was concealed, he wore it in his cap. 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. He was no stouter in body, for he was of the kind
that wear away the flesh by much doing and thinking; but there were
occasional streaks of grey in his bushy hair, and his eye roamed less
than it did once. In the days when he first brought Carmen home, his eye
was like a bead of brown light on a swivel. It flickered and flamed; it
saw here, saw there; it twinkled, and it pierced into life's mysteries;
and all the while it was a good eye. Its whites never showed, as it
were. As an animal, his eye showed a nature free from vice. In some
respects he was easy to live with, for he never found fault with what
was given him to eat, or the way the house was managed; and he never
interfered with the "kitchen people," or refused a dollar or ten dollars
to Carmen for finery. In fact, he was in a sense too lavish, for he used
at one time to bring her home presents of silks and clothes and toilet
things and stoc