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James, Henry, 1843-1916

"Roderick Hudson"

He took a liberal one, and lounged away the lovely
Roman May, doing nothing. He looked very contented; with himself,
perhaps, at times, a trifle too obviously. But who could have said
without good reason? He was "flushed with triumph;" this classic
phrase portrayed him, to Rowland's sense. He would lose himself in long
reveries, and emerge from them with a quickened smile and a heightened
color. Rowland grudged him none of his smiles, and took an extreme
satisfaction in his two statues. He had the Adam and the Eve transported
to his own apartment, and one warm evening in May he gave a little
dinner in honor of the artist. It was small, but Rowland had meant it
should be very agreeably composed. He thought over his friends and chose
four. They were all persons with whom he lived in a certain intimacy.
One of them was an American sculptor of French extraction, or remotely,
perhaps, of Italian, for he rejoiced in the somewhat fervid name of
Gloriani. He was a man of forty, he had been living for years in Paris
and in Rome, and he now drove a very pretty trade in sculpture of the
ornamental and fantastic sort.


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