Valentin had leaned forward again, with his elbows on his knees, and he was scratching the pavement with his stick. At last he said, looking up, “Do you really think I ought to do something?”
Newman laid his hand on his companion’s arm and looked at him a moment through sagaciously-narrowed eyelids. “Try it and see. You are not good enough for it, but we will stretch a point.”
“Do you really think I can make some money? I should like to see how it feels to have a little.”
“Do what I tell you, and you shall be rich,” said Newman. “Think of it.” And he looked at his watch and prepared to resume his way to Madame de Bellegarde’s box.
“Upon my word I will think of it,” said Valentin. “I will go and listen to Mozart another half hour—I can always think better to music—and profoundly meditate upon it.”
The marquis was with his wife when Newman entered their box; he was bland, remote, and correct as usual; or, as it seemed to Newman, even more than usual.
“What do you think of the opera?” asked our hero. “What do you think of the Don?”
“We all know what Mozart is,” said the marquis; “our impressions don’t date from this evening. Mozart is youth, freshness, brilliancy, facility—a little too great facility, perhaps. But the execution is here and there deplorably rough.”
“I am very curious to see how it ends,” said Newman.
“You speak as if it were a feuilleton in the Figaro,” observed the marquis. “You have surely seen the opera before?”