was while the picture of his home scene remained unbroken and
serene; but the hideous mass of last night's holocaust was now before
his eyes, with little streams of smoke rising from the cindered
pile, and a hundred things with which his eyes had been familiar lay
distorted, excoriated and useless. He realized with sudden completeness
that a terrible change bad come in his life, that a cyclone had ruined
the face of his created world.

This picture did more to open up Jean Jacques' eyes to his real position
in life than anything he had experienced, than any sorrow he had
suffered. He had been in torment in the past, but he had refused to see
that he was in Hades. Now it was as though he had been led through the
streets of Hell by some dark spirit, while in vain he looked round for
his old friends Kant and Hegel, Voltaire and Rousseau and Rochefoucauld,
Plato and Aristotle.

While gazing at the dismal scene, however, and unheeding the idlers who
poked about among the ruins, and watched him as one who was the centre
of a drama, he suddenly caught sight of the gold Cock of Beaugard, which
had stood on the top of the mill, in the very centre of the ruins.

Yes, there it was, the crested golden cock which had typified his own
life, as he went head high, body erect, spurs giving warning, and a
clarion in his throat ready to blare forth at any moment. There was the
golden Cock of Beaugard in the cinders, the ashes and the dust. His
chin dropped on his breast, and a cloud like a fog on the coast of
Gaspe settled round him. Yet even as his head drooped, something else
happened--one of those trivial things which yet may be the pivot of
great things. A cock crowed--almost in his very ear, it seemed. He
lifted his head quickly, and a superstitious look flashed into his face.
His eyes fastened on the burnished head of the Cock among the ruins.
To his excited imagination it was as though the ancient symbol of
the Barbilles had spoken to him in its own language of good cheer and
defiance. Yes, there it was, half covered by the ruins, but its head was
erect in the midst of fire and disaster. Brought low, it was still alert
above the wreckage. The child, the dreamer, the optimist, the egoist,
and the man alive in Jean Jacques sprang into vigour again. It was as
though the Cock of Beaugard had really summoned him to action, and the
crowing had not been that of a barnyard bantam not a hundred feet away
from him. Jean Jacques' head went