ining."

"It's a fine list of attractions," said Newman; "they would serve as a
police-detective's description of a favorite criminal. I should sum them
up by another word than 'entertaining.'"

"Why, that is just the word to use. I don't say she is laudable or
lovable. I don't want her as my wife or my sister. But she is a
very curious and ingenious piece of machinery; I like to see it in
operation."

"Well, I have seen some very curious machines too," said Newman; "and
once, in a needle factory, I saw a gentleman from the city, who had
stopped too near one of them, picked up as neatly as if he had been
prodded by a fork, swallowed down straight, and ground into small
pieces."

Reentering his domicile, late in the evening, three days after Madame de
Bellegarde had made her bargain with him--the expression is sufficiently
correct--touching the entertainment at which she was to present him to
the world, he found on his table a card of goodly dimensions bearing an
announcement that this lady would be at home on the 27th of the month,
at ten o'clock in the evening. He stuck it into the frame of his mirror
and eyed it with some complacency; it seemed an agreeable emblem of
triumph, documentary evidence that his prize was gained. Stretched out
in a chair, he was looking at it lovingly, when Valentin de Bellegarde
was shown into the room. Valentin's glance presently followed the
direction of Newman's, and he perceived his mother's invitation.

"And what have they put into the corner?" he asked. "Not the customary
'music,' 'dancing,' or 'tableaux vivants'? They ought at least to put
'An American.'"

"Oh, there are to be several of us," said Newman. "Mrs. Tristram told me
to-day that she had received a card and sent an acceptance."

"Ah, then, with Mrs. Tristram and her husband you will have support. My
mother might have put on her card 'Three Americans.' But I suspect you
will not lack amusement. You will see a great many of the best people in
France. I mean the long pedigrees and the high noses, and all that. Some
of them are awful idiots; I advise you to take them up cautiously."

"Oh, I guess I shall like them," said Newman. "I am prepared to like
every one and everything in these days; I am in high good-humor."

Valentin looked at him a moment in silence and then dropped himself into
a chair with an unwonted air of weariness.

"Happy man!" he said with a sigh. "Take care you don't become
offensive."

"If any