"
"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.
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