Mercy of God, what has broken my life, what but
romance--romance, first with one and then with another! More feeling
than thinking, Maitre Fille--you say that? Why the Barbilles have ever
in the past built up life on a basis of thought and action, and I have
added philosophy--the science of thought and act. Jean Jacques Barbille
has been the man of design and the man of action also. Don Quixote was a
fool, a dreamer, but Jean Jacques is no Don Quixote. He is a man who has
done things, but also he is a man who has been broken on the wheel of
life. He is a man whose heart-strings have been torn--"
He had worked himself up into a fit of eloquence and revolt. He was
touched by the rod of desperation, which makes the soul protest that it
is right when it knows that it is wrong.
Suddenly, breaking off his speech, he threw up his hands and made for the
door.
"I will fight it out alone!" he declared with rough emotion, and at the
door he turned towards them again. He looked at them both as though he
would dare them to contradict him. The restless fire of his eyes seemed
to dart from one to the other.
"That's the way it is," said the widow of Palass Poucette coming quickly
forward to him.
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