WHAT is truth? said jesting Pilate,and would

not stay for an answer.  Certainly there be,

that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to

fix a belief; affecting free-will in thinking, as well

as in acting.  And though the sects of philosophers

of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain dis-

coursing wits, which are of the same veins, though

there be not so much blood in them, as was in those

of the ancients.  But it is not only the difficulty and

labor, which men take in finding out of truth, nor

again, that when it is found, it imposeth upon

men's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor; but

a natural, though corrupt love, of the lie itself.  One

of the later school of the Grecians, examineth the

matter, and is at a stand, to think what should be

in it, that men should love lies; where neither they

make for pleasure, as with poets, nor for advan-

tage, as with the merchant; but for the lie's sake.

But I cannot tell; this same truth, is a naked, and

open day-light, that doth not show the masks, and

mummeries, and triumphs, of the world, half so

stately and daintily as candle-lights.  Truth may

perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth

best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a

diamond, or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied

lights.  A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure.

Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out

of men's minds, vain opinions, flattering hopes,

false valuations, imaginations as one would, and

the like, but it would leave the minds, of a number

of men, poor shrunken things, full of melancholy

and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?
 
 

One of the fathers, in great severity, called poesy

vinum daemonum, because it fireth the imagina-

tion; and yet, it is but with the shadow of a lie.

But it is not the lie that passeth through the mind,

but the lie that sinketh in, and settleth in it, that

doth the hurt; such as we spake of before.  But how-

soever these things are thus in men's depraved

judgments, and affections, yet truth, which only

doth judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of truth,

which is the love-making, or wooing of it, the

knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and

the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is

the sovereign good of human nature.  The first

creature of God, in the works of the days, was the

light of the sense; the last, was the light of reason;

and his sabbath work ever since, is the illumina-

tion of his Spirit.  First he breathed light, upon the

face of the matter or chaos; then he breathed light,

into the face of man; and still he breatheth and in-

spireth light, into the face of his chosen.  The poet,

that beautified the sect, that was otherwise in-

ferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well: It is a

pleasure, to stand upon the shore, and to see ships

tossed upon the sea; a pleasure, to stand in the win-

dow of a castle, and to see a battle, and the adven-

tures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable

to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth

(a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is

always clear and serene), and to see the errors, and

wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale

below; so always that this prospect be with pity,

and not with swelling, or pride.  Certainly, it is

heaven upon earth, to have a man's mind move in

charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the

poles of truth.
 
 

B.

The evidence as yet in truth was meagre; which, for that matter,

was perhaps a little why his expectation had had a drop.  There was

somehow not quite a wealth in her; and a wealth was all that, in

his simplicity, he had definitely prefigured.  Still, it was too

much to be sure already that there was but a poverty.  They moved

away from the house, and, with eyes on a bench at some distance,

he proposed that they should sit down.  "I've heard a great deal

about you," she said as they went; but he had an answer to it that

made her stop short.  "Well, about YOU, Madame de Vionnet, I've

heard, I'm bound to say, almost nothing"--those struck him as the

only words he himself could utter with any lucidity; conscious as

he was, and as with more reason, of the determination to be in

respect to the rest of his business perfectly plain and go

perfectly straight.  It hadn't at any rate been in the least his

idea to spy on Chad's proper freedom.  It was possibly, however, at

this very instant and under the impression of Madame de Vionnet's

pause, that going straight began to announce itself as a matter

for care.  She had only after all to smile at him ever so gently in

order to make him ask himself if he weren't already going crooked.

It might be going crooked to find it of a sudden just only clear

that she intended very definitely to be what he would have called

nice to him.  This was what passed between them while, for another

instant, they stood still; he couldn't at least remember

afterwards what else it might have been.  The thing indeed really

unmistakeable was its rolling over him as a wave that he had been,

in conditions incalculable and unimaginable, a subject of

discussion.  He had been, on some ground that concerned her,

answered for; which gave her an advantage he should never be able

to match.
 
 

"Hasn't Miss Gostrey," she asked, "said a good word for me?"
 
 

What had struck him first was the way he was bracketed with that

lady; and he wondered what account Chad would have given of their

acquaintance.  Something not as yet traceable, at all events.  had

obviously happened.  "I didn't even know of her knowing you."
 
 

"Well, now she'll tell you all.  I'm so glad you're in relation

with her."
 
 

This was one of the things--the "all" Miss Gostrey would now tell

him--that, with every deference to present preoccupation, was

uppermost for Strether after they had taken their seat.  One of the

others was, at the end of five minutes, that she--oh incontestably,

yes--DIFFERED less; differed, that is, scarcely at all--well,

superficially speaking, from Mrs. Newsome or even from Mrs. Pocock.

She was ever so much younger than the one and not so young as the other;

but what WAS there in her, if anything, that would have made it

impossible he should meet her at Woollett? And wherein was her talk

during their moments on the bench together not the same as would have been

found adequate for a Woollett garden-party?--unless perhaps truly in

not being quite so bright.  She observed to him that Mr. Newsome had, to

her knowledge, taken extraordinary pleasure in his visit; but there was

no good lady at Woollett who wouldn't have been at least up to that.

Was there in Chad, by chance, after all, deep down, a principle of

aboriginal loyalty that had made him, for sentimental ends, attach

himself to elements, happily encountered, that would remind him most

of the old air and the old soil? Why accordingly be in a flutter--

Strether could even put it that way--about this unfamiliar

phenomenon of the femme du monde?  On these terms Mrs. Newsome

herself was as much of one.  Little Bilham verily had testified

that they came out, the ladies of the type, in close quarters; but

it was just in these quarters--now comparatively close--that he

felt Madame de Vionnet's common humanity.  She did come out, and

certainly to his relief, but she came out as the usual thing.

There might be motives behind, but so could there often be even at

Woollett.  The only thing was that if she showed him she wished to

like him--as the motives behind might conceivably prompt--it

would possibly have been more thrilling for him that she should

have shown as more vividly alien.  Ah she was neither Turk nor

Pole!--which would be indeed flat once more for Mrs. Newsome and

Mrs. Pocock.  A lady and two gentlemen had meanwhile, however,

approached their bench, and this accident stayed for the time

further developments.
 
 

They presently addressed his companion, the brilliant strangers;

she rose to speak to them, and Strether noted how the escorted

lady, though mature and by no means beautiful, had more of the

bold high look, the range of expensive reference, that he had, as

might have been said, made his plans for.  Madame de Vionnet

greeted her as "Duchesse" and was greeted in turn, while talk

started in French, as "Ma toute-belle"; little facts that had

their due, their vivid interest for Strether.  Madame de Vionnet

didn't, none the less, introduce him--a note he was conscious of

as false to the Woollett scale and the Woollett humanity; though

it didn't prevent the Duchess, who struck him as confident and

free, very much what he had obscurely supposed duchesses, from

looking at him as straight and as hard--for it WAS hard--as if she

would have liked, all the same, to know him.  "Oh yes, my dear,

it's all right, it's ME; and who are YOU, with your interesting

wrinkles and your most effective (is it the handsomest, is it the

ugliest?) of noses?"--some such loose handful of bright flowers

she seemed, fragrantly enough, to fling at him.  Strether almost

wondered--at such a pace was he going--if some divination of the

influence of either party were what determined Madame de Vionnet's

abstention.  One of the gentlemen, in any case, succeeded in

placing himself in close relation with our friend's companion; a

gentleman rather stout and importantly short, in a hat with a

wonderful wide curl to its brim and a frock coat buttoned with an

effect of superlative decision.  His French had quickly turned to

equal English, and it occurred to Strether that he might well be

one of the ambassadors.  His design was evidently to assert a claim

to Madame de Vionnet's undivided countenance, and he made it good

in the course of a minute--led her away with a trick of three

words; a trick played with a social art of which Strether, looking

after them as the four, whose backs were now all turned, moved

off, felt himself no master.
 
 

He sank again upon his bench and, while his eyes followed the

party, reflected, as he had done before, on Chad's strange

communities.  He sat there alone for five minutes, with plenty to

think of; above all with his sense of having suddenly been dropped

by a charming woman overlaid now by other impressions and in fact

quite cleared and indifferent.  He hadn't yet had so quiet a

surrender; he didn't in the least care if nobody spoke to him

more.  He might have been, by his attitude, in for something of a

march so broad that the want of ceremony with which he had just

been used could fall into its place as but a minor incident of the

procession.  Besides, there would be incidents enough, as he felt

when this term of contemplation was closed by the reappearance of

little Bilham, who stood before him a moment with a suggestive

"Well?" in which he saw himself reflected as disorganised, as

possibly floored.  He replied with a "Well!" intended to show that

he wasn't floored in the least.  No indeed; he gave it out, as the

young man sat down beside him, that if, at the worst, he had been

overturned at all, he had been overturned into the upper air, the

sublimer element with which he had an affinity and in which he

might be trusted a while to float.  It wasn't a descent to earth to

say after an instant and in sustained response to the reference:

"You're quite sure her husband's living?"
 

C.

So while they grew older together she did watch with him, and so

she let this association give shape and colour to her own

existence.  Beneath HER forms as well detachment had learned to

sit, and behaviour had become for her, in the social sense, a false

account of herself.  There was but one account of her that would

have been true all the while and that she could give straight to

nobody, least of all to John Marcher.  Her whole attitude was a

virtual statement, but the perception of that only seemed called to

take its place for him as one of the many things necessarily

crowded out of his consciousness.  If she had moreover, like

himself, to make sacrifices to their real truth, it was to be

granted that her compensation might have affected her as more

prompt and more natural.  They had long periods, in this London

time, during which, when they were together, a stranger might have

listened to them without in the least pricking up his ears; on the

other hand the real truth was equally liable at any moment to rise

to the surface, and the auditor would then have wondered indeed

what they were talking about.  They had from an early hour made up

their mind that society was, luckily, unintelligent, and the margin

allowed them by this had fairly become one of their commonplaces.

Yet there were still moments when the situation turned almost

fresh--usually under the effect of some expression drawn from

herself.  Her expressions doubtless repeated themselves, but her

intervals were generous.  "What saves us, you know, is that we

answer so completely to so usual an appearance:  that of the man

and woman whose friendship has become such a daily habit--or

almost--as to be at last indispensable."  That for instance was a

remark she had frequently enough had occasion to make, though she

had given it at different times different developments.  What we

are especially concerned with is the turn it happened to take from

her one afternoon when he had come to see her in honour of her

birthday.  This anniversary had fallen on a Sunday, at a season of

thick fog and general outward gloom; but he had brought her his

customary offering, having known her now long enough to have

established a hundred small traditions.  It was one of his proofs

to himself, the present he made her on her birthday, that he hadn't

sunk into real selfishness.  It was mostly nothing more than a

small trinket, but it was always fine of its kind, and he was

regularly careful to pay for it more than he thought he could

afford.  "Our habit saves you, at least, don't you see?" because it

makes you, after all, for the vulgar, indistinguishable from other

men.  What's the most inveterate mark of men in general?  Why the

capacity to spend endless time with dull women--to spend it I won't

say without being bored, but without minding that they are, without

being driven off at a tangent by it; which comes to the same thing.

I'm your dull woman, a part of the daily bread for which you pray

at church.  That covers your tracks more than anything."

D.
And she did. She was a handy person to have

along on a raid. I would have considered this a doubt-

ful errand, myself. I presently saw the knights riding

away, and Sandy coming back. That was a relief. I

judged she had somehow failed to get the first innings

-- I mean in the conversation; otherwise the interview

wouldn't have been so short. But it turned out that

she had managed the business well; in fact, admirably.

She said that when she told those people I was The

Boss, it hit them where they lived: "smote them sore

with fear and dread" was her word; and then they

were ready to put up with anything she might require.

So she swore them to appear at Arthur's court within

two days and yield them, with horse and harness, and

be my knights henceforth, and subject to my command.

How much better she managed that thing than I should

have done it myself! She was a daisy.
 
 
 
 

CHAPTER XV.

SANDY'S TALE
 
 

AND so I'm proprietor of some knights," said I,

as we rode off. "Who would ever have sup-

posed that I should live to list up assets of that sort.

I shan't know what to do with them; unless I raffle

them off. How many of them are there, Sandy?"
 
 

"Seven, please you, sir, and their squires."
 
 

"It is a good haul. Who are they? Where do they

hang out?"
 
 

"Where do they hang out?"
 
 

"Yes, where do they live?"
 
 

"Ah, I understood thee not. That will I tell

eftsoons." Then she said musingly, and softly, turn-

ing the words daintily over her tongue: "Hang they

out -- hang they out -- where hang -- where do they

hang out; eh, right so; where do they hang out. Of

a truth the phrase hath a fair and winsome grace, and

is prettily worded withal. I will repeat it anon and

anon in mine idlesse, whereby I may peradventure

learn it. Where do they hang out. Even so! already

it falleth trippingly from my tongue, and forasmuch

as --"
 
 

"Don't forget the cowboys, Sandy."
 
 

"Cowboys?"
 
 

"Yes; the knights, you know: You were going to

tell me about them. A while back, you remember.

Figuratively speaking, game's called."
 
 

"Game --"
 
 

"Yes, yes, yes! Go to the bat. I mean, get to

work on your statistics, and don't burn so much

kindling getting your fire started. Tell me about the

knights."
 
 

"I will well, and lightly will begin. So they two

departed and rode into a great forest. And --"
 
 

"Great Scott!"