" M. de
Bellegarde said. "That is very evident. But it will be nothing more."

"As I understand it," Newman answered, "that will be quite enough!"

M. de Bellegarde stood for a moment looking on the ground, as if he
were ransacking his ingenuity to see what else he could do to save his
father's reputation. Then, with a little cold sigh, he seemed to signify
that he regretfully surrendered the late marquis to the penalty of his
turpitude. He gave a hardly perceptible shrug, took his neat umbrella
from the servant in the vestibule, and, with his gentlemanly walk,
passed out. Newman stood listening till he heard the door close; then he
slowly exclaimed, "Well, I ought to begin to be satisfied now!"

CHAPTER XXV

Newman called upon the comical duchess and found her at home. An old
gentleman with a high nose and a gold-headed cane was just taking leave
of her; he made Newman a protracted obeisance as he retired, and our
hero supposed that he was one of the mysterious grandees with whom he
had shaken hands at Madame de Bellegarde's ball. The duchess, in her
arm-chair, from which she did not move, with a great flower-pot on one
side of her, a pile of pink-covered novels on the other, and a large
piece of tapestry depending from her lap, presented an expansive and
imposing front; but her aspect was in the highest degree gracious, and
there was nothing in her manner to check the effusion of his confidence.
She talked to him about flowers and books, getting launched with
marvelous promptitude; about the theatres, about the peculiar
institutions of his native country, about the humidity of Paris about
the pretty complexions of the American ladies, about his impressions
of France and his opinion of its female inhabitants. All this was a
brilliant monologue on the part of the duchess, who, like many of
her country-women, was a person of an affirmative rather than an
interrogative cast of mind, who made mots and put them herself into
circulation, and who was apt to offer you a present of a convenient
little opinion, neatly enveloped in the gilt paper of a happy Gallicism.
Newman had come to her with a grievance, but he found himself in an
atmosphere in which apparently no cognizance was taken of grievance; an
atmosphere into which the chill of discomfort had never penetrated,
and which seemed exclusively made up of mild, sweet, stale intellectual
perfumes. The feeling with which he had watched Madame d'Outreville at
the tre