ion, like you, and
you'd been thrown on the world, like me, maybe I'd be livin' up there on
Grant Avenue and you'd be down here over the saloon."

"Maybe," I said, wondering uneasily whether he meant to imply a
similarity in our gifts. But his manner remained impassive, speculative.

"Ever read Carlyle's 'French Revolution'?" he asked suddenly.

"Why, yes, part of it, a good while ago."

"When you was in college?"

"Yes."

"I've got a little library here," he said, getting up and raising the
shades and opening the glass doors of a bookcase which had escaped my
attention. He took down a volume of Carlyle, bound in half calf.

"Wouldn't think I cared for such things, would you?" he demanded as he
handed it to me.

"Well, you never can tell what a man's real tastes are until you know
him," I observed, to conceal my surprise.

"That's so," he agreed. "I like books--some books. If I'd had an
education, I'd have liked more of 'em, known more about 'em. Now I can
read this one over and over. That feller Carlyle was a genius, he could
look right into the bowels of the volcano, and he was on to how men and
women feet down there, how they hate, how they square 'emselves when they
get a chance."

He had managed to bring before me vividly that terrible, volcanic flow on
Versailles of the Paris mob. He put back the book and resumed his seat.

"And I know how these people fed down here, below the crust," he went on,
waving his cigar out of the window, as though to indicate the whole of
that mean district. "They hate, and their hate is molten hell. I've been
through it."

"But you've got on top," I suggested.

"Sure, I've got on top. Do you know why? it's because I hated--that's
why. A man's feelings, if they're strong enough, have a lot to do with
what he becomes."

"But he has to have ability, too," I objected.

"Sure, he has to have ability, but his feeling is the driving power if he
feels strong enough, he can make a little ability go a long way."

I was struck by the force of this remark. I scarcely recognized Judd
Jason. The man, as he revealed himself, had become at once more sinister
and more fascinating.

"I can guess how some of those Jacobins felt when they had the
aristocrats in the dock. They'd got on top--the Jacobins, I mean. It's
human nature to want to get on top--ain't it?" He looked at me and
smiled, but he did not seem to expect a reply. "Well, what you call
society, rich, respectable society