Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/49

 claim by process of law. There was a sharp contest, but he gained his case; immediately after which he made in another quarter a donation of the disputed sum. He cared nothing for the money, but he had felt a just desire to protest against a star which seemed determined only not to pamper him. It struck him that he could put up with a little pampering. And yet he treated himself to a very modest quantity and submitted without reserve to the great national discipline which began in 1861. When the Civil War broke out he immediately obtained a commission, doing his duty afterwards, for the three first long years, by the aid of much grinding of the teeth. His duty happened to remain, for the most part, obscure, but he never lost a certain private satisfaction in remembering that on two or three occasions it had been performed, if not with glory, at least with a noted propriety. He had disentangled himself from business, and after the war he felt a deep disinclination to take up again the harsh and broken threads. He had no desire to make money, he had money enough; and although he knew, and was frequently reminded, that a young man is the better for a fixed occupation, he could perceive no advantage to his soul in his driving a lucrative trade. Yet few young men of means and leisure ever made less of a parade of idleness, and indeed idleness in any degree could hardly be laid at the door of a personage who took life in the conscious, serious, anxious fashion of our friend. It often seemed to Mallet that he wholly lacked the prime requisite of an expert flâneur—the simple, sensuous, confident relish of 15