stories than any that Bellegarde carried in his budget.  He narrated his career, in fact, from the beginning, through all its variations, and whenever his companion’s credulity, or his habits of gentility, appeared to protest, it amused him to heighten the color of the episode.  Newman had sat with Western humorists in knots, round cast-iron stoves, and seen “tall” stories grow taller without toppling over, and his own imagination had learned the trick of piling up consistent wonders.  Bellegarde’s regular attitude at last became that of laughing self-defense; to maintain his reputation as an all-knowing Frenchman, he doubted of everything, wholesale.  The result of this was that Newman found it impossible to convince him of certain time-honored verities.

“But the details don’t matter,” said M. de Bellegarde.  “You have evidently had some surprising adventures; you have seen some strange sides of life, you have revolved to and fro over a whole continent as I walked up and down the Boulevard.  You are a man of the world with a vengeance!  You have spent some deadly dull hours, and you have done some extremely disagreeable things:  you have shoveled sand, as a boy, for supper, and you have eaten roast dog in a gold-diggers’ camp.  You have stood casting up figures for ten hours at a time, and you have sat through Methodist sermons for the sake of looking at a pretty girl in another pew.  All that is rather stiff, as we say.  But at any rate you have done something and you are something; you have used your will and you have made your fortune.  You have not stupified yourself with debauchery and you have not mortgaged your fortune to social conveniences.  You take things easily, and you have fewer prejudices even than I, who pretend to have none, but who in reality have three or four.  Happy man, you are strong and you are free.  But what the deuce,” demanded the young man in conclusion, “do you propose to do with such advantages?  Really to use them you need a better world than this.  There is nothing worth your while here.”

“Oh, I think there is something,” said Newman.

“What is it?”

“Well,” murmured Newman, “I will tell you some other time!”

In this way our hero delayed from day to day broaching a subject which he had very much at heart.  Meanwhile, however, he was growing practically familiar with it; in other words, he had called again, three times, on Madame de Cintre.  On only two of these occasions had he found her at home, and on each of them she had other visitors.  Her visitors were numerous and extremely loquacious, and they exacted much of their hostess’s attention.  She found time, however, to bestow a little of it on Newman, in an occasional vague smile, the very vagueness of which pleased him, allowing him as it did to fill it out mentally, both at the time and afterwards, with such meanings as most pleased him.  He sat by without speaking, looking at the entrances and exits, the greetings