The Golden Bowl : Complete: Original Text

"Father's form?" She hadn't seen it. "It strikes me he hasn't got any.""He hasn't got mine-he hasn't even got yours.""Thank you for 'even'!" the girl had laughed at him. "Oh, yours, my dear, is tremendous. But your father has his own. I've made that out. So don't doubt it. It's where it has brought him out-that's the point.""It's his goodness that has brought him out," our young woman had, at this, objected."Ah, darling, goodness, I think, never brought anyone out.

Goodness, when it's real, precisely, rather keeps people in." He had been interested in his discrimination, which amused him. "No, it's his WAY. It belongs to him."But she had wondered still. "It's the American way. That's all.""Exactly-it's all. It's all, I say! It fits him-so it must be good for something.""Do you think it would be good for you?" Maggie Verver had smilingly asked.To which his reply had been just of the happiest. "I don't feel, my dear, if you really want to know, that anything much can now either hurt me or help me.

Such as I am-but you'll see for yourself. Say, however, I am a galantuomo-which I devoutly hope: I'm like a chicken, at best, chopped up and smothered in sauce; cooked down as a creme de volaille, with half the parts left out.

Your father's the natural fowl running about the bassecour.

His feathers, movements, his sounds-those are the parts that, with me, are left out.""All, as a matter of course-since you can't eat a chicken alive!"The Prince had not been annoyed at this, but he had been positive. "Well, I'm eating your father alive-which is the only way to taste him.

I want to continue, and as it's when he talks American that he is most alive, so I must also cultivate it, to get my pleasure.

He couldn't make one like him so much in any other language."It mattered little that the girl had continued to demur-it was the mere play of her joy. "I think he could make you like him in Chinese.""It would be an unnecessary trouble.

What I mean is that he's a kind of result of his inevitable tone.

My liking is accordingly FOR the tone-which has made him possible.""Oh, you'll hear enough of it," she laughed, "before you've done with us."Only this, in truth, had made him frown a little.