The Ambassadors Henry James (novel24 txt) š
- Author: Henry James
Book online Ā«The Ambassadors Henry James (novel24 txt) šĀ». Author Henry James
It upset him a little none the less and after a while to find himself at last remembering on what current of association he had been floated so far. Old imaginations of the Latin Quarter had played their part for him, and he had duly recalled its having been with this scene of rather ominous legend that, like so many young men in fiction as well as in fact, Chad had begun. He was now quite out of it, with his āhome,ā as Strether figured the place, in the Boulevard Malesherbes, now; which was perhaps why, repairing, not to fail of justice either, to the elder neighbourhood, our friend had felt he could allow for the element of the usual, the immemorial, without courting perturbation. He was not at least in danger of seeing the youth and the particular Person flaunt by together; and yet he was in the very air of whichā ājust to feel what the early natural note must have beenā āhe wished most to take counsel. It became at once vivid to him that he had originally had, for a few days, an almost envious vision of the boyās romantic privilege. Melancholy MĆ¼rger, with Francine and Musette and Rodolphe, at home, was, in the company of the tattered, oneā āif he not in his single self two or threeā āof the unbound, the paper-covered dozen on the shelf; and when Chad had written, five years ago, after a sojourn then already prolonged to six months, that he had decided to go in for economy and the real thing, Stretherās fancy had quite fondly accompanied him in this migration, which was to convey him, as they somewhat confusedly learned at Woollett, across the bridges and up the Montagne Sainte-GeneviĆØve. This was the regionā āChad had been quite distinct about itā āin which the best French, and many other things, were to be learned at least cost, and in which all sorts of clever fellows, compatriots there for a purpose, formed an awfully pleasant set. The clever fellows, the friendly countrymen were mainly young painters, sculptors, architects, medical students; but they were, Chad sagely opined, a much more profitable lot to be withā āeven on the footing of not being quite one of themā āthan the āterrible toughsā (Strether remembered the edifying discrimination) of the American bars and banks roundabout the OpĆ©ra. Chad had thrown out, in the communications following this oneā āfor at that time he did once in a while communicateā āthat several members of a band of earnest workers under one of the great artists had taken him right in, making him dine every night, almost for nothing, at their place, and even pressing him not to neglect the hypothesis of there being as much āin himā as in any of them. There had been literally a moment at which it appeared there might be something in him; there had been at any rate a moment at which he had written that he didnāt know but what a month or two more might see him enrolled in some atelier. The season had been one at which Mrs. Newsome was moved to gratitude for small mercies; it had broken on them all as a blessing that their absentee had perhaps a conscienceā āthat he was sated in fine with idleness, was ambitious of variety. The exhibition was doubtless as yet not brilliant, but Strether himself, even by that time much enlisted and immersed, had determined, on the part of the two ladies, a temperate approval and in fact, as he now recollected, a certain austere enthusiasm.
But the very next thing that happened had been a dark drop of the curtain. The son and brother had not browsed long on the Montagne Sainte-GeneviĆØveā āhis effective little use of the name of which, like his allusion to the best French, appeared to have been but one of the notes of his rough cunning. The light refreshment of these vain appearances had not accordingly carried any of them very far. On the other hand it had gained Chad time; it had given him a chance, unchecked, to strike his roots, had paved the way for initiations more direct and more deep. It was Stretherās belief that he had been comparatively innocent before this first migration, and even that the first effects of the migration would not have been, without some particular bad accident, to have been deplored. There had been three monthsā āhe had sufficiently figured it outā āin which Chad had wanted to try. He had tried, though not very
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