XVII
Newman was fond of music, and went often to the opera, where, a couple of evenings after Madame de Bellegarde's ball, he sat listening to "Don Giovanni"; having in honour of this work, which he had never yet seen represented, come to occupy his orchestra-chair before the rising of the curtain. Frequently he took a large box and invited a group of his compatriots; this was a mode of recreation to which he was much addicted. He liked making up parties of his friends and conducting them to the theatre or taking them to drive on mail-coaches and dine at restaurants renowned, by what he could a trifle artlessly ascertain, for special and incomparable dishes. He liked doing things that involved his paying for people; the vulgar truth is he enjoyed "treating" them. This was not because he was what is called purse-proud; handling money in public was, on the contrary, positively disagreeable to him; he had a sort of personal modesty about it akin to what he would have felt about making a toilet before spectators. But just as it was a gratification to him to be nobly dressed, just so it was a private satisfaction (for he kept the full flavour of it quite delicately to himself) to see people occupied and amused at his pecuniary expense and by his profuse interposition. To set a large body of them in motion and transport them to a distance, to have special conveyances, to charter railway-carriages
334
