The elder a bold, frank, impetuous, chivalric adventurer; the younger a gentle, studious, book-loving recluse; they lived upon the ancestral estate like mated birds, one always on the wing, the other always in the nest.
There was no trait in Jean Marie Poquelin, said the old gossips, for which he was so well known among his few friends as his apparent fondness for his "little brother." "Jacques said this," and "Jacques said that;" he "would leave this or that, or any thing to Jacques," for "Jacques was a scholar," and "Jacques was good," or "wise," or "just," or "far-sighted," as the nature of the case required; and "he should ask Jacques as soon as he got home," since Jacques was never elsewhere to be seen.
It was between the roving character of the one brother, and the bookishness of the other, that the estate fell into decay.

Jean Marie, generous gentleman, gambled the slaves away one by one, until none was left, man or woman, but one old African mute.
The indigo-fields and vats of Louisiana had been generally abandoned as unremunerative.

Certain enterprising men had substituted the culture of sugar; but while the recluse was too apathetic to take so active a course, the other saw larger, and, at time, equally respectable profits, first in smuggling, and later in the African slave-trade.

What harm could he see in it?
The whole people said it was vitally necessary, and to minister to a vital public necessity,--good enough, certainly, and so he laid up many a doubloon, that made him none the worse in the public regard.
One day old Jean Marie was about to start upon a voyage that was to be longer, much longer, than any that he had yet made.

Jacques had begged him hard for many days not to go, but he laughed him off, and finally said, kissing him: "_Adieu, 'tit frere_." "No," said Jacques, "I shall go with you." They left the old hulk of a house in the sole care of the African mute, and went away to the Guinea coast together.
Two years after, old Poquelin came home without his vessel.