“Why not?” cried he. “You are young, good-looking, and of a fashionable exterior. You are a stranger, besides,—and that is a great point; for she is well weary of Hamburg and Hamburgers.”
I stopped him at once by saying that I was by far too conscious of the indignity attached to my career to aspire to the eminence he spoke of.
“And too proud to marry an old woman for her money! Can't you add that?” said he, laughing. “Well, there we differ. I am neither ashamed of the 'espionage,' nor should I be averse to the marriage. To say truth, my dear Gervois, when I have dined in a splendid salon hung round with the best pieces of Cuyp, Wouvermans, and Jansens; when I have seen the dessert set forth in a golden service, of which the great Schnyders over the fireplace was but a faint copy; when I have supped my Mocha out of a Sèvres cup worth more than its full of gold louis, and rested myself on the fairest tapestries of France, with every sense entranced by luxury,—I do find it excessively hard to throw my mantle over my shoulders, and trudge home through the rain and mud to resume the sorry existence that for an hour I had abandoned.”
“There lies the whole question,” said I; “since, for my part, I could not throw off the identity, even under such captivations as you speak of.”
He looked at me very fixedly as I said this,—so fixedly, indeed, that he seemed to feel some apology necessary for it.
“Forgive me,” cried he; “but I could not help staring at the prodigy of a man content to be himself.”
“I have not said that,” replied I. “I only said I was incapable of feeling myself to be any other.”
“You plume yourself upon your birth then, doubtless,” added he; “and so should I, if I knew how to get rid of my father. What were your people: you said they were not French?”
Had the question been put to me half an hour before, as we sat over our wine, I have little doubt that, in the expansiveness of such a situation, I should have told him all that I knew or suspected of my family. The season of confidence, however, had passed. We were walking along a crowded thoroughfare; our talk was desultory, as the objects about were various; and so I coined some history of my family for the occasion, ascribing my birth to a very humble source, and my rank as one of the meanest.
“Your father was, however, English,” said he; “so much you know?”