THE AMERICAN

Henry James

1921年1月 · YouHui Culture Publishing Company

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The American

by Henry James

CHAPTER I

On a brilliant day in May, in the year 1868, a gentleman was reclining

at his ease on the great circular divan which at that period occupied

the centre of the Salon Carre, in the Museum of the Louvre.

This commodious ottoman has since been removed, to the extreme regret

of all weak-kneed lovers of the fine arts, but the gentleman in question

had taken serene possession of its softest spot, and, with his head

thrown back and his legs outstretched, was staring at Murillo's

beautiful moon-borne Madonna in profound enjoyment of his posture.

He had removed his hat, and flung down beside him a little red guide-book

and an opera-glass. The day was warm; he was heated with walking,

and he repeatedly passed his handkerchief over his forehead,

with a somewhat wearied gesture. And yet he was evidently not

a man to whom fatigue was familiar; long, lean, and muscular,

he suggested the sort of vigor that is commonly known as "toughness."

But his exertions on this particular day had been of an unwonted sort,

and he had performed great physical feats which left him less jaded

than his tranquil stroll through the Louvre. He had looked out all

the pictures to which an asterisk was affixed in those formidable

pages of fine print in his Badeker; his attention had been strained

and his eyes dazzled, and he had sat down with an aesthetic headache.

He had looked, moreover, not only at all the pictures, but at all

the copies that were going forward around them, in the hands of those

innumerable young women in irreproachable toilets who devote themselves,

in France, to the propagation of masterpieces, and if the truth must

be told, he had often admired the copy much more than the original.

His physiognomy would have sufficiently indicated that he was a shrewd

and capable fellow, and in truth he had often sat up all night over

a bristling bundle of accounts, and heard the cock crow without a yawn.

But Raphael and Titian and Rubens were a new kind of arithmetic,

and they inspired our friend, for the first time in his life,

with a vague self-mistrust.