“You missed your chance, falterer,” said the Judge severely. “If you have a good thought, act on it—that is the golden rule. You missed your chance. It will never come again. He has taken the wrong turning, our unhappy Jean Jacques.”
“Monsieur—oh, monsieur, do not shut the door in the face of God like that!” said the shocked little master of the law. “Those two together—it may be only for a moment.”
“Ah, no, my little owl, Jean Jacques will wind the boa-constrictor round his neck like a collar, all for love of those he has lost,” answered the Judge with emotion; and he caught M. Fille’s arm in the companionship of sorrow.
In silence these two watched the red wagon till it was out of sight.
CHAPTER XVI. MISFORTUNES COME NOT SINGLY
Judge Carcasson was right. For a year after Zoe’s flight Jean Jacques wrapped Sebastian Dolores round his neck like a collar, and it choked him like a boaconstrictor. But not Sebastian Dolores alone did that. When things begin to go wrong in the life of a man whose hands have held too many things, the disorder flutters through all the radii of his affairs, and presently they rattle away from the hub of his control.
So it was with Jean Jacques. To take his reprobate father-in-law to his lonely home would have brought him trouble in any case; but as things were, the Spaniard became only the last straw which broke his camel’s back. And what a burden his camel carried—flour-mill, saw-mill, ash-factory, farms, a general store, lime-kilns, agency for lightning-rods and insurance, cattle-dealing, the project for the new cheese-factory, and money-lending!
Money-lending? It seemed strange that Jean Jacques should be able to lend money, since he himself had to borrow, and mortgage also, from time to time. When things began to go really wrong with him financially, he mortgaged his farms, his flour-mill, and saw-mill, and then lent money on other mortgages. This he did because he had always lent money, and it was a habit so associated with his prestige, that he tied himself up in borrowing and lending and counter-mortgaging till, as the saying is, “a Philadelphia lawyer” could not have unravelled his affairs without having been born again in the law. That he was able to manipulate his tangled affairs, while keeping the confidence of those from whom he borrowed, and the admiration of those to whom he lent, was evidence of his capacity. “Genius of a kind” was what his biggest creditor called it later.
After a personal visit to St. Saviour’s, this biggest creditor and financial potentate—M. Mornay—said that if Jean Jacques had been started right and trained right, he would have been a “general in the financial field, winning big battles.”