“He is very nice, though he is not young.  He is upward of fifty, fifteen years my senior.  He has been a father to my sister and me.  He is a very remarkable man; he has the best manners in France.  He is extremely clever; indeed he is very learned.  He is writing a history of The Princesses of France Who Never Married.”  This was said by Bellegarde with extreme gravity, looking straight at Newman, and with an eye that betokened no mental reservation; or that, at least, almost betokened none.

Newman perhaps discovered there what little there was, for he presently said, “You don’t love your brother.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Bellegarde, ceremoniously; “well-bred people always love their brothers.”

“Well, I don’t love him, then!” Newman answered.

“Wait till you know him!” rejoined Bellegarde, and this time he smiled.

“Is your mother also very remarkable?” Newman asked, after a pause.

“For my mother,” said Bellegarde, now with intense gravity, “I have the highest admiration.  She is a very extraordinary woman.  You cannot approach her without perceiving it.”

“She is the daughter, I believe, of an English nobleman.”

“Of the Earl of St. Dunstan’s.”

“Is the Earl of St. Dunstan’s a very old family?”

“So-so; the sixteenth century.  It is on my father’s side that we go back—­back, back, back.  The family antiquaries themselves lose breath.  At last they stop, panting and fanning themselves, somewhere in the ninth century, under Charlemagne.  That is where we begin.”

“There is no mistake about it?” said Newman.

“I’m sure I hope not.  We have been mistaken at least for several centuries.”

“And you have always married into old families?”

“As a rule; though in so long a stretch of time there have been some exceptions.  Three or four Bellegardes, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, took wives out of the bourgoisie—­married lawyers’ daughters.”

“A lawyer’s daughter; that’s very bad, is it?” asked Newman.

“Horrible! one of us, in the middle ages, did better:  he married a beggar-maid, like King Cophetua.  That was really better; it was like marrying a bird or a monkey; one didn’t have to think about her family at all.  Our women have always done well; they have never even gone into the petite noblesse.  There is, I believe, not a case on record of a misalliance among the women.”

Newman turned this over for a while, and, then at last he said, “You offered, the first time you came to see me to render me any service you could.  I told you that some time I would mention something you might do.  Do you remember?”

“Remember?  I have been counting the hours.”

“Very well; here’s your chance.  Do what you can to make your sister think well of me.”

Bellegarde stared, with a smile.  “Why, I’m sure she thinks as well of you as possible, already.”