ratification of which, on several occasions, had given him as many
indelible memories. He had once said to his friend Waterlow: "I don't
know whether it's a confession of a very poor life, but the most
important things that have happened to me in this world have been simply
half a dozen visual impressions--things that happened through my eyes."

"Ah malheureux, you're lost!" the painter had exclaimed in answer to
this, and without even taking the trouble to explain his ominous speech.
Gaston Probert however had not been frightened by it, and he continued
to be thankful for the sensitive plate that nature had lodged in his
brain and that culture had brought to so high a polish. The experience
of the eye was doubtless not everything, but it was so much gained, so
much saved, in a world in which other treasures were apt to slip through
one's fingers; and above all it had the merit that so many things gave
it and that nothing could take it away. He had noted in a moment how
straight Francie Dosson gave it; and now, seeing her a second time, he
felt her promote it in a degree which made acquaintance with her one of
those "important" facts of which he had spoken to Charles Waterlow. It
was in the case of such an accident as this that he felt the value of
his Parisian education. It made him revel in his modern sense.

It was therefore not directly the prospect of the circus that induced
him to accept Mr. Dosson's invitation; nor was it even the charm exerted
by the girl's appearing, in the few words she uttered, to appeal to him
for herself. It was his feeling that on the edge of the glittering ring
her type would attach him to her, to her only, and that if he knew it
was rare she herself didn't. He liked to be intensely conscious, but
liked others not to be. It seemed to him at this moment, after he had
told Mr. Dosson he should be delighted to spend the evening with them,
that he was indeed trying hard to measure how it would feel to recover
the national tie; he had jumped on the ship, he was pitching away to the
west. He had led his sister, Mme. de Brecourt, to expect that he would
dine with her--she was having a little party; so that if she could see
the people to whom, without a scruple, with a quick sense of refreshment
and freedom, he now sacrificed her! He knew who was coming to his
sister's in the Place Beauvau: Mme. d'Outreville and M. de Grospre, old
M. Courageau, Mme. de Drives, Lord and Lady Trantum, Mile de Sainto