idea.  This sort of thing is certainly very stale.  And then I could come back with a trunk full of dollars.  Besides, I might possibly find it amusing.  They call me a raffine; who knows but that I might discover an unsuspected charm in shop-keeping?  It would really have a certain romantic, picturesque side; it would look well in my biography.  It would look as if I were a strong man, a first-rate man, a man who dominated circumstances.”

“Never mind how it would look,” said Newman.  “It always looks well to have half a million of dollars.  There is no reason why you shouldn’t have them if you will mind what I tell you—­I alone—­and not talk to other parties.”  He passed his arm into that of his companion, and the two walked for some time up and down one of the less frequented corridors.  Newman’s imagination began to glow with the idea of converting his bright, impracticable friend into a first-class man of business.  He felt for the moment a sort of spiritual zeal, the zeal of the propagandist.  Its ardor was in part the result of that general discomfort which the sight of all uninvested capital produced in him; so fine an intelligence as Bellegarde’s ought to be dedicated to high uses.  The highest uses known to Newman’s experience were certain transcendent sagacities in the handling of railway stock.  And then his zeal was quickened by his personal kindness for Valentin; he had a sort of pity for him which he was well aware he never could have made the Comte de Bellegarde understand.  He never lost a sense of its being pitiable that Valentin should think it a large life to revolve in varnished boots between the Rue d’Anjou and the Rue de l’Universite, taking the Boulevard des Italiens on the way, when over there in America one’s promenade was a continent, and one’s Boulevard stretched from New York to San Francisco.  It mortified him, moreover, to think that Valentin lacked money; there was a painful grotesqueness in it.  It affected him as the ignorance of a companion, otherwise without reproach, touching some rudimentary branch of learning would have done.  There were things that one knew about as a matter of course, he would have said in such a case.  Just so, if one pretended to be easy in the world, one had money as a matter of course, one had made it!  There was something almost ridiculously anomalous to Newman in the sight of lively pretensions unaccompanied by large investments in railroads; though I may add that he would not have maintained that such investments were in themselves a proper ground for pretensions.  “I will make you do something,” he said to Valentin; “I will put you through.  I know half a dozen things in which we can make a place for you.  You will see some lively work.  It will take you a little while to get used to the life, but you will work in before long, and at the end of six months—­after you have done a thing or two on your own account—­you will like it.  And then it will be very pleasant for you, having your sister over there.  It will be pleasant for her to have you, too.  Yes, Valentin,” continued Newman, pressing his friend’s arm genially, “I think I see just the opening for you.  Keep quiet and I’ll push you right in.”