The worst of him
was on the surface. He showed what other men hid, that was all. Their
vanity was concealed, he wore it in his cap. They put on a manner as
they put on their clothes, and wore it out in the world, or took it off
in their own homes-behind the door of life; but he was the same vain,
frank, cocksure fellow in his home as in the street. There was no
difference at all. 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.
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