"
"Well, then," said Newman, "you are very well fixed. You have got
pleasure in the present and religion in the future; what do you complain
of?"
"It's a part of one's pleasure to complain. There is something in your
own circumstances that irritates me. You are the first man I have ever
envied. It's singular, but so it is. I have known many men who, besides
any factitious advantages that I may possess, had money and brains into
the bargain; but somehow they have never disturbed my good-humor. But
you have got something that I should have liked to have. It is not
money, it is not even brains--though no doubt yours are excellent. It is
not your six feet of height, though I should have rather liked to be a
couple of inches taller. It's a sort of air you have of being thoroughly
at home in the world. When I was a boy, my father told me that it was
by such an air as that that people recognized a Bellegarde. He called my
attention to it. He didn't advise me to cultivate it; he said that as we
grew up it always came of itself. I supposed it had come to me, because
I think I have always had the feeling. My place in life was made for me,
and it seemed easy to occupy it. But you who, as I understand it,
have made your own place, you who, as you told us the other day, have
manufactured wash-tubs--you strike me, somehow, as a man who stands at
his ease, who looks at things from a height.
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