If this was done intentionally, that he might be saved from distraction and despair, it was well done; if it was a real illusion--the old self-deception which had been his bane so often in the past--it still could only do him good at the present.

It prevented him from noticing the attention he attracted on the railway journey from St.
Saviour's to Montreal, cherishing his canary and his book as he went.
He was not so self-conscious now as in the days when he was surprised that Paris did not stop to say, "Bless us, here is that fine fellow, Jean Jacques Barbille of St.Saviour's!" He could concentrate himself more now on things that did not concern the impression he was making on the world.

At present he could only think of Zoe and of her future.
When a patronizing and aggressive commercial traveller in the little hotel on a side-street where he had taken a room in Montreal said to him, "Bien, mon vieux" (which is to say, "Well, old cock"), "aren't you a long way from home ?" something of a new dignity came into Jean Jacques' bearing, very different from the assurance of the old days, and in reply he said: "Not so far that I need be careless about my company." This made the landlady of the little hotel laugh quite hard, for she did not like the braggart "drummer" who had treated her with great condescension for a number of years.

Also Madame Glozel liked Jean Jacques because of his canary.

She thought there must be some sentimental reason for a man of fifty or more carrying a bird about with him; and she did not rest until she had drawn from Jean Jacques that he was taking the bird to his daughter in the West.