I am not married, and I have had much
to do with many of them. I will tell you the truth. I left the West
because of a woman--of two women. I had a good business, but I could
not keep out of trouble with women. They made it too easy for me."
"Peacock-pig!" exclaimed Jean Jacques with an ugly sneer.
"Let a man when he is dying tell all the truth, to ease his mind," said
the master-carpenter with a machiavellian pretence and cunning. "It was
vanity, it was, as you say; it was the peacock in me made me be the
friend of many women and not the husband of one. I came down here to
Quebec from the Far West to get away from consequences. It was
expensive. I had to sacrifice. Well, here I am in trouble again--my
last trouble, and with the wife of a man that I respect and admire, not
enough to keep my hands off his wife, but still that I admire. It is my
weakness that I could not be, as a man, honourable to Jean Jacques
Barbille. And so I pay the price; so I have to go without time to make
my will. Bless heaven above, I have no wife--"
"If you had a wife you would not be dying now. You would not then meddle
with the home of Jean Jacques Barbille," sneered Jean Jacques.
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