Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/173

 horses, who expected a fellow, further, to arrange parties for the opera on nights when Patti sang and the prices were consequent, to propose light suppers at the Kursaal or drives by moonlight to the Castle, to be always arrayed and anointed and under arms for their service—that to move in such society, we say, though it might be a privilege, was a privilege with a penalty attached. But the tables made such things easy; half the Baden world lived by the tables. Roderick tried them, and found them at first a wonderful help. The help, however, was all fallacious, for he soon perceived that to seem to have money, and to have it in fact, exposed an eager and confident youth to peculiar liabilities. As his friend's narrative sailed closer Rowland was reminded of Madame de Cruchecassée in Thackeray's novel, but of a Madame de Cruchecassée mature and quasi-maternal, attached as with a horrible sincerity to her prey, and though he had listened in tranquil silence to the rest of it he found it hard not to say that all this had been, for a young man in his particular position, about as gratuitous a mistake as possible. Roderick admitted it with bitterness; and then told how much—measured simply in vulgar cash—the mistake had cost him. His luck had changed, the tables had ceased to back him, and he had found himself up to his knees in debt. Every penny had gone of the solid sum which had seemed a large equivalent of those shining statues in Rome. He had been an ass, but it was not irreparable; he could make another statue in a couple of months. 139