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Updated: May 12, 2025
"Almost the first person I ever saw to notice him was an American." "Ah?" said Newman, sympathetically. "The great Dr. Franklin," said M. de la Rochefidele. "Of course I was very young. He was received very well in our monde." "Not better than Mr. Newman," said Madame de Bellegarde. "I beg he will offer his arm into the other room. I could have offered no higher privilege to Dr. Franklin."
And Madame de Bellegarde took his arm, and returned to the salon and to her customary place. M. de la Rochefidele and his wife were preparing to take their leave, and Madame de Cintre's interview with the mumbling old lady was at an end. She stood looking about her, asking herself, apparently to whom she should next speak, when Newman came up to her.
Then she said something to which he listened deferentially, but which he completely failed to understand. "Madame de la Rochefidele says that she is convinced that she must have seen Americans without knowing it," Madame de Cintre explained.
"I have been telling Madame de la Rochefidele that you are an American," she said, as he came up. "It interests her greatly. Her father went over with the French troops to help you in your battles in the last century, and she has always, in consequence, wanted greatly to see an American. But she has never succeeded till to-night. You are the first to her knowledge that she has ever looked at."
"Oh, you get off very well; the old Comte de la Rochefidele, yonder, couldn't do it better. I told them that if we only gave you a chance you would be a perfect talon rouge. I know something about men. Besides, you and I belong to the same camp. I am a ferocious democrat. By birth I am vieille roche; a good little bit of the history of France is the history of my family.
Madame de la Rochefidele had an aged, cadaverous face, with a falling of the lower jaw which prevented her from bringing her lips together, and reduced her conversations to a series of impressive but inarticulate gutturals. She raised an antique eyeglass, elaborately mounted in chased silver, and looked at Newman from head to foot.
His wife pointed out Newman to him, apparently explaining his remarkable origin. M. de la Rochefidele, whose old age was rosy and rotund, spoke very neatly and clearly, almost as prettily, Newman thought, as M. Nioche. When he had been enlightened, he turned to Newman with an inimitable elderly grace. "Monsieur is by no means the first American that I have seen," he said.
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