Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/416

THE AMERICAN Catholic, and Newman thought him a queer mixture. His countenance, by daylight, had an amiably saturnine cast; he had a large lean nose and looked like an old Spanish picture. He appeared to think the use of pistols at thirty paces a very perfect arrangement, provided, should one get hit, one might promptly see the priest. He took, clearly, a great satisfaction in Valentin's interview with that functionary, and yet his general tone was far from indicating a sanctimonious habit of mind. M. Ledoux had evidently a high sense of propriety and was furnished, in respect to everything, with an explanation and a grave grin that combined together to push his moustache up under his nose. Savoir-vivre—knowing how to live—was his strong point, in which he included knowing how to die; but, as Newman reflected with a good deal of dumb irritation, he seemed disposed to delegate to others the application of his mastery of this latter resource. M. de Grosjoyaux was quite of another complexion and could but have regarded his friend's theological unction as the sign of an inaccessibly superior spirit. His surprise was so bright that it made him look amused; as if, under the impression of M. Kapp's mere mass, he could n't recover from the oddity of these hazards, that of the translation of so much large looseness into a thing so fine as a direction—even, as it were, a dreadfully wrong one. He could have understood the coup if it had been his own indeed, and he kept looking through the window, over the shoulder of M. Ledoux, at a slender tree by the end of a lane opposite the inn, as if measuring its distance from his extended arm and secretly wishing 386