We should perhaps try to make clear at this point in this story that Jean Baptiste could have settled matters in a very simple manner.... True, the manner in which he could have settled it, would be the manner in which wars could be avoided—by sacrificing principle. He could have gone to his Majesty and played a traitor to his nature by pretending to believe the Elder had been right and justified in everything; whereas, he, Jean Baptiste, had been as duly wrong. He could have acted in such a manner as to have his Majesty feel that he was a great man, that he had been honored by even knowing him, much less in being privileged to marry his daughter. This, in view of the fact that having been absent from her bedside at that crucial time, he was compromised, would have satisfied the Elder, and Baptiste would not have been compelled to forego all that later came to pass in their relations. But Jean Baptiste had a principle, and was not a liar, nor a coward, nor a thief. And, although, he had been so unfortunate as not to have been by the bedside of his wife during that hour, he could have sentimentally appeased his father-in-law, but Jean Baptiste had not nor will he ever in the development of this story, sink so low. Of what was to come—and the most is—in this story, Jean Baptiste at no time sacrificed his manhood for any cause.

N. Justine McCarthy, and this is true of too many of his race and to this cause may be attributed many of their failures, was not a reader. He never read anything but the newspapers briefly and the Bible a little. He was, therefore, not an informed man. As a result he took little interest in, and appreciated less, what the world is thinking and doing. He had never understood because he had not tried, what the people around where Jean Baptiste had come were doing for posterity. Yet he claimed very loudly to be an apostle of the race—to be willing—and was—sacrificing his very soul for the cause of Ethiopia. He took great pride in telling and retelling how he had sacrificed for his family—wife included. As he was heard by others, he had no faults; could do no wrong, and would surely reach heaven in the end!

So while they lingered at the bedside of Orlean, he and Ethel, as a pastime argued with each other, and involved everybody but themselves with wrongs. For instance, the Reverend, affecting much piety, would in discussing his wife, whom he ever did in terms regarding her faults, find occasion to remark in a burst of self pity—and of self pity he had an abundant supply:

"After all I have done for that woman; after all I have sacrificed for her; after all the patience I have endured while she has held me down—kept me from being what I would have been and should, she is ever bursting out with: 'You're the meanest man in the world! You're the meanest man in the world!'" Whereupon he would affect a look of deep self pity and eternal mortification.