Also he had, during the day, collected a debt long since wiped off his
books; he had traded a poor horse for a good cow; he had bought all the
wheat of a Vilray farmer below market-price, because the poor fellow
needed ready money; he had issued an insurance policy; his wife and
daughter had conversed in the public streets with the great judge who was
the doyen of the provincial Bench; and his daughter had been kissed by
the same judge in the presence of at least a dozen people. He was, in
fact, very proud of his Carmen and his Carmencita, as he called the two
who sat in the red wagon sharing his glory--so proud that he did not
extol them to others; and he was quite sure they were both very proud of
him. The world saw what his prizes of life were, and there was no need
to praise or brag. Dignity and pride were both sustained by silence and
a wave of the hand, which in fact said to the world, "Look you, my
masters, they belong to Jean Jacques. Take heed."

There his domestic scheme practically ended. He was so busy that he took
his joys by snatches, in moments of suspension of actual life, as it
were. His real life was in the eddy of his many interests, in the field
of his superficial culture, in the eyes of the world. The worst of him
was on the surface. He showed what other men hid, that was all. Their
vanity was concealed, he wore it in his cap. They put on a manner as
they put on their clothes, and wore it out in the world, or took it off
in their own homes-behind the door of life; but he was the same vain,
frank, cocksure fellow in his home as in the street. There was no
difference at all. He was vain, but he had no conceit; and therefore he
did not deceive, and was not tyrannous or dictatorial; in truth, if you
but estimated him at his own value, he was the least insistent man alive.
Many a debtor knew this; and, by asking Jean Jacques' advice, making an
appeal to his logic, as it were--and it was always worth listening to,