ABSTRACT
Strether has set out on the embassy entrusted to him by the formidable Mrs Newsome of Woollett, Massachusetts, to recover her errant son Chad and return him to his proper inheritance as a New England industrialist. But Strether's landing in Europe implies for him something further: a moment's liberty, romantic effects, memories of his much effaced youth, some sense of the recovery of a lost self which sets in train another level of reflection. So discovery is to move on a double track: one follows the threads that are the essential clues for the recovery of Mrs Newsome's wayward son; another follows his own indifferent curiosity.
