The Golden Bowl

incing image of the truth of the ancient state than any they have left by the Tiber. Brought up on the legend of the City to which

to stop before a window in which objects massive and lumpish, in silver and gold, in the forms to which precious stones contribute, or in leather, steel, brass, applied to a hundred uses and abuses, were as tumbled together as if, in the insolence of the Empire, they had been the loot of far-off victories. The young man’s movements, however, betrayed no consistency of attention — not even, for that matter, when one of his arrests had proceeded from possibilities in faces shaded, as they passed him on the pavement, by huge beribbon

w days was that date now distant. He was to dine at half-past eight o’clock with the young lady on whose behalf, and on whose father’s, the London lawyers had reached an inspired harmony with his own man of business, poor Calderoni, fresh from Rome and now apparently in the wondrous situation of being “shown London,” before promptly leaving it again, by Mr. Verver himself, Mr. Verver whose easy way with his millions had taxed to such small purpose, in the arrangements, the principle of reciprocity. The reciprocity with which the Prince was during these minutes most struck was that of Calderoni’s bestowal of his company for a view of the lions. If there was one thing in the world the young man, at this juncture, clearly intended, it was to be much more decent as a son-inlaw than lots of fellows he could think of had shown themselves in that character. He thought of these fellows, from whom he was so to differ, in English; he used, mentally, the English term to describe his difference, for, familiar with the tongue from his earliest years, so that no note of strangeness remained with him either for lip or for ear, he found it convenient, in life, for the greatest number of relations. He found it convenient, oddly, even for his relation with himself — though not unmind

take.’ There are plenty of sham ones about. He seems

ouldn’t he be?” the gi

hat he was seemed practically to bring a charge of waste against the other things that, with the other people kno

dn’t seen it. It strike

ine — he hasn’t

ar, is tremendous. But your father has his own. I’ve made that out. So

brought him out,” our young

it’s real, precisely, rather keeps people in.” He had been interested in h

still. “It’s the Amer

l, I say! It fits him — so i

good for you?” Maggie Ve

’ll see for yourself. Say, however, I am a galantuomo — which I devoutly hope: I’m like a chicken, at best, chopped up and smothered in sauce; cooked down as a creme de volaille,

ourse — since you can’

h is the only way to taste him. I want to continue, and as it’s when he talks American that he is most alive,

to demur — it was the mere play of her joy. “

he’s a kind of result of his inevitable tone. My liking i

of it,” she laughed, “be

uth, had made hi

please, by my havin

about us all t

the doings, the marriages, the crimes, the follies, the boundless betises of other people — especially of their infamous waste of money that might have come to me. Those things are written — literally in rows of volumes, in libraries; are as public as they’re abominable. Everybody can get at

said; “for what then would become, please

— she had looked, in her prettiness, as she had said it. He also remembered what he had been mo

you must have seen — what you call your unknown quantity, your particular self. It was the generations behind you, the follies and the crimes, the plunder and the waste — the wicked Pope, the monster most of all, whom so many of the volumes in your

, never — not even the infamous Pope — had so sat up to his neck in such a bath. It showed, for that matter, how little one of his race could escape, after all, from history. What was it but history, and of THEIR kind very much, to have the assurance of the enjoyment of more money than the palace-builder himself could have dreamed of? This was the element that bore him up and into which Maggie scattered, on occasion, her exquisite colouring drops. They were of the colour — of what on earth? of what but th

’s just what makes ever

g?” He had

rld, the beautiful, world — or everything in

autiful things. But what he had answered was: “You see too much — that’s what may sometimes make you difficulties. When you don’t, at least,” he

nnocent pleasures, pleasures without penalties. Their enjoyment was a tribute to others without being a loss to themselves. Only the funny thing,

tion to the things he cares for — and I think it beautiful — is absolutely ro

idea for his

and of which he thinks more, as you know, than of anything in the wo

again — smiled delicately, as he had then smiled at

tively — or in a ma

ike the programme of a charity performance. You’re at any rate a part of his collection,” she had explained —“one of the things that can only be got over here. You’re a rarity, an object of beauty, an object of pri

gn of it,” he had risked —“

oment, her way of saying it. He had felt even, for the moment, vulgar. But he had made the best of that.

as if his value were well before her. “Yes,

cinquecento, at its most golden hour, wouldn’t have been ashamed of you. It would of me, and if I didn’t know some of the pieces your father has acquired, I shou

ay have to

anywhere

and say ‘Ha-ha!’ when they come to where their treasure is buried. Ours is buried pretty well everywhere — except what we like to see, what we travel with and have about us. These, the smaller pieces, are the things we take out and arrange as we can, to make the hotels we stay at and the houses we hire a little less ugly. Of course it’s a danger, and we have to keep watch. But father loves a fine piece,

at you unpack at the hotels, or at the worst in the hired houses, like this wonderful one, and put out with

ried, my dear, till you’re dead. Unless inde

rchange, save for the result of an observation that had risen to his lips at the beginning, which he had then ch

believe things enough about you, my dear, to have a few left if most of them, even, go to smash. I’ve

ou recognise that I don’t lie or disse

discussion of veracity, of loyalty, or rather of the want of them, practically took her unprepared, as if it were quite new to her. He had noticed it before: it was the English, the American sign that duplicity, like “love,” had to b

reading for the trip.” She had images, like that, that were drawn from steamers and trains, from a familiarity with “lines,” a command of “own” cars, from an experience of continents and seas, that he was unable as yet to emulate; from

causes well before him. What was his frank judgment of so much of its ugliness, he asked himself, but a part of the cultivation of humility? What was this so important step he had just taken but the desire for some new history that should, so far as possible, contradict, and even if need be flatly dishonour, the old? If what had come to him wouldn’t do he must MAKE something different. He perfectly recognised — always in his humility — that the material for the making had to be Mr. Verver’s millions. There was nothing else for him on earth to make it with; he had tried before — had had to look about and see the truth. Humble as he was, at the same time, he was not so humble as if he had known himself frivolous or stupid. He had an idea — which may amuse his historian — that when you were stupid enough to be mistaken about such a matter you did know it. Therefore he wasn’t mistaken — his future might be MIGHT be scientific. There was nothing in himself, at all events, to prevent it. He was allying himself to science, for it was science but the absence of prejudice backed by the presence of money? His life would be full of machinery, which was the antidote to superstitio

ea for hymeneal reserve, were to accompany him to the altar. It was no great array, yet it was apparently to be a more numerous muster than any possible to the bride herself, having no wealth of kinship to choose from and making it up, on the other hand, by loose invitations. He had been interested in the girl’s attitude on the matter and had wholly deferred to it, giving him, as it did, a glimpse, distinctly pleasing, of the kind of ruminations she would in general be governed by — which were quite such as fell in with his own taste. They hadn’t natural relations, she and her father, she had explained; so they wouldn’t try to supply the place by artificial, by make-believe ones, by any searching of highways and hedges. Oh yes, they had acquaintances enough — but a marriage was an intimate thing. You asked acquaint

f and the high advantages attached, was he about to marry an extraordinarily charming girl, whose “prospects,” of the solid sort, were as guaranteed as her amiability? He wasn’t to do it, assuredly, all for her. The Prince, as happened, however, was so free to feel and yet not to formulate that there rose before him after a little, definitely, the image of a friend whom he had often found ironic. He withheld the tribute of attention from passing faces only to let his impulse accumulate. Youth and beauty made him scarcely turn, but the image of Mrs. Assingham made him presently stop a hansom. HER youth, her beauty were things more or less of the past, but to find her at home, as he possibly might, would be “doing” what he still had time for, would put something of a reason into his restlessness and thereby probably soothe it. To recognise the propriety of this particular pilgrimage — she lived far enough off, in long Cadogan Place —

that sentiment, unsolicited and unrecompensed, rest? what good, again — for it was much like his question about Mr. Verver — should he ever have done her? The Prince’s notion of a recompense to women — similar in this to his notion of an appeal — was more or less to make love to them. Now he hadn’t, as he believed, made love the least little bit to Mrs. Assingham — nor did he think she had for a moment supposed it. He liked in these days, to mark them off, the women to whom he hadn’t made love: it represented — and that was what pleased him in it — a different stage of existence from the time at which he liked to mark off the women to whom he had. Neither, with all this, had Mrs. Assingham herself been either aggressive or resentful. On what occasion, ever, had she appeared to find him wanting? These things, the motives of such people, were obscure — a little alarmingly so; they contributed to that element of the impenetrable which alone slig

. That was the image for the security in which it was open to him to rest; he was to constitute a possession, yet was to escape being reduced to his component parts. What would this mean but that, practically, he was never to be tried or tested? What would it mean but that, if they didn’t “change” him, they really wouldn’t know — he wouldn’t know himself — how many pounds, shillings and pence he had to give? These at any rate, for the present, were unanswerable questions; all that was before him was that he was invested with attributes. He was taken seriously. Lost there in the white mist was the seriousness in them that made them so take him. It was even in Mrs. Assingham, in spite of her having, as she had frequently shown, a more mocking spirit. All he could say as yet was that he had done nothing, so far as to break any charm. What should he do if he were to ask her frankly this afternoon what was, morally speaking, behind their veil. It would come