“Oh they’re every one—all sorts and sizes; of course I mean within limits, though limits down perhaps rather more than limits up. There are always artists—he’s beautiful and inimitable to the _cher confrère_; and then _gros bonnets_ of many kinds—ambassadors, cabinet ministers, bankers, generals, what do I know? even Jews. Above all always some awfully nice women—and not too many; sometimes an actress, an artist, a great performer—but only when they’re not monsters; and in particular the right _femmes du monde_. You can fancy his history on that side—I believe it’s fabulous: they _never_ give him up. Yet he keeps them down: no one knows how he manages; it’s too beautiful and bland. Never too many—and a mighty good thing too; just a perfect choice. But there are not in any way many bores; it has always been so; he has some secret. It’s extraordinary. And you don’t find it out. He’s the same to every one. He doesn’t ask questions.’ “Ah doesn’t he?” Strether laughed. Bilham met it with all his candour. “How then should _I_ be here? “Oh for what you tell me. You’re part of the perfect choice.” Well, the young man took in the scene. “It seems rather good to-day.” Strether followed the direction of his eyes. “Are they all, this time, _femmes du monde?_” Little Bilham showed his competence. “Pretty well.” This was a category our friend had a feeling for; a light, romantic and mysterious, on the feminine element, in which he enjoyed for a little watching it. “Are there any Poles?” His companion considered. “I think I make out a ‘Portuguee.’ But I’ve seen Turks.” Strether wondered, desiring justice. “They seem—all the women—very harmonious.” “Oh in closer quarters they come out!” And then, while Strether was aware of fearing closer quarters, though giving himself again to the harmonies, “Well,” little Bilham went on, “it _is_ at the worst rather good, you know. If you like it, you feel it, this way, that shows you’re not in the least out. But you always know things,” he handsomely added, “immediately.” Strether liked it and felt it only too much; so “I say, don’t lay traps for me!” he rather helplessly murmured. “Well,” his companion returned, “he’s wonderfully kind to _us_.” “To us Americans you mean?” “Oh no—he doesn’t know anything about _that_. That’s half the battle here—that you can never hear politics. We don’t talk them. I mean to poor young wretches of all sorts. And yet it’s always as charming as this; it’s as if, by something in the air, our squalor didn’t show. It puts us all back—into the last century.” “I’m afraid,” Strether said, amused, “that it puts me rather forward: oh ever so far!” “Into the next? But isn’t that only,” little Bilham asked, “because you’re really of the century before?” “The century before the last? Thank you!” Strether laughed. “If I ask you about some of the ladies it can’t be then that I may hope, as such a specimen of the rococo, to please them.”