ng, Strether's fancy had quite fondly
accompanied him in this migration, which was to convey him, as they
somewhat confusedly learned at Woollett, across the bridges and up the
Montagne Sainte-Genevieve. This was the region--Chad had been quite
distinct about it--in which the best French, and many other things,
were to be learned at least cost, and in which all sorts of clever
fellows, compatriots there for a purpose, formed an awfully pleasant
set. The clever fellows, the friendly countrymen were mainly young
painters, sculptors, architects, medical students; but they were, Chad
sagely opined, a much more profitable lot to be with--even on the
footing of not being quite one of them--than the "terrible toughs"
(Strether remembered the edifying discrimination) of the American bars
and banks roundabout the Opera. Chad had thrown out, in the
communications following this one--for at that time he did once in a
while communicate--that several members of a band of earnest workers
under one of the great artists had taken him right in, making him dine
every night, almost for nothing, at their place, and even pressing him
not to neglect the hypothesis of there being as much "in him" as in any
of them. There had been literally a moment at which it appeared there
might be something in him; there had been at any rate a moment at which
he had written that he didn't know but what a month or two more might
see him enrolled in some atelier. The season had been one at which
Mrs. Newsome was moved to gratitude for small mercies; it had broken on
them all as a blessing that their absentee HAD perhaps a
conscience--that he was sated in fine with idleness, was ambitious of
variety. The exhibition was doubtless as yet not brilliant, but
Strether himself, even by that time much enlisted and immersed, had
determined, on the part of the two ladies, a temperate approval and in
fact, as he now recollected, a certain austere enthusiasm.

But the very next thing that happened had been a dark drop of the
curtain. The son and brother had not browsed long on the Montagne
Sainte-Genevieve--his effective little use of the name of which, like
his allusion to the best French, appeared to have been but one of the
notes of his rough cunning. The light refreshment of these vain
appearances had not accordingly carried any of them very far. On the
other hand it had gained Chad time; it had given him a chance,
unchecked, to strike his roots, had paved