age one expected something more. People said he was sociable,
but this was as much a matter of course as for a dipped sponge to
expand; and it was not a high order of sociability. He was a great
gossip and tattler, and to produce a laugh would hardly have spared the
reputation of his aged mother. Newman had a kindness for old memories,
but he found it impossible not to perceive that Tristram was nowadays
a very light weight. His only aspirations were to hold out at poker,
at his club, to know the names of all the cocottes, to shake hands all
round, to ply his rosy gullet with truffles and champagne, and to create
uncomfortable eddies and obstructions among the constituent atoms of the
American colony. He was shamefully idle, spiritless, sensual, snobbish.
He irritated our friend by the tone of his allusions to their native
country, and Newman was at a loss to understand why the United States
were not good enough for Mr. Tristram. He had never been a very
conscious patriot, but it vexed him to see them treated as little better
than a vulgar smell in his friend's nostrils, and he finally broke out
and swore that they were the greatest country in the world, that they
could put all Europe into their breeches' pockets, and that an American
who spoke ill of them ought to be carried home in irons and compelled
to live in Boston. (This, for Newman was putting it very vindictively.)
Tristram was a comfortable man to snub, he bore no malice, and he
continued to insist on Newman's finishing his evening at the Occidental
Club.

Christopher Newman dined several times in the Avenue d'Iena, and his
host always proposed an early adjournment to this institution. Mrs.
Tristram protested, and declared that her husband exhausted his
ingenuity in trying to displease her.

"Oh no, I never try, my love," he answered. "I know you loathe me quite
enough when I take my chance."

Newman hated to see a husband and wife on these terms, and he was sure
one or other of them must be very unhappy. He knew it was not Tristram.
Mrs. Tristram had a balcony before her windows, upon which, during the
June evenings, she was fond of sitting, and Newman used frankly to say
that he preferred the balcony to the club. It had a fringe of perfumed
plants in tubs, and enabled you to look up the broad street and see
the Arch of Triumph vaguely massing its heroic sculptures in the summer
starlight. Sometimes Newman kept his promise of following Mr. Tristram,
in ha