played havoc with his self-esteem, confused his brain, and vexed him by
formality, and, more than all, by their indifference to himself. He
admired, yet he wished to be admired; he was humble, but he wished all
people and things to be humble with him. When he halted he wanted the
world to halt; when he entered a cathedral--Notre Dame or any other; or a
great building--the Law Courts at Rouen or any other; he simply wanted
people to say, wanted the cathedral, or at least the cloister, to whisper
to itself, "Here comes Jean Jacques Barbille."

That was all he wanted, and that would have sufficed. He would not have
had them whisper about his philosophy and his intellect, or the mills and
the ash-factory which he meant to build, the lime-kilns he had started
even before he left, and the general store he intended to open when he
returned to St. Saviour's. Not even his modesty was recognized; and, in
his grand tour, no one was impressed by all that he was, except once. An
ancestor, a grandmother of his, had come from the Basque country; and so
down to St. Jean Pied de Port he went; for he came of a race who set
great store by mothers and grandmothers. At St. Jean Pied de Port he was
more at home. He was, in a sense, a foreigner among foreigners there,
and the people were not quizzical, since he was an outsider in any case
and not a native returned, as he had been in Normandy. He learned to
play pelota, the Basque game taken from the Spaniards, and he even
allowed himself a little of that oratory which, as they say, has its
habitat chiefly in Gascony. And because he had found an audience at
last, he became a liberal host, and spent freely of his dollars, as he
had never done either in Normandy, Paris, or elsewhere. So freely did he
spend, that when he again embarked at Bordeaux for Quebec, he had only
enough cash left to see him through the remainder of his journey in the
great world. Yet he left France with his self-respect restored, and he
even waved her a fond adieu, as the creaking Antoine broke heavily into