least six Barbilles as owners of the Manor. The beaver-hat which Jean
Jacques wore on state occasions, as his grandfather had done, together
with the bonnet rouge of the habitant, donned by him in his younger days
--they fell to the nod of Mere Langlois, who declared that, as she was a
cousin, she would keep the things in the family. Mere Langlois would
have bought the fruit-dish also if she could have afforded to bid against
Virginie Poucette; but the latter would have had the dish if it had cost
her two hundred dollars. The only time she had broken bread in Jean
Jacques' house, she had eaten cake from this fruit-dish; and to her,
as to the parish generally, the dish so beautifully shaped, with its
graceful depth and its fine-chased handles, was symbol of the social
caste of the Barbilles, as the gold Cock of Beaugard was sign of their
civic and commercial glory.

Jean Jacques, who had moved about all day with an almost voluble
affability, seeming not to realize the tragedy going on, or, if he
realized it, rising superior to it, was noticed to stand still suddenly
when the auctioneer put up the fruit-dish for sale. Then the smile left
his face, and the reddish glow in his eyes, which had been there since
the burning of the mill, fled, and a touch of amazement and confusion
took its place. All in a moment he was like a fluttered dweller of the
wilds to whom comes some tremor of danger.

His mouth opened as though he would forbid the selling of the heirloom;
but it closed again, because he knew he had no right to withhold it from
the hammer; and he took on a look like that which comes to the eyes of a
child when it faces humiliating denial. Quickly as it came, however, it
vanished, for he remembered that he could buy the dish himself. He could
buy it himself and keep it. . . . Yet what could he do with it? Even
so, he could keep it. It could still be his till better days came.