young nobles.  He had been tied with so short a rope in his youth that he had now a mortal grudge against family discipline.  He had been known to say, within the limits of the family, that, light-headed as he was, the honor of the name was safer in his hands than in those of some of it’s other members, and that if a day ever came to try it, they should see.  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 freedom 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 I was 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.