Well, then,« said Newman, »you are well fixed. You have got pleasure in the
present and religion in the future; what do you complain of?«
    »It's a part of one's pleasure to complain. There is something in your own
circumstances that irritates me. You are the first man I have ever envied. It's
singular, but so it is. I have known many men who besides any factitious
advantages that I may possess, had money and brains into the bargain; but
somehow they have never disturbed my good-humour. But you have got something
that I should have liked to have. It is not money, it is not even brains -
though no doubt yours are excellent. It is not your six feet of height, though I
should have rather liked to be a couple of inches taller. It's a sort of air you
have of being thoroughly at home in the world. When I was a boy, my father told
me that it was by such an air as that that people recognised a Bellegarde. He
called my attention to it. He didn't advise me to cultivate it; he said that as
we grew up it always came of itself. I supposed it had come to me, because I
think I have always had the feeling. My place in life was made for me, and it
seemed easy to occupy it. But you who, as I understand it, have made your own
place, you who, as you told us the other day, have manufactured wash-tubs - you
strike me, somehow, as a man who stands at his ease, who looks at things from a
height. I fancy you going about the world like a man travelling on a railroad in
which he owns a large amount of stock. You make me feel as if I had missed
something. What is it?«
    »It is the proud consciousness of honest toil - of having manufactured a few
wash-tubs,« said Newman, at once jocose and serious.
    »Oh no; I have seen men who had done even more, men who had made not only
wash-tubs, but soap - strong-smelling yellow soap, in great bars; and they never
made me the least uncomfortable.«
    »Then it's the privilege of being an American citizen,« said Newman. »That
sets a man up.«
    »Possibly,« rejoined M. de Bellegarde. »But I am forced to say that I have
seen a great many American citizens who didn'