ill be getting
out. It is the custom of the family. At Bordeaux, the Spanish detectives
were on the shore gnashing their teeth, when he was a hundred yards away
at sea on the Antoine. They missed him like that; and we'll miss him
too. What is the good! It was not his fault--that was the way of his
bringing up beyond there at Cadiz, where they think more of a toreador
than of John the Baptist. It was my fault. I ought to have banked the
money. I ought not to have kept it to look at like a gamin with his
marbles. There it was in the wall; and there was Dolores a long way from
home and wanting to get back. He found the way by a gift of the tools;
and I wish I had the same gift now; for I've got no other gift that'll
earn anything for me."

These were the last dark or pessimistic words spoken at St. Saviour's
by Jean Jacques; and they were said to the Clerk of the Court, who
could not deny the truth of them; but he wrung the hand of Jean Jacques
nevertheless, and would not leave him night or day. M. Fille was like a
little cruiser protecting a fort when gunboats swarm near, not daring to
attack till their battleship heaves in sight. The battleship was the
Big Financier, who saw that a wreck was now inevitable, and was only
concerned that there should be a fair distribution of the assets. That
meant, of course, that he should be served first, and then that those
below the salt should get a share.

Revelation after revelation had been Jean Jacques' lot of late years,
but the final revelation of his own impotence was overwhelming. When he
began to stir about among his affairs, he was faced by the fact that
the law stood in his way. He realized with inward horror his shattered
egotism and natural vanity; he saw that he might just as well be in
jail; that he had no freedom; that he could do nothing at all in regard
to anything he owned; that he was, in effect, a prisoner of war where he
had been the general commanding an army.

Yet the old pride intervened, and it was associated with some innate
nobility; for from the hour in which it was known that Sebastian Dolores
had escaped in a steamer bound for France, and could not be overhauled,
and the chances were that he would never have to yield up the six
thousand dollars, Jean Jacques bustled about cheerfully, and as though
he had still great affairs of business to order and regulate. It was a
make-believe which few treated with scorn. Even the workmen at the mill
humoured him,