Newman's imagination began to glow with the idea of converting his bright, impracticable friend into a first-class man of business.

He felt for the moment a sort of spiritual zeal, the zeal of the propagandist.

Its ardor was in part the result of that general discomfort which the sight of all uninvested capital produced in him; so fine an intelligence as Bellegarde's ought to be dedicated to high uses.
The highest uses known to Newman's experience were certain transcendent sagacities in the handling of railway stock.

And then his zeal was quickened by his personal kindness for Valentin; he had a sort of pity for him which he was well aware he never could have made the Comte de Bellegarde understand.

He never lost a sense of its being pitiable that Valentin should think it a large life to revolve in varnished boots between the Rue d'Anjou and the Rue de l'Universite, taking the Boulevard des Italiens on the way, when over there in America one's promenade was a continent, and one's Boulevard stretched from New York to San Francisco.