Briefly, he was a born leader; a masterful man, with a habit of thinking before he spoke; and when he said a thing must be done, people were apt to do it.

He was now thirty years old, without kith or kin that any one knew of; living by himself in a good house, and keeping it clean and decent, almost as a woman might; not likely ever to change his condition, it was supposed.
This was the man who happened to come into the street on some errand, that soft summer evening, at the very moment when Marie was feeling lifted up by the light of joy in the children's faces, and was telling herself how good it was that she had come this way.

Hearing the sound of the fiddle, De Arthenay stopped for a moment, and his face grew dark as night.

He was a religious man, as sternly so as his Huguenot ancestor, but wearing his religion with a difference.

He knew all music, except psalm-tunes, to be directly from the devil.