CHAPTER IV


When Mr. George Amberson Minafer came home for the holidays at
Christmastide, in his sophomore year, probably no great change had
taken place inside him, but his exterior was visibly altered. Nothing
about him encouraged any hope that he had received his come-upance; on
the contrary, the yearners for that stroke of justice must yearn even
more itchingly: the gilded youth's manner had become polite, but his
politeness was of a kind which democratic people found hard to bear.
In a word, M. le Due had returned from the gay life of the capital to
show himself for a week among the loyal peasants belonging to the old
chateau, and their quaint habits and costumes afforded him a mild
amusement.

Cards were out for a ball in his honour, and this pageant of the
tenantry was held in the ballroom of the Amberson Mansion the night
after his arrival. It was, as Mrs. Henry Franklin Foster said of
Isabel's wedding, "a big Amberson-style thing," though that wise Mrs.
Henry Franklin Foster had long ago gone the way of all wisdom, having
stepped out of the Midland town, unquestionably into heaven--a long
step, but not beyond her powers. She had successors, but no
successor; the town having grown too large to confess that it was
intellectually led and literarily authoritated by one person; and some
of these successors were not invited to the ball, for dimensions were
now so metropolitan that intellectual leaders and literary authorities
loomed in outlying regions unfamiliar to the Ambersons. However, all
"old citizens" recognizable as gentry received cards, and of course so
did their dancing descendants.