ety seemed to him to have many superfluous wheels, he accepted
invitations and made visits punctiliously, from the conviction that
the only way not to be overcome by the ridiculous side of most of such
observances is to take them with exaggerated gravity. He introduced
Roderick right and left, and suffered him to make his way himself--an
enterprise for which Roderick very soon displayed an all-sufficient
capacity. Wherever he went he made, not exactly what is called a
favorable impression, but what, from a practical point of view, is
better--a puzzling one. He took to evening parties as a duck to water,
and before the winter was half over was the most freely and frequently
discussed young man in the heterogeneous foreign colony. Rowland's
theory of his own duty was to let him run his course and play his
cards, only holding himself ready to point out shoals and pitfalls,
and administer a friendly propulsion through tight places. Roderick's
manners on the precincts of the Pincian were quite the same as his
manners on Cecilia's veranda: that is, they were no manners at all. But
it remained as true as before that it would have been impossible, on the
whole, to violate ceremony with less of lasting offense. He interrupted,
he contradicted, he spoke to people he had never seen, and left his
social creditors without the smallest conversational interest on their
loans; he lounged and yawned, he talked loud when he should have
talked low, and low when he should have talked loud. Many people, in
consequence, thought him insufferably conceited, and declared that he
ought to wait till he had something to show for his powers, before he
assumed the airs of a spoiled celebrity. But to Rowland and to most
friendly observers this judgment was quite beside the mark, and the
young man's undiluted naturalness was its own justification. He
was impulsive, spontaneous, sincere; there were so many people at
dinner-tables and in studios who were not, that it seemed worth while
to allow this rare specimen all possible freedom of action. If Roderick
took the words out of your mouth when you were just prepared to deliver
them with the most effective accent, he did it with a perfect good
conscience and with no pretension of a better right to being heard, but
simply because he was full to overflowing of his own momentary thought
and it sprang from his lips without asking leave. There were persons who
waited on your periods much more deferentially, who