s allowed only in scanty
measure the honor of watching with his master, had been lending a light
Parisian hand in the kitchen. The two Frenchmen did their best to prove
that if circumstances might overshadow, they could not really obscure,
the national talent for conversation, and M. Ledoux delivered a neat
little eulogy on poor Bellegarde, whom he pronounced the most charming
Englishman he had ever known.

"Do you call him an Englishman?" Newman asked.

M. Ledoux smiled a moment and then made an epigram. "C'est plus qu'un
Anglais--c'est un Anglomane!" Newman said soberly that he had never
noticed it; and M. de Grosjoyaux remarked that it was really too soon
to deliver a funeral oration upon poor Bellegarde. "Evidently," said M.
Ledoux. "But I couldn't help observing this morning to Mr. Newman that
when a man has taken such excellent measures for his salvation as our
dear friend did last evening, it seems almost a pity he should put it in
peril again by returning to the world." M. Ledoux was a great Catholic,
and Newman thought him a queer mixture. His countenance, by daylight,
had a sort of amiably saturnine cast; he had a very large thin nose,
and looked like a Spanish picture. He appeared to think dueling a very
perfect arrangement, provided, if one should get hit, one could promptly
see the priest. He seemed to take a great satisfaction in Valentin's
interview with the cure, and yet his conversation did not at all
indicate a sanctimonious habit of mind. M. Ledoux had evidently a high
sense of the becoming, and was prepared to be urbane and tasteful on all
points. He was always furnished with a smile (which pushed his mustache
up under his nose) and an explanation. Savoir-vivre--knowing how to
live--was his specialty, in which he included knowing how to die; but,
as Newman reflected, with a good deal of dumb irritation, he seemed
disposed to delegate to others the application of his learning on this
latter point. M. de Grosjoyaux was of quite another complexion, and
appeared to regard his friend's theological unction as the sign of an
inaccessibly superior mind. He was evidently doing his utmost, with a
kind of jovial tenderness, to make life agreeable to Valentin to the
last, and help him as little as possible to miss the Boulevard des
Italiens; but what chiefly occupied his mind was the mystery of a
bungling brewer's son making so neat a shot. He himself could snuff a
candle, etc., and yet he confessed that he cou