The Princess Casamassima: Book Third

XXII.

HYACINTH got up early — an operation attended with very little effort, as he had scarcely closed his eyes all night. What he saw from his window made him dress as rapidly as a young man could do who desired more than ever that his appearance should not give strange ideas about him : an old garden, with parterres in curious figures, and little intervals of lawn which appeared to our hero’s cockney vision fantastically green. At one end of the garden was a parapet of mossy brick, which looked down, on the other side, into a canal, or moat, or quaint old pond ; and from the same standpoint there was also a view of a considerable part of the main body of the house (Hyacinth’s room appeared to be in a wing commanding the extensive irregular back), which was richly gray wherever it was not green with ivy and other dense creepers, and everywhere infinitely like a picture, with a high-piled, ancient, russet roof, broken by huge chimneys, and queer peep-holes, and all manner of odd gables and windows on different lines, and antique patches and protrusions, and a particularly fascinating architectural excrescence in which a wonderful clock-face was lodged — a clock-face covered with gilding and blazonry, but showing many traces of the years and the weather. Hyacinth had never in his life been in the country — the real country, as he called it, the country which was not the mere raveled fringe of London — and there entered through his open casement the breath of a world enchantingly new and, after his recent feverish hours, inexpressibly refreshing to him ; a sense of sweet, sunny air and mingled odors, all strangely pure and agreeable, and a kind of musical silence, the greater part of which seemed to consist of the voices of birds. There were tall, quiet trees near by, and afar off, and everywhere ; and the group of objects which greeted Hyacinth’s eyes evidently formed only a corner of larger spaces and a more complicated scene. There was a world to be revealed to him : it lay waiting, with the dew upon it, under his windows, and he must go down and take his first steps in it.

The night before, at ten o’clock, when he arrived, he had only got the impression of a mile-long stretch of park, after turning in at a gate ; of the cracking of gravel under the wheels of the fly; and of the glow of several windows, suggesting in-door cheer, in a faÇade that lifted a variety of vague pinnacles into the starlight. It was a good deal of relief to him, then, to be informed that the Princess, in consideration of the lateness of the hour, begged to be excused till the morrow; the delay would give him time to recover his balance and look about him. This latter opportunity was offered him first as he sat at supper in a vast dining-room, with the butler, whose acquaintance he had made in South Street, behind his chair. He had not exactly wondered how he would be treated — there was too much vagueness in his conception of the way in which, at a country-house, insidious distinctions might be made and shades of importance illustrated; but it was plain that the best had been ordered for him. He was, at all events, abundantly content with his reception, and more and more excited by it. The repast was delicate (though his other senses were so awake that hunger dropped out, and he ate, as it were, without eating), and the grave, mechanical servant filled his glass with a liquor that reminded him of some lines in Keats — in the Ode to a Nightingale. He wondered whether he should hear a nightingale at Medley (he knew nothing about the seasons of this vocalist), and also whether the butler would attempt to talk to him, had ideas about him, knew or suspected who he was and what ; which, after all, there was no reason for his doing, unless it might be the poverty of the luggage that had been transported from Lomax Place. Mr. Withers, however (it was in this manner that Hyacinth heard him addressed by the cabman who conveyed the visitor from the station), gave no further symptom of sociability than to ask him at what time he would be called in the morning; to which our young man replied that he preferred not to be called at all — he would get up by himself. The butler rejoined, “ Very good, sir,” while Hyacinth thought it probable that he puzzled him a good deal, and even considered the question of giving him a glimpse of his identity, lest it should be revealed, later, in a manner less graceful. The object of this anticipatory step, in Hyacinth’s mind, was that he should not be oppressed and embarrassed with attentions to which he was unused; but the idea came to nothing, for the simple reason that before he spoke he found that he already was inured to being waited upon. His impulse to deprecate attentions departed, and he became conscious that there were none he should care to miss, or was not quite prepared for. He knew he probably thanked Mr. Withers too much ; but he could n’t help this — it was an irrepressible tendency and an error he should doubtless always commit.

He lay in a bed constituted in a manner so perfect to insure rest that it was probably responsible in some degree for his restlessness, and in a large, high room, where long dressing-glasses emitted ghostly glances even after the light was extinguished. Suspended on the walls were many prints, mezzotints and old engravings, which Hyacinth supposed, possibly without reason, to be fine and rare, He got up several times in the night, lighted his candle, and walked about, looking at them. He looked at himself in one of the long glasses, and in a place where everything was on such a scale it seemed to him more than ever that Mademoiselle Vivier’s son was a tiny particle. As he came down-stairs he encountered housemaids, with dusters and brooms, or perceived them, through open doors, on their knees before fireplaces; and it was his belief that they regarded him more boldly than if he had been a guest of the usual kind. Such a reflection as that, however, ceased to trouble him after he had passed out-of-doors and begun to roam through the park, into which he let himself loose at first, and then, in narrowing circles, through the nearer grounds. He rambled for an hour, in a state of simple ecstasy; brushing the dew from the deep fern and bracken and the rich borders of the garden, tasting the fragrant air, and stopping everywhere, in murmuring rapture, at the touch of some exquisite impression. His whole walk was peopled with recognitions ; he had been dreaming, all his life, of just such a place and such objects, such a morning and such a chance. It was the last of April, and everything was fresh and vivid ; the great trees, in the early air, were a blur of tender shoots. Round the admirable house he revolved repeatedly ; catching every point and tone, feasting on its expression, and wondering whether the Princess would observe his proceedings from the window, and whether, if she did, they would be offensive to her. The house was not hers, but only hired for three months, and it could flatter no princely pride that he should be struck with it. There was something in the way the gray walls rose from the green lawn that brought tears to his eyes : the spectacle of long duration unassociated with some sordid infirmity or poverty was new to him; he had lived with people among whom old age meant, for the most part, a grudged and degraded survival. In the majestic preservation of Medley there was a kind of serenity of success, an accumulation of dignity and honor.

A footman sought him out, in the garden, to tell him that breakfast was ready. He had never thought of breakfast, and as he walked back to the house, attended by the inscrutable flunkey, this offer appeared a free, extravagant gift, unexpected and romantic, He found he was to breakfast alone, and he asked no question ; but when he had finished the butler came in and informed him that the Princess would see him after luncheon, but that in the meanwhile she wished him to understand that the library was entirely at his service. “After luncheon” — that threw the hour he had come for very far into the future, and it caused him some confusion of mind that the Princess should think it worth while to invite him to stay at her house from Saturday evening to Monday morning, if it had been her purpose that so much of his visit should elapse without their meeting. But he felt neither slighted nor impatient ; the impressions that had already crowded upon him were in themselves a sufficient reward, and what could one do better, precisely, in such a house as that than wait for a princess ? The butler showed him the way to the library, and left him planted in the middle of it, staring at the treasures that he instantly perceived it contained. It was an old brown room, of great extent — even the ceiling was brown, though there were figures in it dimly gilt — where row upon row of finely-lettered backs looked down on the discerning youth whose trade was the handling of books, challenging him in every direction. A fire of logs crackled in a great chimney, and there were alcoves with deep window-seats ; and arm-chairs such as he had never seen, luxurious, leathercovered, with an adjustment for holding one’s volume ; and a vast writing-table, before one of the windows, furnished with a perfect magazine of paper and pens, inkstands and blotters, seals, stamps, candlesticks, reels of twine, paper-weights, and book-knives. Hyacinth had never imagined so many aids to correspondence, and before he turned away he had written a note to Millicent, in a hand even more beautiful than usual—his penmanship was very minute, but at the same time wonderfully free and fair — largely for the pleasure of seeing “ Medley Hall ” stamped in crimson, heraldiclooking characters at the top of his paper. In the course of an hour he had ravaged the collection, taken down almost every book, wishing he could keep it a week, and put it back quickly, as his eye caught the next, which appeared even more desirable. He discovered many rare bindings, and gathered several ideas from an inspection of them — ideas which he felt himself perfectly capable of reproducing. Altogether, his vision of true happiness, at that moment, was that, fora month or two, he should be locked into the library at Medley, He forgot the outer world, and the morning waned — the beautiful vernal Sunday — while he lingered there.

He was on the top of a ladder when he heard a voice remark, " I am afraid they are very dusty; in this house, you know, it is the dust of centuries ; ” and, looking down, he saw Madame Grandoni stationed in the middle of the room. He instantly prepared to descend, to make her his salutation, when she exclaimed, “ Stay, stay, if you are not giddy ; we can talk from here! I only came in to show you we are in the house, and to tell you to keep up your patience. The Princess will probably see you in a few hours.”

“ I really hope so,” said Hyacinth, from his perch, rather dismayed at the “ probably.”

“ Natürlich,” the old lady rejoined : “ but people have come, sometimes, and gone away without seeing her. It all depends upon her mood.”

“ Do you mean even when she has sent for them ? ”

“ Oh, who can tell whether she has sent for them or not ? ”

“ But she sent for me, you know,” Hyacinth declared, staring down, and struck with the odd effect of Madame Grandoni’s wig in that bird’s-eye view.

“ Oh yes, she sent for you, poor young man ! ” The old lady returned his gaze, with a smile, and they remained a moment exchanging a silent scrutiny. Then she added, “ Captain Sholto has come, like that, more than once ; and he has gone away no better off.”

“ Captain Sholto ? ” Hyacinth repeated.

“ Very true, if we talk at this distance, I must shut the door.” She took her way back to it (she had left it open), and pushed it to ; then advanced into the room again, with her superannuated, shuffling step, walking as if her shoes were too big for her. Hyacinth meanwhile descended the ladder. “ Ecco. She ’s a capricciosa,”said the old lady.

“ I don’t understand how you speak of her,” Hyacinth remarked, gravely. “ You seem to be her friend, yet you say things that are not favorable to her.”

“ Dear young man, I say much worse to her about herself than I should ever say to you. I am rude, oh yes — even to you, to whom, no doubt, I ought to be particularly kind. But I am not false. It is not our German nature. You will hear me some day. I am the friend of the Princess ; it would be well enough if she never had a worse one! But I should like to be yours, too — what will you have ? Perhaps it is of no use. At any rate, here you are.”

“ Yes, here I am, decidedly ! ” Hyacinth laughed, uneasily.

“ And how long shall you stay ? Excuse me if I ask that; it is part of my rudeness.”

“ I shall stay till to-morrow morning. I must be at my work by noon.”

“ That will do very well. Don’t you remember, the other time, how I told you to remain faithful ? ”

“ That was very good advice. But I think you exaggerate my danger.”

“ So much the better,” said Madame Grandoni; “ though now that I look at you well I doubt it a little. I see you are one of those types that ladies like. I can be sure of that, because I like you myself. At my age — a hundred and twenty — can I not say that ? If the Princess were to do so, it would be different; remember that—that any flattery she may ever offer you will be on her lips much less discreet. But perhaps she will never have the chance ; you may never come again. There are people who have come only once. Vedremo bene. I must tell you that I am not in the least against a young man taking a holiday, a little quiet recreation, once in a while,” Madame Grandoni continued, in her disconnected, discursive, confidential way. “ In Rome they take it every five days; that is, no doubt, too often. In Germany, less often. In this country, I cannot understand whether it is an increase of effort: the English Sunday is so difficult! This one will, however, in any case, have been beautiful for you. Be happy, make yourself comfortable ; but go home to-morrow ! ” And with this injunction Madame Grandoni took her way again to the door, while Haycinth went to open it for her. “ I can say that, because it is not my house. I am only here like you. And sometimes I think I also shall go to-morrow ! ”

“ I imagine you have not, like me, your living to get, every day. That is reason enough for me,” said Hyacinth.

She paused in the doorway, with her expressive, ugly, kindly little eyes on his face. “ I believe I am nearly as poor as you. And I have not, like you, the appearance of nobility. Yet I am noble,” said the old lady, shaking her wig.

And I am not! ” Hyacinth rejoined, smiling.

“ It is better not to be lifted up high, like our friend. It does not give happiness.”

“ Not to one’s self, possibly ; but to others ! ” From where they stood, Hyacinth looked out into the great paneled and decorated hall, lighted from above and roofed with a far-away dim fresco, and the reflection of this grandeur came into his appreciative eyes.

“ Do you admire everything here very much — do you receive great pleasure ? ” asked Madame Grandoni.

“ Oh, so much — so much !”

She considered him a moment longer “ Poverino ! ” she murmured, as she turned away.

A couple of hours later the Princess sent for Hyacinth, and he was conducted up-stairs, through corridors carpeted with crimson and hung with pictures, and ushered into a kind of bright drawingroom, which he afterwards learned that his hostess regarded as her boudoir. The sound of music had come to him outside the door, so that he was prepared to find her seated at the piano, if not to see her continue to play after he appeared. Her face was turned in the direction from which he entered, and she smiled at him while the servant, as if he had just arrived, formally pronounced his name, without lifting her hands from the keys. The room, placed in an angle of the house and lighted from two sides, was large and sunny, upholstered in fresh, gay chintz, furnished with all sorts of sofas and low, familiar seats and convenient little tables, most of them holding great bowls of early flowers, littered over with books, newspapers, magazines, photographs of celebrities and other people, and full of the signs of luxurious and rather indolent habitation. Hyacinth stood there, not advancing very far, and the Princess, still playing and smiling, nodded toward a seat near the piano. “ Put yourself there and listen to me.” Hyacinth obeyed, and she played a long time, without glancing at him. This left him the more free to rest his eyes on her own face and person, while she looked about the room, vaguely, absently, but with an expression of quiet happiness, as if she were lost in her music, soothed and pacified by it. A window near her was half open, and the soft clearness of the day and all the odor of the spring diffused themselves, and made the place cheerful and pure. The Princess struck him as extraordinarily young and fair, and she seemed so slim and simple, and friendly too, in spite of having neither abandoned her occupation nor offered him her hand, that he sank back in his seat at last, with the sense that all his uneasiness, his nervous tension, was leaving him, and that he was safe in her kindness, in the free, original way with which she evidently would always treat him. This peculiar manner, half of ceremony, half of fellowship, seemed to him already to have the sweetness of familiarity. She played ever so movingly, with different pieces succeeding each other; he had never listened to music, nor to a talent, of that order. Two or three times she turned her eyes upon him, and then they shone with the wonderful expression that was the essence of her beauty ; that profuse, mingled light which seemed to belong to some everlasting summer, and yet to suggest seasons that were past and gone, some experience that was only an exquisite memory. She asked him if he cared for music, and then added, laughing, that she ought to have made sure of this before; while he answered (he had already told her so in South Street; she appeared to have forgotten this) that he was awfully fond of it.

The sense of the beauty of women had been given to our young man in a high degree; it was a faculty that made him conscious, to adoration, of every element of loveliness, every delicacy of feature, every shade and tone, that contributed to charm. Even, therefore, if he had appreciated less the deep harmonies the Princess drew from the piano, there would have been no lack of interest in his situation, in such an opportunity to watch her admirable outline and movement, the noble form of her head and face, the gathered-up glories of her hair, the living, flowerlike freshness which had no need to turn from the light. She was dressed in light colors, as simply as a young girl. Before she ceased playing she asked Hyacinth what he would like to do in the afternoon : would he have any objection to taking a drive with her ? It was very possible he might enjoy the country. She seemed not to attend to his answer, which was covered by the sound of the piano ; but if she had done so it would have left her very little doubt as to the reality of his inclination. She remained gazing at the cornice of the room, while her hands wandered to and fro ; then, suddenly, she stopped, got up, and came toward her companion. “ It is probable that is the most I shall ever bore you; you know the worst. Would you very kindly close the piano ? ” He complied with her request, and she went to another part of the room and sank into an arm-chair. When he approached her again she said, “ Is it really true that you have never seen a park, nor a garden, nor any of the beauties of nature, and that sort of thing ? ” She was alluding to something he had said in his letter, when he answered the note by which she proposed to him to run down to Medley ; and after he assured her that it was perfectly true, she exclaimed, “ I’m so glad — I ’m so glad ! I have never been able to show any one anything new, and I have always thought I should like it so — especially to a sensitive nature. Then you will come and drive with me? ” She asked this as if it would be a great favor.

That was the beginning of the communion — so singular, considering their respective positions —which he had come to Medley to enjoy; and it passed into some very remarkable phases. The Princess had the most extraordinary way of taking things for granted, of ignoring difficulties, of assuming that her preferences might be translated into fact. After Hyacinth had remained with her ten minutes longer—a period mainly occupied with her exclamations of delight at his having seen so little of the sort of thing of which Medley consisted (Where should he have seen it, gracious heaven ? he asked himself) ; after she had rested, thus briefly, from her exertions at the piano, she proposed that they should go out-of-doors together. She was an immense walker — she wanted her walk. She left him for a short time, giving him the last number of the Revue des Deux Mondes to entertain himself withal, and calling his attention, in particular, to a story of M. Octave Feuillet (she should be so curious to know what he thought of it) ; and reappeared with her hat and parasol, drawing on her long gloves, and presenting herself to our young man, at that moment, as a sudden incarnation of the heroine of M. Feuillet’s novel, in which he had instantly become immersed. On their way down-stairs it occurred to her that he had not yet seen the house, and that it would be amusing for her to show it to him ; so she turned aside and took him through it, up and down and everywhere, even into the vast, old-fashioned kitchen, where there was a small, red-faced man in a white jacket and apron and a white cap (he removed the latter ornament to salute the little bookbinder), with whom his companion spoke Italian, which Hyacinth understood sufficiently to perceive that she addressed her cook in the second person singular, as if he had been a feudal retainer. He remembered that was the way the three Musketeers spoke to their lackeys. The Princess explained that the gentleman in the white cap was a delightful creature (she could n’t endure English servants, though she was obliged to have two or three), who would make her plenty of risottos and polentas — she had quite the palate of a contadina. She showed Hyacinth everything : the queer transmogrified corner that had once been a chapel; the secret stairway which had served in the persecutions of the Catholics (the owners of Medley were, like the Princess herself, of the old persuasion) ; the musicians’ gallery, over the hall; the tapestried room, which people came from a distance to see ; and the haunted chamber (the two were sometimes confounded, but they were quite distinct), where a dreadful individual at certain times made his appearance — a dwarfish ghost, with an enormous head, a dispossessed brother, of long ago (the eldest), who had passed for an idiot, which he was n’t, and had somehow been made away with. The Princess offered her visitor the privilege of sleeping in this apartment, declaring, however, that nothing would induce her even to enter it alone, she being a benighted creature, consumed with abject superstitions. “ I don’t know whether I am religious, and whether, if I were, my religion would be superstitious. But my superstitions are certainly religious.” She made her young friend pass through the drawing-room very cursorily, remarking that they should see it again : it was rather stupid — drawing - rooms in English countryhouses were always stupid ; indeed, if it would amuse him, they would sit there after dinner. Madame Grandoni and she usually sat up-stairs, but they would do anything that he should find more comfortable.

At last they went out of the house together, and as they did so she explained, as if she wished to justify herself against the imputation of extravagance, that, though the place doubtless struck him as absurdly large for a couple of quiet women, and the whole thing was not in the least what she would have preferred, yet it was all far cheaper than he probably imagined; she would never have looked at it if it had n’t been cheap. It must appear to him so preposterous for a woman to associate herself with the great uprising of the poor, and yet live in palatial halls — a place with forty or fifty rooms. This was one of only two allusions she made that day to her democratic sympathies ; but it fell very happily, for Hyacinth had been reflecting precisely upon the anomaly she mentioned. It had been present to him all day ; it added much to the way life practiced on his sense of the tragic-comical to think of the Princess’s having retired to that magnificent residence in order to concentrate her mind upon the London slums. He listened, therefore, with great attention while she related that she had taken the house for only three months, in any case, because she wanted to rest, after a winter of visiting and living in public (as the English spent their lives, with all their celebrated worship of the “ home ”), and yet did n’t wish as yet to return to town —though she was obliged to confess that she had still the place in South Street on her hands, thanks to her deciding, unexpectedly, to go on with it, rather than move out her things. But one had to keep one’s things somewhere, and why was n’t that as good a receptacle as another? Medley was not what she would have chosen if she had been left to herself: but she had not been left to herself — she never was ; she had been bullied into taking it by the owners, whom she had met somewhere, and who had made up to her immensely, persuading her that she might really have it for nothing — for no more than she would give for the little honeysuckle cottage, the old parsonage embowered in clematis, which were really what she had been looking for. Besides, it was one of those old musty mansions, ever so far from town, which it was always difficult to let, or to get a price for ; and then it was a wretched house for living in. Hyacinth, for whom his three hours in the train had been a series of happy throbs, had not been struck with its geographical remoteness, and he asked the Princess what she meant, in such a connection, by using the word “ wretched.” To this she replied that the place was tumbling to pieces, inconvenient in every respect, full of ghosts and bad smells. " That is the only reason I come to have it. I don’t want you to think me more luxurious than I am, or that I throw away money. Never, never ! ” Hyacinth had no standard by which he could measure the importance his opinion would have for her, and he perceived that though she judged him as a creature still open to every initiation, whose naïveté would entertain her, it was also her fancy to treat him as an old friend, a person to whom she might have had the habit of referring her difficulties. Her performance of the part she had undertaken to play was certainly complete, and everything lay before him but the reason she had for playing it.

One of the gardens at Medley took the young man’s heart beyond the others : it had high brick walls, on the sunny sides of which was a great training of apricots and plums, and straight walks, bordered with old - fashioned, homely flowers, inclosing immense squares where other fruit-trees stood upright and mint and lavender floated in the air. In the southern quarter it overhung a small, disused canal, and here a high embankment had been raised, which was also long and broad and covered with fine turf; so that the top of it, looking down at the canal, made a magnificent grassy terrace, than which, on a summer’s day, there could be no more delightful place for strolling up and down with a companion — all the more that, at either end, was a curious pavilion, in the manner of a tea-house, which completed the scene in an oldworld sense, and offered rest and privacy, a refuge from sun or shower. One of these pavilions was an asylum for gardener’s tools and superfluous flowerpots ; the other was covered, inside, with a queer Chinese paper, representing ever so many times over a group of people, with faces like blind kittens, having tea while they sat on the floor. It also contained a big, clumsy inlaid cabinet, in which cups and saucers showed themselves through doors of greenish glass, together with a carved cocoanut and a pair of outlandish idols. On a shelf, over a sofa, not very comfortable, though it had cushions of faded tapestry, which looked like samplers, was a row of novels, out of date and out of print — novels that one could n’t have found any more, and that were only there. On the chimney-piece was a bowl of dried rose-leaves, mixed with some aromatic spice, and the whole place suggested a certain dampness.

On the terrace Hyacinth paced to and fro with the Princess, until she suddenly remembered that he had not had his luncheon. He protested that this was the last thing he wished to think of, but she declared that she had not asked him down to Medley to starve him, and that he must go back and be fed. They went back, but by a very roundabout way, through the park, so that they really had half an hour’s more talk. She explained to him that she herself breakfasted at twelve o’clock, in the foreign fashion, and had tea in the afternoon; as he too was so foreign, he might like that better, and in this case, on the morrow, they would breakfast together. He could have coffee, and anything else he wanted, brought to his room when he woke up. When Hyacinth had sufficiently composed himself, in the presence of this latter image — he thought he saw a footman arranging a silver service at his bedside — he mentioned that really, as regarded the morrow, he should have to be back in London. There was a train at nine o’clock; he hoped she did n’t mind his taking it. She looked at him a moment, gravely and kindly, as if she were considering an abstract idea, and then she said, “ Oh, yes, I mind it very much. Not to-morrow — some other day.” He made no rejoinder, and the Princess spoke of something else ; that is, his rejoinder was private, and consisted of the reflection that he would leave Medley in the morning, whatever she might say. He simply could n’t afford to stay ; he could n’t be out of work. And then Madame Grandoni thought it so important ; for though the old lady was obscure, she was decidedly impressive. The Princess’s protest, however, was to be reckoned with ; he felt that it might take a form less cursory than the words she had just uttered, which would make it embarrassing. She was less solemn, less explicit, than Madame Grandoni had been, but there was something in her slight seriousness and the delicate way in which she signified a sort of command that seemed to tell him his liberty was going — the liberty he had managed to keep (till the other day, when he gave Hoffendahl a mortgage on it), and the possession of which had in some degree consoled him for other forms of penury. This made him uneasy; what would become of him if he should add another servitude to the one he had undertaken, at the end of that long, anxious cab-drive in the rain, in that dim back bedroom of a house as to whose whereabouts he was even now not clear, while Muniment and Poupin and Schinkel, all visibly pale, listened and accepted the vow ? Muniment and Poupin and Schinkel — how disconnected, all the same, he felt from them at the present hour; how little he was the young man who had made the pilgrimage in the cab ; and how the two latter, at least, if they could have a glimpse of him now, would wonder what he was up to!

As to this, Hyacinth wondered sufficiently himself, while the Princess touched upon the people and places she had seen, the impressions and conclusions she had gathered, since their former meeting. It was to such matters as these that she directed the conversation ; she appeared to wish to keep it off his own concerns, and he was surprised at her continued avoidance of the slums and the question of her intended sacrifices. She mentioned none of her friends by name, but she talked of their character, their houses, their manners, taking for granted, as before, that Hyacinth would always follow. So far as he followed he was edified, but he had to admit to himself that half the time he did n’t know what she was talking about. At all events, if he had been with the dukes (she did n’t call her associates dukes, but Hyacinth was sure they were of that order), he would have got more satisfaction from them. She appeared, on the whole, to judge the English world severely; to think poorly of its wit, and even worse of its morals. " You know people ought n’t to be both corrupt and dull,” she said ; and Hyacinth turned this over, feeling that he certainly had not yet caught the point of view of a person for whom the aristocracy was a collection of bores. He had sometimes taken great pleasure in hearing that it was fabulously profligate, but be was rather disappointed in the bad account the Princess gave of it. She remarked that she herself was very corrupt — she ought to have mentioned that before — but she had never been accused of being stupid. Perhaps he would discover it, but most of the people she had had to do with thought her only too lively. The second allusion that she made to their ulterior designs (Hyacinth’s and hers) was when she said, " I determined to see it ” — she was speaking still of English society — “ to learn for myself what it really is, before we blow it up. I have been here now a year and a half, and, as I tell you, I feel that I have seen. It is the old régime again, the rottenness and extravagance, bristling with every iniquity and every abuse, over which the French Revolution passed like a whirlwind ; or, perhaps, even more a reproduction of Roman society in its décadence, gouty, apoplectic, depraved, gorged, and clogged with wealth and spoils, selfishness and skepticism, and waiting for the onset of the barbarians. You and I are the barbarians, you know.” The Princess was pretty general, after all, in her animadversions, and regaled him with no anecdotes (he rather missed them) that would have betrayed the hospitality she had enjoyed. She could n’t treat him absolutely as if he had been an ambassador. By way of defending the aristocracy, he said to her that it could n’t be true they were all a bad lot (he used that expression because she had let him know that she liked him to speak in the manner of the people), inasmuch as he had an acquaintance among them — a noble lady — who was one of the purest, kindest, most conscientious human beings it was possible to imagine. At this she stopped short and looked at him; then she asked, “ Whom do you mean — a noble lady ? ”

“ I suppose there is no harm saying. Lady Aurora Langrish.”

“ I don’t know her. Is she nice ? ”

“ I like her ever so much.”

“ Is she pretty, clever ? ”

“ She is n’t pretty, but she is very uncommon,” said Hyacinth.

How did you make her acquaintance?” As he hesitated, she went on: " Did you bind some books for her ? ”

“ No. I met her in a place called Audley Court.”

“ Where is that ? ”

“ In South Lambeth.”

“ And who lives there ? ”

“ A young woman I was calling on, who is bedridden.”

“ And the lady you speak of — what do you call her ? Lydia Langrish ? — goes to see her ? ”

“Yes, very often.”

The Princess was silent a moment, looking at him. “ Will you take me there ?”

“ With great pleasure. The young woman I speak of is the sister of the chemist’s assistant you will perhaps remember that I mentioned to you.”

“ Yes, I remember. It must be one of the first places we go to. I am sorry,” the Princess added, walking on. Hyacinth inquired what she might be sorry for, but she took no notice of his question, and presently remarked, “ Perhaps she goes to see him.”

“ Goes to see whom ? ”

“ The chemist’s assistant — the brother.” She said this very seriously.

“ Perhaps she does,” Hyacinth rejoined. laughing. “ But she is a fine sort of woman.”

The Princess repeated that she was sorry, and he again asked her for what — for Lady Aurora’s being of that sort? To which she replied, " No ; I mean for my not being the first — what is it you call them ? — noble lady that you have encountered.”

“ I don’t see what difference that makes. You need n’t be afraid you don’t make an impression on me.”

“ I was not thinking of that. I was thinking that you might be less fresh than I thought.”

“ Of course I don’t know what you thought,” said Hyacinth, smiling.

“ No ; how should you ? ”

XXIII.

He was in the library, after luncheon, when word was brought to him that the carriage was at the door, for their drive ; and when he went into the ball he found Madame Grandoni, bonneted and cloaked, awaiting the descent of the Princess. " You see I go with you. I am always there,” she remarked, jovially. “ The Princess has me with her to take care of her, and this is how I do it. Besides, I never miss my drive.”

“ You are different from me; this will be the first I have ever had in my life.” He could establish that distinction without bitterness, because he was too pleased with his prospect to believe the old lady’s presence could spoil it. He had nothing to say to the Princess that she might not hear. He didn’t dislike her for coming, even after she had said to him, in answer to his own announcement, speaking rather more sententiously than was her wont, “It does n’t surprise me that you have not spent your life in carriages. They have nothing to do with your trade.”

“ Fortunately not,” he answered. “ I should have made a ridiculous coachman.”

The Princess appeared, and they mounted into a great square barouche, an old-fashioned, high-hung vehicle, with a green body, a faded hammer-cloth, and a rumble where the footman sat (the Princess mentioned that it had been let with the house), which rofed, ponderously and smoothly, along the winding avenue and through the gilded gates (they were surmounted with an immense escutcheon) of the park. The progress of this oddly composed trio had a high respectability, and that is one of the reasons why Hyacinth felt the occasion to be tremendously memorable. There might still be greater joys in store for him — he was by this time quite at sea, and could recognize no shores — but he would never again in his life be so respectable. The drive was long and comprehensive, but very little was said while it lasted. " I shall show you the whole country: it is exquisitely beautiful ; it speaks to the heart.” Of so much as this his hostess had informed him at the start; and she added, in French, with a light, allusive nod at the rich, harmonized landscape, “ Voilà ce que j’aime en Angleterre.” For the rest, she sat there opposite to him in quiet fairness under her softly-swaying, lace-fringed parasol: moving her eyes to where she noticed that his eyes rested; allowing them, when the carriage passed anything particularly charming, to meet his own; smiling as if she enjoyed the whole affair very nearly as much as he ; and now and then calling his attention to some prospect, some picturesque detail, by three words of which the cadence was sociable. Madame Grandoni dozed most of the time, with her chin resting on a rather mangy ermine tippet, in which she had enveloped herself, expanding into consciousness at moments, however, to greet the scenery with comfortable polyglot ejaculations. If Hyacinth was exalted, during these delightful hours, he at least measured his exaltation, and it kept him almost solemnly still, as if with the fear that a wrong movement of any sort would break the charm, cause the curtain to fall upon the play. This was especially the case when his senses oscillated back from the objects that sprang up by the way, every one of which was a rich image of something he had longed for, to the most beautiful woman in England, who sat there, close to him, as completely for his benefit as if he had been a painter engaged to make her portrait. More than once he saw everything through a mist; his eyes were full of tears.

That evening they sat in the drawingroom after dinner, as the Princess had promised, or, as he was inclined to consider it, threatened him. The force of the threat was in his prevision that the ladies would make themselves fine, and that in contrast with the setting and company he should feel dingier than ever; having already on his back the only tolerably decent coat he possessed, and being unable to exchange it for a garment of the pattern that civilized people (so much he knew, if he could n’t emulate them) put on about eight o’clock. The ladies, when they came to dinner, looked festal indeed; but Hyacinth was able to make the reflection that he was more pleased to be dressed as he was dressed, meanly and unsuitably as it was, than he should have been to present such a figure as Madame Grandoni, in whose toggery there was something comical. He was coming more and more round to the sense that if the Princess did n’t mind his poorness, in every way, he had no call to mind it himself. His present circumstances were not of his seeking — they had been forced upon him ; they were not the fruit of a disposition to push. How little the Princess minded — how much, indeed, she enjoyed the consciousness that in having him about her in that manner she was playing a trick upon society, the false and conventional society she had measured and despised— was manifest from the way she had introduced him to the people they found awaiting them in the hall on the return from their drive: four ladies, a mother and three daughters, who had come over to call, from Broome, a place some five miles off. Broome was also a great house, as he gathered, and Lady Marchant, the mother, was the wife of a county magnate. She explained that they had come in on the persuasion of the butler, who had represented the return of the Princess as imminent, and who then had administered tea without waiting for this event. The evening had drawn in chill ; there was a fire in the hall, and they all sat near it, round the tea-table, under the great roof which rose to the top of the house. Hyacinth conversed mainly with one of the daughters, a very fine girl, with a straight back and long arms, whose neck was encircled so tightly with a fur boa that, to look a little to one side, she was obliged to move her whole body. She had a handsome, inanimate face, over which the firelight played without making it more lively, a beautiful voice, and the occasional command of a few words. She asked Hyacinth if he had been hunting, and whether he went in much for croquet, and she ate three muffins.

Our young man perceived that Lady Merchant and her daughters had already been at Medley, and even guessed that their reception by the Princess, who probably thought them of a tiresome type, had not been enthusiastic; and his imagination projected itself, further still, into the motives which, in spite of this tepidity, must have led them, in consideration of the rarity of princesses in that country, to come a second time. The talk, in the firelight, while Hyacinth labored, rather recklessly (for the spirit of the occasion, on his hostess’s part, was passing into his own blood), with his muffin-eating beauty — the conversation, accompanied with the light click of delicate tea-cups, was as well-bred as could be consistent with an odd, evident parti-pris of the Princess’s to make poor Lady Marchant explain everything. With great urbanity of manner, she professed complete inability to understand the sense in which her visitor meant her thin remarks; and Hyacinth was scarcely able to follow her here, he wondered so what interest she could have in trying to appear dense. It was only afterwards he learned that the Marchant family produced a very peculiar, and at moments almost maddening, effect upon her nerves. He asked himself what would happen to that member of it with whom he was engaged if it should be revealed to her that she was conversing (how little soever) with a beggarly London artisan ; and though he was rather pleased at her not having discovered his station (for he did n’t attribute her shortness to this idea)., he entertained a little the question of its being perhaps his duty not to keep it hidden from her, not to flourish in a cowardly disguise. What did she take him for — or, rather, what did n’t she take him for—when she asked him if he hunted ? Perhaps that was because it was rather dark ; if there had been more light in the great, vague hall she would have seen he was not one of themselves. Hyacinth felt that by this time he had associated a good deal with swells, but they had always known what he was, and had been able to elect how to treat him. This was the first occasion on which a young gentlewoman had not been warned, and, as a consequence, he appeared to pass muster. He determined not to unmask himself, on the simple ground that he should by the same stroke betray the Princess. It was quite open to her to lean over and say to Miss Marchant, “You know he’s a wretched little bookbinder, earning a few shillings a week in a horrid street in Soho. There are all kinds of low things — and I suspect even something very horrible — connected with his birth. It seems to me I ought to mention it.” He almost wished she would mention it, for the sake of the strange, violent sensations of the thing, a curiosity quivering within him to know what Miss Marcliant would do at such a pinch, and what chorus of ejaculations — or, what appalled, irremediable silence —would rise to the painted roof. The responsibility, however, was not his ; he had entered a phase of his destiny where responsibilities were suspended. Madame Grandoni’s tea had waked her up ; she came, at every crisis, to the rescue of the conversation, and talked to the visitors about Rome, where they had once spent a winter, describing with much drollery the manner in which the English families she had seen there for nearly half a century (and had met, of an evening, in the Roman world) inspected the ruins and monuments and squeezed into the great ceremonies of the church. Clearly, the four ladies did n’t know what to make of her ; but, though they perhaps wondered if she were a paid companion, they were on firm ground in the fact that the queer, familiar, fat person had been acquainted with the Millingtons, the Bunburys, and the Tripps.

After dinner (during which the Princess allowed herself a considerable license of pleasantry on the subject of her recent visitors, declaring that Hyacinth must positively go with her to return their call, and must see their interior, their manner at home), Madame Grandoni sat down to the piano, at Christina’s request, and played to her companions for an hour. The spaces were large in the big drawing-room, and our friends had placed themselves at a distance from each other. The old lady’s music trickled forth discreetly into the pleasant dimness of the candlelight; she knew dozens of Italian local airs, which sounded like the forgotten tunes of a people, and she followed them by a series of tender, plaintive German Lieder, awaking, without violence, the echoes of the high, pompous apartment. It was the music of an old woman, and seemed to quaver a little, as her singing might have done. The Princess, buried in a deep chair, listened, behind her fan. Hyacinth at least supposed she listened ; at any rate, she never moved. At last Madame Grandoni left the piano, and came toward the young man. She had taken up, on the way, a French book, in a pink cover, which she nursed in the hollow of her arm, and she stood looking at Hyacinth.

“ My poor little friend, I must bid you good-night. I shall not see you again for the present, as, to take your early train, you will have left the house before I put on my wig — and I never show myself to gentlemen without it. I have looked after the Princess pretty well, all day, to keep her from harm, and now I give her up to you, for a little. Take the same care, I beg you. I must put myself into my dressinggown ; at my age, at this hour, it is the only thing. What will you have ? I hate to be tight,” pursued Madame Grandoni, who appeared even in her ceremonial garment to have evaded this discomfort successfully enough. “ Do not sit up late,” she added ; “ and do not keep him, Christina. Remember that for an active young man like Mr. Robinson, going every day to his work, there is nothing more exhausting than such an unoccupied life as ours. For what do we do, after all ? His eyes are very heavy. Basta ! ”

During this little address the Princess, who made no rejoinder to that part of it which concerned herself, remained hidden behind her fan; but after Madame Grandoni had wandered away she lowered this emblazoned shield, and rested her eyes for a while on Hyacinth. At last she said, “ Don’t sit half a mile off. Come nearer to me. I want to say something to you that I can’t shout across the room.” Hyacinth instantly got up, but at the same moment she also rose; so that, approaching each other, they met half-way, before the great marble chimney-piece. She stood a little, opening and closing her fan ; then she remarked, “ You must be surprised at my not having yet spoken to you about our great interest.”

“ No, indeed, I am not surprised at anything.”

“ When you take that tone I feel as if we should never, after all, become friends,” said the Princess.

“ I hoped we were, already. Certainly, after the kindness you have shown me, there is no service of friendship that you might ask of me ” —

“ That you would n’t gladly perform ? I know what you are going to say, and have no doubt you speak truly. But what good would your service do me if, all the while, you think of me as a hollow-headed, hollow-hearted lunatic, behaving in the worst possible taste, and oppressing you with her attentions ? Perhaps you can think of me as — what shall I call it ? — as a kind of coquette.”

Hyacinth demurred. " That would be very conceited.”

“ Surely, you have the right to be as conceited as you please, after the advances I have made you ! Pray, who has a better one ? But you persist in remaining humble, and that is very provoking.”

“ It is not I that am provoking; it is life, and society", and all the difficulties that surround us.”

“ I am precisely of that opinion — that they are exasperating; that when I appeal to you, frankly, candidly, disinterestedly — simply because I like you, for no other reason in the world — to help me to disregard and surmount these obstructions, to treat them with the contempt they deserve, you drop your eyes, you even blush a little, and make yourself small, and try to edge out of the situation by pleading general devotion and insignificance. Please remember this : you cease to be insignificant from the moment I have anything to do with you. My dear fellow,” the Princess went on, in her free, audacious, fraternizing way, to which her beauty and purity gave nobleness, “ there are people who would be very glad to enjoy, in your place, that form of obscurity.” " What do you wish me to do ? ” Hyacinth asked, as quietly as he could.

If he had had an idea that this question, to which, as coming from his lips, and even as being uttered with perceptible impatience, a certain unexpectedness might attach, would cause her a momentary embarrassment, he was completely out in his calculation. She answered on the instant: “ I want you to give me time! That’s all I ask of my friends, in general — all I ever asked of the best I have had. But none of them ever did it ; none of them, that is, save the excellent creature who has just left us. She understood me long ago.”

“ That ’s all I, on my side, ask of you,” said Hyacinth, smiling. “ Give me time, give me time,” he murmured, looking up at her splendor.

“ Dear Mr. Hyacinth, I have given you months ! — months since our first meeting. And at present, have n’t I given you the whole day? It has been intentional, my not speaking to you of our plans. Yes, our plans; I know what I am saying. Don’t try to look stupid; you will never succeed. I wished to leave you free to amuse yourself.”

“ Oh, I have amused myself,” said Hyacinth.

“ You would have been very fastidious if you had n’t! However, that is precisely, in the first place, what I wished you to come here for. To observe the impression made by such a place as this on such a nature as yours, introduced to it for the first time, has been, I assure you, quite worth my while. I have already given you a hint of how extraordinary I think it that you should be what you are without having seen — what shall I call them ? — beautiful, delightful old things. I have been watching you ; I am frank enough to tell you that. I want you to see more — more —more ! ” the Prin - cess exclaimed, with a sudden flicker of passion. “ And I want to talk with you about this matter, as well as others. That will be for to-morrow.”

“ To-morrow ? ”

“ I noticed Madame Grandoni took for granted, just now, you are going. But that has nothing to do with the business. She has so little imagination ! ”

Hyacinth shook his head, smiling. “ I can’t stay ! ” He had an idea his mind was made up.

She returned his smile, but there was something strangely touching — it was so sad, yet, as a rebuke, so gentle — in the tone in which she replied, “ You ought n’t to force me to beg you. It is n’t nice.”

He had reckoned without that tone ; all his reasons suddenly seemed to fall from under him, to liquefy. He remained a moment, looking on the ground; then he said, “ Princess, you have no idea — how should you have ? — into the midst of what abject, pitiful preoccupations you thrust yourself. I have no money — I have no clothes.”

“ What do you want of money ? This is n’t an hotel.”

“ Every day I stay here I lose a day’s wages; and I live on my wages from day to day.”

“ Let me, then, give you wages. You will work for me.”

“ What do you mean — work for you ? ”

“ You will bind all my books. I have ever so many foreign ones, in paper.”

“ You speak as if I had brought my tools! ”

“No, I don’t imagine that. I will give you the wages now, and you can do the work, at your leisure and convenience, afterwards. Then, if you want anything, you can go over to Bonchester and buy it. There are very good shops; I have used them.” Hyacinth thought of a great many things at this juncture ; the Princess had that quickening effect upon him. Among others, he thought of these two : first, that it was indelicate (though such an opinion was not very strongly held either in Lomax Place or in Soho) to accept money from a woman ; and second, that it was still more indelicate to make such a woman as that go down on her knees to him. But it took more than a minute for one of these convictions to prevail over the other, and before that he had heard the Princess continue, in the tone of mild, disinterested argument: “If we believe in the coming democracy, if it seems to us right and just, and we hold that, in sweeping over the world, the great wave will wash away a myriad iniquities and cruelties, why not make some attempt, with our own poor means — for one must begin somewhere — to carry out the spirit of it in our lives and our manners? I want to do that. I try to do it — in my relations with you, for instance. But you hang back ; you are not democratic ! ”

The Princess accusing him of a patrician offishness was a very fine stroke; nevertheless, it left him lucidity enough (though he still hesitated an instant, wondering whether the words would not offend her) to say, with a smile, “ I have been strongly warned against you.”

The offense seemed not to touch her. “ I can easily understand that. Of course my proceedings — though, after all, I have done little enough as yet — must appear most unnatural. Che vuole ? as Madame Grandoni says.”

A certain knot of light blue ribbon, which formed part of the trimming of her dress, hung down, at her side, in the folds of it. On these glossy loops Hyacinth’s eyes happened for a moment to have rested, and he now took one of them up and carried it to his lips. “ I will do all the work for you that you will give me. If you give it on purpose, by way of munificence, that is your own affair. I myself will estimate the price. What decides me is that I shall do it so well ; at least it shall be better than any one else can do — so that if you employ me there will have been that reason. I have brought you a book — so you can see. I did it for you last year, and went to South Street to give it to you, but you had already gone.”

“ Give it to me to-morrow.” These words appeared to express so exclusively the calmness of relief at finding that he could be reasonable, as well as that of a friendly desire to see the proof of his talent, that he was surprised when she said, in the next breath, irrelevantly, “ Who was it warned you against me ? ”

He feared she might suppose he meant Madame Grandoni, so he made the plainest answer, having no desire to betray the old lady, and reflecting that, as the likelihood was small that his friend in South Lambeth would ever consent to meet the Princess (in spite of her plan of going there), no one would be hurt by it. “A friend of mine in London — Paul Muniment.”

“Paul Muniment?”

“ I think I mentioned him to you the first time we met.”

“ The person who said something good? I forget what it was.”

“ It was sure to be something good if he said it; he is very wise.”

“ That makes his warning very flattering to me! What does he know about me ? ”

“ Oh, nothing, of course, except the little that I could tell him. He only spoke on general grounds.”

“ I like his name — Paul Muniment,” the Princess said. “ If he resembles it, I think I should like him.”

“ You would like him much better than me.”

“ How do you know how much — or how little — I like you? I am determined to keep hold of you, simply for what you can show me.” She paused a moment, with her beautiful, intelligent eyes smiling into his own, and then she continued, “ On general grounds, bienentendu. Your friend was quite right to warn you. Now those general grounds are just what I have undertaken to make as small as possible. It is to reduce them to nothing that I talk to you, that I conduct myself with regard to you as I have done. What in the world is it I am trying to do but, by every device that my ingenuity suggests, fill up the inconvenient gulf that yawns between my position and yours ? You know what I think of ‘ positions ; ’ I told you in London, For Heaven’s sake, let me feel that I have — a little — succeeded ! ” Hyacinth satisfied her sufficiently to enable her, five minutes later, apparently to entertain no further doubt on the question of his staying over. On the contrary, she burst into a sudden ebullition of laughter, exchanging her bright, lucid insistence for one of her singular sallies. “ You must absolutely go with me to call on the Marchants ; it will be too delightful to see you there ! ”

As he walked up and down the empty drawing-room it occurred to him to ask himself whether that was mainly what she was keeping him for — so that he might help her to play one of her tricks on the good people at Broome. He paced there, in the still candlelight, for a longer time than he measured ; until the butler came and stood in the doorway, looking at him silently and fixedly, as if to let him know that he interfered with the custom of the house. He had told the Princess that what determined him was the thought of the manner in which he might exercise his craft in her service; but this was only half the influence that pressed him into forgetfulness of what he had most said to himself when, in Lomax Place, in an hour of unprecedented introspection, he wrote the letter by which he accepted the invitation to Medley. He would go there (so he said), because a man must be gallant, especially if he is a little bookbinder ; but after he should be there he would insist at every step upon knowing what he was in for. The change that had taken place in him now, from one moment to another, was that he had simply ceased to care what he was in for. All warnings, reflections, considerations of verisimilitude, of the delicate, the natural, and the possible, of the value of his independence, had become as nothing to him. The cup of an exquisite experience — a week in that enchanted palace, a week of such immunity from Lomax Place and old Crookenden as he had never dreamed of — was at his lips; it was purple with the wine of novelty, of civilization, and he could n’t push it aside without drinking. He might go home ashamed, but he would have forevermore, in his mouth, the taste of nectar. He went up-stairs, under the eye of the butler, and on his way to his room, at the turning of a corridor, found himself face to face with Madame Grandoni. She had apparently just issued from her own apartment, the door of which stood open, near her ; she might have been hovering there in expectation of his footstep. She had donned her dressing-gown, which appeared to give her every facility for respiration, but she had not yet parted with her wig. She still had her pink French book under her arm; and her fat little hands tightly locked together in front of her formed, as it were, the clasp of her generous girdle.

“ Do tell me it is positive, Mr. Robinson ! ” she said, stopping short.

“ What is positive, Madame Grandoni ? ”

“ That you take the train in the morning.”

“ I can’t tell you that, because it would n’t be true. On the contrary, it has been settled that I shall stay over. I am very sorry if it distresses you — but che vuole ? ” Hyacinth added, smiling.

Madame Grandoni was a humorous woman, but she gave him no smile in return; she only looked at him a moment, and then, shrugging her shoulders silently but expressively, shuffled back to her room.

XXIV.

“ I can give you your friend’s name — in a single guess. He is Diedrich Hoffendahl ! ” They had been strolling more and more slowly, the next morning, and as she made this announcement the Princess stopped altogether, standing there under a great beech, with her eyes upon Hyacinth’s and her hands full of primroses. He had breakfasted, at noon, with his hostess and Madame Grandoni, but the old lady had fortunately not joined them when the Princess afterwards proposed that he should accompany her on her walk in the park. She told him that her venerable friend had let her know, while the day was still very young, that she thought it in the worst possible taste of the Princess not to have allowed Mr. Robinson to depart; to which Christina had replied that concerning tastes there was no disputing, and that they had disagreed on such matters before without any one being the worse. Hyacinth expressed the hope that they would n’t dispute about him — of all thankless subjects in the world ; and the Princess assured him that she never disputed about anything. She held that there were other ways than that of arranging one’s relations with people ; and Hyacinth guessed that she meant that when a difference became sharp she broke off altogether. On her side, then, there was as little possibility as on his that they should ever quarrel ; their acquaintance would be a solid friendship, or it would be nothing at all. The Princess gave it from hour to hour more of this quality, and it may be imagined how safe Hyacinth felt by the time he began to tell her that something had happened to him, in London, three months before, one night (or rather in the small hours of the morning), that had altered his life altogether — had, indeed, as he might say, changed the terms on which he held it. He was aware that he did n’t know exactly what he meant by this last phrase ; but it expressed sufficiently well the new feeling that had come over him since that interminable, tantalizing cab-drive in the rain.

The Princess had led to this, almost as soon as they left the house ; making up for her avoidance of such topics the day before by saying, suddenly, “ Now tell me what is going on among your friends. I don’t mean your worldly acquaintances, but your colleagues, your brothers. Où en êtes-vous, at the present time ? Is there anything new, is anything going to be done ? I am afraid you are always simply dawdling and muddling.” Hyacinth felt as if, of late, he had by no means either dawdled or muddled ; but before he had committed himself so far as to refute the imputation, the Princess exclaimed, in another tone, “ How annoying it is that I can’t ask you anything without giving you the right to say to yourself, ‘ After all, what do I know? May she not be in the pay of the police ? ’ ”

“ Oh. that does n’t occur to me,” said Hyacinth, with a smile.

“ It might, at all events ; by which I mean it may, at any moment. Indeed, I think it ought.”

“ If you were in the pay of the police you would n’t trouble your head about me.”

“ I should make you think that, certainly ! That would be my first care. However, if you have no tiresome suspicions, so much the better,” said the Princess; and she pressed him again for some news from behind the scenes.

In spite of his absence of doubt on the subject of her honesty — he felt that he should never again entertain any such trashy idea as that she might be an agent on the wrong side — he did not open himself immediately; but at the end of half an hour he let her know that the most important event of his life had taken place, scarcely more than the other day, in the most unexpected manner. And to explain in what it had consisted, he said, “ I pledged myself, by everything that is sacred.”

“ To what did you pledge yourself ? ”

“I took a vow—a tremendous, terrible vow — in the presence of four witnesses,” Hyacinth went on.

“And what was it about, your vow?”

“ I gave my life away,” said Hyacinth, smiling.

She looked at him askance, as if to see how he would make such an announcement as that ; but she wore no smile — her face was politely grave. They moved together a moment, exchanging a glance, in silence, and then she said, “ Ah, well, then, I’m all the more glad you stayed ! ”

“ That was one of the reasons.”

“ I wish you had waited — till after you had been here,” the Princess remarked.

“ Why till after I had been here ? ”

“ Perhaps then you would n’t have given away your life. You might have seen reasons for keeping it.” And now, at last, she treated the matter gayly, as Hyacinth had done. He replied that he had not the least doubt that, on the whole, her influence was relaxing; but without heeding this remark she went on : “ Be so good as to tell me what you are talking about.”

“ I’m not afraid of you, but I ’ll give you no names,” said Hyacinth ; and he related what had happened in the back room in Bloomsbury, in the course of that evening of which I have given some account. The Princess listened, intently, while they strolled under the budding trees with a more interrupted step. Never had the old oaks and beeches, renewing themselves in the sunshine as they did to-day, or naked in some gray November, witnessed such an extraordinary series of confidences, since the first pair that sought isolation wandered over the grassy slopes and ferny dells beneath them. Among other things Hyacinth mentioned to his companion that he did n’t go to the place in Bloomsbury any more ; he now perceived, what he ought to have perceived long before, that this particular temple of their faith, and everything that pretended to get hatched there, was an idiotic sham. He had been a greenhorn, from the first, to take it seriously. He had done so mainly because a friend of his, in whom he had confidence, appeared to set him the example; but now it turned out that this friend (it was Paul Muniment again, by the way) had always thought the men who went there a pack of duffers, and was only trying them because he tried everything. There was nobody you could begin to call a first-rate man there, putting aside another friend of his, a Frenchman named Poupin (and Poupin was magnificent, but he was n’t first-rate). Hyacinth had a standard now that he had seen a man who was the very incarnation of his programme. You felt that he was a swell the very moment you came into his presence.

“ Into whose presence, Mr. Robinson ? ” the Princess inquired.

“ I don’t know that I ought to tell you, much as I believe in you! I am speaking of the very remarkable individual with whom I entered into that engagement.”

“ To give away your life ? ”

“ To do something which in a certain contingency he will require of me. He will require my poor little carcass.”

“ Those plans have a way of failing — unfortunately,” the Princess murmured, adding the last word more quickly.

“ Is that a consolation, or a lament? ” Hyacinth asked. “ This one shall not fail, so far as it depends on me. They wanted an obliging young man — the place was vacant— I stepped in.”

“ I have no doubt you are right. We must pay for what we do.” The Princess made that remark calmly and coldly ; then she said, “ I think I know the person in whose power you have placed yourself.”

“ Possibly, but I doubt it.”

“ You can’t believe I have already gone so far ? Why not ? I have given you a certain amount of proof that I don’t hang back.”

“ Well, if you know my friend, you have gone very far indeed.”

The Princess appeared to be on the point of pronouncing a name ; but she checked herself, and asked suddenly, smiling, “ Don’t they also want, by chance, an obliging young woman ?”

“ I happen to know he does n’t think much of women, my first-rate man. He does n’t trust them.”

“ Is that why you call him first-rate ? You have very nearly betrayed him to me.”

“ Do you imagine there is only one of that opinion ? ” Hyacinth inquired.

“ Only one who, having it, still remains a superior man. That’s a very difficult opinion to reconcile with others that it is important to have.”

“ Schopenhauer did it, successfully,” said Hyacinth.

“ How delightful that you should know Schopenhauer ! ” the Princess exclaimed. “ The gentleman I have in my eye is also German.” Hyacinth let this pass, not challenging her, because he wished not to be challenged in return, and the Princess went on : “ Of course, such an engagement as you speak of must make a tremendous difference, in everything.”

“It has made this difference: that I have now a far other sense from any I had before of the reality, the solidity, of what is being prepared. I was hanging about outside, on the steps of the temple, among the loafers and the gossips, but now I have been in the innermost sanctuary — I have seen the holy of holies.”

“ And it’s very dazzling ? ”

“ Ah, Princess ! ” sighed the young man.

“ Then it is real, it is solid ? ” she pursued. “ That ’s exactly what I have been trying to find out, for so long.”

“ It is more strange than I can say. Nothing of it appears above the surface ; but there is an immense under-world, peopled with a thousand forms of revolutionary passion and devotion. The manner in which it ’s organized is what astonished me; I knew that, or thought I knew it, in a general way, but the reality was a revelation. And on top of it all, society lives! People go and come, and buy and sell, and drink and dance, and make money and make love, and seem to know nothing and suspect nothing and think of nothing ; and iniquities flourish, and the misery of half the world is prated about as a ‘ necessary evil.’ and generations rot away and starve, in the midst of it, and day follows day, and everything is for the best in the best of possible worlds. All that is one half of it; the other half is that everything is doomed ! In silence, in darkness, but under the feet of each one of us, the revolution lives and works. It is a wonderful, immeasurable trap, on the lid of which society performs its antics. When once the machinery is complete, there will be a great rehearsal. That rehearsal is what they want me for. The invisible, impalpable wires are everywhere, passing through everything, attaching themselves to objects in which one would never think of looking for them. What could be more strange and incredible, for instance, than that they should exist just here ? ”

“ You make me believe it,” said the Princess, thoughtfully.

“ It matters little whether one believes it or not! ”

“ You have had a vision,” the Princess continued.

“ Parbleu, I have had a vision ! So would you, if you had been there.”

“ I wish I had ! ” she declared, in a tone charged with such ambiguous implications that Hyacinth, catching them a moment after she had spoken, rejoined, with a quick, incongruous laugh —

“ No, you would have spoiled everything. He made me see. he made me feel, he made me do, everything he wanted.”

“ And why should he have wanted you, in particular ? ”

“ Simply because I struck him as the right person. That’s his affair: I can’t tell you. When he meets the right person he chalks him. I sat on the bed. (There were only two chairs in the dirty little room, and by way of a curtain his overcoat was hung up before the window.) He did n’t sit, himself ; he leaned against the wall, straight in front of me, with his hands behind him. He told me certain things, and his manner was extraordinarily quiet. So was mine, I think I may say ; and indeed it was only poor Poupin that made a row. It was for my sake, somehow : he did n’t think we were all conscious enough ; he wanted to call attention to my sublimity. There was no sublimity about it. I simply could n’t help myself. He and the other German had the two chairs, and Muniment sat on a queer old battered, hair-covered trunk, a most foreign-looking article.” Hyacinth had taken no notice of the little ejaculation with which his companion greeted, in this last sentence, the word “ other.”

“ And what did Mr. Muniment say ? ” she presently inquired.

“ Oh, he said it was all right. Of course he thought that, from the moment he determined to bring me. He knew what the other fellow was looking for.”

“ I see.” Then the Princess remarked, “ We have a curious way of being fond of you.”

Whom do you mean by ‘we’?”

“Your friends. Mr. Muniment and I, for instance.”

“ I like it as well as any other. But you don’t feel alike. I have an idea you are sorry.”

“ Sorry for what ? ”

“ That I have put my head in a noose.”

“ Ah, you’re severe—I thought I concealed it so well! ” the Princess exclaimed. He admitted that he had been severe, and begged her pardon, for he was by no means sure that there was not a hint of tears in her voice. She looked away from him for a minute, and it was after this that, stopping short, she remarked, as I have related, “ He is Diedrich Hoffendahl.”

Hyacinth stared for a moment, with parted lips. “ Well, you are in it, more than I supposed ! ”

“ You know he does n’t trust women,” his companion smiled.

“ Why in the world should you have cared for any light I can throw, if you have ever been in relation with him ? ”

She hesitated a little. " Oh, you are very different. I like you better,” she added.

“ Ah, it it’s for that! ” murmured Hyacinth.

The Princess colored, as he had seen her color before, and in this accident, on her part, there was an unexpectedness, something touching. " Don’t try to fix my inconsistencies on me,” she said, with an humility which matched her blush. " Of course there are plenty of them, but it will always be kinder of you to let them pass. Besides, in this case they are not so serious as they seem. As a product of the ‘ people,’ and of that strange, fermenting underworld (what you say of it is so true!), you interest me more, and have more to say to me, even than Hoffendahl — wonderful creature as he assuredly is.”

“ Would you object to telling me how and where you came to know him ? ”

“ Through a couple of friends of mine in Vienna, two of the affiliated, both passionate revolutionists and clever men. They are Neapolitans, originally poveretti, like yourself, who emigrated, years ago, to seek their fortune. One of them is a teacher of singing, the wisest, most accomplished person in his line I have ever known. The other, if you please, is a confectioner ! He makes the most delicious pâtisserie fine. It would take long to tell you how I made their acquaintance, and how they put me into relation with the Maestro, as they called him, of whom they spoke with bated breath. It is not from yesterday— though you don’t seem able to believe it — that I have had a care for all this business. I wrote to Hoffendahl, and had several letters from him ; the singing-master and the pastry-cook went bail for my sincerity. The next year I had an interview with him at Wiesbaden ; but I can’t tell you the circumstances of our meeting, in that place, without implicating another person, to whom, at present at least, I have no right to give you a clue. Of course Hoffendahl made an immense impression on me; he seemed to me the Master indeed, the very genius of a new social order, and I fully understand the manner in which you were affected by him. When he was in London, three months ago, I knew it, and I knew where to write to him. I did so, and asked him if he would n’t see me somewhere. I said I would meet him in any hole he should designate. He answered by a charming letter, which I will show you — there is nothing in the least compromising in it — but he declined my offer, pleading his short stay and a press of engagements. He will write to me, but he won’t trust me. However, he shall some day! ”

Hyacinth was thrown quite off his balance by this representation of the ground the Princess had already traversed, and the explanation was still but half restorative when, on his asking her why she had n’t exhibited her titles before, she replied, " Well, I thought my being quiet was the better way to draw you out.” There was but little difficulty in drawing him out now, and before their walk was over he had told her more definitely what Hoffendahl demanded. This was simply that he should hold himself ready, for the next five years, to do, at a given moment, an act which would in all probability cost him his life. The act was as yet indefinite, but one might get an idea of it from the penalty involved, which would certainly be capital. The only thing settled was that it was to be done instantly and absolutely, without a question, a hesitation, or a scruple, in the manner that should be prescribed, at the moment, from headquarters. Very likely it would be to kill some one — some humbug in a high place; but whether the individual should deserve it or should not deserve it was not Hyacinth’s affair. If he recognized generally Hoffendahl’s wisdom — and the other night it had seemed to shine like a northern aurora— it was not in order that he might challenge it in the particular case. He had taken a vow of blind obedience, as the Jesuit fathers did to the head of their order. It was because they had carried out their vows (having, in the first place, great administrators) that their organization had been mighty, and that sort of mightiness was what people who felt as Hyacinth and the Princess felt should go in for. It was not certain that he should be taken, any more than it was certain that he should bring down his man; but it was much to be looked for, and it was what he counted on and indeed preferred. He should probably take little trouble to escape, and he should never enjoy the idea of hiding (after the fact) or running away. If it were a question of putting a bullet into some one, he himself should naturally deserve what would come to him. If one did that sort of thing, there was an indelicacy in not being ready to pay for it; and he, at least, was perfectly willing. He should n’t judge; he should simply execute. He did n’t pretend to say what good his little job might do, or what portée it might have ; he had n’t the data for appreciating it, and simply took upon himself to believe that at headquarters they knew what they were about. The thing was to be a feature in a very large plan, of which he could n’t measure the scope — something that was to be done simultaneously in a dozen different countries. The effect was to be very much in this immense coincidence. It was to be hoped it would n’t be spoiled. At any rate, he would n’t hang fire, whatever the other fellows might do. He did n’t say it because Hoffendahl had done him the honor of giving him the business to do, but he believed the Master knew how to pick out his men. To be sure, Hoffendahl had known nothing about him in advance ; he had only been suggested to the man by those who were looking out from one day to the other. The fact remained, however, that when Hyacinth stood before him he recognized him as the sort of little chap that he had in his eye (one who could pass through a small orifice). Humanity, in his scheme, was classified and subdivided with a truly German thoroughness, and altogether, of course, from the point of view of the revolution, as it might forward or obstruct it. Hyacinth’s little job was a very small part of what Hoffendahl had come to England for; he had in his hand innumerable other threads. Hyacinth knew nothing of these, and did n’t much want to know, except that it was marvelous, the way Hoffendahl kept them apart. He had exactly the same mastery of them that a great musician—that the Princess herself — had of the keyboard of the piano ; he treated all things, persons, institutions, ideas, as so many notes in his great symphonic revolt. The day would come when Hyacinth, far down in the treble, would feel himself touched by the little finger of the composer, would become audible (with a small, sharp crack) for a second.

It was impossible that our young man should not feel, at the end of ten minutes, that he had charmed the Princess into the deepest, most genuine attention ; she was listening to him as she had never listened before. He enjoyed having that effect upon her, and his sense of the tenuity of the thread by which his future hung, renewed by his hearing himself talk about it, made him reflect that at present anything in the line of enjoyment was so much gained. The reader may judge whether he had passed through a phase of excitement after finding himself on his new footing of utility in the world ; but that had finally spent itself, through a hundred forms of restlessness, of vain conjecture __ through an exaltation which alternated with despair, and which, equally with the despair, he concealed more successfully than he supposed. He would have detested the idea that his companion might have heard his voice tremble while he told his story ; but though today he had really grown used to his danger, and resigned, as it were, to his consecration, and though it could not fail to be agreeable to him to perceive that he was thrilling, he could still not guess how very remarkable, in such a connection, the Princess thought his composure, his lucidity and good-humor. It is true, she tried to hide her wonder, for she owed it to her self-respect to let it still appear that even she was prepared for a personal sacrifice as complete. She had the air — or she endeavored to have it — of accepting for him everything that he accepted for himself; nevertheless, there was something rather forced in the smile (lovely as it was) with which she covered him, while she said, after a little, " It’s very serious — it ’s very serious indeed, is n’t it ? ” He replied that the serious part was to come — there was no particular grimness for him (comparatively) in strolling in that sweet park and gossiping with her about the matter; and it occurred to her presently to suggest to him that perhaps Hoffendahl would never give him any sign at all, and he would wait all the while, sur les dents, in a false suspense, He admitted that this would be a sell, but declared that either way he would be sold, though differently; and that, at any rate, he would have conformed to the great religious rule — to live each hour as if it were to be one’s last.

“ In holiness, you mean — in great recueillement ? ” the Princess asked.

“ Oh dear, no; simply in extreme thankfulness for every minute that’s added.”

“ Ah, well, there will probably be a great many,” she rejoined.

“ The more the better — if they are like this.”

“ That won’t be the case with many of them, in Lomax Place.”

“ I assure you that since that night Lomax Place has improved.” Hyacinth stood there, smiling, with his hands in his pockets and his hat pushed back a little.

The Princess appeared to consider this fact with an extreme intellectual curiosity. “ If, after all, then, you are not called, you will have been positively happy.”

“ I shall have had some fine moments. Perhaps Hoffendahl’s plot is simply for that; Muniment may have put him up to it! ”

“Who knows? However, with me you must go on as if nothing were changed.”

“ Changed from what ? ”

“ From the time of our first meeting at the theatre.”

“ I ’ll go on in any way you like,” said Hyacinth ; “ only the real difference will be there.”

“ The real difference ? ”

“ That I shall have ceased to care for what you care about.”

“ I don’t understand,” said the Princess.

“ Is n’t it enough, now, to give my life to the beastly cause,” the young man broke out, “ without giving my sympathy ? ”

“ The beastly cause ? ” the Princess murmured, opening her deep eyes.

“ Of course it is really just as holy as ever; only the people I find myself pitying now are the rich, the happy.”

“ I see. You are very curious. Perhaps you pity my husband,” the Princess added in a moment.

“ Do you call him one of the happy?” Hyacinth inquired, as they walked on again.

In answer to this she only repeated, “ You are very curious.”

I have related the whole of this conversation, because it supplies a highly important chapter of Hyacinth’s history, but it will not be possible to trace all the stages through which the friendship of the Princess Casamassima with the young man she had constituted her bookbinder was confirmed. By the end of a week the standard of fitness she had set up in the place of exploded proprieties appeared the model of justice and convenience ; and during this period many other things happened. One of them was that Hyacinth drove over to Broome with his hostess, and called on Lady Marchant and her daughters ; an episode from which the Princess appeared to derive an exquisite gratification. When they came away he asked her why she had n’t told the ladies who he was. Otherwise, where was the point? And she replied, “ Simply because they wouldn’t have believed me. That ’s your fault! ” This was the same note she had struck when, the third day of his stay (the weather had changed for the worse, and a rainy afternoon kept them in-doors), she remarked to him, irrelevantly and abruptly, “ It is most extraordinary, your knowing about Schopenhauer! ” He answered that she really seemed quite unable to accustom herself to his little talents ; and this led to a long talk, longer than the one I have already narrated, in which he took her still further into his confidence. Never had the pleasure of conversation (the greatest he knew) been so largely opened to him. The Princess admitted, frankly, that he would, to her sense, take a great deal of accounting for; she observed that he was, no doubt, pretty well used to himself, but he must give other people time. “ I have watched you, constantly, since you have been here, in every detail of your behavior, and I am more and more intrigée. You have n’t a vulgar intonation, you have n’t a common gesture, you never make a mistake, you do and say everything exactly in the right way. You come out of the hole you have described to me, and yet you might have stayed in country-houses all your life. You are much better than if you had ! Jugez donc, from the way I talk to you ! I have to make no allowances. I have seen Italians with that sort of natural tact and taste, but I did n’t know one ever found it in any Anglo-Saxon in whom it had n’t been cultivated at a vast expense ; unless, indeed, in certain little American women.”

“ Do you mean I ’m a gentleman ? ” asked Hyacinth, in a peculiar tone, looking out into the wet garden.

She hesitated, and then she said, " It’s I who make the mistake! ” Five minutes later she broke into an exclamation which touched him almost more than anything she had ever done, giving him the highest opinion of her delicacy and sympathy, and putting him before himself as vividly as if the words were a little portrait: “ Fancy the strange, the bitter fate : to be constituted as you are constituted, to feel the capacity that you must feel, and yet to look at the good things of life only through the glass of the pastry-cook’s window ! ”

“ Every class has its pleasures,” Hyacinth rejoined, with perverse sententiousness, in spite of his emotion; but the remark did n’t darken their mutual intelligence, and before they separated that evening he told her the things that had never yet passed his lips — the things to which he had awaked when he made Pinnie explain to him the visit to the prison, He told her, in a word, what he was.

Henry James.