, sir, you think of everything."  And she seemed
+to fall a-brooding.
+
+Newman watched her a while, and then he said suddenly.
+"Ah, Mrs. Bread, you are too fond of my lady!"
+
+She looked at him as quickly.  "I wouldn't have you say that, sir.
+I don't think it any part of my duty to be fond of my lady.
+I have served her faithfully this many a year; but if she were to die
+to-morrow, I believe, before Heaven I shouldn't shed a tear for her."
+Then, after a pause, "I have no reason to love her!"  Mrs. Bread added.
+"The most she has done for me has been not to turn me out of the house."
+Newman felt that decidedly his companion was more and more confidential--
+that if luxury is corrupting, Mrs. Bread's conservative habits were
+already relaxed by the spiritual comfort of this preconcerted interview,
+in a remarkable locality, with a free-spoken millionaire.
+All his native shrewdness admonished him that his part was simply
+to let her take her time--let the charm of the occasion work.
+So he said nothing; he only looked at her kindly.  Mrs. Bread sat
+nursing her lean elbows.  "My lady once did me a great wrong,"
+she went on at last.  "She has a terrible tongue when she is vexed.
+It was many a year ago, but I have never forgotten it.  I have never
+mentioned it to a human creature; I have kept my grudge to myself.
+I dare say I have been wicked, but my grudge has grown old with me.
+It has grown good for nothing, too, I dare say; but it has lived along,
+as I have lived.  It will die when I die,--not before!"
+
+"And what IS your grudge?"  Newman asked.
+
+Mrs. Bread dropped her eyes and hesitated.
+"If I were a foreigner, sir, I should make less of
+telling you; it comes harder to a decent Englishwoman.
+But I sometimes think I have picked up too many foreign ways.
+What I was telling you belongs to a time when I was much
+younger and very different looking to what I am now.
+I had a very high color, sir, if you can believe it, indeed I
+was a very smart lass.  My lady was younger, too, and the late
+marquis was youngest of all--I mean in the way he went on, sir;
+he had a very high spirit; he was a magnificent man.
+He was fond of his pleasure, like most foreigners, and it must
+be owned that he sometimes went rather below him to take it.
+My lady was often jealous, and, if you'll believe it, sir, she did
+me the honor to be jealous of me.  One day I had a red ribbon in
+my cap, and my lady flew out at me and ordered me to take it off.
+She accused me of putting it on to make the marquis look at me.
+I don't know that I was impertinent, but I spoke up like an
+honest girl and didn't count my words.  A red ribbon indeed!
+As if it was my ribbons the marquis looked at!  My lady knew
+afterwards that I was perfectly respectable, but she never said
+a word to show that she believed it.  But the marquis did!"
+Mrs. Bread presently added, "I took off my red ribbon and put
+it away in a drawer, where I have kept it to this day.
+It's faded now, it's a very pale pink; but there it lies.
+My grudge has faded, too; the red has all gone out of it; but it
+lies here yet."  And Mrs. Bread stroked her black satin bodice.
+
+Newman listened with interest to this decent narrative, which seemed
+to have opened up the deeps of memory to his companion.  Then, as she
+remained silent, and seemed to be losing herself in retrospective
+meditation upon her perfect respectability, he ventured upon a short
+cut to his goal.  "So Madame de Bellegarde was jealous; I see.
+And M. de Bellegarde admired pretty women, without distinction of class.
+I suppose one mustn't be hard upon him, for they probably didn't
+all behave so properly as you.  But years afterwards it could hardly
+have been jealousy that turned Madame de Bellegarde into a criminal."
+
+Mrs. Bread gave a weary sigh.  "We are using dreadful words,
+sir, but I don't care now.  I see you have your idea, and I
+have no will of my own.  My will was the will of my children,
+as I called them; but I have lost my children now.  They are dead--
+I may say it of both of them; and what should I care for the living?
+What is any one in the house to me now--what am I to them?
+My lady objects to me--she has objected to me these thirty years.
+I should have been glad to be something to young Madame
+de Bellegarde, though I never was nurse to the present marquis.
+When he was a baby I was too young; they wouldn't trust me with him.
+But his wife told her own maid, Mamselle Clarisse, the opinion
+she had of me.  Perhaps you would like to hear it, sir."
+
+"Oh, immensely," said Newman.
+
+"She said that if I would sit in her children's schoolroom I
+should do very well for a penwiper!  When things have come
+to that I don't think I need stand upon ceremony."
+
+"Decidedly not," said Newman.  "Go on, Mrs. Bread."
+
+Mrs. Bread, however, relapsed again into troubled dumbness,
+and all Newman could do was to fold his arms and wait.
+But at last she appeared to have set her memories in order.
+"It was when the late marquis was an old man and his eldest
+son had been two years married.  It was when the time came
+on for marrying Mademoiselle Claire; that's the way they talk
+of it here, you know, sir.  The marquis's health was bad;
+he was very much broken down.  My lady had picked out
+M. de Cintre, for no good reason that I could see.
+But there are reasons, I very well know, that are beyond me,
+and you must be high in the world to understand them.
+Old M. de Cintre was very high, and my lady thought him
+almost as good as herself; that's saying a good deal.
+Mr. Urbain took sides with his mother, as he always did.
+The trouble, I believe, was that my lady would give very
+little money, and all the other gentlemen asked more.
+It was only M. de Cintre that was satisfied.  The Lord willed it
+he should have that one soft spot; it was the only one he had.
+He may have been very grand in his birth, and he certainly was
+very grand in his bows and speeches; but that was all the grandeur
+he had.  I think he was like what I have heard of comedians;
+not that I have ever seen one.  But I know he painted his face.
+He might paint it all he would; he could never make me like it!
+The marquis couldn't abide him, and declared that sooner than take
+such a husband as that Mademoiselle Claire should take none at all.
+He and my lady had a great scene; it came even to our ears
+in the servants' hall.  It was not their first quarrel,
+if the truth must be told.  They were not a loving couple,
+but they didn't often come to words, because, I think,
+neither of them thought the other's doings worth the trouble.
+My lady had long ago got over her jealousy, and she had taken
+to indifference.  In this, I must say, they were well matched.
+The marquis was very easy-going; he had a most gentlemanly temper.
+He got angry only once a year, but then it was very bad.
+He always took to bed directly afterwards.  This time I speak
+of he took to bed as usual, but he never got up again.
+I'm afraid the poor gentleman was paying for his dissipation;
+isn't it true they mostly do, sir, when they get old?
+My lady and Mr. Urbain kept quiet, but I know my lady wrote letters
+to M. de Cintre.  The marquis got worse and the doctors gave him up.
+My lady, she gave him up too, and if the truth must be told,
+she gave up gladly.  When once he was out of the way she could
+do what she pleased with her daughter, and it was all arranged
+that my poor innocent child should be handed over to M. de Cintre.
+You don't know what Mademoiselle was in those days, sir; she was
+the sweetest young creature in France, and knew as little of
+what was going on around her as the lamb does of the butcher.
+I used to nurse the marquis, and I was always in his room.
+It was here at Fleurieres, in the autumn.  We had a doctor
+from Paris, who came and stayed two or three weeks in the house.
+Then there came two others, and there was a consultation,
+and these two others, as I said, declared that the marquis
+couldn't be saved.  After this they went off, pocketing
+their fees, but the other one stayed and did what he could.
+The marquis himself kept crying out that he wouldn't die,
+that he didn't want to die, that he would live and look
+after his daughter.  Mademoiselle Claire and the viscount--
+that was Mr. Valentin, you know--were both in the house.
+The doctor was a clever man,--that I could see myself,--
+and I think he believed that the marquis might get well.
+We took good care of him, he and I, between us, and one day,
+when my lady had almost ordered her mourning, my patient suddenly
+began to mend.  He got better and better, till the doctor said
+he was out of danger.  What was killing him was the dreadful
+fits of pain in his stomach.  But little by little they stopped,
+and the poor marquis began to make his jokes again.
+The doctor found something that gave him great comfort--some white
+stuff that we kept in a great bottle on the chimney-piece. I
+used to give it to the marquis through a glass tube; it always
+made him easier.  Then the doctor went away, after telling
+me to keep on giving him the mixture whenever he was bad.
+After that there was a little doctor from Poitiers,
+who came every day.  So we were alone in the house--
+my lady and her poor husband and their three children.
+Young Madame de Bellegarde had gone away, with her little girl,
+to her mothers.  You know she is very lively, and her maid
+told me that she didn't like to be where people were dying."
+Mrs. Bread paused a moment, and then she went on with the same
+quiet consistency.  "I think you have guessed, sir, that when
+the marquis began to turn my lady was disappointed."
+And she paused again, bending upon Newman a face which seemed
+to grow whiter as the darkness settled down upon them.
+
+Newman had listened eagerly--with an eagerness greater
+even than that with which he had bent his ear to Valentin
+de Bellegarde's last words.  Every now and then, as his
+companion looked up at him, she reminded him of an ancient
+tabby cat, protracting the enjoyment of a dish of milk.
+Even her triumph was measured and decorous; the faculty of
+exultation had been chilled by disuse.  She presently continued.
+"Late one night I was sitting by the marquis in his room,
+the great red room in the west tower.  He had been complaining
+a little, and I gave him a spoonful of the doctor's dose.
+My lady had been there in the early part of the evening; she sat far
+more than an hour by his bed.  Then she went away and left me alone.
+After midnight she came back, and her eldest son was with her.
+They went to the bed and looked at the marquis, and my lady took
+hold of his hand.  Then she turned to me and said he was not
+so well; I remember how the marquis, without saying anything,
+lay staring at her.  I can see his white face, at this moment,
+in the great black square between the bed-curtains. I said I
+didn't think he was very bad; and she told me to go to bed--
+she would sit a while with him.  When the marquis saw me going
+he gave a sort of groan, and called out to me not to leave him;
+but Mr. Urbain opened the door for me and pointed the way out.
+The present marquis--perhaps you have noticed, sir--has a very
+proud way of giving orders, and I was there to take orders.
+I went to my room, but I wasn't easy; I couldn't tell you why.
+I didn't undress; I sat there waiting and listening.
+For what, would you have said, sir?  I couldn't have told you;
+for surely a poor gentleman might be comfortable with his wife
+and his son.  It was as if I expected to hear the marquis
+moaning after me again.  I listened, but I heard nothing.
+It was a very still night; I never knew a night so still.
+At last the very stillness itself seemed to frighten me,
+and I came out of my room and went very softly down-stairs.
+In the anteroom, outside of the marquis's chamber,
+I found Mr. Urbain walking up and down.  He asked me
+what I wanted, and I said I came back to relieve my lady.
+He said HE would relieve my lady, and ordered me back to bed;
+but as I stood there, unwilling to turn away, the door of the room
+opened and my lady came out.  I noticed she was very pale;
+she was very strange.  She looked a moment at the count
+and at me, and then she held out her arms to the count.
+He went to her, and she fell upon him and hid her face.
+I went quickly past her into the room and to the marquis's bed.
+He was lying there, very white, with his eyes shut, like a corpse.
+I took hold of his hand and spoke to him, and he felt to me like a
+dead man.  Then I turned round; my lady and Mr. Urbain were there.
+'My poor Bread,' said my lady, 'M. le Marquis is gone.'
+Mr. Urbain knelt down by the bed and said softly, 'Mon pere,
+mon pere.'  I thought it wonderful strange, and asked my lady
+what in the world had happened, and why she hadn't called me.
+She said nothing had happened; that she had only been
+sitting there with the marquis, very quiet.  She had closed
+her eyes, thinking she might sleep, and she had slept,
+she didn't know how long.  When she woke up he was dead.
+'It's death, my son, It's death,' she said to the count.
+Mr. Urbain said they must have the doctor, immediately,
+from Poitiers, and that he would ride off and fetch him.
+He kissed his father's face, and then he kissed his mother
+and went away.  My lady and I stood there at the bedside.
+As I looked at the poor marquis it came into my head
+that he was not dead, that he was in a kind of swoon.
+And then my lady repeated, 'My poor Bread, it's death,
+it's death;' and I said, 'Yes, my lady, it's certainly death.'
+I said just the opposite to what I believed; it was my notion.
+Then my lady said we must wait for the doctor, and we sat there
+and waited.  It was a long time; the poor marquis neither
+stirred nor changed.  'I have seen death before,' said my lady,
+'and it's terribly like this.'  'Yes please, my lady,'
+said I; and I kept thinking.  The night wore away without
+the count's coming back, and my lady began to be frightened.
+She was afraid he had had an accident in the dark, or met
+with some wild people.  At last she got so restless that she
+went below to watch in the court for her son's return.
+I sat there alone and the marquis never stirred."
+
+Here Mrs. Bread paused again, and the most artistic of
+romancers could not have been more effective.  Newman made
+a movement as if he were turning over the page of a novel.
+"So he WAS dead!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Three days afterwards he was in his grave,"
+said Mrs. Bread, sententiously.  "In a little while I went
+away to the front of the house and looked out into the court,
+and there, before long, I saw Mr. Urbain ride in alone.
+I waited a bit, to hear him come upstairs with his mother,
+but they stayed below, and I went back to the marquis's room.
+I went to the bed and held up the light to him,
+but I don't know why I didn't let the candlestick fall.
+The marquis's eyes were open--open wide! they were staring at me.
+I knelt down beside him and took his hands, and begged him
+to tell me, in the name of wonder, whether he was alive or dead.
+Still he looked at me a long time, and then he made me a sign
+to put my ear close to him:  'I am dead,' he said, 'I am dead.
+The marquise has killed me.'  I was all in a tremble;
+I didn't understand him.  He seemed both a man and a corpse,
+if you can fancy, sir.  'But you'll get well now, sir,' I said.
+And then he whispered again, ever so weak; 'I wouldn't get
+well for a kingdom.  I wouldn't be that woman's husband again.'
+And then he said more; he said she had murdered him.
+I asked him what she had done to him, but he only replied,
+'Murder, murder.  And she'll kill my daughter,' he said;
+'my poor unhappy child.'  And he begged me to prevent that,
+and then he said that he was dying, that he was dead.
+I was afraid to move or to leave him; I was almost dead myself.
+All of a sudden he asked me to get a pencil and write for him;
+and then I had to tell him that I couldn't manage a pencil.
+He asked me to hold him up in bed while he wrote himself,
+and I said he could never, never do such a thing.
+But he seemed to have a kind of terror that gave him strength.
+I found a pencil in the room and a piece of paper and a book,
+and I put the paper on the book and the pencil into
+his hand, and moved the candle near him.  You will think
+all this very strange, sir; and very strange it was.
+The strangest part of it was that I believed he was dying,
+and that I was eager to help him to write.  I sat on the bed
+and put my arm round him, and held him up.  I felt very strong;
+I believe I could have lifted him and carried him.
+It was a wonder how he wrote, but he did write, in a big
+scratching hand; he almost covered one side of the paper.
+It seemed a long time; I suppose it was three or four minutes.
+He was groaning, terribly, all the while.  Then he said it
+was ended, and I let him down upon his pillows and he gave me
+the paper and told me to fold it, and hide it, and give it
+to those who would act upon it.  'Whom do you mean?'  I said.
+'Who are those who will act upon it?'  But he only groaned,
+for an answer; he couldn't speak, for weakness.  In a few minutes
+he told me to go and look at the bottle on the chimney-piece.
+I knew the bottle he meant; the white stuff that was good
+for his stomach.  I went and looked at it, but it was empty.
+When I came back his eyes were open and he was staring
+at me; but soon he closed them and he said no more.
+I hid the paper in my dress; I didn't look at what was
+written upon it, though I can read very well, sir, if I
+haven't any handwriting.  I sat down near the bed, but it
+was nearly half an hour before my lady and the count came in.
+The marquis looked as he did when they left him, and I never
+said a word about his having been otherwise.  Mr. Urbain said
+that the doctor had been called to a person in child-birth,
+but that he promised to set out for Fleurieres immediately.
+In another half hour he arrived, and as soon as he had
+examined the marquis he said that we had had a false alarm.
+The poor gentleman was very low, but he was still living.
+I watched my lady and her son when he said this, to see if they
+looked at each other, and I am obliged to admit that they
+didn't. The doctor said there was no reason he should die;
+he had been going on so well.  And then he wanted to know
+how he had suddenly fallen off; he had left him so very hearty.
+My lady told her little story again--what she had told Mr. Urbain
+and me--and the doctor looked at her and said nothing.
+He stayed all the next day at the chateau, and hardly left
+the marquis.  I was always there.  Mademoiselle and Mr. Valentin
+came and looked at their father, but he never stirred.
+It was a strange, deathly stupor.  My lady was always about;
+her face was as white as her husband's, and she looked very proud,
+as I had seen her look when her orders or her wishes had
+been disobeyed.  It was as if the poor marquis had defied her;
+and the way she took it made me afraid of her.  The apothecary
+from Poitiers kept the marquis along through the day, and we
+waited for the other doctor from Paris, who, as I told you,
+had been staying at Fleurieres.  They had telegraphed for
+him early in the morning, and in the evening he arrived.
+He talked a bit outside with the doctor from Poitiers, and then
+they came in to see the marquis together.  I was with him,
+and so was Mr. Urbain.  My lady had been to receive the doctor
+from Paris, and she didn't come back with him into the room.
+He sat down by the marquis; I can see him there now, with his
+hand on the marquis's wrist, and Mr. Urbain watching him with
+a little looking-glass in his hand.  'I'm sure he's better,'
+said the little doctor from Poitiers; 'I'm sure he'll come back.'
+A few moments after he had said this the marquis opened his eyes,
+as if he were waking up, and looked at us, from one to the other.
+I saw him look at me, very softly, as you'd say.
+At the same moment my lady came in on tiptoe; she came up
+to the bed and put in her head between me and the count.
+The marquis saw her and gave a long, most wonderful moan.
+He said something we couldn't understand, and he seemed
+to have a kind of spasm.  He shook all over and then closed
+his eyes, and the doctor jumped up and took hold of my lady.
+He held her for a moment a bit roughly.  The marquis was stone dead!
+This time there were those there that knew."
+
+Newman felt as if he had been reading by starlight the report
+of highly important evidence in a great murder case.
+"And the paper--the paper!" he said, excitedly.  "What was
+written upon it?"
+
+"I can't tell you, sir," answered Mrs. Bread.  "I couldn't read it;
+it was in French."
+
+"But could no one else read it?"
+
+"I never asked a human creature."
+
+"No one has ever seen it?"
+
+"If you see it you'll be the first."
+
+Newman seized the old woman's hand in both his own and pressed
+it vigorously.  "I thank you ever so much for that," he cried.
+"I want to be the first, I want it to be my property and no one else's!
+You're the wisest old woman in Europe.  And what did you do with the paper?"
+This information had made him feel extraordinarily strong.
+"Give it to me quick!"
+
+Mrs. Bread got up with a certain majesty.  "It is not so easy as that, sir.
+If you want the paper, you must wait."
+
+"But waiting is horrible, you know," urged Newman.
+
+"I am sure I have waited; I have waited these many years,"
+said Mrs. Bread.
+
+"That is very true.  You have waited for me.  I won't forget it.
+And yet, how comes it you didn't do as M. de Bellegarde said,
+show the paper to some one?"
+
+"To whom should I show it?" answered Mrs. Bread, mournfully.
+"It was not easy to know, and many's the night I have
+lain awake thinking of it.  Six months afterwards,
+when they married Mademoiselle to her vicious old husband,
+I was very near bringing it out.  I thought it was my duty
+to do something with it, and yet I was mightily afraid.
+I didn't know what was written on the paper or how bad it
+might be, and there was no one I could trust enough to ask.
+And it seemed to me a cruel kindness to do that sweet young creature,
+letting her know that her father had written her mother down
+so shamefully; for that's what he did, I suppose.  I thought she
+would rather be unhappy with her husband than be unhappy that way.
+It was for her and for my dear Mr. Valentin I kept quiet.
+Quiet I call it, but for me it was a weary quietness.
+It worried me terribly, and it changed me altogether.
+But for others I held my tongue, and no one, to this hour,
+knows what passed between the poor marquis and me."
+
+"But evidently there were suspicions," said Newman.
+"Where did Mr. Valentin get his ideas?"
+
+"It was the little doctor from Poitiers.  He was very ill-satisfied, and
+he made a great talk.  He was a sharp Frenchman, and coming to the house,
+as he did day after day, I suppose he saw more than he seemed to see.
+And indeed the way the poor marquis went off as soon as his eyes fell
+on my lady was a most shocking sight for anyone.  The medical gentleman
+from Paris was much more accommodating, and he hushed up the other.
+But for all he could do Mr. Valentin and Mademoiselle heard something;
+they knew their father's death was somehow against nature.
+Of course they couldn't accuse their mother, and, as I tell you,
+I was as dumb as that stone.  Mr. Valentin used to look at me sometimes,
+and his eyes seemed to shine, as if he were thinking of asking me something.
+I was dreadfully afraid he would speak, and I always looked away and went
+about my business.  If I were to tell him, I was sure he would hate
+me afterwards, and that I could never have borne.  Once I went up to him and
+took a great liberty; I kissed him, as I had kissed him when he was a child.
+'You oughtn't to look so sad, sir,' I said; 'believe your poor old Bread.
+Such a gallant, handsome young man can have nothing to be sad about.'
+And I think he understood me; he understood that I was begging off,
+and he made up his mind in his own way.  He went about with his unasked
+question in his mind, as I did with my untold tale; we were both afraid of
+bringing dishonor on a great house.  And it was the same with Mademoiselle.
+She didn't know what happened; she wouldn't know.  My lady and Mr. Urbain
+asked me no questions because they had no reason.  I was as still as a mouse.
+When I was younger my lady thought me a hussy, and now she thought me a fool.
+How should I have any ideas?"
+
+"But you say the little doctor from Poitiers made a talk," said Newman.
+"Did no one take it up?"
+
+"I heard nothing of it, sir.  They are always talking
+scandal in these foreign countries you may have noticed--
+and I suppose they shook their heads over Madame de Bellegarde.
+But after all, what could they say?  The marquis had been ill,
+and the marquis had died; he had as good a right to die as any one.
+The doctor couldn't say he had not come honestly by his cramps.
+The next year the little doctor left the place and bought a practice
+in Bordeaux, and if there has been any gossip it died out.
+And I don't think there could have been much gossip about my lady
+that any one would listen to.  My lady is so very respectable."
+
+Newman, at this last affirmation, broke into an immense, resounding laugh.
+Mrs. Bread had begun to move away from the spot where they were sitting,
+and he helped her through the aperture in the wall and along the
+homeward path.  "Yes," he said, "my lady's respectability is delicious;
+it will be a great crash!"  They reached the empty space in front
+of the church, where they stopped a moment, looking at each other with
+something of an air of closer fellowship--like two sociable conspirators.
+"But what was it," said Newman, "what was it she did to her husband?
+She didn't stab him or poison him."
+
+"I don't know, sir; no one saw it."
+
+"Unless it was Mr. Urbain.  You say he was walking up and down,
+outside the room.  Perhaps he looked through the keyhole.
+But no; I think that with his mother he would take it on trust."
+
+"You may be sure I have often thought of it," said Mrs. Bread.
+"I am sure she didn't touch him with her hands.
+I saw nothing on him, anywhere.  I believe it was in this way.
+He had a fit of his great pain, and he asked her for his medicine.
+Instead of giving it to him she went and poured it away,
+before his eyes.  Then he saw what she meant, and, weak and
+helpless as he was, he was frightened, he was terrified.
+'You want to kill me,' he said.  'Yes, M. le Marquis, I want to
+kill you,' says my lady, and sits down and fixes her eyes upon him.
+You know my lady's eyes, I think, sir; it was with them she killed him;
+it was with the terrible strong will she put into them.
+It was like a frost on flowers."
+
+"Well, you are a very intelligent woman; you have shown great discretion,"
+said Newman.  "I shall value your services as housekeeper extremely."
+
+They had begun to descend the hill, and Mrs. Bread said nothing
+until they reached the foot.  Newman strolled lightly beside her;
+his head was thrown back and he was gazing at all the stars;
+he seemed to himself to be riding his vengeance along the Milky Way.
+"So you are serious, sir, about that?" said Mrs. Bread, softly.
+
+"About your living with me?  Why of course I will take care of you
+to the end of your days.  You can't live with those people any longer.
+And you oughtn't to, you know, after this.  You give me the paper,
+and you move away."
+
+"It seems very flighty in me to be taking a new place at this time of life,"
+observed Mrs. Bread, lugubriously.  "But if you are going to turn the house
+upside down, I would rather be out of it."
+
+"Oh," said Newman, in the cheerful tone of a man who feels rich
+in alternatives.  "I don't think I shall bring in the constables,
+if that's what you mean.  Whatever Madame de Bellegarde did,
+I am afraid the law can't take hold of it.  But I am glad of that;
+it leaves it altogether to me!"
+
+"You are a mighty bold gentleman, sir," murmured Mrs. Bread,
+looking at him round the edge of her great bonnet.
+
+He walked with her back to the chateau; the curfew had tolled for the
+laborious villagers of Fleurieres, and the street was unlighted and empty.
+She promised him that he should have the marquis's manuscript in half
+an hour.  Mrs. Bread choosing not to go in by the great gate, they passed
+round by a winding lane to a door in the wall of the park, of which she
+had the key, and which would enable her to enter the chateau from behind.
+Newman arranged with her that he should await outside the wall her return
+with the coveted document.
+
+She went in, and his half hour in the dusky lane seemed very long.
+But he had plenty to think about.  At last the door in the wall
+opened and Mrs. Bread stood there, with one hand on the latch
+and the other holding out a scrap of white paper, folded small.
+In a moment he was master of it, and it had passed into his waistcoat pocket.
+"Come and see me in Paris," he said; "we are to settle your future,
+you know; and I will translate poor M. de Bellegarde's French to you."
+Never had he felt so grateful as at this moment for M. Nioche's instructions.
+
+Mrs. Bread's dull eyes had followed the disappearance of the paper,
+and she gave a heavy sigh.  "Well, you have done what you would with me,
+sir, and I suppose you will do it again.  You MUST take care of me now.
+You are a terribly positive gentleman."
+
+"Just now," said Newman, "I'm a terribly impatient gentleman!"
+And he bade her good-night and walked rapidly back to the inn.
+He ordered his vehicle to be prepared for his return to Poitiers,
+and then he shut the door of the common salle and strode toward
+the solitary lamp on the chimney-piece. He pulled out the paper
+and quickly unfolded it.  It was covered with pencil-marks,
+which at first, in the feeble light, seemed indistinct.
+But Newman's fierce curiosity forced a meaning from the tremulous signs.
+The English of them was as follows:--
+
+
+"My wife has tried to kill me, and she has done it; I am dying,
+dying horribly.  It is to marry my dear daughter to M. de Cintre.
+With all my soul I protest,--I forbid it.  I am not insane,--
+ask the doctors, ask Mrs. B----. It was alone with me here, to-night;
+she attacked me and put me to death.  It is murder, if murder ever was.
+Ask the doctors.
+
+"HENRI-URBAIN DE BELLEGARDE"
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+
+
+Newman returned to Paris the second day after his interview with Mrs. Bread.
+The morrow he had spent at Poitiers, reading over and over again
+the little document which he had lodged in his pocket-book, and thinking
+what he would do in the circumstances and how he would do it.
+He would not have said that Poitiers was an amusing place; yet the day
+seemed very short.  Domiciled once more in the Boulevard Haussmann,
+he walked over to the Rue de l'Universite and inquired of Madame
+de Bellegarde's portress whether the marquise had come back.
+The portress told him that she had arrived, with M. le Marquis,
+on the preceding day, and further informed him that if he desired
+to enter, Madame de Bellegarde and her son were both at home.
+As she said these words the little white-faced old woman who peered
+out of the dusky gate-house of the Hotel de Bellegarde gave a small
+wicked smile--a smile which seemed to Newman to mean, "Go in if you dare!"
+She was evidently versed in the current domestic history;
+she was placed where she could feel the pulse of the house.
+Newman stood a moment, twisting his mustache and looking at her;
+then he abruptly turned away.  But this was not because he was afraid
+to go in--though he doubted whether, if he did so, he should be
+able to make his way, unchallenged, into the presence of Madame de
+Cintre's relatives.  Confidence--excessive confidence, perhaps--quite as
+much as timidity prompted his retreat.  He was nursing his thunder-bolt;
+he loved it; he was unwilling to part with it.  He seemed to be holding
+it aloft in the rumbling, vaguely-flashing air, directly over the heads
+of his victims, and he fancied he could see their pale, upturned faces.
+Few specimens of the human countenance had ever given him such pleasure
+as these, lighted in the lurid fashion I have hinted at, and he was
+disposed to sip the cup of contemplative revenge in a leisurely fashion.
+It must be added, too, that he was at a loss to see exactly
+how he could arrange to witness the operation of his thunder.
+To send in his card to Madame de Bellegarde would be a waste
+of ceremony; she would certainly decline to receive him.
+On the other hand he could not force his way into her presence.
+It annoyed him keenly to think that he might be reduced to the blind
+satisfaction of writing her a letter; but he consoled himself in a
+measure with the reflection that a letter might lead to an interview.
+He went home, and feeling rather tired--nursing a vengeance was, it must
+be confessed, a rather fatiguing process; it took a good deal out of one--
+flung himself into one of his brocaded fauteuils, stretched his legs,
+thrust his hands into his pockets, and, while he watched the reflected sunset
+fading from the ornate house-tops on the opposite side of the Boulevard,
+began mentally to compose a cool epistle to Madame de Bellegarde.
+While he was so occupied his servant threw open the door and
+announced ceremoniously, "Madame Brett!"
+
+Newman roused himself, expectantly, and in a few moments perceived
+upon his threshold the worthy woman with whom he had conversed
+to such good purpose on the starlit hill-top of Fleurieres.
+Mrs. Bread had made for this visit the same toilet as for her
+former expedition.  Newman was struck with her distinguished appearance.
+His lamp was not lit, and as her large, grave face gazed at him
+through the light dusk from under the shadow of her ample bonnet,
+he felt the incongruity of such a person presenting herself as a servant.
+He greeted her with high geniality and bade her come in and sit down and
+make herself comfortable.  There was something which might have touched
+the springs both of mirth and of melancholy in the ancient maidenliness
+with which Mrs. Bread endeavored to comply with these directions.
+She was not playing at being fluttered, which would have been
+simply ridiculous; she was doing her best to carry herself as a person
+so humble that, for her, even embarrassment would have been pretentious;
+but evidently she had never dreamed of its being in her horoscope
+to pay a visit, at night-fall, to a friendly single gentleman who lived
+in theatrical-looking rooms on one of the new Boulevards.
+
+"I truly hope I am not forgetting my place, sir," she murmured.
+
+"Forgetting your place?" cried Newman.  "Why, you are remembering it.
+This is your place, you know.  You are already in my service;
+your wages, as housekeeper, began a fortnight ago.
+I can tell you my house wants keeping!  Why don't you take off
+your bonnet and stay?"
+
+"Take off my bonnet?" said Mrs. Bread, with timid literalness.
+"Oh, sir, I haven't my cap.  And with your leave, sir, I couldn't
+keep house in my best gown."
+
+"Never mind your gown," said Newman, cheerfully.  "You shall
+have a better gown than that."
+
+Mrs. Bread stared solemnly and then stretched her hands over her lustreless
+satin skirt, as if the perilous side of her situation were defining itself.
+"Oh, sir, I am fond of my own clothes," she murmured.
+
+"I hope you have left those wicked people, at any rate," said Newman.
+
+"Well, sir, here I am!" said Mrs. Bread.  "That's all I can tell you.
+Here I sit, poor Catherine Bread.  It's a strange place for me to be.
+I don't know myself; I never supposed I was so bold.  But indeed, sir,
+I have gone as far as my own strength will bear me."
+
+"Oh, come, Mrs. Bread," said Newman, almost caressingly, "don't make
+yourself uncomfortable.  Now's the time to feel lively, you know."
+
+She began to speak again with a trembling voice.
+"I think it would be more respectable if I could--if I could"--
+and her voice trembled to a pause.
+
+"If you could give up this sort of thing altogether?" said Newman kindly,
+trying to anticipate her meaning, which he supposed might be a wish
+to retire from service.
+
+"If I could give up everything, sir!  All I should ask is
+a decent Protestant burial."
+
+"Burial!" cried Newman, with a burst of laughter.
+"Why, to bury you now would be a sad piece of extravagance.
+It's only rascals who have to be buried to get respectable.
+Honest folks like you and me can live our time out--
+and live together.  Come!  Did you bring your baggage?"
+
+"My box is locked and corded; but I haven't yet spoken to my lady."
+
+"Speak to her, then, and have done with it.  I should like to have
+your chance!" cried Newman.
+
+"I would gladly give it you, sir.  I have passed some weary hours
+in my lady's dressing-room; but this will be one of the longest.
+She will tax me with ingratitude."
+
+"Well," said Newman, "so long as you can tax her with murder--"
+
+"Oh, sir, I can't; not I," sighed Mrs. Bread.
+
+"You don't mean to say anything about it?  So much the better.
+Leave that to me."
+
+"If she calls me a thankless old woman," said Mrs. Bread,
+"I shall have nothing to say.  But it is better so,"
+she softly added.  "She shall be my lady to the last.
+That will be more respectable."
+
+"And then you will come to me and I shall be your gentleman,"
+said Newman; "that will be more respectable still!"
+
+Mrs. Bread rose, with lowered eyes, and stood a moment;
+then, looking up, she rested her eyes upon Newman's face.
+The disordered proprieties were somehow settling to rest.
+She looked at Newman so long and so fixedly, with such a dull,
+intense devotedness, that he himself might have had a pretext
+for embarrassment.  At last she said gently, "You are not
+looking well, sir."
+
+"That's natural enough," said Newman.  "I have nothing to feel well about.
+To be very indifferent and very fierce, very dull and very jovial,
+very sick and very lively, all at once,--why, it rather mixes one up."
+
+Mrs. Bread gave a noiseless sigh.  "I can tell you something that
+will make you feel duller still, if you want to feel all one way.
+About Madame de Cintre."
+
+"What can you tell me?"  Newman demanded.  "Not that you have seen her?"
+
+She shook her head.  "No, indeed, sir, nor ever shall.
+That's the dullness of it.  Nor my lady.  Nor M. de Bellegarde."
+
+"You mean that she is kept so close."
+
+"Close, close," said Mrs. Bread, very softly.
+
+These words, for an instant, seemed to check the beating of Newman's heart.
+He leaned back in his chair, staring up at the old woman.  "They have tried
+to see her, and she wouldn't--she couldn't?"
+
+"She refused--forever!  I had it from my lady's own maid,"
+said Mrs. Bread, "who had it from my lady.  To speak
+of it to such a person my lady must have felt the shock.
+Madame de Cintre won't see them now, and now is her only chance.
+A while hence she will have no chance."
+
+"You mean the other women--the mothers, the daughters, the sisters;
+what is it they call them?--won't let her?"
+
+"It is what they call the rule of the house,--or of the order, I believe,"
+said Mrs. Bread.  "There is no rule so strict as that of the Carmelites.
+The bad women in the reformatories are fine ladies to them.
+They wear old brown cloaks--so the femme de chambre told me--
+that you wouldn't use for a horse blanket.  And the poor countess was
+so fond of soft-feeling dresses; she would never have anything stiff!
+They sleep on the ground," Mrs. Bread went on; "they are no better,
+no better,"--and she hesitated for a comparison,--"they are no better
+than tinkers' wives.  They give up everything, down to the very
+name their poor old nurses called them by.  They give up father
+and mother, brother and sister,--to say nothing of other persons,"
+Mrs. Bread delicately added.  "They wear a shroud under their brown
+cloaks and a rope round their waists, and they get up on winter
+nights and go off into cold places to pray to the Virgin Mary.
+The Virgin Mary is a hard mistress!"
+
+Mrs. Bread, dwelling on these terrible facts, sat dry-eyed
+and pale, with her hands clasped in her satin lap.  Newman gave
+a melancholy groan and fell forward, leaning his head on his hands.
+There was a long silence, broken only by the ticking of the great
+gilded clock on the chimney-piece.
+
+"Where is this place--where is the convent?"  Newman asked
+at last, looking up.
+
+"There are two houses," said Mrs. Bread.  "I found out; I thought
+you would like to know--though it's poor comfort, I think.
+One is in the Avenue de Messine; they have learned that Madame de Cintre
+is there.  The other is in the Rue d'Enfer. That's a terrible name;
+I suppose you know what it means."
+
+Newman got up and walked away to the end of his long room.  When he came
+back Mrs. Bread had got up, and stood by the fire with folded hands.
+"Tell me this," he said.  "Can I get near her--even if I don't see her?
+Can I look through a grating, or some such thing, at the place where she is?"
+
+It is said that all women love a lover, and Mrs. Bread's sense
+of the pre-established harmony which kept servants in their
+"place," even as planets in their orbits (not that Mrs. Bread
+had ever consciously likened herself to a planet), barely
+availed to temper the maternal melancholy with which she
+leaned her head on one side and gazed at her new employer.
+She probably felt for the moment as if, forty years before,
+she had held him also in her arms.  "That wouldn't help you, sir.
+It would only make her seem farther away."
+
+"I want to go there, at all events," said Newman.  "Avenue de Messine,
+you say?  And what is it they call themselves?"
+
+"Carmelites," said Mrs. Bread.
+
+"I shall remember that."
+
+Mrs. Bread hesitated a moment, and then, "It's my duty to tell
+you this, sir," she went on.  "The convent has a chapel,
+and some people are admitted on Sunday to the Mass.
+You don't see the poor creatures that are shut up there,
+but I am told you can hear them sing.  It's a wonder they have
+any heart for singing!  Some Sunday I shall make bold to go.
+It seems to me I should know her voice in fifty."
+
+Newman looked at his visitor very gratefully; then he held out his hand
+and shook hers.  "Thank you," he said.  "If any one can get in, I will."
+A moment later Mrs. Bread proposed, deferentially, to retire,
+but he checked her and put a lighted candle into her hand.
+"There are half a dozen rooms there I don't use," he said,
+pointing through an open door.  "Go and look at them and take
+your choice.  You can live in the one you like best."
+From this bewildering opportunity Mrs. Bread at first recoiled;
+but finally, yielding to Newman's gentle, reassuring push,
+she wandered off into the dusk with her tremulous taper.
+She remained absent a quarter of an hour, during which Newman
+paced up and down, stopped occasionally to look out of the window
+at the lights on the Boulevard, and then resumed his walk.
+Mrs. Bread's relish for her investigation apparently increased
+as she proceeded; but at last she reappeared and deposited her
+candlestick on the chimney-piece.
+
+"Well, have you picked one out?" asked Newman.
+
+"A room, sir?  They are all too fine for a dingy old body like me.
+There isn't one that hasn't a bit of gilding."
+
+"It's only tinsel, Mrs. Bread," said Newman.
+"If you stay there a while it will all peel off of itself."
+And he gave a dismal smile.
+
+"Oh, sir, there are things enough peeling off already!" rejoined Mrs. Bread,
+with a head-shake. "Since I was there I thought I would look about me.
+I don't believe you know, sir.  The corners are most dreadful.
+You do want a housekeeper, that you do; you want a tidy Englishwoman
+that isn't above taking hold of a broom."
+
+Newman assured her that he suspected, if he had not measured,
+his domestic abuses, and that to reform them was a mission worthy
+of her powers.  She held her candlestick aloft again and looked
+around the salon with compassionate glances; then she intimated
+that she accepted the mission, and that its sacred character
+would sustain her in her rupture with Madame de Bellegarde.
+With this she curtsied herself away.
+
+She came back the next day with her worldly goods, and Newman,
+going into his drawing-room, found her upon her aged
+knees before a divan, sewing up some detached fringe.
+He questioned her as to her leave-taking with her late mistress,
+and she said it had proved easier than she feared.
+"I was perfectly civil, sir, but the Lord helped me to remember
+that a good woman has no call to tremble before a bad one."
+
+"I should think so!" cried Newman.  "And does she know you
+have come to me?"
+
+"She asked me where I was going, and I mentioned your name,"
+said Mrs. Bread.
+
+"What did she say to that?"
+
+"She looked at me very hard, and she turned very red.  Then she bade
+me leave her.  I was all ready to go, and I had got the coachman,
+who is an Englishman, to bring down my poor box and to fetch me a cab.
+But when I went down myself to the gate I found it closed.
+My lady had sent orders to the porter not to let me pass, and by
+the same orders the porter's wife--she is a dreadful sly old body--
+had gone out in a cab to fetch home M. de Bellegarde from his club."
+
+Newman slapped his knee.  "She IS scared! she IS scared!"
+he cried, exultantly.
+
+"I was frightened too, sir," said Mrs. Bread, "but I was also
+mightily vexed.  I took it very high with the porter and asked
+him by what right he used violence to an honorable Englishwoman
+who had lived in the house for thirty years before he was heard of.
+Oh, sir, I was very grand, and I brought the man down.
+He drew his bolts and let me out, and I promised the cabman something
+handsome if he would drive fast.  But he was terribly slow;
+it seemed as if we should never reach your blessed door.
+I am all of a tremble still; it took me five minutes, just now,
+to thread my needle."
+
+Newman told her, with a gleeful laugh, that if she chose she
+might have a little maid on purpose to thread her needles;
+and he went away murmuring to himself again that the old woman
+WAS scared--she WAS scared!
+
+He had not shown Mrs. Tristram the little paper that he carried in his
+pocket-book, but since his return to Paris he had seen her several times,
+and she had told him that he seemed to her to be in a strange way--
+an even stranger way than his sad situation made natural.
+Had his disappointment gone to his head?  He looked like a man who was
+going to be ill, and yet she had never seen him more restless and active.
+One day he would sit hanging his head and looking as if he were firmly
+resolved never to smile again; another he would indulge in laughter
+that was almost unseemly and make jokes that were bad even for him.
+If he was trying to carry off his sorrow, he at such times really
+went too far.  She begged him of all things not to be "strange."
+Feeling in a measure responsible as she did for the affair which had turned
+out so ill for him, she could endure anything but his strangeness.
+He might be melancholy if he would, or he might be stoical;
+he might be cross and cantankerous with her and ask her why she had
+ever dared to meddle with his destiny:  to this she would submit;
+for this she would make allowances.  Only, for Heaven's sake,
+let him not be incoherent.  That would be extremely unpleasant.
+It was like people talking in their sleep; they always frightened her.
+And Mrs. Tristram intimated that, taking very high ground as regards
+the moral obligation which events had laid upon her, she proposed not to
+rest quiet until she should have confronted him with the least inadequate
+substitute for Madame de Cintre that the two hemispheres contained.
+
+"Oh," said Newman, "we are even now, and we had better not open
+a new account!  You may bury me some day, but you shall never
+marry me.  It's too rough.  I hope, at any rate," he added,
+"that there is nothing incoherent in this--that I want to go
+next Sunday to the Carmelite chapel in the Avenue de Messine.
+You know one of the Catholic ministers--an abbe, is that it?--
+I have seen him here, you know; that motherly old gentleman
+with the big waist-band. Please ask him if I need a special
+leave to go in, and if I do, beg him to obtain it for me."
+
+Mrs. Tristram gave expression to the liveliest joy.
+"I am so glad you have asked me to do something!" she cried.
+"You shall get into the chapel if the abbe is disfrocked
+for his share in it."  And two days afterwards she told him
+that it was all arranged; the abbe was enchanted to serve him,
+and if he would present himself civilly at the convent gate
+there would be no difficulty.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+
+
+Sunday was as yet two days off; but meanwhile, to beguile his impatience,
+Newman took his way to the Avenue de Messine and got what comfort he could
+in staring at the blank outer wall of Madame de Cintre's present residence.
+The street in question, as some travelers will remember, adjoins the
+Parc Monceau, which is one of the prettiest corners of Paris.
+The quarter has an air of modern opulence and convenience which seems
+at variance with the ascetic institution, and the impression made upon
+Newman's gloomily-irritated gaze by the fresh-looking, windowless expanse
+behind which the woman he loved was perhaps even then pledging herself
+to pass the rest of her days was less exasperating than he had feared.
+The place suggested a convent with the modern improvements--an asylum in
+which privacy, though unbroken, might be not quite identical with privation,
+and meditation, though monotonous, might be of a cheerful cast.  And yet
+he knew the case was otherwise; only at present it was not a reality to him.
+It was too strange and too mocking to be real; it was like a page torn
+out of a romance, with no context in his own experience.
+
+On Sunday morning, at the hour which Mrs. Tristram had indicated,
+he rang at the gate in the blank wall.  It instantly
+opened and admitted him into a clean, cold-looking court,
+from beyond which a dull, plain edifice looked down upon him.
+A robust lay sister with a cheerful complexion emerged from a
+porter's lodge, and, on his stating his errand, pointed to the open
+door of the chapel, an edifice which occupied the right side
+of the court and was preceded by the high flight of steps.
+Newman ascended the steps and immediately entered the open door.
+Service had not yet begun; the place was dimly lighted, and it
+was some moments before he could distinguish its features.
+Then he saw it was divided by a large close iron screen into two
+unequal portions.  The altar was on the hither side of the screen,
+and between it and the entrance were disposed several benches
+and chairs.  Three or four of these were occupied by vague,
+motionless figures--figures that he presently perceived to
+be women, deeply absorbed in their devotion.  The place seemed
+to Newman very cold; the smell of the incense itself was cold.
+Besides this there was a twinkle of tapers and here and
+there a glow of colored glass.  Newman seated himself;
+the praying women kept still, with their backs turned.
+He saw they were visitors like himself and he would have liked
+to see their faces; for he believed that they were the mourning
+mothers and sisters of other women who had had the same pitiless
+courage as Madame de Cintre.  But they were better off than he,
+for they at least shared the faith to which the others
+had sacrificed themselves.  Three or four persons came in;
+two of them were elderly gentlemen.  Every one was very quiet.
+Newman fastened his eyes upon the screen behind the altar.
+That was the convent, the real convent, the place where she was.
+But he could see nothing; no light came through the crevices.
+He got up and approached the partition very gently,
+trying to look through.  But behind it there was darkness,
+with nothing stirring.  He went back to his place, and after
+that a priest and two altar boys came in and began to say mass.
+Newman watched their genuflections and gyrations with a grim,
+still enmity; they seemed aids and abettors of Madame de
+Cintre's desertion; they were mouthing and droning out their triumph.
+The priest's long, dismal intonings acted upon his nerves
+and deepened his wrath; there was something defiant in his
+unintelligible drawl; it seemed meant for Newman himself.
+Suddenly there arose from the depths of the chapel, from behind
+the inexorable grating, a sound which drew his attention from
+the altar--the sound of a strange, lugubrious chant, uttered by
+women's voices.  It began softly, but it presently grew louder,
+and as it increased it became more of a wail and a dirge.
+It was the chant of the Carmelite nuns, their only human utterance.
+It was their dirge over their buried affections and over the vanity
+of earthly desires.  At first Newman was bewildered--almost stunned--
+by the strangeness of the sound; then, as he comprehended
+its meaning, he listened intently and his heart began to throb.
+He listened for Madame de Cintre's voice, and in the very
+heart of the tuneless harmony he imagined he made it out.
+(We are obliged to believe that he was wrong, inasmuch as
+she had obviously not yet had time to become a member
+of the invisible sisterhood.) The chant kept on, mechanical
+and monotonous, with dismal repetitions and despairing cadences.
+It was hideous, it was horrible; as it continued, Newman felt
+that he needed all his self-control. He was growing more agitated;
+he felt tears in his eyes.  At last, as in its full force
+the thought came over him that this confused, impersonal wail
+was all that either he or the world she had deserted should ever
+hear of the voice he had found so sweet, he felt that he could
+bear it no longer.  He rose abruptly and made his way out.
+On the threshold he paused, listened again to the dreary strain,
+and then hastily descended into the court.  As he did so he saw
+the good sister with the high-colored cheeks and the fanlike
+frill to her coiffure, who had admitted him, was in conference
+at the gate with two persons who had just come in.
+A second glance informed him that these persons were Madame
+de Bellegarde and her son, and that they were about to avail
+themselves of that method of approach to Madame de Cintre
+which Newman had found but a mockery of consolation.
+As he crossed the court M. de Bellegarde recognized him;
+the marquis was coming to the steps, leading his mother.  The old
+lady also gave Newman a look, and it resembled that of her son.
+Both faces expressed a franker perturbation, something more akin
+to the humbleness of dismay, than Newman had yet seen in them.
+Evidently he startled the Bellegardes, and they had not their
+grand behavior immediately in hand.  Newman hurried past them,
+guided only by the desire to get out of the convent walls
+and into the street.  The gate opened itself at his approach;
+he strode over the threshold and it closed behind him.
+A carriage which appeared to have been standing there,
+was just turning away from the sidewalk.  Newman looked at it
+for a moment, blankly; then he became conscious, through the dusky
+mist that swam before his eyes, that a lady seated in it was bowing
+to him.  The vehicle had turned away before he recognized her;
+it was an ancient landau with one half the cover lowered.
+The lady's bow was very positive and accompanied with a smile;
+a little girl was seated beside her.  He raised his hat, and then
+the lady bade the coachman stop.  The carriage halted again
+beside the pavement, and she sat there and beckoned to Newman--
+beckoned with the demonstrative grace of Madame Urbain de Bellegarde.
+Newman hesitated a moment before he obeyed her summons, during this
+moment he had time to curse his stupidity for letting the others
+escape him.  He had been wondering how he could get at them;
+fool that he was for not stopping them then and there!
+What better place than beneath the very prison walls to which they
+had consigned the promise of his joy?  He had been too bewildered
+to stop them, but now he felt ready to wait for them at the gate.
+Madame Urbain, with a certain attractive petulance, beckoned to
+him again, and this time he went over to the carriage.
+She leaned out and gave him her hand, looking at him kindly,
+and smiling.
+
+"Ah, monsieur," she said, "you don't include me in your wrath?
+I had nothing to do with it."
+
+"Oh, I don't suppose YOU could have prevented it!"
+Newman answered in a tone which was not that of studied gallantry.
+
+"What you say is too true for me to resent the small account
+it makes of my influence.  I forgive you, at any rate,
+because you look as if you had seen a ghost."
+
+"I have!" said Newman.
+
+"I am glad, then, I didn't go in with Madame de Bellegarde and my husband.
+You must have seen them, eh?  Was the meeting affectionate?  Did you
+hear the chanting?  They say it's like the lamentations of the damned.
+I wouldn't go in:  one is certain to hear that soon enough.
+Poor Claire--in a white shroud and a big brown cloak!
+That's the toilette of the Carmelites, you know.  Well, she was always
+fond of long, loose things.  But I must not speak of her to you;
+only I must say that I am very sorry for you, that if I could have
+helped you I would, and that I think every one has been very shabby.
+I was afraid of it, you know; I felt it in the air for a fortnight
+before it came.  When I saw you at my mother-in-law's ball,
+taking it all so easily, I felt as if you were dancing on your grave.
+But what could I do?  I wish you all the good I can think of.
+You will say that isn't much!  Yes; they have been very shabby;
+I am not a bit afraid to say it; I assure you every one thinks so.
+We are not all like that.  I am sorry I am not going to see you again;
+you know I think you very good company.  I would prove it by asking
+you to get into the carriage and drive with me for a quarter of
+an hour, while I wait for my mother-in-law. Only if we were seen--
+considering what has passed, and every one knows you have been turned away--
+it might be thought I was going a little too far, even for me.
+But I shall see you sometimes--somewhere, eh?  You know"--
+this was said in English--"we have a plan for a little amusement."
+
+Newman stood there with his hand on the carriage-door
+listening to this consolatory murmur with an unlighted eye.
+He hardly knew what Madame de Bellegarde was saying;
+he was only conscious that she was chattering ineffectively.
+But suddenly it occurred to him that, with her pretty
+professions, there was a way of making her effective;
+she might help him to get at the old woman and the marquis.
+"They are coming back soon--your companions?" he said.
+"You are waiting for them?"
+
+"They will hear the mass out; there is nothing to keep them longer.
+Claire has refused to see them."
+
+"I want to speak to them," said Newman; "and you can help me, you can do me
+a favor.  Delay your return for five minutes and give me a chance at them.
+I will wait for them here."
+
+Madame de Bellegarde clasped her hands with a tender grimace.
+"My poor friend, what do you want to do to them?
+To beg them to come back to you?  It will be wasted words.
+They will never come back!"
+
+"I want to speak to them, all the same.  Pray do what I ask you.
+Stay away and leave them to me for five minutes; you needn't be afraid;
+I shall not be violent; I am very quiet."
+
+"Yes, you look very quiet!  If they had le coeur tendre you would move them.
+But they haven't! However, I will do better for you than what you propose.
+The understanding is not that I shall come back for them.
+I am going into the Parc Monceau with my little girl to give her
+a walk, and my mother-in-law, who comes so rarely into this quarter,
+is to profit by the same opportunity to take the air.  We are to wait
+for her in the park, where my husband is to bring her to us.
+Follow me now; just within the gates I shall get out of my carriage.
+Sit down on a chair in some quiet corner and I will bring them near you.
+There's devotion for you!  Le reste vous regarde."
+
+This proposal seemed to Newman extremely felicitous; it revived his
+drooping spirit, and he reflected that Madame Urbain was not such
+a goose as she seemed.  He promised immediately to overtake her,
+and the carriage drove away.
+
+The Parc Monceau is a very pretty piece of landscape-gardening,
+but Newman, passing into it, bestowed little attention upon its
+elegant vegetation, which was full of the freshness of spring.
+He found Madame de Bellegarde promptly, seated in one of the quiet
+corners of which she had spoken, while before her, in the alley,
+her little girl, attended by the footman and the lap-dog, walked
+up and down as if she were taking a lesson in deportment.
+Newman sat down beside the mamma, and she talked a great deal,
+apparently with the design of convincing him that--if he would
+only see it--poor dear Claire did not belong to the most
+fascinating type of woman.  She was too tall and thin, too stiff
+and cold; her mouth was too wide and her nose too narrow.
+She had no dimples anywhere.  And then she was eccentric,
+eccentric in cold blood; she was an Anglaise, after all.
+Newman was very impatient; he was counting the minutes until his
+victims should reappear.  He sat silent, leaning upon his cane,
+looking absently and insensibly at the little marquise.
+At length Madame de Bellegarde said she would walk toward the gate
+of the park and meet her companions; but before she went she
+dropped her eyes, and, after playing a moment with the lace
+of her sleeve, looked up again at Newman.
+
+"Do you remember," she asked, "the promise you made me three
+weeks ago?"  And then, as Newman, vainly consulting his memory,
+was obliged to confess that the promise had escaped it,
+she declared that he had made her, at the time, a very
+queer answer--an answer at which, viewing it in the light
+of the sequel, she had fair ground for taking offense.
+"You promised to take me to Bullier's after your marriage.
+After your marriage--you made a great point of that.
+Three days after that your marriage was broken off.  Do you know,
+when I heard the news, the first thing I said to myself?
+'Oh heaven, now he won't go with me to Bullier's!' And I really
+began to wonder if you had not been expecting the rupture."
+
+"Oh, my dear lady," murmured Newman, looking down the path to see
+if the others were not coming.
+
+"I shall be good-natured," said Madame de Bellegarde.  "One must not
+ask too much of a gentleman who is in love with a cloistered nun.
+Besides, I can't go to Bullier's while we are in mourning.
+But I haven't given it up for that.  The partie is arranged;
+I have my cavalier.  Lord Deepmere, if you please!  He has gone
+back to his dear Dublin; but a few months hence I am to name
+any evening and he will come over from Ireland, on purpose.
+That's what I call gallantry!"
+
+Shortly after this Madame de Bellegarde walked away with her little girl.
+Newman sat in his place; the time seemed terribly long.
+He felt how fiercely his quarter of an hour in the convent chapel
+had raked over the glowing coals of his resentment.  Madame de
+Bellegarde kept him waiting, but she proved as good as her word.
+At last she reappeared at the end of the path, with her little
+girl and her footman; beside her slowly walked her husband,
+with his mother on his arm.  They were a long time advancing,
+during which Newman sat unmoved.  Tingling as he was with passion,
+it was extremely characteristic of him that he was able to moderate
+his expression of it, as he would have turned down a flaring
+gas-burner. His native coolness, shrewdness, and deliberateness,
+his life-long submissiveness to the sentiment that words were acts
+and acts were steps in life, and that in this matter of taking steps
+curveting and prancing were exclusively reserved for quadrupeds
+and foreigners--all this admonished him that rightful wrath had no
+connection with being a fool and indulging in spectacular violence.
+So as he rose, when old Madame de Bellegarde and her son were close
+to him, he only felt very tall and light.  He had been sitting beside
+some shrubbery, in such a way as not to be noticeable at a distance;
+but M. de Bellegarde had evidently already perceived him.
+His mother and he were holding their course, but Newman
+stepped in front of them, and they were obliged to pause.
+He lifted his hat slightly, and looked at them for a moment;
+they were pale with amazement and disgust.
+
+"Excuse me for stopping you," he said in a low tone, "but I
+must profit by the occasion.  I have ten words to say to you.
+Will you listen to them?"
+
+The marquis glared at him and then turned to his mother.
+"Can Mr. Newman possibly have anything to say that is worth
+our listening to?"
+
+"I assure you I have something," said Newman, "besides, it is my duty
+to say it.  It's a notification--a warning."
+
+"Your duty?" said old Madame de Bellegarde, her thin lips curving
+like scorched paper.  "That is your affair, not ours."
+
+Madame Urbain meanwhile had seized her little girl by the hand,
+with a gesture of surprise and impatience which struck Newman,
+intent as he was upon his own words, with its dramatic effectiveness.
+"If Mr. Newman is going to make a scene in public,"
+she exclaimed, "I will take my poor child out of the melee.
+She is too young to see such naughtiness!" and she instantly
+resumed her walk.
+
+"You had much better listen to me," Newman went on.
+"Whether you do or not, things will be disagreeable for you;
+but at any rate you will be prepared."
+
+"We have already heard something of your threats," said the marquis,
+"and you know what we think of them."
+
+"You think a good deal more than you admit.  A moment,"
+Newman added in reply to an exclamation of the old lady.
+"I remember perfectly that we are in a public place, and you see I am
+very quiet.  I am not going to tell your secret to the passers-by;
+I shall keep it, to begin with, for certain picked listeners.
+Any one who observes us will think that we are having a friendly chat,
+and that I am complimenting you, madam, on your venerable virtues."
+
+The marquis gave three short sharp raps on the ground with his stick.
+"I demand of you to step out of our path!" he hissed.
+
+Newman instantly complied, and M. de Bellegarde stepped forward
+with his mother.  Then Newman said, "Half an hour hence Madame de
+Bellegarde will regret that she didn't learn exactly what I mean."
+
+The marquise had taken a few steps, but at these words she paused,
+looking at Newman with eyes like two scintillating globules of ice.
+"You are like a peddler with something to sell," she said,
+with a little cold laugh which only partially concealed the tremor
+in her voice.
+
+"Oh, no, not to sell," Newman rejoined; "I give it to you for nothing."
+And he approached nearer to her, looking her straight in the eyes.
+"You killed your husband," he said, almost in a whisper.  "That is,
+you tried once and failed, and then, without trying, you succeeded."
+
+Madame de Bellegarde closed her eyes and gave a little cough, which,
+as a piece of dissimulation, struck Newman as really heroic.
+"Dear mother," said the marquis, "does this stuff amuse you so much?"
+
+"The rest is more amusing," said Newman.  "You had better not lose it."
+
+Madame de Bellegarde opened her eyes; the scintillations had gone out of them;
+they were fixed and dead.  But she smiled superbly with her narrow
+little lips, and repeated Newman's word.  "Amusing?  Have I killed
+some one else?"
+
+"I don't count your daughter," said Newman, "though I might!
+Your husband knew what you were doing.  I have a proof
+of it whose existence you have never suspected."
+And he turned to the marquis, who was terribly white--
+whiter than Newman had ever seen any one out of a picture.
+"A paper written by the hand, and signed with the name,
+of Henri-Urbain de Bellegarde.  Written after you, madame, had left
+him for dead, and while you, sir, had gone--not very fast--
+for the doctor."
+
+The marquis looked at his mother; she turned away, looking vaguely round her.
+"I must sit down," she said in a low tone, going toward the bench on which
+Newman had been sitting.
+
+"Couldn't you have spoken to me alone?" said the marquis to Newman,
+with a strange look.
+
+"Well, yes, if I could have been sure of speaking to your mother alone, too,"
+Newman answered.  "But I have had to take you as I could get you."
+
+Madame de Bellegarde, with a movement very eloquent of what he would
+have called her "grit," her steel-cold pluck and her instinctive
+appeal to her own personal resources, drew her hand out of her son's
+arm and went and seated herself upon the bench.  There she remained,
+with her hands folded in her lap, looking straight at Newman.
+The expression of her face was such that he fancied at first
+that she was smiling; but he went and stood in front of her
+and saw that her elegant features were distorted by agitation.
+He saw, however, equally, that she was resisting her agitation with all
+the rigor of her inflexible will, and there was nothing like either
+fear or submission in her stony stare.  She had been startled,
+but she was not terrified.  Newman had an exasperating feeling
+that she would get the better of him still; he would not have
+believed it possible that he could so utterly fail to be touched
+by the sight of a woman (criminal or other) in so tight a place.
+Madame de Bellegarde gave a glance at her son which seemed tantamount
+to an injunction to be silent and leave her to her own devices.
+The marquis stood beside her, with his hands behind him,
+looking at Newman.
+
+"What paper is this you speak of?" asked the old lady, with an imitation
+of tranquillity which would have been applauded in a veteran actress.
+
+"Exactly what I have told you," said Newman.  "A paper
+written by your husband after you had left him for dead,
+and during the couple of hours before you returned.
+You see he had the time; you shouldn't have stayed away so long.
+It declares distinctly his wife's murderous intent."
+
+"I should like to see it," Madame de Bellegarde observed.
+
+"I thought you might," said Newman, "and I have taken a copy."
+And he drew from his waistcoat pocket a small, folded sheet.
+
+"Give it to my son," said Madame de Bellegarde.
+Newman handed it to the marquis, whose mother, glancing at him,
+said simply, "Look at it."  M. de Bellegarde's eyes had a pale
+eagerness which it was useless for him to try to dissimulate;
+he took the paper in his light-gloved fingers and opened it.
+There was a silence, during which he read it.  He had more than time
+to read it, but still he said nothing; he stood staring at it.
+"Where is the original?" asked Madame de Bellegarde, in a voice
+which was really a consummate negation of impatience.
+
+"In a very safe place.  Of course I can't show you that," said Newman.
+"You might want to take hold of it," he added with conscious quaintness.
+"But that's a very correct copy--except, of course, the handwriting.
+I am keeping the original to show some one else."
+
+M. de Bellegarde at last looked up, and his eyes were still very eager.
+"To whom do you mean to show it?"
+
+"Well, I'm thinking of beginning with the duchess," said Newman;
+"that stout lady I saw at your ball.  She asked me to come and see her,
+you know.  I thought at the moment I shouldn't have much to say to her;
+but my little document will give us something to talk about."
+
+"You had better keep it, my son," said Madame de Bellegarde.
+
+"By all means," said Newman; "keep it and show it to your mother
+when you get home."
+
+"And after showing it to the duchess?"--asked the marquis,
+folding the paper and putting it away.
+
+"Well, I'll take up the dukes," said Newman.  "Then the counts
+and the barons--all the people you had the cruelty to introduce me
+to in a character of which you meant immediately to deprive me.
+I have made out a list."
+
+For a moment neither Madame de Bellegarde nor her son said a word;
+the old lady sat with her eyes upon the ground; M. de Bellegarde's
+blanched pupils were fixed upon her face.  Then, looking at Newman,
+"Is that all you have to say?" she asked.
+
+"No, I want to say a few words more.  I want to say that I hope you
+quite understand what I'm about.  This is my revenge, you know.
+You have treated me before the world--convened for the express purpose--
+as if I were not good enough for you.  I mean to show the world that,
+however bad I may be, you are not quite the people to say it."
+
+Madame de Bellegarde was silent again, and then she broke
+her silence.  Her self-possession continued to be extraordinary.
+"I needn't ask you who has been your accomplice.
+Mrs. Bread told me that you had purchased her services."
+
+"Don't accuse Mrs. Bread of venality," said Newman.  "She has kept
+your secret all these years.  She has given you a long respite.
+It was beneath her eyes your husband wrote that paper; he put it into
+her hands with a solemn injunction that she was to make it public.
+She was too good-hearted to make use of it."
+
+The old lady appeared for an instant to hesitate, and then,
+"She was my husband's mistress," she said, softly.  This was
+the only concession to self-defense that she condescended to make.
+
+"I doubt that," said Newman.
+
+Madame de Bellegarde got up from her bench.  "It was not to your
+opinions I undertook to listen, and if you have nothing left but them
+to tell me I think this remarkable interview may terminate."
+And turning to the marquis she took his arm again.  "My son,"
+she said, "say something!"
+
+M. de Bellegarde looked down at his mother, passing his hand
+over his forehead, and then, tenderly, caressingly, "What shall
+I say?" he asked.
+
+"There is only one thing to say," said the Marquise.
+"That it was really not worth while to have interrupted our walk."
+
+But the marquis thought he could improve this.  "Your paper's a forgery,"
+he said to Newman.
+
+Newman shook his head a little, with a tranquil smile.
+"M. de Bellegarde," he said, "your mother does better.
+She has done better all along, from the first of my knowing you.
+You're a mighty plucky woman, madam," he continued.
+"It's a great pity you have made me your enemy.
+I should have been one of your greatest admirers."
+
+"Mon pauvre ami," said Madame de Bellegarde to her son in French,
+and as if she had not heard these words, "you must take me immediately
+to my carriage."
+
+Newman stepped back and let them leave him; he watched them a moment and saw
+Madame Urbain, with her little girl, come out of a by-path to meet them.
+The old lady stooped and kissed her grandchild.  "Damn it, she is plucky!"
+said Newman, and he walked home with a slight sense of being balked.
+She was so inexpressively defiant!  But on reflection he decided that what
+he had witnessed was no real sense of security, still less a real innocence.
+It was only a very superior style of brazen assurance.  "Wait till she
+reads the paper!" he said to himself; and he concluded that he should hear
+from her soon.
+
+He heard sooner than he expected.  The next morning,
+before midday, when he was about to give orders for his breakfast
+to be served, M. de Bellegarde's card was brought to him.
+"She has read the paper and she has passed a bad night,"
+said Newman.  He instantly admitted his visitor, who came
+in with the air of the ambassador of a great power meeting
+the delegate of a barbarous tribe whom an absurd accident
+had enabled for the moment to be abominably annoying.
+The ambassador, at all events, had passed a bad night, and his
+faultlessly careful toilet only threw into relief the frigid rancor
+in his eyes and the mottled tones of his refined complexion.
+He stood before Newman a moment, breathing quickly and softly,
+and shaking his forefinger curtly as his host pointed to a chair.
+
+"What I have come to say is soon said," he declared "and can
+only be said without ceremony."
+
+"I am good for as much or for as little as you desire," said Newman.
+
+The marquis looked round the room a moment, and then, "On what terms
+will you part with your scrap of paper?"
+
+"On none!"  And while Newman, with his head on one side and his hands
+behind him sounded the marquis's turbid gaze with his own, he added,
+"Certainly, that is not worth sitting down about."
+
+M. de Bellegarde meditated a moment, as if he had not heard Newman's refusal.
+"My mother and I, last evening," he said, "talked over your story.
+You will be surprised to learn that we think your little document is--a"--
+and he held back his word a moment--"is genuine."
+
+"You forget that with you I am used to surprises!" exclaimed Newman,
+with a laugh.
+
+"The very smallest amount of respect that we owe to my father's memory,"
+the marquis continued, "makes us desire that he should not be held
+up to the world as the author of so--so infernal an attack upon
+the reputation of a wife whose only fault was that she had been
+submissive to accumulated injury."
+
+"Oh, I see," said Newman.  "It's for your father's sake."
+And he laughed the laugh in which he indulged when he was most amused--
+a noiseless laugh, with his lips closed.
+
+But M. de Bellegarde's gravity held good.  "There are a few
+of my father's particular friends for whom the knowledge of so--
+so unfortunate an--inspiration--would be a real grief.
+Even say we firmly established by medical evidence the presumption
+of a mind disordered by fever, il en resterait quelque chose.
+At the best it would look ill in him.  Very ill!"
+
+"Don't try medical evidence," said Newman.  "Don't touch the doctors and they
+won't touch you.  I don't mind your knowing that I have not written to them."
+
+Newman fancied that he saw signs in M. de Bellegarde's discolored mask
+that this information was extremely pertinent.  But it may have been
+merely fancy; for the marquis remained majestically argumentative.
+"For instance, Madame d'Outreville," he said, "of whom you spoke yesterday.
+I can imagine nothing that would shock her more."
+
+"Oh, I am quite prepared to shock Madame d'Outreville, you know.
+That's on the cards.  I expect to shock a great many people."
+
+M. de Bellegarde examined for a moment the stitching on the back of one of
+his gloves.  Then, without looking up, "We don't offer you money," he said.
+"That we supposed to be useless."
+
+Newman, turning away, took a few turns about the room and then came back.
+"What DO you offer me?  By what I can make out, the generosity is all to be
+on my side."
+
+The marquis dropped his arms at his side and held his head a little higher.
+"What we offer you is a chance--a chance that a gentleman should appreciate.
+A chance to abstain from inflicting a terrible blot upon the memory of a man
+who certainly had his faults, but who, personally, had done you no wrong."
+
+"There are two things to say to that," said Newman.
+"The first is, as regards appreciating your 'chance,' that you
+don't consider me a gentleman.  That's your great point you know.
+It's a poor rule that won't work both ways.  The second
+is that--well, in a word, you are talking great nonsense!"
+
+Newman, who in the midst of his bitterness had, as I have said,
+kept well before his eyes a certain ideal of saying nothing rude,
+was immediately somewhat regretfully conscious of the sharpness
+of these words.  But he speedily observed that the marquis took
+them more quietly than might have been expected.  M. de Bellegarde,
+like the stately ambassador that he was, continued the policy
+of ignoring what was disagreeable in his adversary's replies.
+He gazed at the gilded arabesques on the opposite wall, and then
+presently transferred his glance to Newman, as if he too were
+a large grotesque in a rather vulgar system of chamber-decoration.
+"I suppose you know that as regards yourself it won't do at all."
+
+"How do you mean it won't do?"
+
+"Why, of course you damn yourself.  But I suppose that's in your programme.
+You propose to throw mud at us; you believe, you hope, that some of it
+may stick.  We know, of course, it can't," explained the marquis in a tone
+of conscious lucidity; "but you take the chance, and are willing at any rate
+to show that you yourself have dirty hands."
+
+"That's a good comparison; at least half of it is," said Newman.
+"I take the chance of something sticking.  But as regards my hands,
+they are clean.  I have taken the matter up with my finger-tips."
+
+M. de Bellegarde looked a moment into his hat.  "All our friends are quite
+with us," he said.  "They would have done exactly as we have done."
+
+"I shall believe that when I hear them say it.  Meanwhile I shall
+think better of human nature."
+
+The marquis looked into his hat again.  "Madame de Cintre was
+extremely fond of her father.  If she knew of the existence of the few
+written words of which you propose to make this scandalous use,
+she would demand of you proudly for his sake to give it up to her,
+and she would destroy it without reading it."
+
+"Very possibly," Newman rejoined.  "But she will not know.
+I was in that convent yesterday and I know what SHE is doing.
+Lord deliver us!  You can guess whether it made me feel forgiving!"
+
+M. de Bellegarde appeared to have nothing more to suggest;
+but he continued to stand there, rigid and elegant, as a man who
+believed that his mere personal presence had an argumentative value.
+Newman watched him, and, without yielding an inch on the main issue,
+felt an incongruously good-natured impulse to help him to retreat
+in good order.
+
+"Your visit's a failure, you see," he said.  "You offer too little."
+
+"Propose something yourself," said the marquis.
+
+"Give me back Madame de Cintre in the same state in which you
+took her from me."
+
+M. de Bellegarde threw back his head and his pale face flushed.
+"Never!" he said.
+
+"You can't!"
+
+"We wouldn't if we could!  In the sentiment which led us to deprecate
+her marriage nothing is changed."
+
+"'Deprecate' is good!" cried Newman.  "It was hardly worth while to
+come here only to tell me that you are not ashamed of yourselves.
+I could have guessed that!"
+
+The marquis slowly walked toward the door, and Newman,
+following, opened it for him.  "What you propose to do will be
+very disagreeable," M. de Bellegarde said.  "That is very evident.
+But it will be nothing more."
+
+"As I understand it," Newman answered, "that will be quite enough!"
+
+M. de Bellegarde stood for a moment looking on the ground,
+as if he were ransacking his ingenuity to see what else
+he could do to save his father's reputation.  Then, with a
+little cold sigh, he seemed to signify that he regretfully
+surrendered the late marquis to the penalty of his turpitude.
+He gave a hardly perceptible shrug, took his neat umbrella from
+the servant in the vestibule, and, with his gentlemanly walk,
+passed out.  Newman stood listening till he heard the door close;
+then he slowly exclaimed, "Well, I ought to begin to
+be satisfied now!"
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+
+
+Newman called upon the comical duchess and found her at home.
+An old gentleman with a high nose and a gold-headed cane was just taking
+leave of her; he made Newman a protracted obeisance as he retired,
+and our hero supposed that he was one of the mysterious grandees
+with whom he had shaken hands at Madame de Bellegarde's ball.
+The duchess, in her arm-chair, from which she did not move,
+with a great flower-pot on one side of her, a pile of pink-covered
+novels on the other, and a large piece of tapestry depending
+from her lap, presented an expansive and imposing front;
+but her aspect was in the highest degree gracious, and there was
+nothing in her manner to check the effusion of his confidence.
+She talked to him about flowers and books, getting launched
+with marvelous promptitude; about the theatres, about the peculiar
+institutions of his native country, about the humidity of Paris
+about the pretty complexions of the American ladies, about his
+impressions of France and his opinion of its female inhabitants.
+All this was a brilliant monologue on the part of the duchess, who,
+like many of her country-women, was a person of an affirmative rather
+than an interrogative cast of mind, who made mots and put them
+herself into circulation, and who was apt to offer you a present
+of a convenient little opinion, neatly enveloped in the gilt paper
+of a happy Gallicism.  Newman had come to her with a grievance,
+but he found himself in an atmosphere in which apparently
+no cognizance was taken of grievance; an atmosphere into which
+the chill of discomfort had never penetrated, and which seemed
+exclusively made up of mild, sweet, stale intellectual perfumes.
+The feeling with which he had watched Madame d'Outreville at
+the treacherous festival of the Bellegardes came back to him;
+she struck him as a wonderful old lady in a comedy, particularly well
+up in her part.  He observed before long that she asked him
+no questions about their common friends; she made no allusion
+to the circumstances under which he had been presented to her.
+She neither feigned ignorance of a change in these circumstances
+nor pretended to condole with him upon it; but she smiled and
+discoursed and compared the tender-tinted wools of her tapestry,
+as if the Bellegardes and their wickedness were not of this world.
+"She is fighting shy!" said Newman to himself; and, having made
+the observation, he was prompted to observe, farther, how the duchess
+would carry off her indifference.  She did so in a masterly manner.
+There was not a gleam of disguised consciousness in those small,
+clear, demonstrative eyes which constituted her nearest claim
+to personal loveliness, there was not a symptom of apprehension
+that Newman would trench upon the ground she proposed to avoid.
+"Upon my word, she does it very well," he tacitly commented.
+"They all hold together bravely, and, whether any one else can
+trust them or not, they can certainly trust each other."
+
+Newman, at this juncture, fell to admiring the duchess for her
+fine manners.  He felt, most accurately, that she was not
+a grain less urbane than she would have been if his marriage
+were still in prospect; but he felt also that she was not
+a particle more urbane.  He had come, so reasoned the duchess--
+Heaven knew why he had come, after what had happened;
+and for the half hour, therefore, she would be charmante.
+But she would never see him again.  Finding no ready-made
+opportunity to tell his story, Newman pondered these things
+more dispassionately than might have been expected;
+he stretched his legs, as usual, and even chuckled a little,
+appreciatively and noiselessly.  And then as the duchess went
+on relating a mot with which her mother had snubbed the great
+Napoleon, it occurred to Newman that her evasion of a chapter
+of French history more interesting to himself might possibly
+be the result of an extreme consideration for his feelings.
+Perhaps it was delicacy on the duchess's part--not policy.
+He was on the point of saying something himself, to make
+the chance which he had determined to give her still better,
+when the servant announced another visitor.  The duchess,
+on hearing the name--it was that of an Italian prince--
+gave a little imperceptible pout, and said to Newman, rapidly:
+"I beg you to remain; I desire this visit to be short."
+Newman said to himself, at this, that Madame d'Outreville intended,
+after all, that they should discuss the Bellegardes together.
+
+The prince was a short, stout man, with a head disproportionately large.
+He had a dusky complexion and a bushy eyebrow, beneath which his
+eye wore a fixed and somewhat defiant expression; he seemed to be
+challenging you to insinuate that he was top-heavy. The duchess,
+judging from her charge to Newman, regarded him as a bore;
+but this was not apparent from the unchecked flow of her conversation.
+She made a fresh series of mots, characterized with great felicity
+the Italian intellect and the taste of the figs at Sorrento,
+predicted the ultimate future of the Italian kingdom
+(disgust with the brutal Sardinian rule and complete reversion,
+throughout the peninsula, to the sacred sway of the Holy Father), and,
+finally, gave a history of the love affairs of the Princess X----.
+This narrative provoked some rectifications on the part of the prince,
+who, as he said, pretended to know something about that matter;
+and having satisfied himself that Newman was in no laughing mood,
+either with regard to the size of his head or anything else,
+he entered into the controversy with an animation for which the duchess,
+when she set him down as a bore, could not have been prepared.
+The sentimental vicissitudes of the Princess X----led to a discussion
+of the heart history of Florentine nobility in general; the duchess
+had spent five weeks in Florence and had gathered much information
+on the subject.  This was merged, in turn, in an examination of the
+Italian heart per se.  The duchess took a brilliantly heterodox view--
+thought it the least susceptible organ of its kind that she had
+ever encountered, related examples of its want of susceptibility,
+and at last declared that for her the Italians were a people of ice.
+The prince became flame to refute her, and his visit really
+proved charming.  Newman was naturally out of the conversation;
+he sat with his head a little on one side, watching the interlocutors.
+The duchess, as she talked, frequently looked at him with a smile,
+as if to intimate, in the charming manner of her nation, that it
+lay only with him to say something very much to the point.
+But he said nothing at all, and at last his thoughts began to wander.
+A singular feeling came over him--a sudden sense of the folly of
+his errand.  What under the sun had he to say to the duchess, after all?
+Wherein would it profit him to tell her that the Bellegardes were
+traitors and that the old lady, into the bargain was a murderess?
+He seemed morally to have turned a sort of somersault, and to find
+things looking differently in consequence.  He felt a sudden stiffening
+of his will and quickening of his reserve.  What in the world had he been
+thinking of when he fancied the duchess could help him, and that it
+would conduce to his comfort to make her think ill of the Bellegardes?
+What did her opinion of the Bellegardes matter to him?
+It was only a shade more important than the opinion the Bellegardes
+entertained of her.  The duchess help him--that cold, stout, soft,
+artificial woman help him?--she who in the last twenty minutes had
+built up between them a wall of polite conversation in which she
+evidently flattered herself that he would never find a gate.
+Had it come to that--that he was asking favors of conceited people,
+and appealing for sympathy where he had no sympathy to give?  He rested
+his arms on his knees, and sat for some minutes staring into his hat.
+As he did so his ears tingled--he had come very near being an ass.
+Whether or no the duchess would hear his story, he wouldn't tell it.
+Was he to sit there another half hour for the sake of exposing
+the Bellegardes?  The Bellegardes be hanged!  He got up abruptly,
+and advanced to shake hands with his hostess.
+
+"You can't stay longer?" she asked, very graciously.
+
+"I am afraid not," he said.
+
+She hesitated a moment, and then, "I had an idea you had something
+particular to say to me," she declared.
+
+Newman looked at her; he felt a little dizzy; for the moment he seemed to be
+turning his somersault again.  The little Italian prince came to his help:
+"Ah, madam, who has not that?" he softly sighed.
+
+"Don't teach Mr. Newman to say fadaises," said the duchess.
+"It is his merit that he doesn't know how."
+
+"Yes, I don't know how to say fadaises," said Newman, "and I
+don't want to say anything unpleasant."
+
+"I am sure you are very considerate," said the duchess with a smile;
+and she gave him a little nod for good-by with which he took his departure.
+
+Once in the street, he stood for some time on the pavement,
+wondering whether, after all, he was not an ass not to have discharged
+his pistol.  And then again he decided that to talk to any one
+whomsoever about the Bellegardes would be extremely disagreeable
+to him.  The least disagreeable thing, under the circumstances,
+was to banish them from his mind, and never think of them again.
+Indecision had not hitherto been one of Newman's weaknesses,
+and in this case it was not of long duration.  For three days after this
+he did not, or at least he tried not to, think of the Bellegardes.
+He dined with Mrs. Tristram, and on her mentioning their name,
+he begged her almost severely to desist.  This gave Tom Tristram
+a much-coveted opportunity to offer his condolences.
+
+He leaned forward, laying his hand on Newman's arm compressing his
+lips and shaking his head.  "The fact is my dear fellow, you see,
+that you ought never to have gone into it.  It was not your doing,
+I know--it was all my wife.  If you want to come down on her,
+I'll stand off; I give you leave to hit her as hard as you like.
+You know she has never had a word of reproach from me in her life,
+and I think she is in need of something of the kind.
+Why didn't you listen to ME?  You know I didn't believe in the thing.
+I thought it at the best an amiable delusion.  I don't profess
+to be a Don Juan or a gay Lothario,--that class of man, you know;
+but I do pretend to know something about the harder sex.  I have
+never disliked a woman in my life that she has not turned out badly.
+I was not at all deceived in Lizzie, for instance; I always had my
+doubts about her.  Whatever you may think of my present situation,
+I must at least admit that I got into it with my eyes open.
+Now suppose you had got into something like this box with Madame de Cintre.
+You may depend upon it she would have turned out a stiff one.
+And upon my word I don't see where you could have found your comfort.
+Not from the marquis, my dear Newman; he wasn't a man you could go and talk
+things over with in a sociable, common-sense way.  Did he ever seem
+to want to have you on the premises--did he ever try to see you alone?
+Did he ever ask you to come and smoke a cigar with him of an evening,
+or step in, when you had been calling on the ladies, and take something?
+I don't think you would have got much encouragement out of HIM.
+And as for the old lady, she struck one as an uncommonly strong dose.
+They have a great expression here, you know; they call it 'sympathetic.'
+Everything is sympathetic--or ought to be.  Now Madame de Bellegarde
+is about as sympathetic as that mustard-pot. They're a d--d
+cold-blooded lot, any way; I felt it awfully at that ball of theirs.
+I felt as if I were walking up and down in the Armory, in the Tower
+of London!  My dear boy, don't think me a vulgar brute for hinting
+at it, but you may depend upon it, all they wanted was your money.
+I know something about that; I can tell when people want one's money!
+Why they stopped wanting yours I don't know; I suppose because
+they could get some one else's without working so hard for it.
+It isn't worth finding out.  It may be that it was not Madame de Cintre
+that backed out first, very likely the old woman put her up to it.
+I suspect she and her mother are really as thick as thieves, eh?
+You are well out of it, my boy; make up your mind to that.
+If I express myself strongly it is all because I love you so much;
+and from that point of view I may say I should as soon have thought
+of making up to that piece of pale high-mightiness as I should have
+thought of making up to the Obelisk in the Place des la Concorde."
+
+Newman sat gazing at Tristram during this harangue with a lack-lustre eye;
+never yet had he seemed to himself to have outgrown so completely the phase
+of equal comradeship with Tom Tristram.  Mrs. Tristram's glance at her husband
+had more of a spark; she turned to Newman with a slightly lurid smile.
+"You must at least do justice," she said, "to the felicity with which
+Mr. Tristram repairs the indiscretions of a too zealous wife."
+
+But even without the aid of Tom Tristram's conversational felicities,
+Newman would have begun to think of the Bellegardes again.
+He could cease to think of them only when he ceased to
+think of his loss and privation, and the days had as yet
+but scantily lightened the weight of this incommodity.
+In vain Mrs. Tristram begged him to cheer up; she assured him
+that the sight of his countenance made her miserable.
+
+"How can I help it?" he demanded with a trembling voice.
+"I feel like a widower--and a widower who has not even
+the consolation of going to stand beside the grave of his wife--
+who has not the right to wear so much mourning as a weed on his hat.
+I feel," he added in a moment "as if my wife had been murdered
+and her assassins were still at large."
+
+Mrs. Tristram made no immediate rejoinder, but at last she said,
+with a smile which, in so far as it was a forced one, was less
+successfully simulated than such smiles, on her lips, usually were;
+"Are you very sure that you would have been happy?"
+
+Newman stared a moment, and then shook his head.  "That's weak,"
+he said; "that won't do."
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Tristram with a more triumphant bravery,
+"I don't believe you would have been happy."
+
+Newman gave a little laugh.  "Say I should have been miserable, then;
+it's a misery I should have preferred to any happiness."
+
+Mrs. Tristram began to muse.  "I should have been curious to see;
+it would have been very strange."
+
+"Was it from curiosity that you urged me to try and marry her?"
+
+"A little," said Mrs. Tristram, growing still more audacious.
+Newman gave her the one angry look he had been destined ever to give her,
+turned away and took up his hat.  She watched him a moment, and then
+she said, "That sounds very cruel, but it is less so than it sounds.
+Curiosity has a share in almost everything I do.  I wanted very much
+to see, first, whether such a marriage could actually take place;
+second, what would happen if it should take place."
+
+"So you didn't believe," said Newman, resentfully.
+
+"Yes, I believed--I believed that it would take place, and that you
+would be happy.  Otherwise I should have been, among my speculations,
+a very heartless creature.  BUT," she continued, laying her hand upon
+Newman's arm and hazarding a grave smile, "it was the highest flight
+ever taken by a tolerably bold imagination!"
+
+Shortly after this she recommended him to leave Paris and travel
+for three months.  Change of scene would do him good, and he would
+forget his misfortune sooner in absence from the objects which had
+witnessed it.  "I really feel," Newman rejoined, "as if to leave YOU,
+at least, would do me good--and cost me very little effort.
+You are growing cynical, you shock me and pain me."
+
+"Very good," said Mrs. Tristram, good-naturedly or cynically,
+as may be thought most probable.  "I shall certainly see you again."
+
+Newman was very willing to get away from Paris; the brilliant streets
+he had walked through in his happier hours, and which then seemed to wear
+a higher brilliancy in honor of his happiness, appeared now to be in
+the secret of his defeat and to look down upon it in shining mockery.
+He would go somewhere; he cared little where; and he made his preparations.
+Then, one morning, at haphazard, he drove to the train that would transport
+him to Boulogne and dispatch him thence to the shores of Britain.
+As he rolled along in the train he asked himself what had become of
+his revenge, and he was able to say that it was provisionally pigeon-holed
+in a very safe place; it would keep till called for.
+
+He arrived in London in the midst of what is called "the season,"
+and it seemed to him at first that he might here put himself
+in the way of being diverted from his heavy-heartedness.
+He knew no one in all England, but the spectacle of the
+mighty metropolis roused him somewhat from his apathy.
+Anything that was enormous usually found favor with Newman,
+and the multitudinous energies and industries of England stirred
+within him a dull vivacity of contemplation.  It is on record
+that the weather, at that moment, was of the finest English quality;
+he took long walks and explored London in every direction;
+he sat by the hour in Kensington Gardens and beside the adjoining
+Drive, watching the people and the horses and the carriages;
+the rosy English beauties, the wonderful English dandies,
+and the splendid flunkies.  He went to the opera and found
+it better than in Paris; he went to the theatre and found
+a surprising charm in listening to dialogue the finest
+points of which came within the range of his comprehension.
+He made several excursions into the country, recommended by
+the waiter at his hotel, with whom, on this and similar points,
+he had established confidential relations.  He watched the deer
+in Windsor Forest and admired the Thames from Richmond Hill;
+he ate white-bait and brown-bread and butter at Greenwich,
+and strolled in the grassy shadow of the cathedral of Canterbury.
+He also visited the Tower of London and Madame Tussaud's exhibition.
+One day he thought he would go to Sheffield, and then,
+thinking again, he gave it up.  Why should he go to Sheffield?
+He had a feeling that the link which bound him to a possible
+interest in the manufacture of cutlery was broken.
+He had no desire for an "inside view" of any successful
+enterprise whatever, and he would not have given the smallest
+sum for the privilege of talking over the details of the most
+"splendid" business with the shrewdest of overseers.
+
+One afternoon he had walked into Hyde Park, and was slowly
+threading his way through the human maze which edges the Drive.
+The stream of carriages was no less dense, and Newman, as usual,
+marveled at the strange, dingy figures which he saw taking the air
+in some of the stateliest vehicles.  They reminded him of what he had
+read of eastern and southern countries, in which grotesque idols
+and fetiches were sometimes taken out of their temples and carried
+abroad in golden chariots to be displayed to the multitude.
+He saw a great many pretty cheeks beneath high-plumed hats as he squeezed
+his way through serried waves of crumpled muslin; and sitting on little
+chairs at the base of the great serious English trees, he observed
+a number of quiet-eyed maidens who seemed only to remind him afresh
+that the magic of beauty had gone out of the world with Madame de Cintre:
+to say nothing of other damsels, whose eyes were not quiet,
+and who struck him still more as a satire on possible consolation.
+He had been walking for some time, when, directly in front of him,
+borne back by the summer breeze, he heard a few words uttered in that bright
+Parisian idiom from which his ears had begun to alienate themselves.
+The voice in which the words were spoken made them seem even more
+like a thing with which he had once been familiar, and as he bent his
+eyes it lent an identity to the commonplace elegance of the back hair
+and shoulders of a young lady walking in the same direction as himself.
+Mademoiselle Nioche, apparently, had come to seek a more rapid
+advancement in London, and another glance led Newman to suppose
+that she had found it.  A gentleman was strolling beside her,
+lending a most attentive ear to her conversation and too entranced
+to open his lips.  Newman did not hear his voice, but perceived
+that he presented the dorsal expression of a well-dressed Englishman.
+Mademoiselle Nioche was attracting attention:  the ladies who passed
+her turned round to survey the Parisian perfection of her toilet.
+A great cataract of flounces rolled down from the young lady's waist
+to Newman's feet; he had to step aside to avoid treading upon them.
+He stepped aside, indeed, with a decision of movement which the
+occasion scarcely demanded; for even this imperfect glimpse of Miss
+Noemie had excited his displeasure.  She seemed an odious blot
+upon the face of nature; he wanted to put her out of his sight.
+He thought of Valentin de Bellegarde, still green in the earth
+of his burial--his young life clipped by this flourishing impudence.
+The perfume of the young lady's finery sickened him; he turned his head
+and tried to deflect his course; but the pressure of the crowd kept him
+near her a few minutes longer, so that he heard what she was saying.
+
+"Ah, I am sure he will miss me," she murmured.  "It was very cruel in me
+to leave him; I am afraid you will think me a very heartless creature.
+He might perfectly well have come with us.  I don't think he is very well,"
+she added; "it seemed to me to-day that he was not very gay."
+
+Newman wondered whom she was talking about, but just then an
+opening among his neighbors enabled him to turn away, and he said
+to himself that she was probably paying a tribute to British
+propriety and playing at tender solicitude about her papa.
+Was that miserable old man still treading the path of vice in her train?
+Was he still giving her the benefit of his experience of affairs,
+and had he crossed the sea to serve as her interpreter?
+Newman walked some distance farther, and then began to retrace his steps
+taking care not to traverse again the orbit of Mademoiselle Nioche.
+At last he looked for a chair under the trees, but he had some
+difficulty in finding an empty one.  He was about to give up
+the search when he saw a gentleman rise from the seat he had
+been occupying, leaving Newman to take it without looking at
+his neighbors.  He sat there for some time without heeding them;
+his attention was lost in the irritation and bitterness produced
+by his recent glimpse of Miss Noemie's iniquitous vitality.
+But at the end of a quarter of an hour, dropping his eyes,
+he perceived a small pug-dog squatted upon the path near his feet--
+a diminutive but very perfect specimen of its interesting species.
+The pug was sniffing at the fashionable world, as it passed him,
+with his little black muzzle, and was kept from extending his
+investigation by a large blue ribbon attached to his collar with an
+enormous rosette and held in the hand of a person seated next to Newman.
+To this person Newman transferred his attention, and immediately
+perceived that he was the object of all that of his neighbor,
+who was staring up at him from a pair of little fixed white eyes.
+These eyes Newman instantly recognized; he had been
+sitting for the last quarter of an hour beside M. Nioche.
+He had vaguely felt that some one was staring at him.
+M. Nioche continued to stare; he appeared afraid to move,
+even to the extent of evading Newman's glance.
+
+"Dear me," said Newman; "are you here, too?"  And he looked
+at his neighbor's helplessness more grimly than he knew.
+M. Nioche had a new hat and a pair of kid gloves;
+his clothes, too, seemed to belong to a more recent antiquity
+than of yore.  Over his arm was suspended a lady's mantilla--
+a light and brilliant tissue, fringed with white lace--
+which had apparently been committed to his keeping;
+and the little dog's blue ribbon was wound tightly round his hand.
+There was no expression of recognition in his face--
+or of anything indeed save a sort of feeble, fascinated dread;
+Newman looked at the pug and the lace mantilla, and then he met
+the old man's eyes again.  "You know me, I see," he pursued.
+"You might have spoken to me before."  M. Nioche still said nothing,
+but it seemed to Newman that his eyes began faintly to water.
+"I didn't expect," our hero went on, "to meet you so far from--
+from the Cafe de la Patrie."  The old man remained silent,
+but decidedly Newman had touched the source of tears.
+His neighbor sat staring and Newman added, "What's the matter,
+M. Nioche?  You used to talk--to talk very prettily.
+Don't you remember you even gave lessons in conversation?"
+
+At this M. Nioche decided to change his attitude.
+He stooped and picked up the pug, lifted it to his face and wiped
+his eyes on its little soft back.  "I'm afraid to speak to you,"
+he presently said, looking over the puppy's shoulder.
+"I hoped you wouldn't notice me.  I should have moved away,
+but I was afraid that if I moved you would notice me.
+So I sat very still."
+
+"I suspect you have a bad conscience, sir," said Newman.
+
+The old man put down the little dog and held it carefully in his lap.
+Then he shook his head, with his eyes still fixed upon his interlocutor.
+"No, Mr. Newman, I have a good conscience," he murmured.
+
+"Then why should you want to slink away from me?"
+
+"Because--because you don't understand my position."
+
+"Oh, I think you once explained it to me," said Newman.
+"But it seems improved."
+
+"Improved!" exclaimed M. Nioche, under his breath.
+"Do you call this improvement?"  And he glanced at the treasures
+in his arms.
+
+"Why, you are on your travels," Newman rejoined.  "A visit to London
+in the season is certainly a sign of prosperity."
+
+M. Nioche, in answer to this cruel piece of irony,
+lifted the puppy up to his face again, peering at Newman with
+his small blank eye-holes. There was something almost imbecile
+in the movement, and Newman hardly knew whether he was taking
+refuge in a convenient affectation of unreason, or whether
+he had in fact paid for his dishonor by the loss of his wits.
+In the latter case, just now, he felt little more tenderly
+to the foolish old man than in the former.  Responsible or not,
+he was equally an accomplice of his detestably mischievous daughter.
+Newman was going to leave him abruptly, when a ray of entreaty
+appeared to disengage itself from the old man's misty gaze.
+"Are you going away?" he asked.
+
+"Do you want me to stay?" said Newman.
+
+"I should have left you--from consideration.  But my dignity
+suffers at your leaving me--that way."
+
+"Have you got anything particular to say to me?"
+
+M. Nioche looked around him to see that no one was listening, and then
+he said, very softly but distinctly, "I have NOT forgiven her!"
+
+Newman gave a short laugh, but the old man seemed for the moment
+not to perceive it; he was gazing away, absently, at some
+metaphysical image of his implacability.  "It doesn't much
+matter whether you forgive her or not," said Newman.
+"There are other people who won't, I assure you."
+
+"What has she done?"  M. Nioche softly questioned, turning round again.
+"I don't know what she does, you know."
+
+"She has done a devilish mischief; it doesn't matter what," said Newman.
+"She's a nuisance; she ought to be stopped."
+
+M. Nioche stealthily put out his hand and laid it very gently
+upon Newman's arm.  "Stopped, yes," he whispered.  "That's it.
+Stopped short.  She is running away--she must be stopped."
+Then he paused a moment and looked round him.  "I mean to stop her,"
+he went on.  "I am only waiting for my chance."
+
+"I see," said Newman, laughing briefly again.
+"She is running away and you are running after her.
+You have run a long distance!"
+
+But M. Nioche stared insistently:  "I shall stop her!"
+he softly repeated.
+
+He had hardly spoken when the crowd in front of them separated,
+as if by the impulse to make way for an important personage.
+Presently, through the opening, advanced Mademoiselle Nioche,
+attended by the gentleman whom Newman had lately observed.
+His face being now presented to our hero, the latter recognized
+the irregular features, the hardly more regular complexion,
+and the amiable expression of Lord Deepmere.  Noemie, on finding
+herself suddenly confronted with Newman, who, like M. Nioche,
+had risen from his seat, faltered for a barely perceptible instant.
+She gave him a little nod, as if she had seen him yesterday,
+and then, with a good-natured smile, "Tiens, how we keep meeting!"
+she said.  She looked consummately pretty, and the front of her
+dress was a wonderful work of art.  She went up to her father,
+stretching out her hands for the little dog, which he submissively
+placed in them, and she began to kiss it and murmur over it:
+"To think of leaving him all alone,--what a wicked,
+abominable creature he must believe me!  He has been very unwell,"
+she added, turning and affecting to explain to Newman, with a
+spark of infernal impudence, fine as a needlepoint, in her eye.
+"I don't think the English climate agrees with him."
+
+"It seems to agree wonderfully well with his mistress," said Newman.
+
+"Do you mean me?  I have never been better, thank you,"
+Miss Noemie declared.  "But with MILORD"--and she gave a brilliant
+glance at her late companion--"how can one help being well?"
+She seated herself in the chair from which her father had risen,
+and began to arrange the little dog's rosette.
+
+Lord Deepmere carried off such embarrassment as might be incidental to this
+unexpected encounter with the inferior grace of a male and a Briton.
+He blushed a good deal, and greeted the object of his late momentary
+aspiration to rivalry in the favor of a person other than the mistress
+of the invalid pug with an awkward nod and a rapid ejaculation--
+an ejaculation to which Newman, who often found it hard to understand
+the speech of English people, was able to attach no meaning.
+Then the young man stood there, with his hand on his hip,
+and with a conscious grin, staring askance at Miss Noemie.
+Suddenly an idea seemed to strike him, and he said, turning to Newman,
+"Oh, you know her?"
+
+"Yes," said Newman, "I know her.  I don't believe you do."
+
+"Oh dear, yes, I do!" said Lord Deepmere, with another grin.
+"I knew her in Paris--by my poor cousin Bellegarde you know.
+He knew her, poor fellow, didn't he?  It was she you know,
+who was at the bottom of his affair.  Awfully sad, wasn't it?"
+continued the young man, talking off his embarrassment as his
+simple nature permitted.  "They got up some story about its
+being for the Pope; about the other man having said something
+against the Pope's morals.  They always do that, you know.
+They put it on the Pope because Bellegarde was once in the Zouaves.
+But it was about HER morals--SHE was the Pope!"
+Lord Deepmere pursued, directing an eye illumined by this
+pleasantry toward Mademoiselle Nioche, who was bending gracefully
+over her lap-dog, apparently absorbed in conversation with it.
+"I dare say you think it rather odd that I should--a-- keep up
+the acquaintance," the young man resumed.  "But she couldn't help it,
+you know, and Bellegarde was only my twentieth cousin.  I dare say
+you think it's rather cheeky, my showing with her in Hyde Park.
+But you see she isn't known yet, and she's in such very good form"--
+And Lord Deepmere's conclusion was lost in the attesting glance
+which he again directed toward the young lady.
+
+Newman turned away; he was having more of her than he relished.
+M. Nioche had stepped aside on his daughter's approach, and he stood there,
+within a very small compass, looking down hard at the ground.
+It had never yet, as between him and Newman, been so apposite
+to place on record the fact that he had not forgiven his daughter.
+As Newman was moving away he looked up and drew near to him,
+and Newman, seeing the old man had something particular to say,
+bent his head for an instant.
+
+"You will see it some day in the papers,"' murmured M. Nioche.
+
+Our hero departed to hide his smile, and to this day, though the newspapers
+form his principal reading, his eyes have not been arrested by any paragraph
+forming a sequel to this announcement.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+
+
+In that uninitiated observation of the great spectacle of English life
+upon which I have touched, it might be supposed that Newman passed
+a great many dull days.  But the dullness of his days pleased him;
+his melancholy, which was settling into a secondary stage,
+like a healing wound, had in it a certain acrid, palatable sweetness.
+He had company in his thoughts, and for the present he wanted no other.
+He had no desire to make acquaintances, and he left untouched a couple
+of notes of introduction which had been sent him by Tom Tristram.
+He thought a great deal of Madame de Cintre--sometimes with a dogged
+tranquillity which might have seemed, for a quarter of an hour
+at a time, a near neighbor to forgetfulness.  He lived over again
+the happiest hours he had known--that silver chain of numbered days
+in which his afternoon visits, tending sensibly to the ideal result,
+had subtilized his good humor to a sort of spiritual intoxication.
+He came back to reality, after such reveries, with a somewhat muffled shock;
+he had begun to feel the need of accepting the unchangeable.
+At other times the reality became an infamy again and the unchangeable
+an imposture, and he gave himself up to his angry restlessness till
+he was weary.  But on the whole he fell into a rather reflective mood.
+Without in the least intending it or knowing it, he attempted to read the
+moral of his strange misadventure.  He asked himself, in his quieter hours,
+whether perhaps, after all, he WAS more commercial than was pleasant.
+We know that it was in obedience to a strong reaction against
+questions exclusively commercial that he had come out to pick up
+aesthetic entertainment in Europe; it may therefore be understood
+that he was able to conceive that a man might be too commercial.
+He was very willing to grant it, but the concession, as to his
+own case, was not made with any very oppressive sense of shame.
+If he had been too commercial, he was ready to forget it, for in being
+so he had done no man any wrong that might not be as easily forgotten.
+He reflected with sober placidity that at least there were
+no monuments of his "meanness" scattered about the world.
+If there was any reason in the nature of things why his connection
+with business should have cast a shadow upon a connection--
+even a connection broken--with a woman justly proud, he was willing
+to sponge it out of his life forever.  The thing seemed a possibility;
+he could not feel it, doubtless, as keenly as some people, and it hardly
+seemed worth while to flap his wings very hard to rise to the idea;
+but he could feel it enough to make any sacrifice that still remained
+to be made.  As to what such sacrifice was now to be made to,
+here Newman stopped short before a blank wall over which there sometimes
+played a shadowy imagery.  He had a fancy of carrying out his life
+as he would have directed it if Madame de Cintre had been left to him--
+of making it a religion to do nothing that she would have disliked.
+In this, certainly, there was no sacrifice; but there was a pale,
+oblique ray of inspiration.  It would be lonely entertainment--a good deal
+like a man talking to himself in the mirror for want of better company.
+Yet the idea yielded Newman several half hours' dumb exaltation
+as he sat, with his hands in his pockets and his legs stretched,
+over the relics of an expensively poor dinner, in the undying
+English twilight.  If, however, his commercial imagination was dead,
+he felt no contempt for the surviving actualities begotten by it.
+He was glad he had been prosperous and had been a great man of
+business rather than a small one; he was extremely glad he was rich.
+He felt no impulse to sell all he had and give to the poor, or to retire
+into meditative economy and asceticism.  He was glad he was rich
+and tolerably young; it was possible to think too much about buying
+and selling, it was a gain to have a good slice of life left in which
+not to think about them.  Come, what should he think about now?
+Again and again Newman could think only of one thing; his thoughts
+always came back to it, and as they did so, with an emotional rush
+which seemed physically to express itself in a sudden upward choking,
+he leaned forward--the waiter having left the room--and, resting his
+arms on the table, buried his troubled face.
+
+He remained in England till midsummer, and spent a month in
+the country, wandering about cathedrals, castles, and ruins.
+Several times, taking a walk from his inn into meadows and parks,
+he stopped by a well-worn stile, looked across through the early
+evening at a gray church tower, with its dusky nimbus of
+thick-circling swallows, and remembered that this might have been
+part of the entertainment of his honeymoon.  He had never been
+so much alone or indulged so little in accidental dialogue.
+The period of recreation appointed by Mrs. Tristram had at
+last expired, and he asked himself what he should do now.
+Mrs. Tristram had written to him, proposing to him that he
+should join her in the Pyrenees; but he was not in the humor
+to return to France.  The simplest thing was to repair
+to Liverpool and embark on the first American steamer.
+Newman made his way to the great seaport and secured his berth;
+and the night before sailing he sat in his room at the hotel,
+staring down, vacantly and wearily, at an open portmanteau.
+A number of papers were lying upon it, which he had been meaning
+to look over; some of them might conveniently be destroyed.
+But at last he shuffled them roughly together, and pushed
+them into a corner of the valise; they were business papers,
+and he was in no humor for sifting them.  Then he drew
+forth his pocket-book and took out a paper of smaller
+size than those he had dismissed.  He did not unfold it;
+he simply sat looking at the back of it.  If he had momentarily
+entertained the idea of destroying it, the idea quickly expired.
+What the paper suggested was the feeling that lay in his innermost
+heart and that no reviving cheerfulness could long quench--
+the feeling that after all and above all he was a good
+fellow wronged.  With it came a hearty hope that the Bellegardes
+were enjoying their suspense as to what he would do yet.
+The more it was prolonged the more they would enjoy it!
+He had hung fire once, yes; perhaps, in his present queer
+state of mind, he might hang fire again.  But he restored
+the little paper to his pocket-book very tenderly, and felt
+better for thinking of the suspense of the Bellegardes.
+He felt better every time he thought of it after that,
+as he sailed the summer seas.  He landed in New York and
+journeyed across the continent to San Francisco, and nothing
+that he observed by the way contributed to mitigate his sense
+of being a good fellow wronged.
+
+He saw a great many other good fellows--his old friends--
+but he told none of them of the trick that had been played him.
+He said simply that the lady he was to have married had changed
+her mind, and when he was asked if he had changed his own,
+he said, "Suppose we change the subject."  He told his friends
+that he had brought home no "new ideas" from Europe, and his conduct
+probably struck them as an eloquent proof of failing invention.
+He took no interest in chatting about his affairs and manifested
+no desire to look over his accounts.  He asked half a dozen
+questions which, like those of an eminent physician inquiring
+for particular symptoms, showed that he still knew what he was
+talking about; but he made no comments and gave no directions.
+He not only puzzled the gentlemen on the stock exchange,
+but he was himself surprised at the extent of his indifference.
+As it seemed only to increase, he made an effort to combat it;
+he tried to interest himself and to take up his old occupations.
+But they appeared unreal to him; do what he would he somehow
+could not believe in them.  Sometimes he began to fear that there
+was something the matter with his head; that his brain, perhaps,
+had softened, and that the end of his strong activities had come.
+This idea came back to him with an exasperating force.  A hopeless,
+helpless loafer, useful to no one and detestable to himself--
+this was what the treachery of the Bellegardes had made of him.
+In his restless idleness he came back from San Francisco
+to New York, and sat for three days in the lobby of his hotel,
+looking out through a huge wall of plate-glass at the unceasing
+stream of pretty girls in Parisian-looking dresses, undulating past
+with little parcels nursed against their neat figures.
+At the end of three days he returned to San Francisco,
+and having arrived there he wished he had stayed away.
+He had nothing to do, his occupation was gone, and it seemed to him
+that he should never find it again.  He had nothing to do here,
+he sometimes said to himself; but there was something beyond
+the ocean that he was still to do; something that he had left
+undone experimentally and speculatively, to see if it could
+content itself to remain undone.  But it was not content:
+it kept pulling at his heartstrings and thumping at his reason;
+it murmured in his ears and hovered perpetually before his eyes.
+It interposed between all new resolutions and their fulfillment;
+it seemed like a stubborn ghost, dumbly entreating to be laid.
+Till that was done he should never be able to do anything else.
+
+One day, toward the end of the winter, after a long interval,
+he received a letter from Mrs. Tristram, who apparently was animated
+by a charitable desire to amuse and distract her correspondent.
+She gave him much Paris gossip, talked of General Packard and Miss
+Kitty Upjohn, enumerated the new plays at the theatre, and inclosed
+a note from her husband, who had gone down to spend a month at Nice.
+Then came her signature, and after this her postscript.
+The latter consisted of these few lines:  "I heard three days since
+from my friend, the Abbe Aubert, that Madame de Cintre last week took
+the veil at the Carmelites.  It was on her twenty-seventh birthday,
+and she took the name of her, patroness, St. Veronica.
+Sister Veronica has a life-time before her!"
+
+This letter came to Newman in the morning; in the evening he started
+for Paris.  His wound began to ache with its first fierceness,
+and during his long bleak journey the thought of Madame de
+Cintre's "life-time," passed within prison walls on whose
+outer side he might stand, kept him perpetual company.
+Now he would fix himself in Paris forever; he would extort
+a sort of happiness from the knowledge that if she was
+not there, at least the stony sepulchre that held her was.
+He descended, unannounced, upon Mrs. Bread, whom he found keeping
+lonely watch in his great empty saloons on the Boulevard Haussmann.
+They were as neat as a Dutch village, Mrs. Bread's only
+occupation had been removing individual dust-particles. She made
+no complaint, however, of her loneliness, for in her philosophy
+a servant was but a mysteriously projected machine, and it would
+be as fantastic for a housekeeper to comment upon a gentleman's
+absences as for a clock to remark upon not being wound up.
+No particular clock, Mrs. Bread supposed, went all the time,
+and no particular servant could enjoy all the sunshine diffused
+by the career of an exacting master.  She ventured, nevertheless,
+to express a modest hope that Newman meant to remain a while
+in Paris.  Newman laid his hand on hers and shook it gently.
+"I mean to remain forever," he said.
+
+He went after this to see Mrs. Tristram, to whom he had telegraphed,
+and who expected him.  She looked at him a moment and shook her head.
+"This won't do," she said; "you have come back too soon."  He sat down
+and asked about her husband and her children, tried even to inquire
+about Miss Dora Finch.  In the midst of this--"Do you know where she is?"
+he asked, abruptly.
+
+Mrs. Tristram hesitated a moment; of course he couldn't mean Miss Dora Finch.
+Then she answered, properly:  "She has gone to the other house--
+in the Rue d'Enfer." After Newman had sat a while longer looking
+very sombre, she went on:  "You are not so good a man as I thought.
+You are more--you are more--"
+
+"More what?"  Newman asked.
+
+"More unforgiving."
+
+"Good God!" cried Newman; "do you expect me to forgive?"
+
+"No, not that.  I have forgiven, so of course you can't. But you
+might forget!  You have a worse temper about it than I should have expected.
+You look wicked--you look dangerous."
+
+"I may be dangerous," he said; "but I am not wicked.  No, I am not wicked."
+And he got up to go.  Mrs. Tristram asked him to come back to dinner;
+but he answered that he did not feel like pledging himself to be present
+at an entertainment, even as a solitary guest.  Later in the evening,
+if he should be able, he would come.
+
+He walked away through the city, beside the Seine and over it,
+and took the direction of the Rue d'Enfer. The day had the
+softness of early spring; but the weather was gray and humid.
+Newman found himself in a part of Paris which he little knew--
+a region of convents and prisons, of streets bordered by long
+dead walls and traversed by a few wayfarers.  At the intersection
+of two of these streets stood the house of the Carmelites--a dull,
+plain edifice, with a high-shouldered blank wall all round it.
+From without Newman could see its upper windows, its steep
+roof and its chimneys.  But these things revealed no symptoms
+of human life; the place looked dumb, deaf, inanimate.
+The pale, dead, discolored wall stretched beneath it,
+far down the empty side street--a vista without a human figure.
+Newman stood there a long time; there were no passers;
+he was free to gaze his fill.  This seemed the goal of his journey;
+it was what he had come for.  It was a strange satisfaction,
+and yet it was a satisfaction; the barren stillness of the place
+seemed to be his own release from ineffectual longing.
+It told him that the woman within was lost beyond recall,
+and that the days and years of the future would pile themselves
+above her like the huge immovable slab of a tomb.  These days
+and years, in this place, would always be just so gray and silent.
+Suddenly, from the thought of their seeing him stand there,
+again the charm utterly departed.  He would never stand there again;
+it was gratuitous dreariness.  He turned away with a heavy heart,
+but with a heart lighter than the one he had brought.
+Everything was over, and he too at last could rest.
+He walked down through narrow, winding streets to the edge
+of the Seine again, and there he saw, close above him, the soft,
+vast towers of Notre Dame.  He crossed one of the bridges and
+stood a moment in the empty place before the great cathedral;
+then he went in beneath the grossly-imaged portals.
+He wandered some distance up the nave and sat down in the
+splendid dimness.  He sat a long time; he heard far-away bells
+chiming off, at long intervals, to the rest of the world.
+He was very tired; this was the best place he could be in.
+He said no prayers; he had no prayers to say.
+He had nothing to be thankful for, and he had nothing to ask;
+nothing to ask, because now he must take care of himself.
+But a great cathedral offers a very various hospitality,
+and Newman sat in his place, because while he was there
+he was out of the world.  The most unpleasant thing that had
+ever happened to him had reached its formal conclusion,
+as it were; he could close the book and put it away.
+He leaned his head for a long time on the chair in front of him;
+when he took it up he felt that he was himself again.
+Somewhere in his mind, a tight knot seemed to have loosened.
+He thought of the Bellegardes; he had almost forgotten them.
+He remembered them as people he had meant to do something to.
+He gave a groan as he remembered what he had meant to do;
+he was annoyed at having meant to do it; the bottom, suddenly,
+had fallen out of his revenge.  Whether it was Christian charity
+or unregenerate good nature--what it was, in the background
+of his soul--I don't pretend to say; but Newman's last
+thought was that of course he would let the Bellegardes go.
+If he had spoken it aloud he would have said that he didn't want
+to hurt them.  He was ashamed of having wanted to hurt them.
+They had hurt him, but such things were really not his game.
+At last he got up and came out of the darkening church;
+not with the elastic step of a man who had won a victory
+or taken a resolve, but strolling soberly, like a good-natured
+man who is still a little ashamed.
+
+Going home, he said to Mrs. Bread that he must trouble her to put back
+his things into the portmanteau she had unpacked the evening before.
+His gentle stewardess looked at him through eyes a trifle bedimmed.
+"Dear me, sir," she exclaimed, "I thought you said that you were going
+to stay forever."
+
+"I meant that I was going to stay away forever," said Newman kindly.
+And since his departure from Paris on the following day he has
+certainly not returned.  The gilded apartments I have so often spoken
+of stand ready to receive him; but they serve only as a spacious
+residence for Mrs. Bread, who wanders eternally from room to room,
+adjusting the tassels of the curtains, and keeps her wages,
+which are regularly brought her by a banker's clerk, in a great pink
+Sevres vase on the drawing-room mantel-shelf.
+
+Late in the evening Newman went to Mrs. Tristram's
+and found Tom Tristram by the domestic fireside.
+"I'm glad to see you back in Paris," this gentleman declared.
+"You know it's really the only place for a white man to live."
+Mr. Tristram made his friend welcome, according to his
+own rosy light, and offered him a convenient resume
+of the Franco-American gossip of the last six months.
+Then at last he got up and said he would go for half an hour
+to the club.  "I suppose a man who has been for six months
+in California wants a little intellectual conversation.
+I'll let my wife have a go at you."
+
+Newman shook hands heartily with his host, but did not ask him to remain;
+and then he relapsed into his place on the sofa, opposite to Mrs. Tristram.
+She presently asked him what he had done after leaving her.
+"Nothing particular," said Newman
+
+"You struck me," she rejoined, "as a man with a plot in his head.
+You looked as if you were bent on some sinister errand, and after you
+had left me I wondered whether I ought to have let you go."
+
+"I only went over to the other side of the river--
+to the Carmelites," said Newman.
+
+Mrs. Tristram looked at him a moment and smiled.  "What did you do there?
+Try to scale the wall?"
+
+"I did nothing.  I looked at the place for a few minutes and then came away."
+
+Mrs. Tristram gave him a sympathetic glance.  "You didn't happen to meet
+M. de Bellegarde," she asked, "staring hopelessly at the convent wall
+as well?  I am told he takes his sister's conduct very hard."
+
+"No, I didn't meet him, I am happy to say," Newman answered,
+after a pause.
+
+"They are in the country," Mrs. Tristram went on; "at--what is the name
+of the place?--Fleurieres.  They returned there at the time you
+left Paris and have been spending the year in extreme seclusion.
+The little marquise must enjoy it; I expect to hear that she has
+eloped with her daughter's music-master!"
+
+Newman was looking at the light wood-fire; but he listened to this with
+extreme interest.  At last he spoke:  "I mean never to mention the name
+of those people again, and I don't want to hear anything more about them."
+And then he took out his pocket-book and drew forth a scrap of paper.
+He looked at it an instant, then got up and stood by the fire.
+"I am going to burn them up," he said.  "I am glad to have you as a witness.
+There they go!"  And he tossed the paper into the flame.
+
+Mrs. Tristram sat with her embroidery needle suspended.
+"What is that paper?" she asked.
+
+Newman leaning against the fire-place, stretched his arms and drew a longer
+breath than usual.  Then after a moment, "I can tell you now," he said.
+"It was a paper containing a secret of the Bellegardes--something which would
+damn them if it were known."
+
+Mrs. Tristram dropped her embroidery with a reproachful moan.
+"Ah, why didn't you show it to me?"
+
+"I thought of showing it to you--I thought of showing it to every one.
+I thought of paying my debt to the Bellegardes that way.
+So I told them, and I frightened them.  They have been staying
+in the country as you tell me, to keep out of the explosion.
+But I have given it up."
+
+Mrs. Tristram began to take slow stitches again.
+"Have you quite given it up?"
+
+"Oh yes."
+
+"Is it very bad, this secret?"
+
+"Yes, very bad."
+
+"For myself," said Mrs. Tristram, "I am sorry you have given
+it up.  I should have liked immensely to see your paper.
+They have wronged me too, you know, as your sponsor
+and guarantee, and it would have served for my revenge as well.
+How did you come into possession of your secret?"
+
+"It's a long story.  But honestly, at any rate."
+
+"And they knew you were master of it?"
+
+"Oh, I told them."
+
+"Dear me, how interesting!" cried Mrs. Tristram.
+"And you humbled them at your feet?"
+
+Newman was silent a moment.  "No, not at all.  They pretended not to care--
+not to be afraid.  But I know they did care--they were afraid."
+
+"Are you very sure?"
+
+Newman stared a moment.  "Yes, I'm sure."
+
+Mrs. Tristram resumed her slow stitches.  "They defied you, eh?"
+
+"Yes," said Newman, "it was about that."
+
+"You tried by the threat of exposure to make them retract?"
+Mrs. Tristram pursued.
+
+"Yes, but they wouldn't. I gave them their choice, and they chose to take
+their chance of bluffing off the charge and convicting me of fraud.
+But they were frightened," Newman added, "and I have had all
+the vengeance I want."
+
+"It is most provoking," said Mrs. Tristram, "to hear you talk of
+the 'charge' when the charge is burnt up.  Is it quite consumed?"
+she asked, glancing at the fire.
+
+Newman assured her that there was nothing left of it.
+"Well then," she said, "I suppose there is no harm in saying
+that you probably did not make them so very uncomfortable.
+My impression would be that since, as you say, they defied you,
+it was because they believed that, after all, you would never
+really come to the point.  Their confidence, after counsel taken
+of each other, was not in their innocence, nor in their talent
+for bluffing things off; it was in your remarkable good nature!
+You see they were right."
+
+Newman instinctively turned to see if the little paper was in fact consumed;
+but there was nothing left of it.
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg edition of The American by Henry James
+
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