"Not at all. I had seen it on the table before she came in. Afterwards
she kindly offered to read German aloud with me, for the accent, two or
three times a week. 'What shall we begin with?' she asked. 'With this!'
I said, and held up the book. And she let me take it to look it over."

I was neither a cynic nor a satirist, but even if I had been, I might
have been disarmed by Pickering's assurance, before we parted, that
Madame Blumenthal wished to know me and expected him to introduce me.
Among the foolish things which, according to his own account, he had
uttered, were some generous words in my praise, to which she had civilly
replied. I confess I was curious to see her, but I begged that the
introduction should not be immediate, for I wished to let Pickering work
out his destiny alone. For some days I saw little of him, though we met
at the Kursaal and strolled occasionally in the park. I watched, in
spite of my desire to let him alone, for the signs and portents of the
world's action upon him--of that portion of the world, in especial, of
which Madame Blumenthal had constituted herself the agent. He seemed
very happy, and gave me in a dozen ways an impression of increased self-
confidence and maturity. His mind was admirably active, and always,
after a quarter of an hour's talk with him, I asked myself what
experience could really do, that innocence had not done, to make it
bright and fine. I was struck with his deep enjoyment of the whole
spectacle of foreign life--its novelty, its picturesqueness, its light
and shade--and with the infinite freedom with which he felt he could go
and come and rove and linger and observe it all. It was an expansion, an
awakening, a coming to moral manhood. Each time I met him he spoke a
little less of Madame Blumenthal; but he let me know generally that he
saw her often, and continued to admire her. I was forced to admit to
myself, in spite of preconceptions, that if she were really the ruling