Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/129

 last, or perhaps even the very first, refinement. Newman had a great esteem, after all, for refinement, and that evening, during the half-hour that he watched the star-sheen on the warm Adriatic, he felt rebuked and humiliated. He was unable to decide how to answer this communication. His good-nature checked his snubbing his late companion's earnestness, and his tough, inelastic sense of humour forbade his taking it seriously. He wrote no answer at all, but a day or two after he found in a curiosity-shop a grotesque little statuette in ivory, of the sixteenth century, which he sent off to Babcock without a commentary. It represented a gaunt, ascetic-looking monk, in a tattered gown and cowl, kneeling with clasped hands and pulling a portentously long face. It was a wonderfully delicate piece of carving, and in a moment, through one of the rents of his gown, you espied a fat capon hung round the monk's waist. In Newman's intention what did the figure symbolise? Did it mean that he was going to try to be as impressed with the solemnity of things as the monk looked at first, but that he feared he should succeed no better than this personage proved on a closer inspection to have done? It is not supposable he intended a satire on Babcock's own asceticism, for this would have been a truly cynical stroke. He at any rate made his late companion a valuable little present.

He went, on leaving Venice, through the Tyrol to Vienna and then returned, westward, through South Germany. The autumn found him at Baden-Baden, where he spent several weeks. The charming 99