The American
by Henry James
1877
Contents
CHAPTER I
On a brilliant day in May, in the year 1868, a gentleman was reclining at hisease on the great circular divan which at that period occupied the centre ofthe Salon Carré, in the Museum of the Louvre. This commodious ottoman has sincebeen 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 atMurillo’s beautiful moon-borne Madonna in profound enjoyment of hisposture. He had removed his hat, and flung down beside him a little redguide-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 somewhatwearied gesture. And yet he was evidently not a man to whom fatigue wasfamiliar; long, lean, and muscular, he suggested the sort of vigor that iscommonly known as “toughness.” But his exertions on this particularday had been of an unwonted sort, and he had performed great physical featswhich left him less jaded than his tranquil stroll through the Louvre. He hadlooked out all the pictures to which an asterisk was affixed in thoseformidable pages of fine print in his Bädeker; his attention had been strainedand his eyes dazzled, and he had sat down with an æsthetic headache. He hadlooked, moreover, not only at all the pictures, but at all the copies that weregoing forward around them, in the hands of those innumerable y