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.