His voice frayed a little on the last word, but his head was up now. The Clerk of the Court would have asked to accompany him to the Manor Cartier, but he was not sure that Jean Jacques would like it. He had a feeling that Jean Jacques would wish to have his dark hour alone. So he remained silent, and Jean Jacques touched his horses with the whip. After starting, however, and having been followed for a hundred yards or so by the pitying murmurs and a few I-told-you-so's and revilings for having married as he did, Jean Jacques stopped the ponies. Standing up in the red wagon he looked round for someone whom, for a moment, he did not see in the slowly shifting crowd.
Philosophy was all very well, and he had courageously given his allegiance to it, or a formula of it, a moment before; but there was something deeper and rarer still in the little man's soul. His heart hungered for the two women who had been the joy and pride of his life, even when he had been lost in the business of the material world. They were more to him than he had ever known; they were parts of himself which had slowly developed, as the features and characteristics of ancestors gradually emerge and are emphasized in a descendant as his years increase. Carmen and Zoe were more a part of himself now than they had ever been.
They were gone, the living spirits of his home. Anything that reminded him of them, despite the pain of the reminder, was dear to him. Love was greater than the vengeful desire of injured human nature. His eyes wandered over the people, over the market. At last he saw what he was looking for. He called. A man turned. Jean Jacques beckoned to him. He came eagerly, he hurried to the red wagon.
"Come home with me," said Jean Jacques.
The words were addressed to Sebastian Dolores, who said to himself that this was a refuge surer than "The Red Eagle," or the home of the widow Poucette. He climbed in beside Jean Jacques with a sigh of content.
"Ah, but that—but that is the end of our philosopher," said Judge Carcasson sadly to the Clerk of the Court, as with amazement he saw this catastrophe.
"Alas! if I had only asked to go with him, as I wished to do!" responded M. Fille. "There, but a minute ago, it was in my mind," he added with a look of pain.
"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.