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Gilbert Parker
The Money Master, Complete
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066214289
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I. THE GRAND TOUR OF JEAN JACQUES BARBILLE
CHAPTER II. “THE REST OF THE STORY TO-MORROW”
CHAPTER IV. THIRTEEN YEARS AFTER AND THE CLERK OF THE COURT TELLS A STORY
CHAPTER V. THE CLERK OF THE COURT ENDS HIS STORY
CHAPTER VI. JEAN JACQUES HAD HAD A GREAT DAY
CHAPTER VII. JEAN JACQUES AWAKES FROM SLEEP
CHAPTER VIII. THE GATE IN THE WALL
CHAPTER IX. “MOI-JE SUIS PHILOSOPHE”
CHAPTER X. “QUIEN SABE”—WHO KNOWS!
CHAPTER XI. THE CLERK OF THE COURT KEEPS A PROMISE
CHAPTER XII. THE MASTER-CARPENTER HAS A PROBLEM
CHAPTER XIII. THE MAN FROM OUTSIDE
CHAPTER XIV. “I DO NOT WANT TO GO”
CHAPTER XVI. MISFORTUNES COME NOT SINGLY
CHAPTER XVII. HIS GREATEST ASSET
CHAPTER XVIII. JEAN JACQUES HAS AN OFFER
CHAPTER XIX. SEBASTIAN DOLORES DOES NOT SLEEP
CHAPTER XX. “AU ‘VOIR, M’SIEU’ JEAN JACQUES”
CHAPTER XXI. IF SHE HAD KNOWN IN TIME
CHAPTER XXIII. JEAN JACQUES HAS WORK TO DO
CHAPTER XXIV. JEAN JACQUES ENCAMPED
CHAPTER XXV. WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE?
INTRODUCTION
This book is in a place by itself among the novels I have written. Many critics said that it was a welcome return to Canada, where I had made my first success in the field of fiction. This statement was only meagrely accurate, because since ‘The Right of Way’ was published in 1901 I had written, and given to the public, ‘Northern Lights’, a book of short stories, ‘You Never Know Your Luck’, a short novel, and ‘The World for Sale’, though all of these dealt with life in Western Canada, and not with the life of the French Canadians, in which field I had made my first firm impression upon the public. In any case, The Money Master was favourably received by the press and public both in England and America, and my friends were justified in thinking, and in saying, that I was at home in French Canada and gave the impression of mastery of my material. If mastery of material means a knowledge of the life, and a sympathy with it, then my friends are justified; for I have always had an intense sympathy with, and admiration for, French Canadian life. I think the French Canadian one of the most individual, original, and distinctive beings of the modern world. He has kept his place, with his own customs, his own Gallic views of life, and his religious habits, with an assiduity and firmness none too common. He is essentially a man of the home, of the soil, and of the stream; he has by nature instinctive philosophy and temperamental logic. As a lover of the soil of Canada he is not surpassed by any of the other citizens of the country, English or otherwise.
It would almost seem as though the pageantry of past French Canadian history, and the beauty and vigour of the topographical surroundings of French Canadian life, had produced an hereditary pride and exaltation—perhaps an excessive pride and a strenuous exaltation, but, in any case, there it was, and is. The French Canadian lives a more secluded life on the whole than any other citizen of Canada, though the native, adventurous spirit has sent him to the Eastern States of the American Union for work in the mills and factories, or up to the farthest reaches of the St. Lawrence, Ottawa, and their tributaries in the wood and timber trade.
Domestically he is perhaps the most productive son of the North American continent. Families of twenty, or even twenty-five, are not unknown, and, when a man has had more than one wife, it has even exceeded that. Life itself is full of camaraderie and good spirit, marked by religious traits and sacerdotal influence.
The French Canadian is on the whole sober and industrious; but when he breaks away from sobriety and industry he becomes a vicious element in the general organism. Yet his vices are of the surface, and do not destroy the foundations of his social and domestic scheme. A French Canadian pony used to be considered the most virile and lasting stock on the continent, and it is fair to say that the French Canadians themselves are genuinely hardy, long-lived, virile, and enduring.
It was among such people that the hero of The Money Master, Jean Jacques Barbille, lived. He was the symbol or pattern of their virtues and of their weaknesses. By nature a poet, a philosopher, a farmer and an adventurer, his life was a sacrifice to prepossession and race instinct; to temperament more powerful than logic or common sense, though he was almost professionally the exponent of both.
There is no man so simply