Jean Jacques. If he was interested it was not necessary to interest
anyone else, nor was it expedient to do so, for the biggest fish in the
net on the Antoine was the money-master of St. Saviour's.

Carmen had made up her mind from the first to marry Jean Jacques, and she
deported herself accordingly--with modesty, circumspection and skill. It
would be the easiest way out of all their difficulties. Since her heart,
such as it was, fluttered, a mournful ghost, over the Place d'Armes,
where her Gonzales was shot, it might better go to Jean Jacques than
anyone else; for he was a man of parts, of money, and of looks, and she
loved these all; and to her credit she loved his looks better than all
the rest. She had no real cupidity, and she was not greatly enamoured of
brains. She had some real philosophy of life learned in a hard school;
and it was infinitely better founded than the smattering of conventional
philosophy got by Jean Jacques from his compendium picked up on the quay
at Quebec.

Yet Jean Jacques' cruiser of life was not wholly unarmed. From his
Norman forebears he had, beneath all, a shrewdness and an elementary
alertness not submerged by his vain, kind nature. He was quite a good
business man, and had proved himself so before his father died--very
quick to see a chance, and even quicker to see where the distant,
sharp corners in the road were; though not so quick to see the pitfalls,
for his head was ever in the air. And here on the Antoine, there crossed
his mind often the vision of Carmen Dolores and himself in the parish of
St. Saviour's, with the daily life of the Beau Cheval revolving about
him. Flashes of danger warned him now and then, just at the beginning of
the journey, as it were; just before he had found it necessary to become
her champion against the captain and his calumnies; but they were of the
instant only. But champion as he became, and worshipping as his manner