The American

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 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 their fixed positions irritate me. I feel as if I were at some big, dull party, in a room full of people I don’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 does n’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, hut 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 hacks 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 how which must have seemed to Mademoiselle Noémie quite in harmony with the impressiveness of his title, hut 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. “Nowit is more interesting. It tells a story. Is it for sale, mademoiselle? ”

“ 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 Niochc 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 hand 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 ou 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 ease, was simple good manners. M. Nioche at last took his daughter’s paint-box in one band 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 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 as 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 need n’t mind him.”

“ I verily believe that you are accusing the poor gentleman of being capable of rejoicing in his daughter’s dishonor.”

“ Voyonsd’ 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 responsibility, and he has sixty years of honesty on his back. All this I perfectly appreciate. But I know my fellowmen 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 Virginias 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. Nioclie 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 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, ho 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. Nioclie 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 a 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.

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 illumined 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 did n’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,” explained 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 Forabella,” 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 explained 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 every one 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 cried 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 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 toward 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 hare-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 could n’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 belong 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 miml 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 wanted 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, wc 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 marry 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 imaged 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 — dans les affaires 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 for abstract reasoning. Are you very sure that she replied to your striking proposition in the gracious manner you describe? You knowhow terribly incisive she is sometimes. Did n’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 should n’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 need n’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 farce 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, but he reflected 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 neckcloth, 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 an 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 did n’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,” 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 yon 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, could n’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 vie'die 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, whatever he might be of the others, for, really, she went very far indeed. “ Strong people ” — les 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? Yon 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 conversation to a series of impressive but inarticulate gutturals. She raised an antique eye-glass, 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 me 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 drawingroom. 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 the 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 ease 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 did n’t understand,” said Newman, “but I made out that. You will leave me an open field. I am much obliged.”

“ I wish to add a wrord 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 ; did n’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 much so; hut I would n’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. le Comte de la Rochefidfèle 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 tirst 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 certain 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 tightIt’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 did n’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! ”

Henry James, Jr.