Henry James - The American

“What I envy you is your liberty,” observed M. de Bellegarde, “your wide range, your freedom to come and go, your not having a lot of people, who take themselves awfully seriously, expecting something of you. I live,” he added with a sigh, “beneath the eyes of my admirable mother.”

“It is your own fault; what is to hinder your ranging?” said Newman.

“There is a delightful simplicity in that remark! Everything is to hinder me. To begin with, I have not a penny.”

“I had not a penny when I began to range.”

“Ah, but your poverty was your capital. Being an American, it was impossible you should remain what you were born, and being born poor—do I understand it?—it was therefore inevitable that you should become rich. You were in a position that makes one’s mouth water; you looked round you and saw a world full of things you had only to step up to and take hold of. When I was twenty, I looked around me and saw a world with everything ticketed ‘Hands off!’ and the deuce of it was that the ticket seemed meant only for me. I couldn’t go into business, I couldn’t make money, because I was a Bellegarde. I couldn’t go into politics, because I was a Bellegarde—the Bellegardes don’t recognize the Bonapartes. I couldn’t go into literature, because I was a dunce. I couldn’t marry a rich girl, because no Bellegarde had ever married a roturiere, and it was not proper that I should begin. We shall have to come to it, yet. Marriageable heiresses, de notre bord, are not to be had for nothing; it must be name for name, and fortune for fortune. The only thing I could do was to go and fight for the Pope. That I did, punctiliously, and received an apostolic flesh-wound at Castlefidardo. It did neither the Holy Father nor me any good, that I could see. Rome was doubtless a very amusing place in the days of Caligula, but it has sadly fallen off since. I passed three years in the Castle of St. Angelo, and then came back to secular life.”

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