Yet his vices are of the surface, and do not destroy the foundations of his social and domestic scheme.

A French Canadian pony used to be considered the most virile and lasting stock on the continent, and it is fair to say that the French Canadians themselves are genuinely hardy, long-lived, virile, and enduring.
It was among such people that the hero of The Money Master, Jean Jacques Barbille, lived.

He was the symbol or pattern of their virtues and of their weaknesses.

By nature a poet, a philosopher, a farmer and an adventurer, his life was a sacrifice to prepossession and race instinct; to temperament more powerful than logic or common sense, though he was almost professionally the exponent of both.
There is no man so simply sincere, or so extraordinarily prejudiced as the French Canadian.

He is at once modest and vain; he is even lyrical in his enthusiasms; he is a child in the intrigues and inventions of life; but he has imagination, he has a heart, he has a love of tradition, and is the slave of legend.