But he fed and clothed that shabby multitude; those degenerate descendants of Portuguese conquerors; he was their providence; he kept them singing his praises in the midst of their laziness, of their dirt, of their immense and hopeless squalor: and he was greatly delighted.

They wanted much, but he could give them all they wanted without ruining himself.

In exchange he had their silent fear, their loquacious love, their noisy veneration.

It is a fine thing to be a providence, and to be told so on every day of one's life.

It gives one a feeling of enormously remote superiority, and Willems revelled in it.