conocía tenía carruajes. Entonces era perfectamente fácil ubicar a cualquiera; ahora uno no sabe qué pensar, y prefiero no intentarlo.
Solo la vieja Catherine Mingott, con su ausencia de prejuicios morales y su indiferencia casi parvenu ante las distinciones más sutiles, podría haber salvado el abismo; pero jamás había abierto un libro ni mirado un cuadro, y la música solo le importaba porque le recordaba las noches de gala en los Italiens, en los días de su triunfo en las Tullerías.
Posiblemente Beaufort, que la igualaba en osadía, habría logrado llevar a cabo una fusión; pero su gran casa y sus lacayos de medias de seda eran un obstáculo para la sociabilidad informal. Además, era tan analfabeto como la vieja señora Mingott y consideraba a los «tipos que escribían» como meros proveedores pagados de los placeres de los ricos; y nadie con la suficiente fortuna como para influir en su opinión lo había cuestionado jamás.
Newland Archer had been aware of these things ever since he could remember, and had accepted them as part of the structure of his universe. He knew that there were societies where painters and poets and novelists and men of science, and even great actors, were as sought after as Dukes; he had often pictured to himself what it would have been to live in the intimacy of drawing-rooms dominated by the talk of Mérimée (whose Lettres à une Inconnue was one of his inseparables), of Thackeray, Browning or William Morris. But such things were inconceivable in New York, and unsettling to think of. Archer knew most of the “fellows who wrote,” the musicians and the painters: he met them at the Century, or at the little musical and theatrical clubs that were beginning to come into existence. He enjoyed them there, and was bored with them at the Blenkers’, where they were mingled with fervid and dowdy women who passed them