is tremendous. But your father has his own. I've made that out. So
don't doubt it. It's where it has brought him out--that's the point."

"It's his goodness that has brought him out," our young woman had, at
this, objected.

"Ah, darling, goodness, I think, never brought anyone out. Goodness,
when it's real, precisely, rather keeps people in." He had been
interested in his discrimination, which amused him. "No, it's his WAY.
It belongs to him."

But she had wondered still. "It's the American way. That's all."

"Exactly--it's all. It's all, I say! It fits him--so it must be good for
something."

"Do you think it would be good for you?" Maggie Verver had smilingly
asked.

To which his reply had been just of the happiest. "I don't feel, my
dear, if you really want to know, that anything much can now either hurt
me or help me. Such as I am--but you'll see for yourself. Say, however,
I am a galantuomo--which I devoutly hope: I'm like a chicken, at best,
chopped up and smothered in sauce; cooked down as a creme de volaille,
with half the parts left out. Your father's the natural fowl running
about the bassecour. His feathers, movements, his sounds--those are the
parts that, with me, are left out."

"All, as a matter of course--since you can't eat a chicken alive!"

The Prince had not been annoyed at this, but he had been positive.
"Well, I'm eating your father alive--which is the only way to taste him.
I want to continue, and as it's when he talks American that he is most
alive, so I must also cultivate it, to get my pleasure. He couldn't make
one like him so much in any other language."

It mattered little that the girl had continued to demur--it was the mere
play of her joy. "I think he could make you like him in Chinese."

"It would be an unnecessary trouble. What I mean is that he's a kind
of result of his inevitable tone. My liking is accordingly FOR the
tone--which has made him possible."

"Oh, you'll hear enough of it," she laughed, "before you've done with
us."

Only this, in truth, had made him frown a little.

"What do you mean, please, by my having 'done' with you?"

"Why, found out about us all there is to find."

He had been able to take it indeed easily as a joke. "Ah, love, I
began with that. I know enough, I feel, never to be surprised. It's you
yourselves meanwhile," he continued, "who really know nothing. There are
two parts of me"--yes, he had been moved to go on. "One is made up of
the h