The sentimental vicissitudes of the Princess X----led to a discussion of the heart history of Florentine nobility in general; the duchess had spent five weeks in Florence and had gathered much information on the subject.This was merged, in turn, in an examination of the Italian heart per se.The duchess took a brilliantly heterodox view--thought it the least susceptible organ of its kind that she had ever encountered, related examples of its want of susceptibility, and at last declared that for her the Italians were a people of ice.
The prince became flame to refute her, and his visit really proved charming.Newman was naturally out of the conversation;he sat with his head a little on one side, watching the interlocutors.
The duchess, as she talked, frequently looked at him with a smile, as if to intimate, in the charming manner of her nation, that it lay only with him to say something very much to the point.
But he said nothing at all, and at last his thoughts began to wander.
A singular feeling came over him--a sudden sense of the folly of his errand.What under the sun had he to say to the duchess, after all?
Wherein would it profit him to tell her that the Bellegardes were traitors and that the old lady, into the bargain was a murderess?
He seemed morally to have turned a sort of somersault, and to find things looking differently in consequence.He felt a sudden stiffening of his will and quickening of his reserve.What in the world had he been thinking of when he fancied the duchess could help him, and that it would conduce to his comfort to make her think ill of the Bellegardes?
What did her opinion of the Bellegardes matter to him?
It was only a shade more important than the opinion the Bellegardes entertained of her.The duchess help him--that cold, stout, soft, artificial woman help him?--she who in the last twenty minutes had built up between them a wall of polite conversation in which she evidently flattered herself that he would never find a gate.
Had it come to that--that he was asking favors of conceited people, and appealing for sympathy where he had no sympathy to give? He rested his arms on his knees, and sat for some minutes staring into his hat.
As he did so his ears tingled--he had come very near being an ass.
Whether or no the duchess would hear his story, he wouldn't tell it.
Was he to sit there another half hour for the sake of exposing the Bellegardes? The Bellegardes be hanged! He got up abruptly, and advanced to shake hands with his hostess.
"You can't stay longer?" she asked, very graciously.
"I am afraid not," he said.
She hesitated a moment, and then, "I had an idea you had something particular to say to me," she declared.
Newman looked at her; he felt a little dizzy; for the moment he seemed to be turning his somersault again.The little Italian prince came to his help:
"Ah, madam, who has not that?" he softly sighed.
"Don't teach Mr.Newman to say fadaises," said the duchess.
"It is his merit that he doesn't know how.""Yes, I don't know how to say fadaises," said Newman, "and Idon't want to say anything unpleasant."
"I am sure you are very considerate," said the duchess with a smile;and she gave him a little nod for good-by with which he took his departure.
Once in the street, he stood for some time on the pavement, wondering whether, after all, he was not an ass not to have discharged his pistol.And then again he decided that to talk to any one whomsoever about the Bellegardes would be extremely disagreeable to him.The least disagreeable thing, under the circumstances, was to banish them from his mind, and never think of them again.
Indecision had not hitherto been one of Newman's weaknesses, and in this case it was not of long duration.For three days after this he did not, or at least he tried not to, think of the Bellegardes.
He dined with Mrs.Tristram, and on her mentioning their name, he begged her almost severely to desist.This gave Tom Tristram a much-coveted opportunity to offer his condolences.
He leaned forward, laying his hand on Newman's arm compressing his lips and shaking his head."The fact is my dear fellow, you see, that you ought never to have gone into it.It was not your doing, I know--it was all my wife.If you want to come down on her, I'll stand off; I give you leave to hit her as hard as you like.
You know she has never had a word of reproach from me in her life, and I think she is in need of something of the kind.
Why didn't you listen to ME? You know I didn't believe in the thing.
I thought it at the best an amiable delusion.I don't profess to be a Don Juan or a gay Lothario,--that class of man, you know;but I do pretend to know something about the harder sex.I have never disliked a woman in my life that she has not turned out badly.
I was not at all deceived in Lizzie, for instance; I always had my doubts about her.Whatever you may think of my present situation, I must at least admit that I got into it with my eyes open.
Now suppose you had got into something like this box with Madame de Cintre.
You may depend upon it she would have turned out a stiff one.
And upon my word I don't see where you could have found your comfort.
Not from the marquis, my dear Newman; he wasn't a man you could go and talk things over with in a sociable, common-sense way.Did he ever seem to want to have you on the premises--did he ever try to see you alone?
Did he ever ask you to come and smoke a cigar with him of an evening, or step in, when you had been calling on the ladies, and take something?
I don't think you would have got much encouragement out of HIM.
And as for the old lady, she struck one as an uncommonly strong dose.
They have a great expression here, you know; they call it 'sympathetic.'
Everything is sympathetic--or ought to be.Now Madame de Bellegarde is about as sympathetic as that mustard-pot.They're a d--d cold-blooded lot, any way; I felt it awfully at that ball of theirs.
