"You know he has a quick and fearful temper;" and "why does he cover his loss with mystery ?" "Grief would out with the truth." "But," said the charitable few, "look in his face; see that expression of true humanity." The many did look in his face, and, as he looked in theirs, he read the silent question: "Where is thy brother Abel ?" The few were silenced, his former friends died off, and the name of Jean Marie Poquelin became a symbol of witchery, devilish crime, and hideous nursery fictions.
The man and his house were alike shunned.

The snipe and duck hunters forsook the marsh, and the wood-cutters abandoned the canal.

Sometimes the hardier boys who ventured out there snake-shooting heard a slow thumping of oar-locks on the canal.

They would look at each other for a moment half in consternation, half in glee, then rush from their sport in wanton haste to assail with their gibes the unoffending, withered old man who, in rusty attire, sat in the stern of a skiff, rowed homeward by his white-headed African mute.
"O Jean-ah Poquelin! O Jean-ah! Jean-ah Poquelin!" It was not necessary to utter more than that.

No hint of wickedness, deformity, or any physical or moral demerit; merely the name and tone of mockery: "Oh, Jean-ah Poquelin!" and while they tumbled one over another in their needless haste to fly, he would rise carefully from his seat, while the aged mute, with downcast face, went on rowing, and rolling up his brown fist and extending it toward the urchins, would pour forth such an unholy broadside of French imprecation and invective as would all but craze them with delight.
Among both blacks and whites the house was the object of a thousand superstitions.