He feels respect for the young lady, but he is afraid of Christine, who has his dangerous secrets in her keeping.  His emotional callousness is sufficient to prevent the night’s happenings from exercising a disturbing influence on his plans for the future.  Having at once the slave’s brutality and the master’s lack of squeamishness, he can see blood without fainting, and he can also bend his back under a mishap until able to throw it off.  For this reason he will emerge unharmed from the battle, and will probably end his days as the owner of a hotel.  And if he does not become a Roumanian count, his son will probably go to a university, and may even become a county attorney.

Otherwise, he furnishes us with rather significant information as to the way in which the lower classes look at life from beneath—–­ that is, when he speaks the truth, which is not often, as he prefers what seems favourable to himself to what is true.  When Miss Julia suggests that the lower classes must feel the pressure from above very heavily, Jean agrees with her, of course, because he wants to gain her sympathy.  But he corrects himself at once, the moment he realises the advantage of standing apart from the herd.

And Jean stands above Miss Julia not only because his fate is in ascendancy, but because he is a man.  Sexually he is the aristocrat because of his male strength, his more finely developed senses, and his capacity for taking the initiative.  His inferiority depends mainly on the temporary social environment in which he has to live, and which he probably can shed together with the valet’s livery.

The mind of the slave speaks through his reverence for the count (as shown in the incident with the boots) and through his religious superstition.  But he reveres the count principally as a possessor of that higher position toward which he himself is striving.  And this reverence remains even when he has won the daughter of the house, and seen that the beautiful shell covered nothing but emptiness.

I don’t believe that any love relation in a “higher” sense can spring up between two souls of such different quality.  And for this reason I let Miss Julia imagine her love to be protective or commiserative in its origin.  And I let Jean suppose that, under different social conditions, he might feel something like real love for her.  I believe love to be like the hyacinth, which has to strike roots in darkness before it can bring forth a vigorous flower.  In this case it shoots up quickly, bringing forth blossom and seed at once, and for that reason the plant withers so soon.