“You had a college education, Mr. Paret,” he remarked at length.

“Yes.”

“Life’s a queer thing.  Now if I’d had a college education, like you, and you’d been thrown on the world, like me, maybe I’d be livin’ up there on Grant Avenue and you’d be down here over the saloon.”

“Maybe,” I said, wondering uneasily whether he meant to imply a similarity in our gifts.  But his manner remained impassive, speculative.

“Ever read Carlyle’s ’French Revolution’?” he asked suddenly.

“Why, yes, part of it, a good while ago.”

“When you was in college?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve got a little library here,” he said, getting up and raising the shades and opening the glass doors of a bookcase which had escaped my attention.  He took down a volume of Carlyle, bound in half calf.

“Wouldn’t think I cared for such things, would you?” he demanded as he handed it to me.

“Well, you never can tell what a man’s real tastes are until you know him,” I observed, to conceal my surprise.

“That’s so,” he agreed.  “I like books—­some books.  If I’d had an education, I’d have liked more of ’em, known more about ’em.  Now I can read this one over and over.  That feller Carlyle was a genius, he could look right into the bowels of the volcano, and he was on to how men and women feet down there, how they hate, how they square ’emselves when they get a chance.”

He had managed to bring before me vividly that terrible, volcanic flow on Versailles of the Paris mob.  He put back the book and resumed his seat.

“And I know how these people fed down here, below the crust,” he went on, waving his cigar out of the window, as though to indicate the whole of that mean district.  “They hate, and their hate is molten hell.  I’ve been through it.”

“But you’ve got on top,” I suggested.

“Sure, I’ve got on top.  Do you know why? it’s because I hated—­that’s why.  A man’s feelings, if they’re strong enough, have a lot to do with what he becomes.”

“But he has to have ability, too,” I objected.

“Sure, he has to have ability, but his feeling is the driving power if he feels strong enough, he can make a little ability go a long way.”

I was struck by the force of this remark.  I scarcely recognized Judd Jason.  The man, as he revealed himself, had become at once more sinister and more fascinating.

“I can guess how some of those Jacobins felt when they had the aristocrats in the dock.  They’d got on top—­the Jacobins, I mean.  It’s human nature to want to get on top—­ain’t it?” He looked at me and smiled, but he did not seem to expect a reply.  “Well, what you call society, rich, respectable society like you belong to would have made a bum and a criminal out of me if I hadn’t been too smart for ’em, and it’s a kind of satisfaction to have ’em coming down here to Monahan’s for things they can’t have without my leave.  I’ve got a half Nelson on ’em.  I wouldn’t live up on Grant Avenue if you gave me Scherer’s new house.”