He is of the builders on the one hand, of the Illuminati and the Encyclopedistes on the other." Even the Clerk of the Court, with his circumscribed range of thought and experience, in that moment saw Jean Jacques as he really was.

Here was a man whose house of life was beginning to sway from an earthquake; who had been smitten in several deadly ways, and was about to receive buffetings beyond aught he had yet experienced, philosophizing on the tight-rope--Blondin and Plato in one.

Yet sardonically piteous as it was, the incident had shown Jean Jacques with the germ of something big in him.

He had recognized in M.Mornay, who could level him to the dust tomorrow financially, a master of the world's affairs, a prospector of life's fields, who would march fearlessly beyond the farthest frontiers into the unknown.

Jean Jacques' admiration of the lion who could, and would, slay him was the best tribute to his own character.
M.Fille's eyes moistened as he realized it; and he knew that nothing he could say or do would make this man accommodate his actions to the hard rules of the business of life; he must for ever be applying to them conceptions of a half-developed mind.
"Quite so, quite so, Jean Jacques," M.Fille responded gently, "but"-- here came a firmer note to his voice, for he had taken to heart the lesson M.Mornay had taught him, and he was determined to do his duty now when the opportunity was in his hand--"but you have got to deal with things as they are; not as they might have been.