The American (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907)/Chapter 17

by Henry James

XVII

Newman was fond of music, and went often to the opera, where, a couple of evenings after Madame de Bellegarde's ball, he sat listening to "Don Giovanni"; having in honour of this work, which he had never yet seen represented, come to occupy his orchestra-chair before the rising of the curtain. Frequently he took a large box and invited a group of his compatriots; this was a mode of recreation to which he was much addicted. He liked making up parties of his friends and conducting them to the theatre or taking them to drive on mail-coaches and dine at restaurants renowned, by what he could a trifle artlessly ascertain, for special and incomparable dishes. He liked doing things that involved his paying for people; the vulgar truth is he enjoyed "treating" them. This was not because he was what is called purse-proud; handling money in public was, on the contrary, positively disagreeable to him; he had a sort of personal modesty about it akin to what he would have felt about making a toilet before spectators. But just as it was a gratification to him to be nobly dressed, just so it was a private satisfaction (for he kept the full flavour of it quite delicately to himself) to see people occupied and amused at his pecuniary expense and by his profuse interposition. To set a large body of them in motion and transport them to a distance, to have special conveyances, to charter railway-carriages and steamboats, harmonised with his relish for bold processes and made hospitality the potent thing it should ideally be. A few evenings before the occasion of which I speak he had invited several ladies and gentlemen to the opera to listen to the young and wondrous Adelina Patti—a party which included Miss Dora Finch. It befell, however, that Miss Dora Finch, sitting near him in the box, discoursed brilliantly, not only during the entr'actes but during many of the finest portions of the performance, so that he had really come away with an irritated sense that the new rare diva had a thin, shrill voice and that her roulades resembled giggles. After this he promised himself to go for a while to the opera alone.

When the curtain had fallen on the first act of "Don Giovanni" he turned round in his place to observe the audience. Presently, in one of the boxes, he perceived Urbain de Bellegarde and his wife. The little Marquise swept the house very busily with a glass, and Newman, supposing she saw him, determined to go and bid her good-evening. M. de Bellegarde leaned against a column, motionless, looking straight in front of him, one hand in the breast of his white waistcoat and the other resting his hat on his thigh. Newman was about to leave his place when he noticed in that obscure region devoted to the small boxes which in French are called, not inaptly, bathtubs, from their promoting at least immersion through the action of the pores, a face which even the dim light and the distance could not make wholly indistinct. It was the face of a young and pretty woman, crowned with an arrangement of pink roses and diamonds. This person looked round the house while her fan moved with practised grace; when she lowered it Newman perceived a pair of plump white shoulders and the edge of a rose-coloured dress. Beside her, very close to the shoulders and talking, apparently with an earnestness which it suited her scantly to heed, sat a young man with a red face and a very low shirt-collar. A moment's consideration left Newman no doubts; the pretty young woman was Noémie Nioche. He looked hard into the depths of the box, thinking her father might perhaps be in attendance, but from what he could see the young man's eloquence had no other auditor. Newman at last made his way out, and in doing so passed beneath the baignoire of his former client. She saw him as he approached, giving him a nod and smile which seemed meant as a hint that her enviable rise in the world had not made her inhuman. He passed into the foyer and walked through it, but suddenly to pause before a gentleman seated on one of the divans. The gentleman's elbows were on his knees; he leaned forward and stared at the pavement, lost apparently in meditations of a gloomy cast. But in spite of his bent head Newman recognised him and in a moment had sat down beside him. Then the gentleman looked up and displayed the expressive countenance of Valentin de Bellegarde. "What in the world are you thinking of so hard?"

"A subject that requires hard thinking to do it justice," Valentin promptly replied. "My immeasurable idiocy."

"What's the matter now?"

"The matter now is that, as I'm a madman with lucid intervals, I 'm having one of them now. But I came within an ace of entertaining a sentiment—!"

"For the young lady below stairs, in a baignoire, in a pink dress?"

"Did you notice what a rare kind of pink it was?" Valentin enquired by way of answer. "It makes her look as white as new milk."

Newman had a stare of some wonderment, and then: "Is she what you call crême de la crême?" But as Valentin's face pronounced this a witticism below the Parisian standard he went on: "You've stopped then, at any rate, going to see her?"

"Oh bless you, no. Why should I stop? I've changed, but she has n't," said Valentin. "The more I see her the more sure I am—well, that I see her right. She has awfully pretty arms, and several other things, but she's not really a bit gentille. The other day she had the bad taste to begin to abuse her father, to his face, in my presence. I should n't have expected it of her; it was a disappointment. Heigho!"

"Why, she cares no more for her father than for her door-mat," Newman declared. "I discovered that the first time I saw her."

"Oh, that's another affair; she may think of the poor old beggar what she pleases. But it was base in her to call him bad names; it spoiled my reckoning and quite threw me off. It was about a frilled petticoat that he was to have fetched from the washerwoman's; he appeared to have forgotten the frilled petticoat. She almost boxed his ears. He stood there staring at her with his little blank eyes and smoothing his old hat with his coat-tail. At last he turned round and went out without a word. Then I told her it was in very bad taste to speak so even to an unnatural father. She said she should be so thankful to me if I would mention it to her whenever her taste was at fault; she had immense confidence in mine. I told her I could n't have the inconvenience of forming her manners; I had had an idea they were already formed, after the best models. She had quite put me out. But I shall get over it," said Valentin gaily.

"Oh, time's a great consoler!" Newman answered with humorous sobriety. He was silent a moment and then added in another tone: "I wish you 'd think of what I said to you the other day. Come over to America with us and I 'll put you in the way of doing some business. You've got a very fine mind if you 'd only give it a chance."

Valentin made a genial grimace. "My mind's much obliged to you: you make it feel finer than ever. Would the 'chance' be that place in a bank?"

"There are several places, but I suppose you 'd consider the bank the most aristocratic."

Valentin burst into a laugh. "My dear fellow, at night all cats are grey! When one falls from such a height there are no degrees!"

Newman answered nothing for a minute. "Then, I think you 'll find there are degrees in success," he said with his most exemplary mild distinctness.

Valentin had leaned forward again with his elbows on his knees and was scratching the pavement with his stick. At last, looking up, "Do you really think I ought to do something?" he asked.

Newman laid his hand on his companion's arm and eyed him a moment through measuring lids. "Try it and see. I'm not sure you're not too bright to live; but why not find out how bright a man can afford to be?"

"Do you really think I can make some money? Once when I was a small boy I found a silver piece under a door-mat. I should like awfully to see how it feels to find a gold one."

"Well, do what I tell you and you shall find salvation," said Newman. "Think of it well." And he looked at his watch and prepared to resume his way to Madame de Bellegarde's box.

"Upon my honour I will think of it," Valentin returned. "I 'll go and listen to Mozart another half-hour—I can always think better to music—and profoundly meditate on it."

The Marquis was with his wife when Newman entered their box; he was as remotely bland as usual, but the great demonstration in which he had lately played his part appeared to have been a drawbridge lowered and lifted again. Newman was once more outside the castle and its master perched on the battlements. "What do you think of the opera?" our hero none the less artlessly demanded. "What do you think of the cool old Don?"

"He does n't remain so very cool," the Marquis amusedly replied. "But we all know what Mozart is; our impressions don't date from this evening. Mozart is youth, freshness, brilliancy, facility—facility perhaps a little too unbroken. But the execution is here and there deplorably rough."

"I'm very curious to see how it ends," Newman less critically continued.

"You speak as if it were a feuilleton in the Figaro," observed the Marquis. "You've surely seen the opera before?"

"Never—I 'm sure I should have remembered it. Donna Elvira reminds me of Madame de Cintré; I don't mean in her situation, but in her lovely tone."

"It's a very nice distinction," the Marquis neatly conceded. "There's no possibility, I imagine, of my sister's being forsaken."

"That's right, sir," Newman said. "But what becomes of the Don?"

"The Devil comes down—or comes up—and carries him off," Madame Urbain replied. "I suppose Zerlina reminds you of me."

"I 'll go to the foyer for a few moments," said her husband, "and give you a chance to say that I'm like the Commander—the man of stone." With which he passed out of the box.

The little Marquise stared an instant at the velvet ledge of the balcony and then murmured: "Not a man of stone, a man of wood!" Newman had taken her husband's empty chair; she made no protest, but turned suddenly and laid her closed fan on his arm. "I'm very glad you came in; I want to ask you a favour. I wanted to do so on Thursday, at my mother-in-law's ball, but you would give me no chance. You were in such very good spirits that I thought you might grant my little prayer then; not that you look particularly doleful now. It's some thing you must promise me; now's the time to take you; after you're married you 'll be good for nothing. Allons, promise!"

"I never sign a paper without reading it first," said Newman. "Show me your document."

"No, you must sign with your eyes shut; I 'll hold your hand. Voyons, before you put your head into the noose you ought to be thankful for me giving you a chance to do something amusing."

"If it's so amusing," said Newman, "it will be in even better season after I'm married."

"In other words," she cried, "you 'll not do it at all, for then you 'll be afraid of your wife."

"Oh, if the thing violates the moral law—pardon my strong language!—I won't go into it. If it does n't I shall be quite as ready for it after my marriage."

"Oh, you people, with your moral law—I wonder that with such big words in your mouth you don't all die of choking!" Madame Urbain declared. "You talk like a treatise on logic, and English logic into the bargain. Promise then after you're married," she went on. "After all, I shall enjoy keeping you to it."

"Well, then after I'm married," said Newman serenely.

She hesitated a moment, looking at him, and he wondered what was coming. "I suppose you know what my life is," she presently said. "I've no pleasure, I see nothing, I do nothing. I live in Paris as I might live at Poitiers. My mother-in-law calls me—what is the pretty word?—a gadabout; accuses me of going to unheard-of places and thinks it ought to be joy enough for me to sit at home and count over my ancestors on my fingers. But why should I bother about my ancestors? I'm sure they never bothered about me. I don't propose to live with a green shade over my eyes; I hold that the only thing you can do with things arranged in a row before you is see them. My husband, you know, has principles, and the first on the list is that the Tuileries are dreadfully vulgar. If the Tuileries are vulgar his principles are imbecile. If I chose I might have principles quite as well as he. If they grew on one's family tree I should only have to give mine a shake to bring down a shower of the finest. At any rate I prefer clever Bonapartes to stupid Bourbons."

"Oh, I see; you want to go to court," said Newman, fantastically wondering if she might n't wish him to smooth her way to the imperial halls through some ingenious use of the American Legation.

The Marquise gave a little sharp laugh. "You're a thousand miles away. I 'll take care of the Tuileries myself; the day I decide to go they 'll be glad enough to have me. Sooner or later I shall dance in an imperial quadrille. I know what you're going to say: 'How will you dare?' But I shall dare. I'm afraid of my husband; he's soft, smooth, irreproachable, everything you know; but I'm afraid of him—horribly afraid of him. And yet I shall arrive at the Tuileries. But that will not be this winter, nor perhaps next, and meantime I must live. For the moment I want to go somewhere else; it's my dream. I want to go to the Bal Bullier."

"To the Bal Bullier?" repeated Newman, for whom the words at first meant nothing.

"The ball in the Latin Quarter, where the students dance with their mistresses. Don't tell me you've not heard of it."

"Oh yes," said Newman; "I've heard of it; I remember now. I've even been there. And you want to go there?"

"It's bête, it 's low, it 's anything you please. But I want to go. Some of my friends have been, and they say it's very curious. My friends go everywhere; it's only I who sit moping at home."

"It seems to me you're not at home now," said Newman, "and I should n't exactly say you were moping."

"I'm bored to death. I've been to the opera twice a week for the last eight years. Whenever I ask for anything my mouth is stopped with that: Pray, madame, have n't you your loge aux Italiens? Could a woman of taste want more? In the first place my box was down in my contrat; they have to give it to me. To-night, for instance, I should have preferred a thousand times to go to the Palais Royal. But my husband won't go to the Palais Royal because the ladies of the court go there so much. You may imagine then whether he would take me to Bullier's; he says it is a mere imitation—and a bad one—of what they do in the imperial intimité. But as I'm not yet for a little in the imperial intimité—which must be charming—why should n't I look in where you can get the nearest notion of it? It 's my dream at any rate; it 's a fixed idea. All I ask of you is to give me your arm; you're less compromising than any one else. I don't know why, but you are. I can arrange it. I shall risk something, but that's my own affair. Besides, fortune favours the bold. Don't refuse me; it is my dream!"

Newman gave a loud laugh. It seemed to him hardly worth while to be the wife of the Marquis de Bellegarde, a daughter of the crusaders, heiress of six centuries of glories and traditions, only to have centred one's aspirations upon the sight of fifty young ladies kicking off the hats of a hundred young men. It struck him as a theme for the moralist, but he had no time to moralise. The curtain rose again; M. de Bellegarde returned and he went back to his seat. He observed that Valentin had taken his place in the baignoire of Mademoiselle Nioche, behind this young lady and her companion, where he was visible only if one carefully looked for him. In the next act Newman met him in the lobby and asked him if he had reflected upon possible emigration. "If you really meant to meditate," he said, "you might have chosen a better place for it."

"Oh, the place was n't bad," Valentin replied. "I was n't thinking of that girl. I listened to the music and, heedless of the play and without looking at the stage, turned over your handsome proposal. At first it seemed quite fantastic. And then a certain fiddle in the orchestra—I could distinguish it—began to say as it scraped away: 'Why not, why not, why not?' And then in that rapid movement all the fiddles took it up and the conductor's stick seemed to beat it in the air: 'Why not, why not, why not?' I'm sure I can't say! I don't see why not. I don't see why I should n't do something. It appears to me a really very bright idea. This sort of thing is certainly very stale. And then I should come back with a trunk full of dollars. Besides, I might possibly find it amusing. They call me an extravagant raffiné; who knows but that I might discover an unsuspected charm in shopkeeping? It would really have a certain rare and romantic side; it would look well in my biography. It would look as if I were a strong man, an homme de premier ordre, a man who dominated circumstances."

"I guess you had better not mind how it would look," said Newman. "It always looks well to have half a million of dollars. There's no reason why you should n't have them if you 'll mind what I tell you—I alone—and not fool round with other parties." He passed his arm into that of his friend, and the two walked for some time up and down one of the less frequented corridors. Newman's imagination began to glow with the idea of converting this irresistible idler into a first-class man of business. He felt for the moment a spiritual zeal, the zeal of the propagandist. Its ardour was in part the result of that general discomfort which the sight of all uninvested capital produced in him; so charming an intelligence ought to be dedicated to fine uses. The finest uses known to Newman's experience were transcendent operations in ferocious markets. And then his zeal was quickened by personal kindness; he entertained a form of pity which he was well aware he never could have made the Comte de Bellegarde understand. He never lost a sense of its being pitiable that so bright a figure should think it a large life to revolve in varnished boots between the Rue d'Anjou and the Rue de l'Université, taking the Boulevard des Italiens on the way, when over there in America one's promenade was a continent and one's boulevard stretched from one world-sea to another. It mortified him moreover to have to understand that Valentin wanted for money; it was n't business, that was what was the matter with it, he would have said; it was unpractical, unsuitable, unsightly—very much as if he had n't known how to spell or to ride. There was something almost ridiculously anomalous to Newman in the sight of lively pretensions unaccompanied by a considerable control of Western railroads; though I may add that he would not have maintained that such advantages were in themselves a proper ground for pretensions. "I 'll put you into something," he said at any rate; "I 'll see you through. I know half a dozen things in which we can make a place for you. You 'll find it a big rush and you 'll see some high jumps; it will take you a little while to get used to the scale. But you 'll work in before long and at the end of six months—after you 've tasted blood, after you've done a thing or two on your own account—you 'll have some good times. And then it will be very pleasant for you having your sister over there. It will be pleasant for her to have you too. Yes, Valentine," he continued, pressing his comrade's arm genially, "I think I see just the opening for you. Keep quiet, and I'll find something nice—I 'll fix you all right."

Newman pursued this favouring strain over a wide stretch of prospect; the two men strolled about for a quarter of an hour. Valentin listened and questioned, making his friend laugh at his ignorance of the very alphabet of affairs, smiling himself too, half ironical and half curious. And yet he was serious and nearly convinced, fascinated as by the biggest, plainest map of the great land of El Dorado ever spread before him. It is true, withal, that if it might be bold, original and even amusing to surrender his faded escutcheon to the process, the smart patent transatlantic process, of heavy regilding, he did n't quite relish the freedom with which it might be handled, and yet suddenly felt eager to know the worst that might await him. So that when the bell rang to indicate the close of the entr'acte there was a certain mock-heroism in his saying all gaily: "Well then, put me through; locate me and fix me! I make myself over to you. Dip me into the pot and turn me into gold."

They had passed into the corridor which encircled the row of baignoires, and Valentin stopped in front of the dusky little box in which Mademoiselle Nioche had bestowed herself, laying his hand on the door-knob. "Oh come, are you going back there?" Newman hereupon asked.

"Mon Dieu, oui," said Valentin.

"Have n't you another place?"

"Yes, I've my usual place in the stalls."

"You had better go then and occupy it."

"I see her very well from there too," Valentin went on serenely; "and to-night she's worth seeing. But," he added in a moment, "I've a particular reason for going back just now."

"Oh, I give you up," said Newman. "You're sunk in depravity and don't know the light when you see it."

"No, it's only this. There's a young man in the box whom I shall worry by going in, and I really want to worry him."

"Why, you cold-blooded calculating wretch!" Newman cried. "Can't you give the poor devil a chance?"

"No, he has trod with all his weight on my toes. The box is not his; Noémie came alone and installed herself. I went and spoke to her, and in a few moments she asked me to go and get her fan from the pocket of her cloak, which the greedy ouvreuse had carried off, with her eye to a fee, instead of hanging it up on a peg. In my absence a gentleman came in and took the chair beside her in which I had been sitting. My reappearance put him out, and he had the grossness to show it. He came within an ace of being impertinent. I don't know who he is—a big hard-breathing red-faced animal. I can't think where she picks up such acquaintances. He has been drinking too, but he knows what he's about. Just now, in the second act, the brute did unmistakeably betray an intention. I shall put in another appearance for ten minutes—time enough to give him an opportunity to commit himself if he feels inclined. I really can't let him suppose he's keeping me out of the box."

"My poor dear boy," said Newman remonstrantly, "why should n't he have his good time? You're not going to pick a quarrel about such an article as that, I hope."

"The nature of the article—if you mean of the young lady has nothing to do with it, and I've no intention of picking a quarrel. I'm not a bully nor a fire-eater, I simply wish to make a point that a gentleman must."

"Oh, damn your point!" Newman impatiently returned. "That's the trouble with you Frenchmen; you must be always making points. Well," he added, "be lively, or I shall pack you off first to a country where you 'll find half your points already made and the other half quite unnoticed."

"Very good," Valentin answered, "whenever you like. But if I go to America I must n't let the fellow suppose it's to run away from him."

And they separated. At the end of the act Newman observed that Valentin was still in the baignoire. He strolled into the corridor again, expecting to meet him, and when he was within a few yards of Noémie's retreat saw his friend pass out accompanied by the young man who had been seated beside its more interesting occupant. The two walked with some quickness of step to a distant part of the lobby, where Newman perceived them stop and stand talking. The manner of each was quiet enough, but the stranger, who was strikingly flushed, had begun to wipe his face very emphatically with his pocket-handkerchief. By this time Newman was abreast of the baignoire; the door had been left ajar and he could see a pink dress inside. He immediately went in. Noémie turned on him a glitter of interest.

"Ah, if you've at last decided to come and see me you but just save your politeness. You find me in a fine moment. Sit down." She looked, it had to be owned, exceedingly pretty and perverse and animated and elegant, and quite as if she had had some very good news.

"Something has happened here!" Newman said while he kept his feet.

"You find me in a very fine moment," she repeated. "Two gentlemen—one of them's M. de Bellegarde, the pleasure of whose acquaintance I owe to you—have just had words about your humble servant. Very sharp words too. They can't come off without its going further. A meeting and a big noise—that will give me a push!" said Noémie, clapping with a soft thud her little pearl-coloured hands. C'est ça qui pose une femme!"

"You don't mean to say Bellegarde's going to fight about you!" Newman disgustedly cried.

"Nothing less!"—and she looked at him with a hard little smile. "No, no, you're not galant! And if you prevent this affair I shall owe you a grudge—and pay my debt!"

Newman uttered one of the least attenuated imprecations that had ever passed his lips, and then, turning his back without more ceremony on the pink dress, went out of the box. In the corridor he found Valentin and his companion walking toward him. The latter had apparently just thrust a card into his waistcoat pocket. Noémie's jealous votary was an immense, robust young man with a candid, excited glare, a thick nose and a thick mouth, the certainty of a thick articulation; also with a pair of very large white gloves and a very massive, voluminous watchchain. When they reached the box Valentin, over whom he towered, made with an emphasised bow way for him to pass in first. Newman touched his friend's arm as a sign he wished to speak with him, and Valentin answered that he would be with him in an instant. Valentin entered the box after the robust young man, but a couple of minutes later reappeared in a state of aggravated gaiety. "She's immensely set up—she says we 'll make her fortune. I don't want to be fatuous, but I think it very possible."

"So you 're going to fight?" Newman asked.

"My dear fellow, don't look at me as if I had told you I'm not! It was not my own choice. The thing's perfectly settled."

"I told you so!" groaned Newman.

"I told him so," smiled Valentin.

"What the hell did he ever do to you?"

"My good friend, it does n't matter what. It seems to me you don't understand these things. He used an expression—I took it up."

"But I insist on knowing; I can't, as your elder brother, let you give way to public tantrums—!"

"I'm, as your younger brother, very much obliged to you," said Valentin. "I've nothing to conceal, but I can't go into particulars now and here."

"We 'll leave this place then. You can tell me outside."

"Oh no, I can't leave this place; why should I hurry away? I 'll go to my stall and sit out the opera."

"You 'll not enjoy it."

Valentin looked at him a moment, coloured a little, smiled and patted his arm. "You 'd have been an ornament to the Golden Age. Before an affair a man's quiet. The quietest thing I can do is to go straight to my place."

"Ah," said Newman, "you want her to see you there—you and your quietness. Your quietness will drown the orchestra. I'm not so undeveloped. It's the damnedest foolery."

Valentin remained, and the two men, in their respective places, sat out the rest of the performance, which was also enjoyed by Mademoiselle Nioche and her truculent admirer. At the end Newman joined his friend again, and they went out into the street together. The young man shook his head at the proposal that he should get into Newman's own vehicle and stopped on the edge of the pavement. "I must go off alone; must look up a couple of friends who 'll be so good as to act for me."

"I 'll be so good as to act for you," Newman declared. "Put the case into my hands."

"You're very kind, but that's hardly possible. In the first place you're, as you said just now, almost my brother; you're going to marry my sister. That alone disqualifies you; it casts doubts on your impartiality. And if it did n't it would be enough for me that you have n't, as I say, God forgive you, the sentiment of certain shades. You 'd only try to prevent a meeting."

"Of course I should," said Newman. "Whoever your friends are they 'll be ruffians if they don't do that."

"Unquestionably then they 'll do it. They 'll urge that excuses be made, the most proper excuses. But you 'd be much too coulant. You won't do."

Newman was silent a moment. He was in presence, it seemed to him, of a vain and grotesque parade, poor, restricted, indirect as a salve to an insult or a righting of a wrong, and yet pretentious and pompous as an accommodation. But he saw it useless to attempt interference. "When is this precious performance to come off?" he could only ask.

"The sooner the better. The day after to-morrow I hope."

"Well," Newman went on, "I 've certainly a claim to know the facts. I can't consent to shut my eyes to a single one of them."

"I shall be most happy to tell you them all then. They're very simple and it will be quickly done. But now everything depends on my putting my hands on my friends without delay. I 'll jump into a cab; you had better drive to my rooms and wait for me there. I 'll turn up at the end of an hour."

Newman assented protestingly, let him go, and then betook himself to the encumbered little apartment in the Rue d'Anjou. It was more than an hour before Valentin returned, but when he did so he was able to announce that he had found one of his accessories and that this gentleman had taken upon himself the care of securing the other. Newman had been sitting without lights by the faded fire, on which he had thrown a log; the blaze played over the rich multifarious properties of the place and produced fantastic gleams and shadows. He listened in silence to Valentin's account of what had passed between him and the gentleman whose card he had in his pocket—M. Stanislas Kapp of Strasbourg—after his return to the society of their common hostess. This acute young woman had espied an acquaintance on the other side of the house and had expressed her displeasure at his not having the civility to come and pay her a visit. "Oh, let him alone," M. Stanislas Kapp had hereupon exclaimed; "there are too many people in the box already!" And he had fixed his eyes on his fellow-guest with the utmost ferocity. Valentin had promptly retorted that if there were too many people in the box it was easy for M. Kapp to diminish the number. "I shall be most happy to open the door for you!" M. Kapp had exclaimed: "And I shall be delighted to fling you into the pit!" Valentin had as promptly retorted. "Oh do make a rumpus and get into the papers!" Miss Noémie had gleefully ejaculated. "M. Kapp, turn him out; or, M. de Bellegarde, pitch him into the pit, into the orchestra—anywhere! I don't care who does which, so long as you make a scene." Valentin had answered that they would make no scene, but that the gentleman would be so good as to step into the corridor with him. In the corridor, after a brief further exchange of words, there had been an exchange of cards. M. Stanislas Kapp had pressed on his intention, the flat-faced imbecile, with all his weight; and there were fifty tons, at the least, of that.

"Well, say there are! If you had n't gone back into the box the thing would n't have happened."

"Why, don't you see," Valentin replied, "that the event proves the extreme propriety of my going back into the box? M. Kapp wished to provoke me; he was awaiting his chance. In such a case—that is, when he has been, so to speak, notified—a man must be on hand to receive the provocation. My not returning would simply have been tantamount to my saying to M. Stanislas Kapp: 'Oh, if you're going to be offensive!—!'"

"'You must manage it by yourself; damned if I 'll help you!' That would have been a thoroughly sensible thing to say. The only attraction for you seems to have been the idea that you could help him," Newman went on. "You told me you were not going back for that minx herself."

"Oh, don't mention her ever, ever any more!" Valentin almost plaintively sighed. "She's really quite a bad bore."

"With all my heart. But if that's the way you feel about her, why could n't you let her alone?"

Valentin shook his head with a fine smile. "I don't think you quite understand, and I don't believe I can make you. She understood the situation; she knew what was in the air; she was watching us."

"Then you are doing it for her?" Newman railed.

"I'm doing it for myself, and you must leave me judge of what concerns my honour."

"Well, I 'll leave you judge if you 'll leave me to, quite impartially, kick somebody!"

"It's vain talking," Valentin replied to this. "Words have passed and the thing's settled."

Newman turned away, taking his hat. Then pausing as if with interest, his hand on the door: "You're going to use knives?"

"That's for M. Stanislas Kapp, as the challenged party, to decide. My own choice would be a short, light sword. I handle it well. I'm an indifferent shot."

Newman had put on his hat; he pushed it back, gently scratching his forehead high up. "I wish it were guns," he said. "I could show you how to hold one."

Valentin gave him a hard look and then broke into a laugh. "Murderer!" he cried with some intensity, but agreeing to see him again on the morrow, after the details of the meeting with M. Stanislas Kapp should have been arranged.

In the course of the day Newman received three lines from him to the effect that it had been decided he should cross the frontier with his adversary, and that he was accordingly to take the night express to Geneva. They should have time, however, to dine together. In the afternoon Newman called on Madame de Cintré for the single daily hour of reinvoked and reasserted confidence—a solemnity but the more exquisite with repetition—to which she had, a little strangely, given him to understand it was convenient, important, in fact vital to her, that their communion, for their strained interval, should be restricted, even though this reduced him for so many other recurrent hours, the hours of evening in particular, the worst of the probation, to the state of a restless, prowling, time-keeping ghost, a taker of long night-walks through streets that affected him at moments as the alleys of a great darkened bankrupt bazaar. But his visit to-day had a worry to reckon with—all the more that it had as well so much of one to conceal. She shone upon him, as always, with that light of her gentleness which might have been figured, in the heat-thickened air, by a sultry harvest moon; but she was visibly bedimmed, and she confessed, on his charging her with her red eyes, that she had been, for a vague vain reason, crying them half out. Valentin had been with her a couple of hours before and had somehow troubled her without in the least intending it. He had laughed and gossiped, had brought her no bad news, had only been, in taking leave of her, rather "dearer," poor boy, than usual. A certain extravagance of tenderness in him had in fact touched her to positive pain, so that on his departure she had burst into miserable tears. She had felt as if something strange and wrong were hanging about them—ah, she had had that feeling in other connexions too; nervous, always nervous, she had tried to reason away the fear, but the effort had only given her a headache. Newman was of course tongue-tied on what he himself knew, and, his power of simulation and his general art of optimism breaking down on this occasion as if some long needle point had suddenly passed, to make him wince, through the sole crevice of his armour, he could, to his high chagrin, but cut his call short. Before he retreated, however, he asked if Valentin had seen his mother.

"Yes; but he did n't make her cry!"

It was in Newman's own apartments that the young man dined, having sent his servant and his effects to await him at the railway. M. Stanislas Kapp had positively declined to make excuses, and he on his side had obviously none to offer. Valentin had found out with whom he was dealing, and that his adversary was the son and heir of a rich brewer of Strasbourg, a youth sanguineous, brawny, bullheaded, and lately much occupied in making ducks and drakes of the paternal brewery. Though passing in a general way for a good companion, he had already been noted as apt to quarrel after dinner and to be disposed then to charge with his head down. "Que voulez-vous?" said Valentin: "brought up on beer how could he stand such champagne as Noémie, cup-bearer to the infernal gods, had poured out for him?" He had chosen the weapon known to Newman as the gun. Valentin had an excellent appetite: he made a point, in view of his long journey, of eating more than usual: one of the points, no doubt, that his friend had accused him of always needing to make. He took the liberty of suggesting to the latter the difference of the suspicion of a shade in the composition of a fish-sauce; he thought it worth hinting, with precautions, to the cook. But Newman had no mind for sauces; there was more in the dish itself, the mixture now presented to him, than he could swallow; he was in short nervous to a tune of which he felt almost ashamed as he watched his inimitable friend go through their superior meal without skipping a step or missing a savour; the exposure, the possible sacrifice, of so charming a life on the altar of a stupid tradition struck him as intolerably wrong. He exaggerated the perversity of Noémie, the ferocity of M. Kapp, the grimness of M. Kapp's friends, and only knew that he did yearn now as a brother.

"This sort of thing may be all very well," he broke out at last, "but I 'll be blamed if I see it. I can't stop you perhaps, but at least I can swear at you handsomely. Take me as doing so in the most awful terms."

"My dear fellow, don't make a scene"—Valentin was almost sententious. "Scenes in these cases are in very bad taste."

"Your duel itself is a scene," Newman said; "a scene of the most flagrant description. It 's a wretched theatrical affair. Why don't you take a band of music with you outright? It's G— d— barbarous, and yet it's G— d— effete."

"Oh, I can't begin at this time of day to defend the theory of duelling," the young man blandly reasoned. "It's our only resource at given moments, and I hold it a good thing. Quite apart from the merit of the cause in which a meeting may take place, it strikes a romantic note that seems to me in this age of vile prose greatly to recommend it. It's a remnant of a higher-tempered time; one ought to cling to it. It's a way of more decently testifying. Testify when you can!"

"I don't know what you mean by a higher-tempered time," Newman retorted. "Because your great grandfather liked to prance, is that any reason for you, who have got beyond it? For my part I think we had better let our temper take care of itself; it generally seems to me quite high enough; I'm not more of a fire-eater than most, but I'm not afraid of being too mild. If your great-grandfather were to make himself unpleasant to me I think I could tackle him yet."

"My dear friend"—Valentin was perfectly patient with him—you can't invent anything that will take the place of satisfaction for an insult. To demand it and to give it are equally excellent arrangements."

"Do you call this sort of thing satisfaction?" Newman groaned. "Does it satisfy you to put yourself at the disposal of a bigger fool even than yourself? I 'd see him somewhere first! Does it satisfy you that he should set up this ridiculous relation with you? I 'd like to see him try anything of the sort with me! If a man has a bad intention on you it's his own affair till it takes effect; but when it does, give him one in the eye. If you don't know how to do that—straight—you're not fit to go round alone. But I'm talking of those who claim they are, and that they don't require some one to take care of them."

"Well," Valentin smiled, "it would be interesting truly to go round with you. But to get the full good of that, alas, I should have begun earlier!"

Newman could scarcely bear even the possible pertinence of his "alas." "See here," he said at the last: "if any one ever hurts you again—!"

"Well, mon bon?"—and Valentin, with his eyes on his friend's, might now have been much moved.

"Come straight to me about it. I' ll go for him."

"Matamore!" the young man laughed as they parted.