They put on a manner as they
put on their clothes, and wore it out in the world, or took it off in
their own homes-behind the door of life; but he was the same vain, frank,
cocksure fellow in his home as in the street. There was no difference at
all. He was vain, but he had no conceit; and therefore he did not
deceive, and was not tyrannous or dictatorial; in truth, if you but
estimated him at his own value, he was the least insistent man alive.
Many a debtor knew this; and, by asking Jean Jacques' advice, making an
appeal to his logic, as it were--and it was always worth listening to,
even when wrong or sadly obvious, because of the glow with which he
declared things this or that--found his situation immediately eased. Many
a hard-up countryman, casting about for a five-dollar bill, could get it
of Jean Jacques by telling him what agreeable thing some important person
had said about him; or by writing to a great newspaper in Montreal a
letter, saying that the next candidate for the provincial legislature
should be M. Jean Jacques Barbille, of St. Saviour's. This never failed
to draw a substantial "bill" from the wad which Jean Jacques always
carried in his pocket-loose, not tied up in a leather roll, as so many
lesser men freighted the burdens of their wealth.
He had changed since the day he left Bordeaux on the Antoine; since he
had first caught the flash of interest in Carmen Dolores' eyes--an
interest roused from his likeness to a conspirator who had been shot for
his country's good.
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