not care to hear. It's a
sign that I'm growing old--that I like to talk with younger people. I
think it's a very pretty compensation. If we can't have youth within us
we can have it outside, and I really think we see it and feel it better
that way. Of course we must be in sympathy with it--that I shall always
be. I don't know that I shall ever be ill-natured with old people--I
hope not; there are certainly some old people I adore. But I shall never
be anything but abject with the young; they touch me and appeal to me
too much. I give you carte blanche then; you can even be impertinent if
you like; I shall let it pass and horribly spoil you. I speak as if I
were a hundred years old, you say? Well, I am, if you please; I was born
before the French Revolution. Ah, my dear, je viens de loin; I belong to
the old, old world. But it's not of that I want to talk; I want to talk
about the new. You must tell me more about America; you never tell me
enough. Here I've been since I was brought here as a helpless child, and
it's ridiculous, or rather it's scandalous, how little I know about that
splendid, dreadful, funny country--surely the greatest and drollest of
them all. There are a great many of us like that in these parts, and I
must say I think we're a wretched set of people. You should live in your
own land; whatever it may be you have your natural place there. If we're
not good Americans we're certainly poor Europeans; we've no natural
place here. We're mere parasites, crawling over the surface; we haven't
our feet in the soil. At least one can know it and not have illusions. A
woman perhaps can get on; a woman, it seems to me, has no natural place
anywhere; wherever she finds herself she has to remain on the surface
and, more or less, to crawl. You protest, my dear? you're horrified?
you declare you'll never crawl? It's very true that I don't see you
crawling; you stand more upright than a good many poor creatures.
Very good; on the whole, I don't think you'll crawl. But the men, the
Americans; je vous demande un peu, what do they make of it over here?
I don't envy them trying to arrange themselves. Look at poor Ralph
Touchett: what sort of a figure do you call that? Fortunately he has a
consumption; I say fortunately, because it gives him something to do.
His consumption's his carriere it's a kind of position. You can say:
'Oh, Mr. Touchett, he takes care of his lungs, he knows a great deal
about climates.' But without that