His talk was an odd mixture of almost boyish garrulity and of the reserve and discretion of the man of the world, and he seemed to Newman, as afterwards young members of the Latin races often seemed to him, now amusingly juvenile and now appallingly mature.
In America, Newman reflected, lads of twenty-five and thirty have old heads and young hearts, or at least young morals;here they have young heads and very aged hearts, morals the most grizzled and wrinkled.
"What I envy you is your liberty," observed M.de Bellegarde, "your wide range, your ******* to come and go, your not having a lot of people, who take themselves awfully seriously, expecting something of you.I live," he added with a sigh, "beneath the eyes of my admirable mother.""It is your own fault; what is to hinder your ranging?" said Newman.
"There is a delightful simplicity in that remark!
Everything is to hinder me.To begin with, I have not a penny.""I had not a penny when I began to range.""Ah, but your poverty was your capital.Being an American, it was impossible you should remain what you were born, and being born poor--do I understand it?--it was therefore inevitable that you should become rich.You were in a position that makes one's mouth water;you looked round you and saw a world full of things you had only to step up to and take hold of.When I was twenty, I looked around me and saw a world with everything ticketed 'Hands off!'
and the deuce of it was that the ticket seemed meant only for me.
I couldn't go into business, I couldn't make money, because Iwas a Bellegarde.I couldn't go into politics, because I was a Bellegarde--the Bellegardes don't recognize the Bonapartes.
I couldn't go into literature, because I was a dunce.
I couldn't marry a rich girl, because no Bellegarde had ever married a roturiere, and it was not proper that I should begin.
We shall have to come to it, yet.Marriageable heiresses, de notre bord, are not to be had for nothing; it must be name for name, and fortune for fortune.The only thing I could do was to go and fight for the Pope.That I did, punctiliously, and received an apostolic flesh-wound at Castlefidardo.
It did neither the Holy Father nor me any good, that I could see.
Rome was doubtless a very amusing place in the days of Caligula, but it has sadly fallen off since.I passed three years in the Castle of St.Angelo, and then came back to secular life.""So you have no profession--you do nothing," said Newman.
"I do nothing! I am supposed to amuse myself, and, to tell the truth, I have amused myself.One can, if one knows how.
But you can't keep it up forever.I am good for another five years, perhaps, but I foresee that after that I shall lose my appetite.
Then what shall I do? I think I shall turn monk.Seriously, I think I shall tie a rope round my waist and go into a monastery.
It was an old custom, and the old customs were very good.
People understood life quite as well as we do.
They kept the pot boiling till it cracked, and then they put it on the shelf altogether.""Are you very religious?" asked Newman, in a tone which gave the inquiry a grotesque effect.
M.de Bellegarde evidently appreciated the comical element in the question, but he looked at Newman a moment with extreme soberness."I am a very good Catholic.I respect the Church.I adore the blessed Virgin.
I fear the Devil."
"Well, then," said Newman, "you are very well fixed.
You have got pleasure in the present and religion in the future;what do you complain of?"
"It's a part of one's pleasure to complain.There is something in your own circumstances that irritates me.You are the first man I have ever envied.It's singular, but so it is.
I have known many men who, besides any factitious advantages that I may possess, had money and brains into the bargain;but somehow they have never disturbed my good-humor.But you have got something that I should have liked to have.
It is not money, it is not even brains--though no doubt yours are excellent.It is not your six feet of height, though Ishould have rather liked to be a couple of inches taller.
It's a sort of air you have of being thoroughly at home in the world.When I was a boy, my father told me that it was by such an air as that that people recognized a Bellegarde.
He called my attention to it.He didn't advise me to cultivate it;he said that as we grew up it always came of itself.
I supposed it had come to me, because I think I have always had the feeling.My place in life was made for me, and it seemed easy to occupy it.But you who, as I understand it, have made your own place, you who, as you told us the other day, have manufactured wash-tubs--you strike me, somehow, as a man who stands at his ease, who looks at things from a height.
I fancy you going about the world like a man traveling on a railroad in which he owns a large amount of stock.
You make me feel as if I had missed something.What is it?""It is the proud consciousness of honest toil--of having manufactured a few wash-tubs," said Newman, at once jocose and serious.
"Oh no; I have seen men who had done even more, men who had made not only wash-tubs, but soap--strong-smelling yellow soap, in great bars;and they never made me the least uncomfortable.""Then it's the privilege of being an American citizen," said Newman.
"That sets a man up."
"Possibly," rejoined M.de Bellegarde."But I am forced to say that Ihave seen a great many American citizens who didn't seem at all set up or in the least like large stock-holders.I never envied them.
I rather think the thing is an accomplishment of your own.""Oh, come," said Newman, "you will make me proud!""No, I shall not.You have nothing to do with pride, or with humility--that is a part of this easy manner of yours.
People are proud only when they have something to lose, and humble when they have something to gain.""I don't know what I have to lose," said Newman, "but I certainly have something to gain.""What is it?" asked his visitor.