rgia, as if opening straight upon the
stage, and Europe, by the stroke, had come to us in such force that we
had but to enjoy it on the spot. That could never have been more the
case than on the occasion of my assuming, for the famous fancy-ball--not
at the operatic Academy, but at the dancing-school, which came so nearly
to the same thing--the dress of a debardeur, whatever that might be,
which carried in its puckered folds of dark green relieved with scarlet
and silver such an exotic fragrance and appealed to me by such a legend.
The legend had come round to us, it was true, by way of Albany, whence
we learned at the moment of our need, that one of the adventures, one of
the least lamentable, of our cousin Johnny had been his figuring as a
debardeur at some Parisian revel; the elegant evidence of which, neatly
packed, though with but vague instructions for use, was helpfully sent
on to us. The instructions for use were in fact so vague that I was
afterward to become a bit ruefully conscious of having sadly
dishonoured, or at least abbreviated, my model. I fell, that is I stood,
short of my proper form by no less than half a leg; the essence of the
debardeur being, it appeared, that he emerged at the knees, in white
silk stockings and with neat calves, from the beribboned breeches which
I artlessly suffered to flap at my ankles. The discovery, after the
fact, was disconcerting--yet had been best made withal, too late; for
it would have seemed, I conceive, a less monstrous act to attempt to
lengthen my legs than to shorten Johnny's _culotte_. The trouble had
been that we hadn't really known what a debardeur _was_, and I am not
sure indeed that I know to this day. It had been more fatal still that
even fond Albany couldn't tell us.

XVIII

I have nevertheless the memory of a restless relish of all that time--by
which I mean of those final months of New York, even with so scant a
record of other positive successes to console me. I had but one success,
always--that of endlessly supposing, wondering, admiring: I was sunk in
that luxury, which had never yet been so great, and it might well make
up for anything. It made up perfectly, and more particularly as the
stopgap as which I have already defined it, for the scantness of the
period immediately round us; since how could I have wanted richer when
the limits of reality, as I advanced upon them, seemed ever to recede
and recede? It is true that but the other day, on