by Henry James
CHAPTER V
When Newman related to Mrs. Tristram his fruitless visit to Madame deCintré, she urged him not to be discouraged, but to carry out his planof “seeing Europe” during the summer, and return to Paris in the autumnand settle down comfortably for the winter. “Madame de Cintré willkeep,” she said; “she is not a woman who will marry from one day toanother.” Newman made no distinct affirmation that he would come backto Paris; he even talked about Rome and the Nile, and abstained fromprofessing any especial interest in Madame de Cintré’s continuedwidowhood. This circumstance was at variance with his habitualfrankness, and may perhaps be regarded as characteristic of theincipient stage of that passion which is more particularly known as themysterious one. The truth is that the expression of a pair of eyes thatwere at once brilliant and mild had become very familiar to his memory,and he would not easily have resigned himself to the prospect of neverlooking into them again. He communicated to Mrs. Tristram a number ofother facts, of greater or less importance, as you choose; but on thisparticular point he kept his own counsel. He took a kindly leave ofM. Nioche, having assured him that, so far as he was concerned, theblue-cloaked Madonna herself might have been present at hisinterview with Mademoiselle Noémie; and left the old man nursing hisbreast-pocket, in an ecstasy which the acutest misfortune might havebeen defied to dissipate. Newman then started on his travels, with allhis usual appearance of slow-strolling leisure, and all his essentialdirectness and intensity of aim. No man seemed less in a hurry, andyet no man achieved more in brief periods. He had certain practicalinstincts which served him excellently in his trade of tourist. He foundhis way in foreign cities by divination, his memory was excellent whenonce his attention had been at all cordially given, and he emerged fromdialogues in foreign tongues, of which he had, formally, not understooda word, in full possession of the particular fact he had desired toascertain. His appetite for facts was capacious, and although many ofthose which he noted would have seemed woefully dry and colorless to theordinary sentimental traveler, a careful inspection of the list wouldhave shown that he had a soft spot in his imagination. In the charmingcity of Brussels--his first stopping-place after leaving Paris--heasked a great many questions about the street-cars, and took extremesatisfaction in the reappearance of this familiar symbol of Americancivilization but he was also greatly struck with the beautiful Gothictower of the Hôtel de Ville, and wondered whether it would not bepossible to “get up” something like it in San Francisco. He stood forhalf an hour in the crowded square before this edifice, in imminentdanger from carriage-wheels, listening to a toothless old ciceronemumble in broken English the touching history of Counts Egmont and Horn;and he wrote the names of these gentlemen--for reasons best known tohimself--on the back of an old letter.
At the outset, on his leaving Paris, his curiosity had not been intense;passive entertainment, in the Champs Élysées and at the theatres, seemedabout as much as he need expect of himself, and although, as he had saidto Tristram, he wanted to see the mysterious, satisfying _best_, he hadnot the Grand Tour in the least on his conscience, and was not given tocross-questioning the amusement of the hour. He believed that Europewas made for him, and not he for Europe. He had said that he wantedto improve his mind, but he would have felt a certain embarrassment, acertain shame, even--a false shame, possibly--if he had caught himselflooking intellectually into the mirror. Neither in this nor in any otherrespect had Newman a high sense of responsibility; it was his primeconviction that a man’s life should be easy, and that he should be ableto resolve privilege into a matter of course. The world, to his sense,was a great bazaar, where one might stroll about and purchase handsomethings; but he was no more conscious, individually, of social pressurethan he admitted the existence of such a thing as an obligatorypurchase. He had not only a dislike, but a sort of moral mistrust,of uncomfortable thoughts, and it was both uncomfortable and slightlycontemptible to feel obliged to square one’s self with a standard.One’s standard was the ideal of one’s own good-humored prosperity, theprosperity which enabled one to give as well as take. To expand,without bothering about it--without shiftless timidity on one side, orloquacious eagerness on the other--to the full compass of what hewould have called a “pleasant” experience, was Newman’s most definiteprogramme of life. He had always hated to hurry to catch railroadtrains, and yet he had always caught them; and just so an unduesolicitude for “culture” seemed a sort of silly dawdling at thestation, a proceeding properly confined to women, foreigners, and otherunpractical persons. All this admitted, Newman enjoyed his journey,when once he had fairly entered the current, as profoundly as the mostzealous _dilettante_. One’s theories, after all, matter little; it isone’s humor that is the great thing. Our friend was intelligent, andhe could not help that. He lounged through Belgium and Holland andthe Rhineland, through Switzerland and Northern Italy, planning aboutnothing, but seeing everything. The guides and _valets de place_ foundhim an excellent subject. He was always approachable, for he was muchaddicted to standing about in the vestibules and porticos of inns, andhe availed himself little of the opportunities for impressive seclusionwhich are so liberally offered in Europe to gentlemen who travelwith long purses. When an excursion, a church, a gallery, a ruin, wasproposed to him, the first thing Newman usually did, after surveyinghis postulant in silence, from head to foot, was to sit down at a littletable and order something to drink. The cicerone, during this process,usually retreated to a respectful distance; otherwise I am not sure thatNewman would not have bidden him sit down and have a glass also, andtell him as an honest fellow whether his church or his gallery wasreally worth a man’s trouble. At last he rose and stretched his longlegs, beckoned to the man of monuments, looked at his watch, andfixed his eye on his adversary. “What is it?” he asked. “How far?” Andwhatever the answer was, although he sometimes seemed to hesitate, henever declined. He stepped into an open cab, made his conductor sitbeside him to answer questions, bade the driver go fast (he had aparticular aversion to slow driving) and rolled, in all probabilitythrough a dusty suburb, to the goal of his pilgrimage. If the goal was adisappointment, if the church was meagre, or the ruin a heap of rubbish,Newman never protested or berated his cicerone; he looked with animpartial eye upon great monuments and small, made the guide recite hislesson, listened to it religiously, asked if there was nothing else tobe seen in the neighborhood, and drove back again at a rattling pace.It is to be feared that his perception of the difference between goodarchitecture and bad was not acute, and that he might sometimes havebeen seen gazing with culpable serenity at inferior productions. Uglychurches were a part of his pastime in Europe, as well as beautifulones, and his tour was altogether a pastime. But there is sometimesnothing like the imagination of these people who have none, and Newman,now and then, in an unguided stroll in a foreign city, before somelonely, sad-towered church, or some angular image of one who hadrendered civic service in an unknown past, had felt a singular inwardtremor. It was not an excitement or a perplexity; it was a placid,fathomless sense of diversion.
He encountered by chance in Holland a young American, with whom, fora time, he formed a sort of traveler’s partnership. They were men of avery different cast, but each, in his way, was so good a fellow that,for a few weeks at least, it seemed something of a pleasure to sharethe chances of the road. Newman’s comrade, whose name was Babcock, wasa young Unitarian minister, a small, spare, neatly-attired man, witha strikingly candid physiognomy. He was a native of Dorchester,Massachusetts, and had spiritual charge of a small congregation inanother suburb of the New England metropolis. His digestion was weak andhe lived chiefly on Graham bread and hominy--a regimen to which he wasso much attached that his tour seemed to him destined to be blightedwhen, on landing on the Continent, he found that these delicacies didnot flourish under the _table d’hôte_ system. In Paris he had purchaseda bag of hominy at an establishment which called itself an AmericanAgency, and at which the New York illustrated papers were also tobe procured, and he had carried i
t about with him, and shown extremeserenity and fortitude in the somewhat delicate position of having hishominy prepared for him and served at anomalous hours, at the hotels hesuccessively visited. Newman had once spent a morning, in the course ofbusiness, at Mr. Babcock’s birthplace, and, for reasons too reconditeto unfold, his visit there always assumed in his mind a jocular cast.To carry out his joke, which certainly seems poor so long as it isnot explained, he used often to address his companion as “Dorchester.” Fellow-travelers very soon grow intimate but it is highly improbablethat at home these extremely dissimilar characters would have found anyvery convenient points of contact. They were, indeed, as different aspossible. Newman, who never reflected on such matters, accepted thesituation with great equanimity, but Babcock used to meditate overit privately; used often, indeed, to retire to his room early in theevening for the express purpose of considering it conscientiouslyand impartially. He was not sure that it was a good thing for him toassociate with our hero, whose way of taking life was so little his own.Newman was an excellent, generous fellow; Mr. Babcock sometimes said tohimself that he was a _noble_ fellow, and, certainly, it was impossiblenot to like him. But would it not be desirable to try to exert aninfluence upon him, to try to quicken his moral life and sharpen hissense of duty? He liked everything, he accepted everything, he foundamusement in everything; he was not discriminating, he had not a hightone. The young man from Dorchester accused Newman of a fault which heconsidered very grave, and which he did his best to avoid: what he wouldhave called a want of “moral reaction.” Poor Mr. Babcock was extremelyfond of pictures and churches, and carried Mrs. Jameson’s works aboutin his trunk; he delighted in æsthetic analysis, and received peculiarimpressions from everything he saw. But nevertheless in his secret soulhe detested Europe, and he felt an irritating need to protest againstNewman’s gross intellectual hospitality. Mr. Babcock’s moral _malaise_,I am afraid, lay deeper than where any definition of mine can reach it.He mistrusted the European temperament, he suffered from the Europeanclimate, he hated the European dinner-hour; European life seemed to himunscrupulous and impure. And yet he had an exquisite sense of beauty;and as beauty was often inextricably associated with the abovedispleasing conditions, as he wished, above all, to be just anddispassionate, and as he was, furthermore, extremely devoted to“culture,” he could not bring himself to decide that Europe was utterlybad. But he thought it was very bad indeed, and his quarrel with Newmanwas that this unregulated epicure had a sadly insufficient perceptionof the bad. Babcock himself really knew as little about the bad, in anyquarter of the world, as a nursing infant, his most vivid realization ofevil had been the discovery that one of his college classmates, who wasstudying architecture in Paris had a love affair with a young woman whodid not expect him to marry her. Babcock had related this incident toNewman, and our hero had applied an epithet of an unflattering sort tothe young girl. The next day his companion asked him whether he wasvery sure he had used exactly the right word to characterize the youngarchitect’s mistress. Newman stared and laughed. “There are a great manywords to express that idea,” he said; “you can take your choice!”
“Oh, I mean,” said Babcock, “was she possibly not to be considered ina different light? Don’t you think she _really_ expected him to marryher?”
“I am sure I don’t know,” said Newman. “Very likely she did; I have nodoubt she is a grand woman.” And he began to laugh again.
“I didn’t mean that either,” said Babcock, “I was only afraid that Imight have seemed yesterday not to remember--not to consider; well, Ithink I will write to Percival about it.”
And he had written to Percival (who answered him in a really impudentfashion), and he had reflected that it was somehow, raw and reckless inNewman to assume in that off-hand manner that the young woman in Parismight be “grand.” The brevity of Newman’s judgments very often shockedand discomposed him. He had a way of damning people without fartherappeal, or of pronouncing them capital company in the face ofuncomfortable symptoms, which seemed unworthy of a man whose consciencehad been properly cultivated. And yet poor Babcock liked him, andremembered that even if he was sometimes perplexing and painful, thiswas not a reason for giving him up. Goethe recommended seeing humannature in the most various forms, and Mr. Babcock thought Goetheperfectly splendid. He often tried, in odd half-hours of conversationto infuse into Newman a little of his own spiritual starch, but Newman’spersonal texture was too loose to admit of stiffening. His mind could nomore hold principles than a sieve can hold water. He admired principlesextremely, and thought Babcock a mighty fine little fellow for havingso many. He accepted all that his high-strung companion offered him,and put them away in what he supposed to be a very safe place; but poorBabcock never afterwards recognized his gifts among the articles thatNewman had in daily use.
They traveled together through Germany and into Switzerland, wherefor three or four weeks they trudged over passes and lounged upon bluelakes. At last they crossed the Simplon and made their way to Venice.Mr. Babcock had become gloomy and even a trifle irritable; he seemedmoody, absent, preoccupied; he got his plans into a tangle, and talkedone moment of doing one thing and the next of doing another. Newman ledhis usual life, made acquaintances, took his ease in the galleries andchurches, spent an unconscionable amount of time in strolling in thePiazza San Marco, bought a great many bad pictures, and for a fortnightenjoyed Venice grossly. One evening, coming back to his inn, he foundBabcock waiting for him in the little garden beside it. The young manwalked up to him, looking very dismal, thrust out his hand, and saidwith solemnity that he was afraid they must part. Newman expressedhis surprise and regret, and asked why a parting had become necessary.“Don’t be afraid I’m tired of you,” he said.
“You are not tired of me?” demanded Babcock, fixing him with his cleargray eye.
“Why the deuce should I be? You are a very plucky fellow. Besides, Idon’t grow tired of things.”
“We don’t understand each other,” said the young minister.
“Don’t I understand you?” cried Newman. “Why, I hoped I did. But what ifI don’t; where’s the harm?”
“I don’t understand _you_,” said Babcock. And he sat down and rested hishead on his hand, and looked up mournfully at his immeasurable friend.
“Oh Lord, I don’t mind that!” cried Newman, with a laugh.
“But it’s very distressing to me. It keeps me in a state of unrest. Itirritates me; I can’t settle anything. I don’t think it’s good for me.”
“You worry too much; that’s what’s the matter with you,” said Newman.
“Of course it must seem so to you. You think I take things too hard, andI think you take things too easily. We can never agree.”
“But we have agreed very well all along.”
“No, I haven’t agreed,” said Babcock, shaking his head. “I am veryuncomfortable. I ought to have separated from you a month ago.”
“Oh, horrors! I’ll agree to anything!” cried Newman.
Mr. Babcock buried his head in both hands. At last looking up, “I don’tthink you appreciate my position,” he said. “I try to arrive at thetruth about everything. And then you go too fast. For me, you are toopassionate, too extravagant. I feel as if I ought to go over all thisground we have traversed again, by myself, alone. I am afraid I havemade a great many mistakes.”
“Oh, you needn’t give so many reasons,” said Newman. “You are simplytired of my company. You have a good right to be.”
“No, no, I am not tired!” cried the pestered young divine. “It is verywrong to be tired.”
“I give it up!” laughed Newman. “But of course it will never do to goon making mistakes. Go your way, by all means. I shall miss you; but youhave seen I make friends very easily. You will be lonely yourself;but drop me a line, when you feel like it, and I will wait for youanywhere.”
“I think I will go back to Milan. I am afraid I didn’t do justice toLuini.”
“Poor Luini!” said Newman.
/>
“I mean that I am afraid I overestimated him. I don’t think that he is apainter of the first rank.”
“Luini?” Newman exclaimed; “why, he’s enchanting--he’s magnificent!There is something in his genius that is like a beautiful woman. Itgives one the same feeling.”
Mr. Babcock frowned and winced. And it must be added that this was, forNewman, an unusually metaphysical flight; but in passing through Milanhe had taken a great fancy to the painter. “There you are again!” said Mr. Babcock. “Yes, we had better separate.” And on the morrow heretraced his steps and proceeded to tone down his impressions of thegreat Lombard artist.
A few days afterwards Newman received a note from his late companionwhich ran as follows:--
My Dear Mr. Newman,--I am afraid that my conduct at Venice, a week ago,seemed to you strange and ungrateful, and I wish to explain my position,which, as I said at the time, I do not think you appreciate. I had longhad it on my mind to propose that we should part company, and this stepwas not really so abrupt as it seemed. In the first place, you know, Iam traveling in Europe on funds supplied by my congregation, who kindlyoffered me a vacation and an opportunity to enrich my mind with thetreasures of nature and art in the Old World. I feel, therefore, as if Iought to use my time to the very best advantage. I have a high sense ofresponsibility. You appear to care only for the pleasure of the hour,and you give yourself up to it with a violence which I confess I am notable to emulate. I feel as if I must arrive at some conclusion and fixmy belief on certain points. Art and life seem to me intensely seriousthings, and in our travels in Europe we should especially remember theimmense seriousness of Art. You seem to hold that if a thing amuses youfor the moment, that is all you need ask for it, and your relish formere amusement is also much higher than mine. You put, however, a kindof reckless confidence into your pleasure which at times, I confess, hasseemed to me--shall I say it?--almost cynical. Your way at any rate isnot my way, and it is unwise that we should attempt any longer to pulltogether. And yet, let me add that I know there is a great deal to besaid for your way; I have felt its attraction, in your society, verystrongly. But for this I should have left you long ago. But I was soperplexed. I hope I have not done wrong. I feel as if I had a great dealof lost time to make up. I beg you take all this as I mean it, which,Heaven knows, is not invidiously. I have a great personal esteem for youand hope that some day, when I have recovered my balance, we shallmeet again. I hope you will continue to enjoy your travels, only _do_remember that Life and Art _are_ extremely serious. Believe me yoursincere friend and well-wisher,
BENJAMIN BABCOCK
P. S. I am greatly perplexed by Luini.
This letter produced in Newman’s mind a singular mixture of exhilarationand awe. At first, Mr. Babcock’s tender conscience seemed to him acapital farce, and his traveling back to Milan only to get into adeeper muddle appeared, as the reward of his pedantry, exquisitely andludicrously just. Then Newman reflected that these are mighty mysteries,that possibly he himself was indeed that baleful and barely mentionablething, a cynic, and that his manner of considering the treasures of artand the privileges of life was probably very base and immoral. Newmanhad a great contempt for immorality, and that evening, for a good halfhour, as he sat watching the star-sheen on the warm Adriatic, he feltrebuked and depressed. He was at a loss how to answer Babcock’s letter.His good nature checked his resenting the young minister’s loftyadmonitions, and his tough, inelastic sense of humor forbade his takingthem seriously. He wrote no answer at all but a day or two afterward hefound in a curiosity shop a grotesque little statuette in ivory, of thesixteenth century, which he sent off to Babcock without a commentary. Itrepresented a gaunt, ascetic-looking monk, in a tattered gown and cowl,kneeling with clasped hands and pulling a portentously long face. It wasa wonderfully delicate piece of carving, and in a moment, through oneof the rents of his gown, you espied a fat capon hung round the monk’swaist. In Newman’s intention what did the figure symbolize? Did it meanthat he was going to try to be as “high-toned” as the monk looked atfirst, but that he feared he should succeed no better than the friar, ona closer inspection, proved to have done? It is not supposable that heintended a satire upon Babcock’s own asceticism, for this would havebeen a truly cynical stroke. He made his late companion, at any rate, avery valuable little present.
Newman, on leaving Venice, went through the Tyrol to Vienna, and thenreturned westward, through Southern Germany. The autumn found him atBaden-Baden, where he spent several weeks. The place was charming, andhe was in no hurry to depart; besides, he was looking about him anddeciding what to do for the winter. His summer had been very full, andhe sat under the great trees beside the miniature river that tricklespast the Baden flower-beds, he slowly rummaged it over. He had seen anddone a great deal, enjoyed and observed a great deal; he felt older,and yet he felt younger too. He remembered Mr. Babcock and his desireto form conclusions, and he remembered also that he had profited verylittle by his friend’s exhortation to cultivate the same respectablehabit. Could he not scrape together a few conclusions? Baden-Badenwas the prettiest place he had seen yet, and orchestral music in theevening, under the stars, was decidedly a great institution. This wasone of his conclusions! But he went on to reflect that he had done verywisely to pull up stakes and come abroad; this seeing of the world wasa very interesting thing. He had learned a great deal; he couldn’t sayjust what, but he had it there under his hat-band. He had done what hewanted; he had seen the great things, and he had given his mind a chanceto “improve,” if it would. He cheerfully believed that it had improved.Yes, this seeing of the world was very pleasant, and he would willinglydo a little more of it. Thirty-six years old as he was, he had ahandsome stretch of life before him yet, and he need not begin tocount his weeks. Where should he take the world next? I have said heremembered the eyes of the lady whom he had found standing in Mrs.Tristram’s drawing-room; four months had elapsed, and he had notforgotten them yet. He had looked--he had made a point of looking--intoa great many other eyes in the interval, but the only ones he thoughtof now were Madame de Cintré’s. If he wanted to see more of the world,should he find it in Madame de Cintré’s eyes? He would certainly findsomething there, call it this world or the next. Throughout these ratherformless meditations he sometimes thought of his past life and the longarray of years (they had begun so early) during which he had had nothingin his head but “enterprise.” They seemed far away now, for his presentattitude was more than a holiday, it was almost a rupture. He had toldTristram that the pendulum was swinging back and it appeared that thebackward swing had not yet ended. Still “enterprise,” which was overin the other quarter wore to his mind a different aspect at differenthours. In its train a thousand forgotten episodes came trooping backinto his memory. Some of them he looked complacently enough in the face;from some he averted his head. They were old efforts, old exploits,antiquated examples of “smartness” and sharpness. Some of them, as helooked at them, he felt decidedly proud of; he admired himself as ifhe had been looking at another man. And, in fact, many of the qualitiesthat make a great deed were there: the decision, the resolution, thecourage, the celerity, the clear eye, and the strong hand. Of certainother achievements it would be going too far to say that he was ashamedof them for Newman had never had a stomach for dirty work. He wasblessed with a natural impulse to disfigure with a direct, unreasoningblow the comely visage of temptation. And certainly, in no man could awant of integrity have been less excusable. Newman knew the crooked fromthe straight at a glance, and the former had cost him, first and last,a great many moments of lively disgust. But none the less some of hismemories seemed to wear at present a rather graceless and sordid mien,and it struck him that if he had never done anything very ugly, he hadnever, on the other hand, done anything particularly beautiful. He hadspent his years in the unremitting effort to add thousands to thousands,and, now that he stood well outside of it, the business of money-gettingappeared tolerably dry and sterile. It is very well to sneer
atmoney-getting after you have filled your pockets, and Newman, it may besaid, should have begun somewhat earlier to moralize thus delicately. Tothis it may be answered that he might have made another fortune, if hechose; and we ought to add that he was not exactly moralizing. It hadcome back to him simply that what he had been looking at all summer wasa very rich and beautiful world, and that it had not all been made bysharp railroad men and stock-brokers.
During his stay at Baden-Baden he received a letter from Mrs. Tristram,scolding him for the scanty tidings he had sent to his friends of theAvenue d’Iéna, and begging to be definitely informed that he had notconcocted any horrid scheme for wintering in outlying regions, but wascoming back sanely and promptly to the most comfortable city in theworld. Newman’s answer ran as follows:--
“I supposed you knew I was a miserable letter-writer, and didn’t expectanything of me. I don’t think I have written twenty letters of purefriendship in my whole life; in America I conducted my correspondencealtogether by telegrams. This is a letter of pure friendship; you havegot hold of a curiosity, and I hope you will value it. You want to knoweverything that has happened to me these three months. The best way totell you, I think, would be to send you my half dozen guide-books, withmy pencil-marks in the margin. Wherever you find a scratch or a cross,or a ‘Beautiful!’ or a ‘So true!’ or a ‘Too thin!’ you may know thatI have had a sensation of some sort or other. That has been about myhistory, ever since I left you. Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Germany,Italy--I have been through the whole list, and I don’t think I am anythe worse for it. I know more about Madonnas and church-steeples than Isupposed any man could. I have seen some very pretty things, and shallperhaps talk them over this winter, by your fireside. You see, my faceis not altogether set against Paris. I have had all kinds of plans andvisions, but your letter has blown most of them away. ‘_L’appétit vienten mangeant_,’ says the French proverb, and I find that the more I seeof the world the more I want to see. Now that I am in the shafts, whyshouldn’t I trot to the end of the course? Sometimes I think of thefar East, and keep rolling the names of Eastern cities under my tongue:Damascus and Bagdad, Medina and Mecca. I spent a week last month in thecompany of a returned missionary, who told me I ought to be ashamed tobe loafing about Europe when there are such big things to be seen outthere. I do want to explore, but I think I would rather explore over inthe Rue de l’Université. Do you ever hear from that pretty lady? If youcan get her to promise she will be at home the next time I call, I willgo back to Paris straight. I am more than ever in the state of mind Itold you about that evening; I want a first-class wife. I have kept aneye on all the pretty girls I have come across this summer, but none ofthem came up to my notion, or anywhere near it. I should have enjoyedall this a thousand times more if I had had the lady just mentionedby my side. The nearest approach to her was a Unitarian minister fromBoston, who very soon demanded a separation, for incompatibility oftemper. He told me I was low-minded, immoral, a devotee of ‘art forart’--whatever that is: all of which greatly afflicted me, for hewas really a sweet little fellow. But shortly afterwards I met anEnglishman, with whom I struck up an acquaintance which at first seemedto promise well--a very bright man, who writes in the London papersand knows Paris nearly as well as Tristram. We knocked about for a weektogether, but he very soon gave me up in disgust. I was too virtuous byhalf; I was too stern a moralist. He told me, in a friendly way, that Iwas cursed with a conscience; that I judged things like a Methodist andtalked about them like an old lady. This was rather bewildering. Whichof my two critics was I to believe? I didn’t worry about it and verysoon made up my mind they were both idiots. But there is one thing inwhich no one will ever have the impudence to pretend I am wrong, thatis, in being your faithful friend,
“C. N.”
