Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/184

THE AMERICAN "Of Lord Saint Dunstans."

"And was he very grand?"

"Not as grand as we. They date only from the sixteenth century. It is on my father's side that we go back—back, back, back. The family antiquaries themselves lose breath. At last they stop, panting and fanning themselves, somewhere in the ninth century, under Charlemagne. That's where we begin."

"There is no mistake about it?" Newman demanded.

"I'm sure I hope not. We've been mistaken at least for several centuries."

"And you've always married into—what do you call them?—'ancient houses'?"

"As a rule; though in so long a stretch of time there have been some exceptions. Three or four Bellegardes, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, took wives out of the bourgeoisie—accepted lawyers' daughters."

"A lawyer's daughter—that's a come-down?" Newman went on.

"A condescension. But one of us, in the Middle Ages, did better: he married a beggar-maid, like King Cophetua. That was really more convenient; it was like pairing with a bird or a monkey; one did n't have to think about her family at all. Our women have always done well; they've never even gone into the petite noblesse. There is, I believe, not a case on record of a misalliance among ces dames."

Newman turned this over a while and then at last: "You offered, the first time you came to see 154