“Ah you, my friend, you’ve the happy faculty of believing what you like to believe. I have to believe what I see.”
“She wishes to throw herself into the revolution, to guide it, to enlighten it,” Madame Grandoni said to Hyacinth, speaking now with imperturbable gravity.
“I’m sure she could direct it in any sense she would wish!” the young man responded in his glow. The pure, high dignity with which the Princess had just spoken and which appeared to cover a suppressed tremor of passion set his pulses throbbing, and though he scarcely saw what she meant—her aspirations appearing as yet so vague—her tone, her voice, her wonderful face showed she had a generous soul.
She answered his eager declaration with a serious smile and a melancholy head-shake. “I’ve no such pretensions and my good old friend’s laughing at me. Of course that’s very easy; for what in fact can be more absurd on the face of it than for a woman with a title, with diamonds, with a carriage, with servants, with a position, as they call it, to sympathise with the upward struggles of those who are below? ‘Give all that up and we’ll believe you,’ you’ve a right to say. I’m ready to give them up the moment it will help the cause; I assure you that’s the least difficulty. I don’t want to teach, I want to learn; and above all I want to know à quoi m’en tenir. Are we on the eve of great changes or are we not? Is everything that’s gathering force underground, in the dark, in the night, in little hidden rooms, out of sight of governments and policemen and idiotic ‘statesmen’—heaven save them!—is all this going to burst forth some fine morning and set the world on fire? Or is it to sputter out and spend itself in vain conspiracies, be dissipated in sterile heroisms and abortive isolated movements? I want to know à quoi m’en tenir,” she repeated, fixing her visitor with more brilliant eyes and almost as if he could tell her on the spot. Then suddenly she added in quite a different tone: “Pardon me, I’ve an idea you know French. Didn’t Captain Sholto tell me so?”
“I’ve some little acquaintance with it,” Hyacinth replied. “I’ve French blood in my veins.”
She considered him as if he had proposed to her some attaching problem. “Yes, I can see you’re not le premier venu. Now your friend, of whom you were speaking, is a chemist; and you yourself—what’s your occupation?”
“I’m just a bookbinder.”
“That must be delightful. I wonder if you’d bind me some books.”
“You’d have to bring them to our shop, and I can do there only the work that’s given out to me. I might manage it by myself at home,” Hyacinth freely professed.