, turning to Newman, with sustained urbanity: »You are travelling
for your pleasure?« he asked.
    »Oh, I am knocking about to pick up one thing and another. Of course I get a
good deal of pleasure out of it.«
    »What especially interests you?« inquired the marquis.
    »Well, everything interests me,« said Newman. »I am not particular.
Manufactures are what I care most about.«
    »That has been your specialty?«
    »I can't say I have had any specialty. My specialty has been to make the
largest possible fortune in the shortest possible time« Newman made this last
remark very deliberately; he wished to open the way, if it were necessary, to an
authoritative statement of his means.
    M. de Bellegarde laughed agreeably. »I hope you have succeeded,« he said.
    »Yes, I have made a fortune in a reasonable time. I am not so old, you see.«
    »Paris is a very good place to spend a fortune. I wish you great enjoyment
of yours.« And M. de Bellegarde drew forth his gloves and began to put them on.
    Newman for a few moments watched him sliding his white hands into the white
kid, and as he did so his feelings took a singular turn. M. de Bellegarde's good
wishes seemed to descend out of the white expanse of his sublime serenity with
the soft scattered movement of a shower of snow-flakes. Yet Newman was not
irritated; he did not feel that he was being patronised; he was conscious of no
especial impulse to introduce a discord into so noble a harmony. Only he felt
himself suddenly in personal contact with the forces with which his friend
Valentin had told him that he would have to contend, and he became sensible of
their intensity. He wished to make some answering manifestations, to stretch
himself out at his own length, to sound a note at the uttermost end of his
scale. It must be added that if this impulse was not vicious or malicious, it
was by no means void of humorous expectancy. Newman was quite as ready to give
play to that loosely-adjusted smile of his, if his hosts should happen to be
shocked, as he was far from deliberately planning to shock them.
    »Paris is a very good place for idle people,« he said, »or it is a very good
place if your family has been settled here for a long time, and you have made
acquaintances and got your relations round you; or if you have got a
