Hyacinth did not mention to Pinnie or Mr Vetch that he had been taken up by a great lady; but he mentioned it to Paul Muniment, to whom he now confided a great many things. He had, at first, been in considerable fear of his straight, loud, north-country friend, who showed signs of cultivating logic and criticism to a degree that was hostile to free conversation; but he discovered later that he was a man to whom one could say anything in the world, if one didn’t think it of more importance to be sympathised with than to be understood. For a revolutionist, he was strangely good-natured. The sight of all the things he wanted to change had seemingly no power to irritate him, and if he joked about questions that lay very near his heart his pleasantry was not bitter nor invidious; the fault that Hyacinth sometimes found with it, rather, was that it was innocent to puerility. Our hero envied his power of combining a care for the wide misery of mankind with the apparent state of mind of the cheerful and virtuous young workman who, on Sunday morning, has put on a clean shirt, and, not having taken the gilt off his wages the night before, weighs against each other, for a happy day, the respective attractions of Epping Forest and Gravesend. He was never sarcastic about his personal lot and his daily life; it had not seemed to occur to him, for instance, that ‘society’ was really responsible for the condition of his sister’s spinal column, though Eustache Poupin and his wife (who practically, however, were as patient as he) did everything they could to make him say so, believing, evidently, that it would relieve him. Apparently he cared nothing for women, talked of them rarely, and always decently, and had never a sign of a sweetheart, unless Lady Aurora Langrish might pass for one. He never drank a drop of beer nor touched a pipe; he always had a clear tone, a fresh cheek and a smiling eye, and once excited on Hyacinth’s part a kind of elder-brotherly indulgence by the open-mouthed glee and credulity with which, when the pair were present, in the sixpenny gallery, at Astley’s, at an equestrian pantomime, he followed the tawdry spectacle. He once told the young bookbinder that he was a suggestive little beggar, and Hyacinth’s opinion of him, by this time, was so exalted that the remark had almost the value of a patent of nobility. Our hero treated himself to an unlimited belief in him; he had always dreamed of having some grand friendship, and this was the best opening he had ever encountered. No one could entertain a sentiment of that sort better than Hyacinth, or cultivate a greater luxury of confidence. It disappointed him, sometimes, that it was not more richly repaid; that on certain important points of the socialistic programme Muniment would never commit himself; and that he had not yet shown the fond du sac, as Eustache Poupin called it, to so ardent an admirer. He answered particular questions freely enough, and answered them occasionally in a manner that made Hyacinth jump, as when, in reply to an inquiry in regard to his view of capital punishment, he said that, so far from wishing it abolished, he should go in for extending it much further – he should impose it on those who habitually lied or got drunk; but his friend had always a feeling that he kept back his best card and that even in the listening circle in Bloomsbury, when only the right men were present, there were unspoken conclusions in his mind which he didn’t as yet think any one good enough to be favoured with. So far, therefore, from suspecting him of half-heartedness, Hyacinth was sure that he had extraordinary things in his head; that he was thinking them out to the logical end, wherever it might land him; and that the night he should produce them, with the door of the club-room guarded and the company bound by a tremendous oath, the others would look at each other and turn pale.

“She wants to see you; she asked me to bring you; she was very serious,” Hyacinth said, relating his interview with the ladies in the box at the play; which, however, now that he looked back upon it, seemed as queer as a dream, and not much more likely than that sort of experience to have a continuation in one’s waking hours.

“To bring me – to bring me where?” asked Muniment. “You talk as if I were a sample out of your shop, or a little dog you had for sale. Has she ever seen me? Does she think I’m smaller than you? What does she know about me?”

“Well, principally, that you’re a friend of mine – that’s enough for her.”

“Do you mean that it ought to be enough for me that she’s a friend of yours? I have a notion you’ll have some queer ones before you’re done; a good many more than I have time to talk to. And how can I go to see a delicate female, with those paws?” Muniment inquired, exhibiting ten work-stained fingers.

“Buy a pair of gloves,” said Hyacinth, who recognised the serious character of this obstacle. But after a moment he added, “No, you oughtn’t to do that; she wants to see dirty hands.”

“That’s easy enough; she needn’t send for me for the purpose. But isn’t she making game of you?”

“It’s very possible, but I don’t see what good it can do her.”

“You are not obliged to find excuses for the pampered classes. Their bloated luxury begets evil, impudent desires; they are capable of doing harm for the sake of harm. Besides, is she genuine?”

“If she isn’t, what becomes of your explanation?” asked Hyacinth.

“Oh, it doesn’t matter; at night all cats are gray. Whatever she is, she’s an idle, bedizened jade.”

“If you had seen her, you wouldn’t talk of her that way.”

“God forbid I should see her, then, if she’s going to corrupt me!”

“Do you suppose she’ll corrupt me?” Hyacinth demanded, with an expression of face and a tone of voice which produced, on his friend’s part, an explosion of mirth.

“How can she, after all, when you are already such a little mass of corruption?”

“You don’t think that,” said Hyacinth, looking very grave.

“Do you mean that if I did I wouldn’t say it? Haven’t you noticed that I say what I think?”

“No, you don’t, not half of it: you’re as close as a fish.”

Paul Muniment looked at his companion a moment, as if he were rather struck with the penetration of that remark; then he said, “Well, then, if I should give you the other half of my opinion of you, do you think you’d fancy it?”

“I’ll save you the trouble. I’m a very clever, conscientious, promising young chap, and any one would be proud to claim me as a friend.”

“Is that what your Princess told you? She must be a precious piece of goods!” Paul Muniment exclaimed. “Did she pick your pocket meanwhile?”

“Oh yes; a few minutes later I missed a silver cigar-case, engraved with the arms of the Robinsons. Seriously,” Hyacinth continued, “don’t you consider it possible that a woman of that class should want to know what is going on among the like of us?”

“It depends upon what class you mean.”

“Well, a woman with a lot of jewels and the manners of an angel. It’s queer of course, but it’s conceivable; why not? There may be unselfish natures; there may be disinterested feelings.”

“And there may be fine ladies in an awful funk about their jewels, and even about their manners. Seriously, as you say, it’s perfectly conceivable. I am not in the least surprised at the aristocracy being curious to know what we are up to, and wanting very much to look into it; in their place I should be very uneasy, and if I were a woman with angelic manners very likely I too should be glad to get hold of a soft, susceptible little bookbinder, and pump him dry, bless his heart!”

“Are you afraid I’ll tell her secrets?” cried Hyacinth, flushing with virtuous indignation.

“Secrets? What secrets could you tell her, my pretty lad?”

Hyacinth stared a moment. “You don’t trust me – you never have.”

“We will, some day – don’t be afraid,” said Muniment, who, evidently, had no intention of unkindness, a thing that appeared to be impossible to him. “And when we do, you’ll cry with disappointment.”

“Well, you won’t,” Hyacinth declared. And then he asked whether his friend thought the Princess Casamassima a spy; and why, if she were in that line, Mr Sholto was not – inasmuch as it must be supposed he was not, since they had seen fit to let him walk in and out, at that rate, in the place in Bloomsbury. Muniment did not even know whom he meant, not having had any relations with the gentleman; but he summoned a sufficient image when his companion had described the Captain’s appearance. He then remarked, with his usual geniality, that he didn’t take him for a spy – he took him for an ass; but even if he had edged himself into the place with every intention to betray them, what handle could he possibly get – what use, against them, could he make of anything he had seen or heard? If he had a fancy to dip into working-men’s clubs (Muniment remembered, now, the first night he came; he had been brought by that German cabinet-maker, who had a stiff neck and smoked a pipe with a bowl as big as a stove); if it amused him to put on a bad hat, and inhale foul tobacco, and call his ‘inferiors’ ‘my dear fellow’; if he thought that in doing so he was getting an insight into the people and going half-way to meet them and preparing for what was coming – all this was his own affair, and he was very welcome, though a man must be a flat who would spend his evening in a hole like that when he might enjoy his comfort in one of those flaming big shops, full of arm-chairs and flunkies, in Pall Mall. And what did he see, after all, in Bloomsbury? Nothing but a ‘social gathering’, where there were clay pipes, and a sanded floor, and not half enough gas, and the principal newspapers; and where the men, as any one would know, were advanced radicals, and mostly advanced idiots. He could pat as many of them on the back as he liked, and say the House of Lords wouldn’t last till midsummer; but what discoveries would he make? He was simply on the same lay as Hyacinth’s Princess; he was nervous and scared, and he thought he would see for himself.

“Oh, he isn’t the same sort as the Princess. I’m sure he’s in a very different line!” Hyacinth exclaimed.

“Different, of course: she’s a handsome woman, I suppose, and he’s an ugly man; but I don’t think that either of them will save us or spoil us. Their curiosity is natural, but I have got other things to do than to show them over; therefore you can tell her serene highness that I’m much obliged.”

Hyacinth reflected a moment, and then he said, “You show Lady Aurora over; you seem to wish to give her the information she desires; and what’s the difference? If it’s right for her to take an interest, why isn’t it right for my Princess?”

“If she’s already yours, what more can she want?” Muniment asked. “All I know of Lady Aurora, and all I look at, is that she comes and sits with Rosy, and brings her tea, and waits upon her. If the Princess will do as much I’ll tell her she’s a woman of genius; but apart from that I shall never take a grain of interest in her interest in the masses – or in this particular mass!” And Paul Muniment, with his discoloured thumb, designated his own substantial person. His tone was disappointing to Hyacinth, who was surprised at his not appearing to think the episode at the theatre more remarkable and romantic. Muniment seemed to regard his explanation of such a proceeding as all-sufficient; but when, a moment later, he made use, in referring to the mysterious lady, of the expression that she was ‘quaking’, Hyacinth broke out – “Never in the world; she’s not afraid of anything!”

“Ah, my lad, not afraid of you, evidently!”

Hyacinth paid no attention to this coarse sally, but asked in a moment, with a candour that was proof against further ridicule, “Do you think she can do me a hurt of any kind, if we follow up our acquaintance?”
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