ater or less importance, as you choose; but on this
particular point he kept his own counsel. He took a kindly leave of
M. Nioche, having assured him that, so far as he was concerned, the
blue-cloaked Madonna herself might have been present at his
interview with Mademoiselle Noemie; and left the old man nursing his
breast-pocket, in an ecstasy which the acutest misfortune might have
been defied to dissipate. Newman then started on his travels, with all
his usual appearance of slow-strolling leisure, and all his essential
directness and intensity of aim. No man seemed less in a hurry, and
yet no man achieved more in brief periods. He had certain practical
instincts which served him excellently in his trade of tourist. He found
his way in foreign cities by divination, his memory was excellent when
once his attention had been at all cordially given, and he emerged from
dialogues in foreign tongues, of which he had, formally, not understood
a word, in full possession of the particular fact he had desired to
ascertain. His appetite for facts was capacious, and although many of
those which he noted would have seemed woefully dry and colorless to the
ordinary sentimental traveler, a careful inspection of the list would
have shown that he had a soft spot in his imagination. In the charming
city of Brussels--his first stopping-place after leaving Paris--he
asked a great many questions about the street-cars, and took extreme
satisfaction in the reappearance of this familiar symbol of American
civilization; but he was also greatly struck with the beautiful Gothic
tower of the Hotel de Ville, and wondered whether it would not be
possible to "get up" something like it in San Francisco. He stood for
half an hour in the crowded square before this edifice, in imminent
danger from carriage-wheels, listening to a toothless old cicerone
mumble in broken English the touching history of Counts Egmont and Horn;
and he wrote the names of these gentlemen--for reasons best known to
himself--on the back of an old letter.

At the outset, on his leaving Paris, his curiosity had not been intense;
passive entertainment, in the Champs Elysees and at the theatres, seemed
about as much as he need expect of himself, and although, as he had said
to Tristram, he wanted to see the mysterious, satisfying BEST, he had
not the Grand Tour in the least on his conscience, and was not given to
cross-questioning the amusement of the hour. He believed that Europe
w