| | 1 | Author: | James, Henry | Add | | | Title: | Confidence  | | | | Published: | 1993 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | It was in the early days of April; Bernard Longueville had been spending
the winter in Rome. He had travelled northward with the consciousness of
several social duties that appealed to him from the further side of the
Alps, but he was under the charm of the Italian spring, and he made a
pretext for lingering. He had spent five days at Siena, where he had
intended to spend but two, and still it was impossible to continue his
journey. He was a young man of a contemplative and speculative turn,
and this was his first visit to Italy, so that if he dallied by the way he
should not be harshly judged. He had a fancy for sketching, and it was on
his conscience to take a few pictorial notes. There were two old inns at
Siena, both of them very shabby and very dirty. The one at which
Longueville had taken up his abode was entered by a dark, pestiferous
arch-way, surmounted by a sign which at a distance might have been read
by the travellers as the Dantean injunction to renounce all hope. The other
was not far off, and the day after his arrival, as he passed it, he saw two
ladies going in who evidently belonged to the large fraternity of
Anglo-Saxon tourists, and one of whom was young and carried herself
very well. Longueville had his share — or more than his share — of gallantry,
and this incident awakened a regret. If he had gone to the other inn he
might have had charming company: at his own establishment there was no
one but an æsthetic German who smoked bad tobacco in the
dining-room. He remarked to himself that this was always his luck, and
the remark was characteristic of the man; it was charged with the feeling
of the moment, but it was not absolutely just; it was the result of an acute
impression made by the particular occasion; but it failed in appreciation of
a providence which had sprinkled Longueville's career with happy
accidents — accidents, especially, in which his characteristic gallantry was
not allowed to rust for want of exercise. He lounged, however,
contentedly enough through these bright, still days of a Tuscan April,
drawing much entertainment from the high picturesqueness of the things
about him. Siena, a few years since, was a flawless gift of the Middle Ages to
the modern imagination. No other Italian city could have been
more interesting to an observer fond of reconstructing obsolete manners.
This was a taste of Bernard Longueville's, who had a relish for serious
literature, and at one time had made several lively excursions into
mediæval history. His friends thought him very clever, and at the same
time had an easy feeling about him which was a tribute to his freedom
from pedantry. He was clever indeed, and an excellent companion; but the
real measure of his brilliancy was in the success with which he entertained
himself. He was much addicted to conversing with his own wit, and he
greatly enjoyed his own society. Clever as he often was in talking with his
friends, I am not sure that his best things, as the phrase is, were not for
his own ears. And this was not on account of any cynical contempt for the
understanding of his fellow-creatures: it was simply because what I have
called his own society was more of a stimulus than that of most other
people. And yet he was not for this reason fond of solitude; he was, on
the contrary, a very sociable animal. It must be admitted at the outset that
he had a nature which seemed at several points to contradict itself, as will
probably be perceived in the course of this narration. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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