Preface

    Nothing is more easy than
          to state the subject
               of "The Ambassadors,"
          which first
            appeared in twelve numbers
                   of The North American Review
        (1903) and was
              published as
                   a whole
                 the same year.

    The situation involved
        is gathered up betimes,
           that is
               in the second chapter
                   of Book Fifth,
         for the reader's benefit,
           into as
               few words as possible
          -- planted or
         "sunk,"
            stiffly and saliently,
         in the centre
               of the current,
         almost perhaps
               to the obstruction of traffic.

    Never can a composition
           of this sort
          have sprung straighter
               from a dropped
             grain of suggestion,
           and never can that grain,
         developed,
           overgrown and smothered,
         have yet
            lurked more in the mass
                   as an independent particle.

    The whole case,
           in fine,
         is in Lambert Strether's
             irrepressible
                outbreak
               to little Bilham
             on the Sunday afternoon
               in Gloriani's garden,
           the candour
             with which he yields,
         for his young friend's enlightenment,
           to the charming admonition
               of that crisis.

    The idea of the tale
        resides indeed
               in the very fact
         that an hour of such
             unprecedented
                ease
            should have been felt
                   by him AS a crisis,
           and he
            is at pains
                  to express it for us
                       as neatly as
             we could desire.

    The remarks
         to which
             he thus
                gives utterance
                      contain the essence of
         "The Ambassadors,"
            his fingers close,
         before he has done,
         round the stem
               of the full-blown flower;
        which,
           after that fashion,
         he continues officiously
              to present to us.

    "Live all you can;
        it's a mistake not to.

    It doesn't so much matter
         what you
              do in particular so long
                   as you
                  have your life.

    If you haven't had that
         what HAVE you had?

    I'm too old
          --too old
               at any rate for
             what I see.

    What one loses one loses;
        make no mistake about that.

    Still,
           we have the illusion
               of freedom;
        therefore don't,
           like me to-day,
         be without the memory
               of that illusion.

    I was either,
           at the right time,
         too stupid or too intelligent
              to have it,
           and now
            I'm a case of reaction
                   against the mistake.

    Do what
           you like so long
         as you
          don't make it.

    For it WAS a mistake.

    Live,
           live!"

    Such is the gist
           of Strether's
          appeal to the impressed youth,
           whom he likes and whom
             he desires to befriend;
        the word
         "mistake"
            occurs several times,
         it will be seen,
         in the course
               of his remarks
          -- which
            gives the measure
                   of the signal warning
             he feels
                  attached to his case.

    He has accordingly
          missed too much,
           though perhaps
              after all constitutionally
            qualified for a better part,
         and he
            wakes up to it
                   in conditions
             that press the spring
                   of a terrible question.

    WOULD there yet perhaps be
         time for reparation?

    --reparation,
           that is,
         for the injury
              done his character;
        for the affront,
           he is
              quite ready to say,
         so stupidly
              put upon it and
             in which
                 he has
                   even himself
                    had so clumsy a hand?

    The answer
         to which is
             that he
                  now at all events SEES;
        so that the business
               of my tale
             and the march
                   of my action,
           not to say
               the precious moral
             of everything,
         is just my
             demonstration
                of this process of vision.

    Nothing can exceed the closeness
         with which the whole fits