Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 2.djvu/83

 that he had nothing particular to complain of, personally, or that if he had he didn't complain of it—an attitude which perhaps contained the germs of a latent disaffection. Hyacinth could easily see that he himself was exposed to the same imputation, but he couldn't help it; it would have been impossible to him to keep up his character for sincerity by revealing, at the 'Sun and Moon,' the condition of his wardrobe, or announcing that he had not had a pennyworth of bacon for six months. There were members of the club who were apparently always in the enjoyment of involuntary leisure—narrating the vainest peregrinations in search of a job, the crudest rebuffs, the most vivid anecdotes of the insolence of office. They made Hyacinth uncomfortably conscious, at times, that if he should be out of work it would be wholly by his own fault; that he had in his hand a bread-winning tool on which he might absolutely count. He was also aware, however, that his position in this little band of malcontents (it was little only if measured by the numbers that were gathered together on any one occasion; he liked to think it was large in its latent possibilities, its mysterious ramifications and affiliations), was peculiar and distinguished; it would be favourable if he had the kind of energy and assurance that would help him to make use of it. He had an intimate conviction—the proof of it was in the air, in the sensible facility of his footing at the 'Sun and Moon'—that Eustache Poupin had taken upon himself to disseminate the anecdote of his origin, of his mother's disaster; in consequence of which, as the victim of social infamy, of heinous laws, it was conceded to him that he had a larger account to settle even than most. He was ab ovo a revolutionist, and that