? By what I can make out, the generosity is all to be on my
side.«
    The marquis dropped his arms at his side and held his head a little higher.
»What we offer you is a chance - a chance that a gentleman should appreciate. A
chance to abstain from inflicting a terrible blot upon the memory of a man who
certainly had his faults, but who, personally, had done you no wrong.«
    »There are two things to say to that,« said Newman. »The first is, as
regards appreciating your chance, that you don't consider me a gentleman. That's
your great point, you know. It's a poor rule that won't work both ways. The
second is that - well, in a word, you are talking great nonsense!«
    Newman, who in the midst of his bitterness had, as I have said, kept well
before his eyes a certain ideal of saying nothing rude, was immediately somewhat
regretfully conscious of the sharpness of these words. But he speedily observed
that the marquis took them more quietly than might have been expected. M. de
Bellegarde, like the stately ambassador that he was, continued the policy of
ignoring what was disagreeable in his adversary's replies. He gazed at the
gilded arabesques on the opposite wall, and then presently transferred his
glance to Newman, as if he too were a large grotesque in a rather vulgar system
of chamber-decoration. »I suppose you know that as regards yourself, it won't do
at all.«
    »How do you mean it won't do?«
    »Why, of course you damn yourself. But I suppose that's in your programme.
You propose to throw mud at us; you believe, you hope, that some of it may
stick. We know, of course, it can't,« explained the marquis in a tone of
conscious lucidity; »but you take the chance, and are willing at any rate to
show that you yourself have dirty hands.«
    »That's a good comparison; at least half of it is,« said Newman. »I take the
chance of something sticking. But as regards my hands, they are clean. I have
taken the matter up with my finger-tips.«
    M. de Bellegarde looked a moment into his hat. »All our friends are quite
with us,« he said. »They would have done exactly as we have done.«
    »I shall believe that when I hear them say it
