Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/347

THE AMERICAN "Yes, she's very beautiful," the Marquis a little distantly admitted. "But that's not so great a source of satisfaction to other people, naturally, as to you."

"Well, I am satisfied and suited, Marquis—there's no doubt but what I am," said Newman with his protracted enunciation. "And now tell me," he added, taking in more of the scene, "who some of these pleasant folks are."

M. de Bellegarde looked about him in silence, with his head bent and his hand raised to his lower lip, which he slowly rubbed. A stream of people had been pouring into the salon in which Newman stood with his host, the rooms were filling up and the place, all light and colour and fine resonance, looked rich and congressional. It borrowed its splendour largely from the shining shoulders and profuse jewels of the women, and from the rest of their festal array. There were uniforms, but not many, as Madame de Bellegarde's door was inexorably closed against the mere myrmidons of the upstart power which then flourished on the soil of France, and the great company of smiling and chattering faces was not, as to line and feature, a collection of gold or silver medals. It was a pity for our friend, nevertheless, that he had not been a physiognomist, for these mobile masks, much more a matter of wax than of bronze, were the picture of a world and the vivid translation, as might have seemed to him, of a text that had had otherwise its obscurities. If the occasion had been different they would hardly have pleased him; he would have found in the women too little beauty and in the men too many smirks; but he was now in a 317