The Princess hesitated a moment; then she said, “He told me you were very original.”
“He doesn’t know, and—if you will allow me to say so—I don’t think you know. How should you? I am one of many thousands of young men of my class—you know, I suppose, what that is—in whose brains certain ideas are fermenting. There is nothing original about me at all. I am very young and very ignorant; it’s only a few months since I began to talk of the possibility of a social revolution with men who have considered the whole ground much more than I have done. I’m a mere particle in the immensity of the people. All I pretend to is my good faith, and a great desire that justice shall be done.”
The Princess listened to him intently, and her attitude made him feel how little he, in comparison, expressed himself like a person who had the habit of conversation; he seemed to himself to stammer and emit common sounds. For a moment she said nothing, only looking at him with her pure smile. “I do draw you out!” she exclaimed, at last. “You are much more interesting to me than if you were an exception.” At these last words Hyacinth flinched a hair’s breadth; the movement was shown by his dropping his eyes. We know to what extent he really regarded himself as of the stuff of the common herd. The Princess doubtless guessed it as well, for she quickly added, “At the same time, I can see that you are remarkable enough.”
“What do you think I am remarkable for?”
“Well, you have general ideas.”
“Every one has them to-day. They have them in Bloomsbury to a terrible degree. I have a friend (who understands the matter much better than I) who has no patience with them: he declares they are our danger and our bane. A few very special ideas—if they are the right ones—are what we want.”
“Who is your friend?” the Princess asked, abruptly.
“Ah, Christina, Christina,” Madame Grandoni murmured from the other side of the box.
Christina took no notice of her, and Hyacinth, not understanding the warning, and only remembering how personal women always are, replied, “A young man who lives in Camberwell, an assistant at a wholesale chemist’s.”
If he had expected that this description of his friend was a bigger dose than his hostess would be able to digest, he was greatly mistaken. She seemed to look tenderly at the picture suggested by his words, and she immediately inquired whether the young man were also clever, and whether she might not hope to know him. Hadn’t Captain Sholto seen him; and if so, why hadn’t he spoken of him, too? When Hyacinth had replied that Captain Sholto had probably seen him, but that he believed he had had no particular conversation with him, the Princess inquired, with startling frankness, whether her visitor wouldn’t bring his friend, some day, to see her.