initial commit of ebook 1841HEADmain

16 files changed, 9161 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/1841-0.txt b/1841-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9aa3bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/1841-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,1481 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Z. Marcas, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Z. Marcas
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Clara Bell and Others
+
+Release Date: August, 1999  [Etext #1841]
+Posting Date: March 3, 2010
+Last Updated: November 22, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK Z. MARCAS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
+
+
+
+
+
+Z. MARCAS
+
+
+By Honore De Balzac
+
+
+
+Translated by Clara Bell and Others
+
+
+
+
+                             DEDICATION
+
+  To His Highness Count William of Wurtemberg, as a token of the
+  Author’s respectful gratitude.
+
+                                                      DE BALZAC.
+
+
+
+
+
+Z. MARCAS
+
+
+I never saw anybody, not even among the most remarkable men of the
+day, whose appearance was so striking as this man’s; the study of his
+countenance at first gave me a feeling of great melancholy, and at last
+produced an almost painful impression.
+
+There was a certain harmony between the man and his name. The Z.
+preceding Marcas, which was seen on the addresses of his letters, and
+which he never omitted from his signature, as the last letter of the
+alphabet, suggested some mysterious fatality.
+
+MARCAS! say this two-syllabled name again and again; do you not feel as
+if it had some sinister meaning? Does it not seem to you that its owner
+must be doomed to martyrdom? Though foreign, savage, the name has a
+right to be handed down to posterity; it is well constructed, easily
+pronounced, and has the brevity that beseems a famous name. Is it not
+pleasant as well as odd? But does it not sound unfinished?
+
+I will not take it upon myself to assert that names have no influence on
+the destiny of men. There is a certain secret and inexplicable concord
+or a visible discord between the events of a man’s life and his name
+which is truly surprising; often some remote but very real correlation
+is revealed. Our globe is round; everything is linked to everything
+else. Some day perhaps we shall revert to the occult sciences.
+
+Do you not discern in that letter Z an adverse influence? Does it not
+prefigure the wayward and fantastic progress of a storm-tossed life?
+What wind blew on that letter, which, whatever language we find it in,
+begins scarcely fifty words? Marcas’ name was Zephirin; Saint Zephirin
+is highly venerated in Brittany, and Marcas was a Breton.
+
+Study the name once more: Z Marcas! The man’s whole life lies in this
+fantastic juxtaposition of seven letters; seven! the most significant of
+all the cabalistic numbers. And he died at five-and-thirty, so his life
+extended over seven lustres.
+
+Marcas! Does it not hint of some precious object that is broken with a
+fall, with or without a crash?
+
+
+
+I had finished studying the law in Paris in 1836. I lived at that time
+in the Rue Corneille in a house where none but students came to lodge,
+one of those large houses where there is a winding staircase quite at
+the back lighted below from the street, higher up by borrowed
+lights, and at the top by a skylight. There were forty furnished
+rooms--furnished as students’ rooms are! What does youth demand more
+than was here supplied? A bed, a few chairs, a chest of drawers, a
+looking-glass, and a table. As soon as the sky is blue the student opens
+his window.
+
+But in this street there are no fair neighbors to flirt with. In front
+is the Odeon, long since closed, presenting a wall that is beginning to
+go black, its tiny gallery windows and its vast expanse of slate roof.
+I was not rich enough to have a good room; I was not even rich enough
+to have a room to myself. Juste and I shared a double-bedded room on the
+fifth floor.
+
+On our side of the landing there were but two rooms--ours and a smaller
+one, occupied by Z. Marcas, our neighbor. For six months Juste and I
+remained in perfect ignorance of the fact. The old woman who managed the
+house had indeed told us that the room was inhabited, but she had added
+that we should not be disturbed, that the occupant was exceedingly
+quiet. In fact, for those six months, we never met our fellow-lodger,
+and we never heard a sound in his room, in spite of the thinness of the
+partition that divided us--one of those walls of lath and plaster which
+are common in Paris houses.
+
+Our room, a little over seven feet high, was hung with a vile cheap
+paper sprigged with blue. The floor was painted, and knew nothing of
+the polish given by the _frotteur’s_ brush. By our beds there was only
+a scrap of thin carpet. The chimney opened immediately to the roof, and
+smoked so abominably that we were obliged to provide a stove at our own
+expense. Our beds were mere painted wooden cribs like those in schools;
+on the chimney shelf there were but two brass candlesticks, with or
+without tallow candles in them, and our two pipes with some tobacco in a
+pouch or strewn abroad, also the little piles of cigar-ash left there by
+our visitors or ourselves.
+
+A pair of calico curtains hung from the brass window rods, and on each
+side of the window was a small bookcase in cherry-wood, such as every
+one knows who has stared into the shop windows of the Quartier Latin,
+and in which we kept the few books necessary for our studies.
+
+The ink in the inkstand was always in the state of lava congealed in the
+crater of a volcano. May not any inkstand nowadays become a Vesuvius?
+The pens, all twisted, served to clean the stems of our pipes; and, in
+opposition to all the laws of credit, paper was even scarcer than coin.
+
+How can young men be expected to stay at home in such furnished
+lodgings? The students studied in the cafes, the theatre, the Luxembourg
+gardens, in _grisettes’_ rooms, even in the law schools--anywhere rather
+than in their horrible rooms--horrible for purposes of study, delightful
+as soon as they were used for gossiping and smoking in. Put a cloth on
+the table, and the impromptu dinner sent in from the best eating-house
+in the neighborhood--places for four--two of them in petticoats--show
+a lithograph of this “Interior” to the veriest bigot, and she will be
+bound to smile.
+
+We thought only of amusing ourselves. The reason for our dissipation lay
+in the most serious facts of the politics of the time. Juste and I could
+not see any room for us in the two professions our parents wished us to
+take up. There are a hundred doctors, a hundred lawyers, for one that is
+wanted. The crowd is choking these two paths which are supposed to lead
+to fortune, but which are merely two arenas; men kill each other there,
+fighting, not indeed with swords or fire-arms, but with intrigue and
+calumny, with tremendous toil, campaigns in the sphere of the intellect
+as murderous as those in Italy were to the soldiers of the Republic. In
+these days, when everything is an intellectual competition, a man must
+be able to sit forty-eight hours on end in his chair before a table, as
+a General could remain for two days on horseback and in his saddle.
+
+The throng of aspirants has necessitated a division of the Faculty of
+Medicine into categories. There is the physician who writes and the
+physician who practises, the political physician, and the physician
+militant--four different ways of being a physician, four classes already
+filled up. As to the fifth class, that of physicians who sell remedies,
+there is such a competition that they fight each other with disgusting
+advertisements on the walls of Paris.
+
+In all the law courts there are almost as many lawyers as there are
+cases. The pleader is thrown back on journalism, on politics, on
+literature. In fact, the State, besieged for the smallest appointments
+under the law, has ended by requiring that the applicants should
+have some little fortune. The pear-shaped head of the grocer’s son is
+selected in preference to the square skull of a man of talent who has
+not a sou. Work as he will, with all his energy, a young man, starting
+from zero, may at the end of ten years find himself below the point
+he set out from. In these days, talent must have the good luck which
+secures success to the most incapable; nay, more, if it scorns the base
+compromises which insure advancement to crawling mediocrity, it will
+never get on.
+
+If we thoroughly knew our time, we also knew ourselves, and we preferred
+the indolence of dreamers to aimless stir, easy-going pleasure to the
+useless toil which would have exhausted our courage and worn out the
+edge of our intelligence. We had analyzed social life while smoking,
+laughing, and loafing. But, though elaborated by such means as these,
+our reflections were none the less judicious and profound.
+
+While we were fully conscious of the slavery to which youth is
+condemned, we were amazed at the brutal indifference of the authorities
+to everything connected with intellect, thought, and poetry. How often
+have Juste and I exchanged glances when reading the papers as we studied
+political events, or the debates in the Chamber, and discussed the
+proceedings of a Court whose wilful ignorance could find no parallel but
+in the platitude of the courtiers, the mediocrity of the men forming
+the hedge round the newly-restored throne, all alike devoid of talent or
+breadth of view, of distinction or learning, of influence or dignity!
+
+Could there be a higher tribute to the Court of Charles X. than the
+present Court, if Court it may be called? What a hatred of the country
+may be seen in the naturalization of vulgar foreigners, devoid of
+talent, who are enthroned in the Chamber of Peers! What a perversion of
+justice! What an insult to the distinguished youth, the ambitions native
+to the soil of France! We looked upon these things as upon a spectacle,
+and groaned over them, without taking upon ourselves to act.
+
+Juste, whom no one ever sought, and who never sought any one, was, at
+five-and-twenty, a great politician, a man with a wonderful aptitude for
+apprehending the correlation between remote history and the facts of the
+present and of the future. In 1831, he told me exactly what would and
+did happen--the murders, the conspiracies, the ascendency of the Jews,
+the difficulty of doing anything in France, the scarcity of talent in
+the higher circles, and the abundance of intellect in the lowest ranks,
+where the finest courage is smothered under cigar ashes.
+
+What was to become of him? His parents wished him to be a doctor. But if
+he were a doctor, must he not wait twenty years for a practice? You
+know what he did? No? Well, he is a doctor; but he left France, he is in
+Asia. At this moment he is perhaps sinking under fatigue in a desert, or
+dying of the lashes of a barbarous horde--or perhaps he is some Indian
+prince’s prime minister.
+
+Action is my vocation. Leaving a civil college at the age of twenty, the
+only way for me to enter the army was by enlisting as a common soldier;
+so, weary of the dismal outlook that lay before a lawyer, I acquired the
+knowledge needed for a sailor. I imitate Juste, and keep out of France,
+where men waste, in the struggle to make way, the energy needed for the
+noblest works. Follow my example, friends; I am going where a man steers
+his destiny as he pleases.
+
+These great resolutions were formed in the little room in the
+lodging-house in the Rue Corneille, in spite of our haunting the Bal
+Musard, flirting with girls of the town, and leading a careless and
+apparently reckless life. Our plans and arguments long floated in the
+air.
+
+Marcas, our neighbor, was in some degree the guide who led us to the
+margin of the precipice or the torrent, who made us sound it, and showed
+us beforehand what our fate would be if we let ourselves fall into it.
+It was he who put us on our guard against the time-bargains a man
+makes with poverty under the sanction of hope, by accepting precarious
+situations whence he fights the battle, carried along by the devious
+tide of Paris--that great harlot who takes you up or leaves you
+stranded, smiles or turns her back on you with equal readiness, wears
+out the strongest will in vexatious waiting, and makes misfortune wait
+on chance.
+
+
+
+At our first meeting, Marcas, as it were, dazzled us. On our return from
+the schools, a little before the dinner-hour, we were accustomed to go
+up to our room and remain there a while, either waiting for the other,
+to learn whether there were any change in our plans for the evening. One
+day, at four o’clock, Juste met Marcas on the stairs, and I saw him in
+the street. It was in the month of November, and Marcas had no cloak;
+he wore shoes with heavy soles, corduroy trousers, and a blue
+double-breasted coat buttoned to the throat, which gave a military air
+to his broad chest, all the more so because he wore a black stock. The
+costume was not in itself extraordinary, but it agreed well with the
+man’s mien and countenance.
+
+My first impression on seeing him was neither surprise, nor distress,
+nor interest, nor pity, but curiosity mingled with all these feelings.
+He walked slowly, with a step that betrayed deep melancholy, his head
+forward with a stoop, but not bent like that of a conscience-stricken
+man. That head, large and powerful, which might contain the treasures
+necessary for a man of the highest ambition, looked as if it were loaded
+with thought; it was weighted with grief of mind, but there was no touch
+of remorse in his expression. As to his face, it may be summed up in
+a word. A common superstition has it that every human countenance
+resembles some animal. The animal for Marcas was the lion. His hair was
+like a mane, his nose was sort and flat; broad and dented at the tip
+like a lion’s; his brow, like a lion’s, was strongly marked with a
+deep median furrow, dividing two powerful bosses. His high, hairy
+cheek-bones, all the more prominent because his cheeks were so thin,
+his enormous mouth and hollow jaws, were accentuated by lines of tawny
+shadows. This almost terrible countenance seemed illuminated by two
+lamps--two eyes, black indeed, but infinitely sweet, calm and deep, full
+of thought. If I may say so, those eyes had a humiliated expression.
+
+Marcas was afraid of looking directly at others, not for himself, but
+for those on whom his fascinating gaze might rest; he had a power, and
+he shunned using it; he would spare those he met, and he feared notice.
+This was not from modesty, but from resignation founded on reason, which
+had demonstrated the immediate inutility of his gifts, the impossibility
+of entering and living in the sphere for which he was fitted. Those eyes
+could at times flash lightnings. From those lips a voice of thunder must
+surely proceed; it was a mouth like Mirabeau’s.
+
+“I have seen such a grand fellow in the street,” said I to Juste on
+coming in.
+
+“It must be our neighbor,” replied Juste, who described, in fact, the
+man I had just met. “A man who lives like a wood-louse would be sure to
+look like that,” he added.
+
+“What dejection and what dignity!”
+
+“One is the consequence of the other.”
+
+“What ruined hopes! What schemes and failures!”
+
+“Seven leagues of ruins! Obelisks--palaces--towers!--The ruins of
+Palmyra in the desert!” said Juste, laughing.
+
+So we called him the Ruins of Palmyra.
+
+As we went out to dine at the wretched eating-house in the Rue de la
+Harpe to which we subscribed, we asked the name of Number 37, and then
+heard the weird name Z. Marcas. Like boys, as we were, we repeated
+it more than a hundred times with all sorts of comments, absurd or
+melancholy, and the name lent itself to a jest. Juste would fire off the
+Z like a rocket rising, _z-z-z-z-zed_; and after pronouncing the first
+syllable of the name with great importance, depicted a fall by the dull
+brevity of the second.
+
+“Now, how and where does the man live?”
+
+From this query, to the innocent espionage of curiosity there was no
+pause but that required for carrying out our plan. Instead of loitering
+about the streets, we both came in, each armed with a novel. We read
+with our ears open. And in the perfect silence of our attic rooms, we
+heard the even, dull sound of a sleeping man breathing.
+
+“He is asleep,” said I to Juste, noticing this fact.
+
+“At seven o’clock!” replied the Doctor.
+
+This was the name by which I called Juste, and he called me the Keeper
+of the Seals.
+
+“A man must be wretched indeed to sleep as much as our neighbor!” cried
+I, jumping on to the chest of drawers with a knife in my hand, to which
+a corkscrew was attached.
+
+I made a round hole at the top of the partition, about as big as a
+five-sou piece. I had forgotten that there would be no light in the
+room, and on putting my eye to the hole, I saw only darkness. At about
+one in the morning, when we had finished our books and were about to
+undress, we heard a noise in our neighbor’s room. He got up, struck a
+match, and lighted his dip. I got on to the drawers again, and I then
+saw Marcas seated at his table and copying law-papers.
+
+His room was about half the size of ours; the bed stood in a recess by
+the door, for the passage ended there, and its breadth was added to
+his garret; but the ground on which the house was built was evidently
+irregular, for the party-wall formed an obtuse angle, and the room was
+not square. There was no fireplace, only a small earthenware stove,
+white blotched with green, of which the pipe went up through the roof.
+The window, in the skew side of the room, had shabby red curtains. The
+furniture consisted of an armchair, a table, a chair, and a wretched
+bed-table. A cupboard in the wall held his clothes. The wall-paper was
+horrible; evidently only a servant had ever been lodged there before
+Marcas.
+
+“What is to be seen?” asked the Doctor as I got down.
+
+“Look for yourself,” said I.
+
+At nine next morning, Marcas was in bed. He had breakfasted off a
+saveloy; we saw on a plate, with some crumbs of bread, the remains of
+that too familiar delicacy. He was asleep; he did not wake till eleven.
+He then set to work again on the copy he had begun the night before,
+which was lying on the table.
+
+On going downstairs we asked the price of that room, and were told
+fifteen francs a month.
+
+In the course of a few days, we were fully informed as to the mode of
+life of Z. Marcas. He did copying, at so much a sheet no doubt, for a
+law-writer who lived in the courtyard of the Sainte-Chapelle. He worked
+half the night; after sleeping from six till ten, he began again and
+wrote till three. Then he went out to take the copy home before dinner,
+which he ate at Mizerai’s in the Rue Michel-le-Comte, at a cost of nine
+sous, and came in to bed at six o’clock. It became known to us that
+Marcas did not utter fifteen sentences in a month; he never talked to
+anybody, nor said a word to himself in his dreadful garret.
+
+“The Ruins of Palmyra are terribly silent!” said Juste.
+
+This taciturnity in a man whose appearance was so imposing was strangely
+significant. Sometimes when we met him, we exchanged glances full of
+meaning on both sides, but they never led to any advances. Insensibly
+this man became the object of our secret admiration, though we knew no
+reason for it. Did it lie in his secretly simple habits, his monastic
+regularity, his hermit-like frugality, his idiotically mechanical labor,
+allowing his mind to remain neuter or to work on his own lines, seeming
+to us to hint at an expectation of some stroke of good luck, or at some
+foregone conclusion as to his life?
+
+After wandering for a long time among the Ruins of Palmyra, we forgot
+them--we were young! Then came the Carnival, the Paris Carnival,
+which, henceforth, will eclipse the old Carnival of Venice, unless some
+ill-advised Prefect of Police is antagonistic.
+
+Gambling ought to be allowed during the Carnival; but the stupid
+moralists who have had gambling suppressed are inert financiers, and
+this indispensable evil will be re-established among us when it is
+proved that France leaves millions at the German tables.
+
+This splendid Carnival brought us to utter penury, as it does every
+student. We got rid of every object of luxury; we sold our second coats,
+our second boots, our second waistcoats--everything of which we had a
+duplicate, except our friend. We ate bread and cold sausages; we looked
+where we walked; we had set to work in earnest. We owed two months’
+rent, and were sure of having a bill from the porter for sixty or eighty
+items each, and amounting to forty or fifty francs. We made no noise,
+and did not laugh as we crossed the little hall at the bottom of the
+stairs; we commonly took it at a flying leap from the lowest step into
+the street. On the day when we first found ourselves bereft of tobacco
+for our pipes, it struck us that for some days we had been eating bread
+without any kind of butter.
+
+Great was our distress.
+
+“No tobacco!” said the Doctor.
+
+“No cloak!” said the Keeper of the Seals.
+
+“Ah, you rascals, you would dress as the postillion de Longjumeau, you
+would appear as Debardeurs, sup in the morning, and breakfast at night
+at Very’s--sometimes even at the _Rocher de Cancale_.--Dry bread for
+you, my boys! Why,” said I, in a big bass voice, “you deserve to sleep
+under the bed, you are not worthy to lie in it--”
+
+“Yes, yes; but, Keeper of the Seals, there is no more tobacco!” said
+Juste.
+
+“It is high time to write home, to our aunts, our mothers, and our
+sisters, to tell them we have no underlinen left, that the wear and
+tear of Paris would ruin garments of wire. Then we will solve an elegant
+chemical problem by transmuting linen into silver.”
+
+“But we must live till we get the answer.”
+
+“Well, I will go and bring out a loan among such of our friends as may
+still have some capital to invest.”
+
+“And how much will you find?”
+
+“Say ten francs!” replied I with pride.
+
+It was midnight. Marcas had heard everything. He knocked at our door.
+
+“Messieurs,” said he, “here is some tobacco; you can repay me on the
+first opportunity.”
+
+We were struck, not by the offer, which we accepted, but by the rich,
+deep, full voice in which it was made; a tone only comparable to the
+lowest string of Paganini’s violin. Marcas vanished without waiting for
+our thanks.
+
+Juste and I looked at each other without a word. To be rescued by a man
+evidently poorer than ourselves! Juste sat down to write to every member
+of his family, and I went off to effect a loan. I brought in twenty
+francs lent me by a fellow-provincial. In that evil but happy day
+gambling was still tolerated, and in its lodes, as hard as the rocky ore
+of Brazil, young men, by risking a small sum, had a chance of winning a
+few gold pieces. My friend, too, had some Turkish tobacco brought home
+from Constantinople by a sailor, and he gave me quite as much as we had
+taken from Z. Marcas. I conveyed the splendid cargo into port, and
+we went in triumph to repay our neighbor with a tawny wig of Turkish
+tobacco for his dark _Caporal_.
+
+“You are determined not to be my debtors,” said he. “You are giving me
+gold for copper.--You are boys--good boys----”
+
+The sentences, spoken in varying tones, were variously emphasized. The
+words were nothing, but the expression!--That made us friends of ten
+years’ standing at once.
+
+Marcas, on hearing us coming, had covered up his papers; we understood
+that it would be taking a liberty to allude to his means of subsistence,
+and felt ashamed of having watched him. His cupboard stood open; in it
+there were two shirts, a white necktie and a razor. The razor made
+me shudder. A looking-glass, worth five francs perhaps, hung near the
+window.
+
+The man’s few and simple movements had a sort of savage grandeur. The
+Doctor and I looked at each other, wondering what we could say in reply.
+Juste, seeing that I was speechless, asked Marcas jestingly:
+
+“You cultivate literature, monsieur?”
+
+“Far from it!” replied Marcas. “I should not be so wealthy.”
+
+“I fancied,” said I, “that poetry alone, in these days, was amply
+sufficient to provide a man with lodgings as bad as ours.”
+
+My remark made Marcas smile, and the smile gave a charm to his yellow
+face.
+
+“Ambition is not a less severe taskmaster to those who fail,” said he.
+“You, who are beginning life, walk in the beaten paths. Never dream of
+rising superior, you will be ruined!”
+
+“You advise us to stay just as we are?” said the Doctor, smiling.
+
+There is something so infectious and childlike in the pleasantries of
+youth, that Marcas smiled again in reply.
+
+“What incidents can have given you this detestable philosophy?” asked I.
+
+“I forgot once more that chance is the result of an immense equation of
+which we know not all the factors. When we start from zero to work up
+to the unit, the chances are incalculable. To ambitious men Paris is
+an immense roulette table, and every young man fancies he can hit on a
+successful progression of numbers.”
+
+He offered us the tobacco I had brought that we might smoke with him;
+the Doctor went to fetch our pipes; Marcas filled his, and then he came
+to sit in our room, bringing the tobacco with him, since there were but
+two chairs in his. Juste, as brisk as a squirrel, ran out, and returned
+with a boy carrying three bottles of Bordeaux, some Brie cheese, and a
+loaf.
+
+“Hah!” said I to myself, “fifteen francs,” and I was right to a sou.
+
+Juste gravely laid five francs on the chimney-shelf.
+
+There are immeasurable differences between the gregarious man and the
+man who lives closest to nature. Toussaint Louverture, after he was
+caught, died without speaking a word. Napoleon, transplanted to a rock,
+talked like a magpie--he wanted to account for himself. Z. Marcas erred
+in the same way, but for our benefit only. Silence in all its majesty is
+to be found only in the savage. There is never a criminal who, though he
+might let his secrets fall with his head into the basket of sawdust does
+not feel the purely social impulse to tell them to somebody.
+
+Nay, I am wrong. We have seen one Iroquois of the Faubourg Saint-Marceau
+who raised the Parisian to the level of the natural savage--a
+republican, a conspirator, a Frenchman, an old man, who outdid all we
+have heard of Negro determination, and all that Cooper tells us of
+the tenacity and coolness of the Redskins under defeat. Morey, the
+Guatimozin of the “Mountain,” preserved an attitude unparalleled in the
+annals of European justice.
+
+
+
+This is what Marcas told us during the small hours, sandwiching his
+discourse with slices of bread spread with cheese and washed down with
+wine. All the tobacco was burned out. Now and then the hackney coaches
+clattering across the Place de l’Odeon, or the omnibuses toiling past,
+sent up their dull rumbling, as if to remind us that Paris was still
+close to us.
+
+His family lived at Vitre; his father and mother had fifteen hundred
+francs a year in the funds. He had received an education gratis in a
+Seminary, but had refused to enter the priesthood. He felt in himself
+the fires of immense ambition, and had come to Paris on foot at the age
+of twenty, the possessor of two hundred francs. He had studied the
+law, working in an attorney’s office, where he had risen to be superior
+clerk. He had taken his doctor’s degree in law, had mastered the old and
+modern codes, and could hold his own with the most famous pleaders. He
+had studied the law of nations, and was familiar with European treaties
+and international practice. He had studied men and things in five
+capitals--London, Berlin, Vienna, Petersburg, and Constantinople.
+
+No man was better informed than he as to the rules of the Chamber. For
+five years he had been reporter of the debates for a daily paper. He
+spoke extempore and admirably, and could go on for a long time in that
+deep, appealing voice which had struck us to the soul. Indeed, he proved
+by the narrative of his life that he was a great orator, a concise
+orator, serious and yet full of piercing eloquence; he resembled Berryer
+in his fervor and in the impetus which commands the sympathy of the
+masses, and was like Thiers in refinement and skill; but he would
+have been less diffuse, less in difficulties for a conclusion. He had
+intended to rise rapidly to power without burdening himself first with
+the doctrines necessary to begin with, for a man in opposition, but an
+incubus later to the statesman.
+
+Marcas had learned everything that a real statesman should know; indeed,
+his amazement was considerable when he had occasion to discern the utter
+ignorance of men who have risen to the administration of public affairs
+in France. Though in him it was vocation that had led to study, nature
+had been generous and bestowed all that cannot be acquired--keen
+perceptions, self-command, a nimble wit, rapid judgment, decisiveness,
+and, what is the genius of these men, fertility in resource.
+
+By the time when Marcas thought himself duly equipped, France was torn
+by intestine divisions arising from the triumph of the House of Orleans
+over the elder branch of the Bourbons.
+
+The field of political warfare is evidently changed. Civil war
+henceforth cannot last for long, and will not be fought out in the
+provinces. In France such struggles will be of brief duration and at
+the seat of government; and the battle will be the close of the moral
+contest which will have been brought to an issue by superior minds. This
+state of things will continue so long as France has her present singular
+form of government, which has no analogy with that of any other country;
+for there is no more resemblance between the English and the French
+constitutions than between the two lands.
+
+Thus Marcas’ place was in the political press. Being poor and unable to
+secure his election, he hoped to make a sudden appearance. He resolved
+on making the greatest possible sacrifice for a man of superior
+intellect, to work as a subordinate to some rich and ambitious deputy.
+Like a second Bonaparte, he sought his Barras; the new Colbert hoped to
+find a Mazarin. He did immense services, and he did them then and there;
+he assumed no importance, he made no boast, he did not complain of
+ingratitude. He did them in the hope that his patron would put him in a
+position to be elected deputy; Marcas wished for nothing but a loan
+that might enable him to purchase a house in Paris, the qualification
+required by law. Richard III. asked for nothing but his horse.
+
+In three years Marcas had made his man--one of the fifty supposed great
+statesmen who are the battledores with which two cunning players toss
+the ministerial portfolios exactly as the man behind the puppet-show
+hits Punch against the constable in his street theatre, and counts on
+always getting paid. This man existed only by Marcas, but he had just
+brains enough to appreciate the value of his “ghost” and to know that
+Marcas, if he ever came to the front, would remain there, would be
+indispensable, while he himself would be translated to the polar zone of
+Luxembourg. So he determined to put insurmountable obstacles in the way
+of his Mentor’s advancement, and hid his purpose under the semblance
+of the utmost sincerity. Like all mean men, he could dissimulate to
+perfection, and he soon made progress in the ways of ingratitude, for he
+felt that he must kill Marcas, not to be killed by him. These two men,
+apparently so united, hated each other as soon as one had deceived the
+other.
+
+The politician was made one of a ministry; Marcas remained in the
+opposition to hinder his man from being attacked; nay, by skilful
+tactics he won him the applause of the opposition. To excuse himself for
+not rewarding his subaltern, the chief pointed out the impossibility of
+finding a place suddenly for a man on the other side, without a great
+deal of manoeuvring. Marcas had hoped confidently for a place to enable
+him to marry, and thus acquire the qualification he so ardently desired.
+He was two-and-thirty, and the Chamber ere long must be dissolved.
+Having detected his man in this flagrant act of bad faith, he overthrew
+him, or at any rate contributed largely to his overthrow, and covered
+him with mud.
+
+A fallen minister, if he is to rise again to power, must show that he is
+to be feared; this man, intoxicated by Royal glibness, had fancied that
+his position would be permanent; he acknowledged his delinquencies;
+besides confessing them, he did Marcas a small money service, for Marcas
+had got into debt. He subsidized the newspaper on which Marcas worked,
+and made him the manager of it.
+
+Though he despised the man, Marcas, who, practically, was being
+subsidized too, consented to take the part of the fallen minister.
+Without unmasking at once all the batteries of his superior intellect,
+Marcas came a little further than before; he showed half his shrewdness.
+The Ministry lasted only a hundred and eighty days; it was swallowed
+up. Marcas had put himself into communication with certain deputies, had
+moulded them like dough, leaving each impressed with a high opinion of
+his talent; his puppet again became a member of the Ministry, and then
+the paper was ministerial. The Ministry united the paper with another,
+solely to squeeze out Marcas, who in this fusion had to make way for a
+rich and insolent rival, whose name was well known, and who already had
+his foot in the stirrup.
+
+Marcas relapsed into utter destitution; his haughty patron well knew the
+depths into which he had cast him.
+
+Where was he to go? The ministerial papers, privily warned, would have
+nothing to say to him. The opposition papers did not care to admit him
+to their offices. Marcas could side neither with the Republicans nor
+with the Legitimists, two parties whose triumph would mean the overthrow
+of everything that now is.
+
+“Ambitious men like a fast hold on things,” said he with a smile.
+
+He lived by writing a few articles on commercial affairs, and
+contributed to one of those encyclopedias brought out by speculation and
+not by learning. Finally a paper was founded, which was destined to
+live but two years, but which secured his services. From that moment he
+renewed his connection with the minister’s enemies; he joined the party
+who were working for the fall of the Government; and as soon as his
+pickaxe had free play, it fell.
+
+This paper had now for six months ceased to exist; he had failed to find
+employment of any kind; he was spoken of as a dangerous man, calumny
+attacked him; he had unmasked a huge financial and mercantile job by a
+few articles and a pamphlet. He was known to be a mouthpiece of a banker
+who was said to have paid him largely, and from whom he was supposed to
+expect some patronage in return for his championship. Marcas, disgusted
+by men and things, worn out by five years of fighting, regarded as a
+free lance rather than as a great leader, crushed by the necessity of
+earning his daily bread, which hindered him from gaining ground, in
+despair at the influence exerted by money over mind, and given over to
+dire poverty, buried himself in a garret, to make thirty sous a day, the
+sum strictly answering to his needs. Meditation had leveled a desert all
+round him. He read the papers to be informed of what was going on. Pozzo
+di Borgo had once lived like this for some time.
+
+Marcas, no doubt, was planning a serious attack, accustoming himself
+to dissimulation, and punishing himself for his blunders by Pythagorean
+muteness. But he did not tell us the reasons for his conduct.
+
+It is impossible to give you an idea of the scenes of the highest comedy
+that lay behind this algebraic statement of his career; his useless
+patience dogging the footsteps of fortune, which presently took wings,
+his long tramps over the thorny brakes of Paris, his breathless chases
+as a petitioner, his attempts to win over fools; the schemes laid only
+to fail through the influence of some frivolous woman; the meetings with
+men of business who expected their capital to bring them places and a
+peerage, as well as large interest. Then the hopes rising in a towering
+wave only to break in foam on the shoal; the wonders wrought in
+reconciling adverse interests which, after working together for a week,
+fell asunder; the annoyance, a thousand times repeated, of seeing a
+dunce decorated with the Legion of Honor, and preferred, though as
+ignorant as a shop-boy, to a man of talent. Then, what Marcas called the
+stratagems of stupidity--you strike a man, and he seems convinced, he
+nods his head--everything is settled; next day, this india-rubber ball,
+flattened for a moment, has recovered itself in the course of the night;
+it is as full of wind as ever; you must begin all over again; and you go
+on till you understand that you are not dealing with a man, but with a
+lump of gum that loses shape in the sunshine.
+
+These thousand annoyances, this vast waste of human energy on barren
+spots, the difficulty of achieving any good, the incredible facility of
+doing mischief; two strong games played out, twice won, and then twice
+lost; the hatred of a statesman--a blockhead with a painted face and a
+wig, but in whom the world believed--all these things, great and small,
+had not crushed, but for the moment had dashed Marcas. In the days when
+money had come into his hands, his fingers had not clutched it; he
+had allowed himself the exquisite pleasure of sending it all to his
+family--to his sisters, his brothers, his old father. Like Napoleon in
+his fall, he asked for no more than thirty sous a day, and any man of
+energy can earn thirty sous for a day’s work in Paris.
+
+When Marcas had finished the story of his life, intermingled with
+reflections, maxims, and observations, revealing him as a great
+politician, a few questions and answers on both sides as to the progress
+of affairs in France and in Europe were enough to prove to us that he
+was a real statesman; for a man may be quickly and easily judged when
+he can be brought on to the ground of immediate difficulties: there is a
+certain Shibboleth for men of superior talents, and we were of the tribe
+of modern Levites without belonging as yet to the Temple. As I have
+said, our frivolity covered certain purposes which Juste has carried
+out, and which I am about to execute.
+
+When we had done talking, we all three went out, cold as it was, to walk
+in the Luxembourg gardens till the dinner hour. In the course of that
+walk our conversation, grave throughout, turned on the painful aspects
+of the political situation. Each of us contributed his remarks, his
+comment, or his jest, a pleasantry or a proverb. This was no longer
+exclusively a discussion of life on the colossal scale just described
+by Marcas, the soldier of political warfare. Nor was it the distressful
+monologue of the wrecked navigator, stranded in a garret in the Hotel
+Corneille; it was a dialogue in which two well-informed young men,
+having gauged the times they lived in, were endeavoring, under the
+guidance of a man of talent, to gain some light on their own future
+prospects.
+
+“Why,” asked Juste, “did you not wait patiently for an opportunity,
+and imitate the only man who has been able to keep the lead since the
+Revolution of July by holding his head above water?”
+
+“Have I not said that we never know where the roots of chance lie?
+Carrell was in identically the same position as the orator you speak of.
+That gloomy young man, of a bitter spirit, had a whole government in
+his head; the man of whom you speak had no idea beyond mounting on the
+crupper of every event. Of the two, Carrel was the better man. Well,
+one becomes a minister, Carrel remained a journalist; the incomplete but
+craftier man is living; Carrel is dead.
+
+“I may point out that your man has for fifteen years been making his
+way, and is but making it still. He may yet be caught and crushed
+between two cars full of intrigues on the highroad to power. He has no
+house; he has not the favor of the palace like Metternich; nor, like
+Villele, the protection of a compact majority.
+
+“I do not believe that the present state of things will last ten years
+longer. Hence, supposing I should have such poor good luck, I am already
+too late to avoid being swept away by the commotion I foresee. I should
+need to be established in a superior position.”
+
+“What commotion?” asked Juste.
+
+“AUGUST, 1830,” said Marcas in solemn tones, holding out his hand
+towards Paris; “AUGUST, the offspring of Youth which bound the sheaves,
+and of Intellect which had ripened the harvest, forgot to provide for
+Youth and Intellect.
+
+“Youth will explode like the boiler of a steam-engine. Youth has
+no outlet in France; it is gathering an avalanche of underrated
+capabilities, of legitimate and restless ambitions; young men are not
+marrying now; families cannot tell what to do with their children. What
+will the thunderclap be that will shake down these masses? I know
+not, but they will crash down into the midst of things, and overthrow
+everything. These are laws of hydrostatics which act on the human race;
+the Roman Empire had failed to understand them, and the Barbaric hordes
+came down.
+
+“The Barbaric hordes now are the intelligent class. The laws of
+overpressure are at this moment acting slowly and silently in our midst.
+The Government is the great criminal; it does not appreciate the two
+powers to which it owes everything; it has allowed its hands to be tied
+by the absurdities of the Contract; it is bound, ready to be the victim.
+
+“Louis XIV., Napoleon, England, all were or are eager for intelligent
+youth. In France the young are condemned by the new legislation, by
+the blundering principles of elective rights, by the unsoundness of the
+ministerial constitution.
+
+“Look at the elective Chamber; you will find no deputies of thirty; the
+youth of Richelieu and of Mazarin, of Turenne and of Colbert, of Pitt
+and of Saint-Just, of Napoleon and of Prince Metternich, would find no
+admission there; Burke, Sheridan, or Fox could not win seats. Even if
+political majority had been fixed at one-and-twenty, and eligibility had
+been relieved of every disabling qualification, the Departments would
+have returned the very same members, men devoid of political talent,
+unable to speak without murdering French grammar, and among whom, in ten
+years, scarcely one statesman has been found.
+
+“The causes of an impending event may be seen, but the event itself
+cannot be foretold. At this moment the youth of France is being driven
+into Republicanism, because it believes that the Republic would bring it
+emancipation. It will always remember the young representatives of the
+people and the young army leaders! The imprudence of the Government is
+only comparable to its avarice.”
+
+That day left its echoes in our lives. Marcas confirmed us in our
+resolution to leave France, where young men of talent and energy
+are crushed under the weight of successful commonplace, envious, and
+insatiable middle age.
+
+We dined together in the Rue de la Harpe. We thenceforth felt for Marcas
+the most respectful affection; he gave us the most practical aid in the
+sphere of the mind. That man knew everything; he had studied everything.
+For us he cast his eye over the whole civilized world, seeking the
+country where openings would be at once the most abundant and the most
+favorable to the success of our plans. He indicated what should be the
+goal of our studies; he bid us make haste, explaining to us that time
+was precious, that emigration would presently begin, and that its
+effect would be to deprive France of the cream of its powers and of its
+youthful talent; that their intelligence, necessarily sharpened, would
+select the best places, and that the great thing was to be first in the
+field.
+
+Thenceforward, we often sat late at work under the lamp. Our generous
+instructor wrote some notes for our guidance--two pages for Juste and
+three for me--full of invaluable advice--the sort of information which
+experience alone can supply, such landmarks as only genius can place. In
+those papers, smelling of tobacco, and covered with writing so vile
+as to be almost hieroglyphic, there are suggestions for a fortune, and
+forecasts of unerring acumen. There are hints as to certain parts of
+America and Asia which have been fully justified, both before and since
+Juste and I could set out.
+
+Marcas, like us, was in the most abject poverty. He earned, indeed, his
+daily bread, but he had neither linen, clothes, nor shoes. He did not
+make himself out any better than he was; his dreams had been of luxury
+as well as of power. He did not admit that this was the real Marcas; he
+abandoned this person, indeed, to the caprices of life. What he lived by
+was the breath of ambition; he dreamed of revenge while blaming himself
+for yielding to so shallow a feeling. The true statesman ought, above
+all things, to be superior to vulgar passions; like the man of science.
+It was in these days of dire necessity that Marcas seemed to us so
+great--nay, so terrible; there was something awful in the gaze which saw
+another world than that which strikes the eye of ordinary men. To us he
+was a subject of contemplation and astonishment; for the young--which of
+us has not known it?--the young have a keen craving to admire; they love
+to attach themselves, and are naturally inclined to submit to the men
+they feel to be superior, as they are to devote themselves to a great
+cause.
+
+Our surprise was chiefly roused by his indifference in matters of
+sentiment; women had no place in his life. When we spoke of this matter,
+a perennial theme of conversation among Frenchmen, he simply remarked:
+
+“Gowns cost too much.”
+
+He saw the look that passed between Juste and me, and went on:
+
+“Yes, far too much. The woman you buy--and she is the least
+expensive--takes a great deal of money. The woman who gives herself
+takes all your time! Woman extinguishes every energy, every ambition.
+Napoleon reduced her to what she should be. From that point of view, he
+really was great. He did not indulge such ruinous fancies of Louis XIV.
+and Louis XV.; at the same time he could love in secret.”
+
+We discovered that, like Pitt, who made England his wife, Marcas bore
+France in his heart; he idolized his country; he had not a thought that
+was not for his native land. His fury at feeling that he had in his
+hands the remedy for the evils which so deeply saddened him, and could
+not apply it, ate into his soul, and this rage was increased by the
+inferiority of France at that time, as compared with Russia and England.
+France a third-rate power! This cry came up again and again in his
+conversation. The intestinal disorders of his country had entered into
+his soul. All the contests between the Court and the Chamber, showing,
+as they did, incessant change and constant vacillation, which must
+injure the prosperity of the country, he scoffed at as backstairs
+squabbles.
+
+“This is peace at the cost of the future,” said he.
+
+
+
+One evening Juste and I were at work, sitting in perfect silence. Marcas
+had just risen to toil at his copying, for he had refused our assistance
+in spite of our most earnest entreaties. We had offered to take it in
+turns to copy a batch of manuscript, so that he should do but a third
+of his distasteful task; he had been quite angry, and we had ceased to
+insist.
+
+We heard the sound of gentlemanly boots in the passage, and raised our
+heads, looking at each other. There was a tap at Marcas’ door--he never
+took the key out of the lock--and we heard the hero answer:
+
+“Come in.” Then--“What, you here, monsieur?”
+
+“I, myself,” replied the retired minister.
+
+It was the Diocletian of this unknown martyr.
+
+For some time he and our neighbor conversed in an undertone. Suddenly
+Marcas, whose voice had been heard but rarely, as is natural in a
+dialogue in which the applicant begins by setting forth the situation,
+broke out loudly in reply to some offer we had not overheard.
+
+“You would laugh at me for a fool,” cried he, “if I took you at your
+word. Jesuits are a thing of the past, but Jesuitism is eternal. Your
+Machiavelism and your generosity are equally hollow and untrustworthy.
+You can make your own calculations, but who can calculate on you? Your
+Court is made up of owls who fear the light, of old men who quake in the
+presence of the young, or who simply disregard them. The Government is
+formed on the same pattern as the Court. You have hunted up the remains
+of the Empire, as the Restoration enlisted the Voltigeurs of Louis XIV.
+
+“Hitherto the evasions of cowardice have been taken for the manoeuvring
+of ability; but dangers will come, and the younger generation will rise
+as they did in 1790. They did grand things then.--Just now you change
+ministries as a sick man turns in his bed; these oscillations betray the
+weakness of the Government. You work on an underhand system of policy
+which will be turned against you, for France will be tired of your
+shuffling. France will not tell you that she is tired of you; a man
+never knows whence his ruin comes; it is the historian’s task to find
+out; but you will undoubtedly perish as the reward of not having the
+youth of France to lend you its strength and energy; for having hated
+really capable men; for not having lovingly chosen them from this noble
+generation; for having in all cases preferred mediocrity.
+
+“You have come to ask my support, but you are an atom in that decrepit
+heap which is made hideous by self-interest, which trembles and squirms,
+and, because it is so mean, tries to make France mean too. My strong
+nature, my ideas, would work like poison in you; twice you have tricked
+me, twice have I overthrown you. If we unite a third time, it must be
+a very serious matter. I should kill myself if I allowed myself to be
+duped; for I should be to blame, not you.”
+
+Then we heard the humblest entreaties, the most fervent adjuration,
+not to deprive the country of such superior talents. The man spoke of
+patriotism, and Marcas uttered a significant “_Ouh! ouh!_” He laughed at
+his would-be patron. Then the statesman was more explicit; he bowed to
+the superiority of his erewhile counselor; he pledged himself to enable
+Marcas to remain in office, to be elected deputy; then he offered him a
+high appointment, promising him that he, the speaker, would thenceforth
+be the subordinate of a man whose subaltern he was only worthy to be.
+He was in the newly-formed ministry, and he would not return to power
+unless Marcas had a post in proportion to his merit; he had already made
+it a condition, Marcas had been regarded as indispensable.
+
+Marcas refused.
+
+“I have never before been in a position to keep my promises; here is an
+opportunity of proving myself faithful to my word, and you fail me.”
+
+To this Marcas made no reply. The boots were again audible in the
+passage on the way to the stairs.
+
+“Marcas! Marcas!” we both cried, rushing into his room. “Why refuse? He
+really meant it. His offers are very handsome; at any rate, go to see
+the ministers.”
+
+In a twinkling, we had given Marcas a hundred reasons. The minister’s
+voice was sincere; without seeing him, we had felt sure that he was
+honest.
+
+“I have no clothes,” replied Marcas.
+
+“Rely on us,” said Juste, with a glance at me.
+
+Marcas had the courage to trust us; a light flashed in his eye, he
+pushed his fingers through his hair, lifting it from his forehead with
+a gesture that showed some confidence in his luck and when he had thus
+unveiled his face, so to speak, we saw in him a man absolutely unknown
+to us--Marcas sublime, Marcas in his power! His mind was in its
+element--the bird restored to the free air, the fish to the water, the
+horse galloping across the plain.
+
+It was transient. His brow clouded again, he had, it would seem, a
+vision of his fate. Halting doubt had followed close on the heels of
+white-winged hope.
+
+We left him to himself.
+
+“Now, then,” said I to the Doctor, “we have given our word; how are we
+to keep it?”
+
+“We will sleep upon it,” said Juste, “and to-morrow morning we will talk
+it over.”
+
+Next morning we went for a walk in the Luxembourg.
+
+We had had time to think over the incident of the past night, and were
+both equally surprised at the lack of address shown by Marcas in the
+minor difficulties of life--he, a man who never saw any difficulties in
+the solution of the hardest problems of abstract or practical politics.
+But these elevated characters can all be tripped up on a grain of sand,
+and will, like the grandest enterprise, miss fire for want of a thousand
+francs. It is the old story of Napoleon, who, for lack of a pair of
+boots, did not set out for India.
+
+“Well, what have you hit upon?” asked Juste.
+
+“I have thought of a way to get him a complete outfit.”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“From Humann.”
+
+“How?”
+
+“Humann, my boy, never goes to his customers--his customers go to him;
+so that he does not know whether I am rich or poor. He only knows that I
+dress well and look decent in the clothes he makes for me. I shall tell
+him that an uncle of mine has dropped in from the country, and that his
+indifference in matters of dress is quite a discredit to me in the upper
+circles where I am trying to find a wife.--It will not be Humann if he
+sends in his bill before three months.”
+
+The Doctor thought this a capital idea for a vaudeville, but poor enough
+in real life, and doubted my success. But I give you my word of honor,
+Humann dressed Marcas, and, being an artist, turned him out as a
+political personage ought to be dressed.
+
+Juste lent Marcas two hundred francs in gold, the product of two watches
+bought on credit, and pawned at the Mont-de-Piete. For my part, I had
+said nothing of the six shirts and all necessary linen, which cost me
+no more than the pleasure of asking for them from a forewoman in a shop
+whom I had treated to Musard’s during the carnival.
+
+Marcas accepted everything, thanking us no more than he ought. He only
+inquired as to the means by which we had got possession of such riches,
+and we made him laugh for the last time. We looked on our Marcas as
+shipowners, when they have exhausted their credit and every resource
+at their command it fit out a vessel, must look on it as it puts out to
+sea.
+
+Here Charles was silent; he seemed crushed by his memories.
+
+“Well,” cried the audience, “and what happened?”
+
+“I will tell you in a few words--for this is not romance--it is
+history.”
+
+We saw no more of Marcas. The administration lasted for three months; it
+fell at the end of the session. Then Marcas came back to us, worked to
+death. He had sounded the crater of power; he came away from it with the
+beginnings of brain fever. The disease made rapid progress; we nursed
+him. Juste at once called in the chief physician of the hospital where
+he was working as house-surgeon. I was then living alone in our room,
+and I was the most attentive attendant; but care and science alike were
+in vain. By the month of January, 1838, Marcas himself felt that he had
+but a few days to live.
+
+The man whose soul and brain he had been for six months never even sent
+to inquire after him. Marcas expressed the greatest contempt for the
+Government; he seemed to doubt what the fate of France might be, and
+it was this doubt that had made him ill. He had, he thought, detected
+treason in the heart of power, not tangible, seizable treason, the
+result of facts, but the treason of a system, the subordination of
+national interests to selfish ends. His belief in the degradation of the
+country was enough to aggravate his complaint.
+
+I myself was witness to the proposals made to him by one of the leaders
+of the antagonistic party which he had fought against. His hatred of
+the men he had tried to serve was so virulent, that he would gladly have
+joined the coalition that was about to be formed among certain ambitious
+spirits who, at least, had one idea in common--that of shaking off the
+yoke of the Court. But Marcas could only reply to the envoy in the words
+of the Hotel de Ville:
+
+“It is too late!”
+
+Marcas did not leave money enough to pay for his funeral. Juste and I
+had great difficulty in saving him from the ignominy of a pauper’s bier,
+and we alone followed the coffin of Z. Marcas, which was dropped into
+the common grave of the cemetery of Mont-Parnasse.
+
+
+
+We looked sadly at each other as we listened to this tale, the last we
+heard from the lips of Charles Rabourdin the day before he embarked at
+le Havre on a brig that was to convey him to the islands of Malay. We
+all knew more than one Marcas, more than one victim of his devotion to a
+party, repaid by betrayal or neglect.
+
+
+LES JARDIES, May 1840.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personage appears in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+     Marcas, Zephirin
+       A Prince of Bohemia
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Z. Marcas, by Honore de Balzac
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK Z. MARCAS ***
+
+***** This file should be named 1841-0.txt or 1841-0.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/4/1841/
+
+Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
+Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation”
+ or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project
+Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+“Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, “Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+“Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
+of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’ WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm’s
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.
+
+The Foundation’s principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation’s web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/1841-0.zip b/1841-0.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..78249b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/1841-0.zip
diff --git a/1841-h.zip b/1841-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0aa5e49
--- /dev/null
+++ b/1841-h.zip
diff --git a/1841-h/1841-h.htm b/1841-h/1841-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c5bb12f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/1841-h/1841-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,1714 @@
+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Z. Marcas, by Honore de Balzac
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Z. Marcas, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Z. Marcas
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Clara Bell and Others
+
+Release Date: March 3, 2010 [EBook #1841]
+Last Updated: November 22, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK Z. MARCAS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      Z. MARCAS
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Honore De Balzac
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      Translated by Clara Bell and Others
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      DEDICATION<br /><br /> To His Highness Count William of Wurtemberg, as a
+      token of the<br /> Author&rsquo;s respectful gratitude.<br /><br /> DE BALZAC.<br />
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <b>Z. MARCAS</b> </a><br /><br /> <a
+      href="#link2H_4_0002"> ADDENDUM </a>
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      Z. MARCAS
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I never saw anybody, not even among the most remarkable men of the day,
+      whose appearance was so striking as this man&rsquo;s; the study of his
+      countenance at first gave me a feeling of great melancholy, and at last
+      produced an almost painful impression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a certain harmony between the man and his name. The Z. preceding
+      Marcas, which was seen on the addresses of his letters, and which he never
+      omitted from his signature, as the last letter of the alphabet, suggested
+      some mysterious fatality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARCAS! say this two-syllabled name again and again; do you not feel as if
+      it had some sinister meaning? Does it not seem to you that its owner must
+      be doomed to martyrdom? Though foreign, savage, the name has a right to be
+      handed down to posterity; it is well constructed, easily pronounced, and
+      has the brevity that beseems a famous name. Is it not pleasant as well as
+      odd? But does it not sound unfinished?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I will not take it upon myself to assert that names have no influence on
+      the destiny of men. There is a certain secret and inexplicable concord or
+      a visible discord between the events of a man&rsquo;s life and his name which is
+      truly surprising; often some remote but very real correlation is revealed.
+      Our globe is round; everything is linked to everything else. Some day
+      perhaps we shall revert to the occult sciences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Do you not discern in that letter Z an adverse influence? Does it not
+      prefigure the wayward and fantastic progress of a storm-tossed life? What
+      wind blew on that letter, which, whatever language we find it in, begins
+      scarcely fifty words? Marcas&rsquo; name was Zephirin; Saint Zephirin is highly
+      venerated in Brittany, and Marcas was a Breton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Study the name once more: Z Marcas! The man&rsquo;s whole life lies in this
+      fantastic juxtaposition of seven letters; seven! the most significant of
+      all the cabalistic numbers. And he died at five-and-thirty, so his life
+      extended over seven lustres.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marcas! Does it not hint of some precious object that is broken with a
+      fall, with or without a crash?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had finished studying the law in Paris in 1836. I lived at that time in
+      the Rue Corneille in a house where none but students came to lodge, one of
+      those large houses where there is a winding staircase quite at the back
+      lighted below from the street, higher up by borrowed lights, and at the
+      top by a skylight. There were forty furnished rooms&mdash;furnished as
+      students&rsquo; rooms are! What does youth demand more than was here supplied? A
+      bed, a few chairs, a chest of drawers, a looking-glass, and a table. As
+      soon as the sky is blue the student opens his window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in this street there are no fair neighbors to flirt with. In front is
+      the Odeon, long since closed, presenting a wall that is beginning to go
+      black, its tiny gallery windows and its vast expanse of slate roof. I was
+      not rich enough to have a good room; I was not even rich enough to have a
+      room to myself. Juste and I shared a double-bedded room on the fifth
+      floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On our side of the landing there were but two rooms&mdash;ours and a
+      smaller one, occupied by Z. Marcas, our neighbor. For six months Juste and
+      I remained in perfect ignorance of the fact. The old woman who managed the
+      house had indeed told us that the room was inhabited, but she had added
+      that we should not be disturbed, that the occupant was exceedingly quiet.
+      In fact, for those six months, we never met our fellow-lodger, and we
+      never heard a sound in his room, in spite of the thinness of the partition
+      that divided us&mdash;one of those walls of lath and plaster which are
+      common in Paris houses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our room, a little over seven feet high, was hung with a vile cheap paper
+      sprigged with blue. The floor was painted, and knew nothing of the polish
+      given by the <i>frotteur&rsquo;s</i> brush. By our beds there was only a scrap
+      of thin carpet. The chimney opened immediately to the roof, and smoked so
+      abominably that we were obliged to provide a stove at our own expense. Our
+      beds were mere painted wooden cribs like those in schools; on the chimney
+      shelf there were but two brass candlesticks, with or without tallow
+      candles in them, and our two pipes with some tobacco in a pouch or strewn
+      abroad, also the little piles of cigar-ash left there by our visitors or
+      ourselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A pair of calico curtains hung from the brass window rods, and on each
+      side of the window was a small bookcase in cherry-wood, such as every one
+      knows who has stared into the shop windows of the Quartier Latin, and in
+      which we kept the few books necessary for our studies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ink in the inkstand was always in the state of lava congealed in the
+      crater of a volcano. May not any inkstand nowadays become a Vesuvius? The
+      pens, all twisted, served to clean the stems of our pipes; and, in
+      opposition to all the laws of credit, paper was even scarcer than coin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How can young men be expected to stay at home in such furnished lodgings?
+      The students studied in the cafes, the theatre, the Luxembourg gardens, in
+      <i>grisettes&rsquo;&rsquo;</i> rooms, even in the law schools&mdash;anywhere rather
+      than in their horrible rooms&mdash;horrible for purposes of study,
+      delightful as soon as they were used for gossiping and smoking in. Put a
+      cloth on the table, and the impromptu dinner sent in from the best
+      eating-house in the neighborhood&mdash;places for four&mdash;two of them
+      in petticoats&mdash;show a lithograph of this &ldquo;Interior&rdquo; to the veriest
+      bigot, and she will be bound to smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We thought only of amusing ourselves. The reason for our dissipation lay
+      in the most serious facts of the politics of the time. Juste and I could
+      not see any room for us in the two professions our parents wished us to
+      take up. There are a hundred doctors, a hundred lawyers, for one that is
+      wanted. The crowd is choking these two paths which are supposed to lead to
+      fortune, but which are merely two arenas; men kill each other there,
+      fighting, not indeed with swords or fire-arms, but with intrigue and
+      calumny, with tremendous toil, campaigns in the sphere of the intellect as
+      murderous as those in Italy were to the soldiers of the Republic. In these
+      days, when everything is an intellectual competition, a man must be able
+      to sit forty-eight hours on end in his chair before a table, as a General
+      could remain for two days on horseback and in his saddle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The throng of aspirants has necessitated a division of the Faculty of
+      Medicine into categories. There is the physician who writes and the
+      physician who practises, the political physician, and the physician
+      militant&mdash;four different ways of being a physician, four classes
+      already filled up. As to the fifth class, that of physicians who sell
+      remedies, there is such a competition that they fight each other with
+      disgusting advertisements on the walls of Paris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In all the law courts there are almost as many lawyers as there are cases.
+      The pleader is thrown back on journalism, on politics, on literature. In
+      fact, the State, besieged for the smallest appointments under the law, has
+      ended by requiring that the applicants should have some little fortune.
+      The pear-shaped head of the grocer&rsquo;s son is selected in preference to the
+      square skull of a man of talent who has not a sou. Work as he will, with
+      all his energy, a young man, starting from zero, may at the end of ten
+      years find himself below the point he set out from. In these days, talent
+      must have the good luck which secures success to the most incapable; nay,
+      more, if it scorns the base compromises which insure advancement to
+      crawling mediocrity, it will never get on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we thoroughly knew our time, we also knew ourselves, and we preferred
+      the indolence of dreamers to aimless stir, easy-going pleasure to the
+      useless toil which would have exhausted our courage and worn out the edge
+      of our intelligence. We had analyzed social life while smoking, laughing,
+      and loafing. But, though elaborated by such means as these, our
+      reflections were none the less judicious and profound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While we were fully conscious of the slavery to which youth is condemned,
+      we were amazed at the brutal indifference of the authorities to everything
+      connected with intellect, thought, and poetry. How often have Juste and I
+      exchanged glances when reading the papers as we studied political events,
+      or the debates in the Chamber, and discussed the proceedings of a Court
+      whose wilful ignorance could find no parallel but in the platitude of the
+      courtiers, the mediocrity of the men forming the hedge round the
+      newly-restored throne, all alike devoid of talent or breadth of view, of
+      distinction or learning, of influence or dignity!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Could there be a higher tribute to the Court of Charles X. than the
+      present Court, if Court it may be called? What a hatred of the country may
+      be seen in the naturalization of vulgar foreigners, devoid of talent, who
+      are enthroned in the Chamber of Peers! What a perversion of justice! What
+      an insult to the distinguished youth, the ambitions native to the soil of
+      France! We looked upon these things as upon a spectacle, and groaned over
+      them, without taking upon ourselves to act.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Juste, whom no one ever sought, and who never sought any one, was, at
+      five-and-twenty, a great politician, a man with a wonderful aptitude for
+      apprehending the correlation between remote history and the facts of the
+      present and of the future. In 1831, he told me exactly what would and did
+      happen&mdash;the murders, the conspiracies, the ascendency of the Jews,
+      the difficulty of doing anything in France, the scarcity of talent in the
+      higher circles, and the abundance of intellect in the lowest ranks, where
+      the finest courage is smothered under cigar ashes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What was to become of him? His parents wished him to be a doctor. But if
+      he were a doctor, must he not wait twenty years for a practice? You know
+      what he did? No? Well, he is a doctor; but he left France, he is in Asia.
+      At this moment he is perhaps sinking under fatigue in a desert, or dying
+      of the lashes of a barbarous horde&mdash;or perhaps he is some Indian
+      prince&rsquo;s prime minister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Action is my vocation. Leaving a civil college at the age of twenty, the
+      only way for me to enter the army was by enlisting as a common soldier;
+      so, weary of the dismal outlook that lay before a lawyer, I acquired the
+      knowledge needed for a sailor. I imitate Juste, and keep out of France,
+      where men waste, in the struggle to make way, the energy needed for the
+      noblest works. Follow my example, friends; I am going where a man steers
+      his destiny as he pleases.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These great resolutions were formed in the little room in the
+      lodging-house in the Rue Corneille, in spite of our haunting the Bal
+      Musard, flirting with girls of the town, and leading a careless and
+      apparently reckless life. Our plans and arguments long floated in the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marcas, our neighbor, was in some degree the guide who led us to the
+      margin of the precipice or the torrent, who made us sound it, and showed
+      us beforehand what our fate would be if we let ourselves fall into it. It
+      was he who put us on our guard against the time-bargains a man makes with
+      poverty under the sanction of hope, by accepting precarious situations
+      whence he fights the battle, carried along by the devious tide of Paris&mdash;that
+      great harlot who takes you up or leaves you stranded, smiles or turns her
+      back on you with equal readiness, wears out the strongest will in
+      vexatious waiting, and makes misfortune wait on chance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At our first meeting, Marcas, as it were, dazzled us. On our return from
+      the schools, a little before the dinner-hour, we were accustomed to go up
+      to our room and remain there a while, either waiting for the other, to
+      learn whether there were any change in our plans for the evening. One day,
+      at four o&rsquo;clock, Juste met Marcas on the stairs, and I saw him in the
+      street. It was in the month of November, and Marcas had no cloak; he wore
+      shoes with heavy soles, corduroy trousers, and a blue double-breasted coat
+      buttoned to the throat, which gave a military air to his broad chest, all
+      the more so because he wore a black stock. The costume was not in itself
+      extraordinary, but it agreed well with the man&rsquo;s mien and countenance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My first impression on seeing him was neither surprise, nor distress, nor
+      interest, nor pity, but curiosity mingled with all these feelings. He
+      walked slowly, with a step that betrayed deep melancholy, his head forward
+      with a stoop, but not bent like that of a conscience-stricken man. That
+      head, large and powerful, which might contain the treasures necessary for
+      a man of the highest ambition, looked as if it were loaded with thought;
+      it was weighted with grief of mind, but there was no touch of remorse in
+      his expression. As to his face, it may be summed up in a word. A common
+      superstition has it that every human countenance resembles some animal.
+      The animal for Marcas was the lion. His hair was like a mane, his nose was
+      sort and flat; broad and dented at the tip like a lion&rsquo;s; his brow, like a
+      lion&rsquo;s, was strongly marked with a deep median furrow, dividing two
+      powerful bosses. His high, hairy cheek-bones, all the more prominent
+      because his cheeks were so thin, his enormous mouth and hollow jaws, were
+      accentuated by lines of tawny shadows. This almost terrible countenance
+      seemed illuminated by two lamps&mdash;two eyes, black indeed, but
+      infinitely sweet, calm and deep, full of thought. If I may say so, those
+      eyes had a humiliated expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marcas was afraid of looking directly at others, not for himself, but for
+      those on whom his fascinating gaze might rest; he had a power, and he
+      shunned using it; he would spare those he met, and he feared notice. This
+      was not from modesty, but from resignation founded on reason, which had
+      demonstrated the immediate inutility of his gifts, the impossibility of
+      entering and living in the sphere for which he was fitted. Those eyes
+      could at times flash lightnings. From those lips a voice of thunder must
+      surely proceed; it was a mouth like Mirabeau&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have seen such a grand fellow in the street,&rdquo; said I to Juste on coming
+      in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It must be our neighbor,&rdquo; replied Juste, who described, in fact, the man
+      I had just met. &ldquo;A man who lives like a wood-louse would be sure to look
+      like that,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What dejection and what dignity!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One is the consequence of the other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What ruined hopes! What schemes and failures!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seven leagues of ruins! Obelisks&mdash;palaces&mdash;towers!&mdash;The
+      ruins of Palmyra in the desert!&rdquo; said Juste, laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So we called him the Ruins of Palmyra.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As we went out to dine at the wretched eating-house in the Rue de la Harpe
+      to which we subscribed, we asked the name of Number 37, and then heard the
+      weird name Z. Marcas. Like boys, as we were, we repeated it more than a
+      hundred times with all sorts of comments, absurd or melancholy, and the
+      name lent itself to a jest. Juste would fire off the Z like a rocket
+      rising, <i>z-z-z-z-zed</i>; and after pronouncing the first syllable of
+      the name with great importance, depicted a fall by the dull brevity of the
+      second.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, how and where does the man live?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From this query, to the innocent espionage of curiosity there was no pause
+      but that required for carrying out our plan. Instead of loitering about
+      the streets, we both came in, each armed with a novel. We read with our
+      ears open. And in the perfect silence of our attic rooms, we heard the
+      even, dull sound of a sleeping man breathing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is asleep,&rdquo; said I to Juste, noticing this fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At seven o&rsquo;clock!&rdquo; replied the Doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the name by which I called Juste, and he called me the Keeper of
+      the Seals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man must be wretched indeed to sleep as much as our neighbor!&rdquo; cried I,
+      jumping on to the chest of drawers with a knife in my hand, to which a
+      corkscrew was attached.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I made a round hole at the top of the partition, about as big as a
+      five-sou piece. I had forgotten that there would be no light in the room,
+      and on putting my eye to the hole, I saw only darkness. At about one in
+      the morning, when we had finished our books and were about to undress, we
+      heard a noise in our neighbor&rsquo;s room. He got up, struck a match, and
+      lighted his dip. I got on to the drawers again, and I then saw Marcas
+      seated at his table and copying law-papers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His room was about half the size of ours; the bed stood in a recess by the
+      door, for the passage ended there, and its breadth was added to his
+      garret; but the ground on which the house was built was evidently
+      irregular, for the party-wall formed an obtuse angle, and the room was not
+      square. There was no fireplace, only a small earthenware stove, white
+      blotched with green, of which the pipe went up through the roof. The
+      window, in the skew side of the room, had shabby red curtains. The
+      furniture consisted of an armchair, a table, a chair, and a wretched
+      bed-table. A cupboard in the wall held his clothes. The wall-paper was
+      horrible; evidently only a servant had ever been lodged there before
+      Marcas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is to be seen?&rdquo; asked the Doctor as I got down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look for yourself,&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At nine next morning, Marcas was in bed. He had breakfasted off a saveloy;
+      we saw on a plate, with some crumbs of bread, the remains of that too
+      familiar delicacy. He was asleep; he did not wake till eleven. He then set
+      to work again on the copy he had begun the night before, which was lying
+      on the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On going downstairs we asked the price of that room, and were told fifteen
+      francs a month.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the course of a few days, we were fully informed as to the mode of life
+      of Z. Marcas. He did copying, at so much a sheet no doubt, for a
+      law-writer who lived in the courtyard of the Sainte-Chapelle. He worked
+      half the night; after sleeping from six till ten, he began again and wrote
+      till three. Then he went out to take the copy home before dinner, which he
+      ate at Mizerai&rsquo;s in the Rue Michel-le-Comte, at a cost of nine sous, and
+      came in to bed at six o&rsquo;clock. It became known to us that Marcas did not
+      utter fifteen sentences in a month; he never talked to anybody, nor said a
+      word to himself in his dreadful garret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Ruins of Palmyra are terribly silent!&rdquo; said Juste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This taciturnity in a man whose appearance was so imposing was strangely
+      significant. Sometimes when we met him, we exchanged glances full of
+      meaning on both sides, but they never led to any advances. Insensibly this
+      man became the object of our secret admiration, though we knew no reason
+      for it. Did it lie in his secretly simple habits, his monastic regularity,
+      his hermit-like frugality, his idiotically mechanical labor, allowing his
+      mind to remain neuter or to work on his own lines, seeming to us to hint
+      at an expectation of some stroke of good luck, or at some foregone
+      conclusion as to his life?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After wandering for a long time among the Ruins of Palmyra, we forgot them&mdash;we
+      were young! Then came the Carnival, the Paris Carnival, which, henceforth,
+      will eclipse the old Carnival of Venice, unless some ill-advised Prefect
+      of Police is antagonistic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gambling ought to be allowed during the Carnival; but the stupid moralists
+      who have had gambling suppressed are inert financiers, and this
+      indispensable evil will be re-established among us when it is proved that
+      France leaves millions at the German tables.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This splendid Carnival brought us to utter penury, as it does every
+      student. We got rid of every object of luxury; we sold our second coats,
+      our second boots, our second waistcoats&mdash;everything of which we had a
+      duplicate, except our friend. We ate bread and cold sausages; we looked
+      where we walked; we had set to work in earnest. We owed two months&rsquo; rent,
+      and were sure of having a bill from the porter for sixty or eighty items
+      each, and amounting to forty or fifty francs. We made no noise, and did
+      not laugh as we crossed the little hall at the bottom of the stairs; we
+      commonly took it at a flying leap from the lowest step into the street. On
+      the day when we first found ourselves bereft of tobacco for our pipes, it
+      struck us that for some days we had been eating bread without any kind of
+      butter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Great was our distress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No tobacco!&rdquo; said the Doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No cloak!&rdquo; said the Keeper of the Seals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you rascals, you would dress as the postillion de Longjumeau, you
+      would appear as Debardeurs, sup in the morning, and breakfast at night at
+      Very&rsquo;s&mdash;sometimes even at the <i>Rocher de Cancale</i>.&mdash;Dry
+      bread for you, my boys! Why,&rdquo; said I, in a big bass voice, &ldquo;you deserve to
+      sleep under the bed, you are not worthy to lie in it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes; but, Keeper of the Seals, there is no more tobacco!&rdquo; said
+      Juste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is high time to write home, to our aunts, our mothers, and our
+      sisters, to tell them we have no underlinen left, that the wear and tear
+      of Paris would ruin garments of wire. Then we will solve an elegant
+      chemical problem by transmuting linen into silver.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we must live till we get the answer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I will go and bring out a loan among such of our friends as may
+      still have some capital to invest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how much will you find?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say ten francs!&rdquo; replied I with pride.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was midnight. Marcas had heard everything. He knocked at our door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Messieurs,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;here is some tobacco; you can repay me on the first
+      opportunity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We were struck, not by the offer, which we accepted, but by the rich,
+      deep, full voice in which it was made; a tone only comparable to the
+      lowest string of Paganini&rsquo;s violin. Marcas vanished without waiting for
+      our thanks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Juste and I looked at each other without a word. To be rescued by a man
+      evidently poorer than ourselves! Juste sat down to write to every member
+      of his family, and I went off to effect a loan. I brought in twenty francs
+      lent me by a fellow-provincial. In that evil but happy day gambling was
+      still tolerated, and in its lodes, as hard as the rocky ore of Brazil,
+      young men, by risking a small sum, had a chance of winning a few gold
+      pieces. My friend, too, had some Turkish tobacco brought home from
+      Constantinople by a sailor, and he gave me quite as much as we had taken
+      from Z. Marcas. I conveyed the splendid cargo into port, and we went in
+      triumph to repay our neighbor with a tawny wig of Turkish tobacco for his
+      dark <i>Caporal</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are determined not to be my debtors,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;You are giving me
+      gold for copper.&mdash;You are boys&mdash;good boys&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sentences, spoken in varying tones, were variously emphasized. The
+      words were nothing, but the expression!&mdash;That made us friends of ten
+      years&rsquo; standing at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marcas, on hearing us coming, had covered up his papers; we understood
+      that it would be taking a liberty to allude to his means of subsistence,
+      and felt ashamed of having watched him. His cupboard stood open; in it
+      there were two shirts, a white necktie and a razor. The razor made me
+      shudder. A looking-glass, worth five francs perhaps, hung near the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man&rsquo;s few and simple movements had a sort of savage grandeur. The
+      Doctor and I looked at each other, wondering what we could say in reply.
+      Juste, seeing that I was speechless, asked Marcas jestingly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You cultivate literature, monsieur?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Far from it!&rdquo; replied Marcas. &ldquo;I should not be so wealthy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I fancied,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;that poetry alone, in these days, was amply
+      sufficient to provide a man with lodgings as bad as ours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My remark made Marcas smile, and the smile gave a charm to his yellow
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ambition is not a less severe taskmaster to those who fail,&rdquo; said he.
+      &ldquo;You, who are beginning life, walk in the beaten paths. Never dream of
+      rising superior, you will be ruined!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You advise us to stay just as we are?&rdquo; said the Doctor, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is something so infectious and childlike in the pleasantries of
+      youth, that Marcas smiled again in reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What incidents can have given you this detestable philosophy?&rdquo; asked I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I forgot once more that chance is the result of an immense equation of
+      which we know not all the factors. When we start from zero to work up to
+      the unit, the chances are incalculable. To ambitious men Paris is an
+      immense roulette table, and every young man fancies he can hit on a
+      successful progression of numbers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He offered us the tobacco I had brought that we might smoke with him; the
+      Doctor went to fetch our pipes; Marcas filled his, and then he came to sit
+      in our room, bringing the tobacco with him, since there were but two
+      chairs in his. Juste, as brisk as a squirrel, ran out, and returned with a
+      boy carrying three bottles of Bordeaux, some Brie cheese, and a loaf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hah!&rdquo; said I to myself, &ldquo;fifteen francs,&rdquo; and I was right to a sou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Juste gravely laid five francs on the chimney-shelf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are immeasurable differences between the gregarious man and the man
+      who lives closest to nature. Toussaint Louverture, after he was caught,
+      died without speaking a word. Napoleon, transplanted to a rock, talked
+      like a magpie&mdash;he wanted to account for himself. Z. Marcas erred in
+      the same way, but for our benefit only. Silence in all its majesty is to
+      be found only in the savage. There is never a criminal who, though he
+      might let his secrets fall with his head into the basket of sawdust does
+      not feel the purely social impulse to tell them to somebody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nay, I am wrong. We have seen one Iroquois of the Faubourg Saint-Marceau
+      who raised the Parisian to the level of the natural savage&mdash;a
+      republican, a conspirator, a Frenchman, an old man, who outdid all we have
+      heard of Negro determination, and all that Cooper tells us of the tenacity
+      and coolness of the Redskins under defeat. Morey, the Guatimozin of the
+      &ldquo;Mountain,&rdquo; preserved an attitude unparalleled in the annals of European
+      justice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is what Marcas told us during the small hours, sandwiching his
+      discourse with slices of bread spread with cheese and washed down with
+      wine. All the tobacco was burned out. Now and then the hackney coaches
+      clattering across the Place de l&rsquo;Odeon, or the omnibuses toiling past,
+      sent up their dull rumbling, as if to remind us that Paris was still close
+      to us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His family lived at Vitre; his father and mother had fifteen hundred
+      francs a year in the funds. He had received an education gratis in a
+      Seminary, but had refused to enter the priesthood. He felt in himself the
+      fires of immense ambition, and had come to Paris on foot at the age of
+      twenty, the possessor of two hundred francs. He had studied the law,
+      working in an attorney&rsquo;s office, where he had risen to be superior clerk.
+      He had taken his doctor&rsquo;s degree in law, had mastered the old and modern
+      codes, and could hold his own with the most famous pleaders. He had
+      studied the law of nations, and was familiar with European treaties and
+      international practice. He had studied men and things in five capitals&mdash;London,
+      Berlin, Vienna, Petersburg, and Constantinople.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No man was better informed than he as to the rules of the Chamber. For
+      five years he had been reporter of the debates for a daily paper. He spoke
+      extempore and admirably, and could go on for a long time in that deep,
+      appealing voice which had struck us to the soul. Indeed, he proved by the
+      narrative of his life that he was a great orator, a concise orator,
+      serious and yet full of piercing eloquence; he resembled Berryer in his
+      fervor and in the impetus which commands the sympathy of the masses, and
+      was like Thiers in refinement and skill; but he would have been less
+      diffuse, less in difficulties for a conclusion. He had intended to rise
+      rapidly to power without burdening himself first with the doctrines
+      necessary to begin with, for a man in opposition, but an incubus later to
+      the statesman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marcas had learned everything that a real statesman should know; indeed,
+      his amazement was considerable when he had occasion to discern the utter
+      ignorance of men who have risen to the administration of public affairs in
+      France. Though in him it was vocation that had led to study, nature had
+      been generous and bestowed all that cannot be acquired&mdash;keen
+      perceptions, self-command, a nimble wit, rapid judgment, decisiveness,
+      and, what is the genius of these men, fertility in resource.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the time when Marcas thought himself duly equipped, France was torn by
+      intestine divisions arising from the triumph of the House of Orleans over
+      the elder branch of the Bourbons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The field of political warfare is evidently changed. Civil war henceforth
+      cannot last for long, and will not be fought out in the provinces. In
+      France such struggles will be of brief duration and at the seat of
+      government; and the battle will be the close of the moral contest which
+      will have been brought to an issue by superior minds. This state of things
+      will continue so long as France has her present singular form of
+      government, which has no analogy with that of any other country; for there
+      is no more resemblance between the English and the French constitutions
+      than between the two lands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus Marcas&rsquo; place was in the political press. Being poor and unable to
+      secure his election, he hoped to make a sudden appearance. He resolved on
+      making the greatest possible sacrifice for a man of superior intellect, to
+      work as a subordinate to some rich and ambitious deputy. Like a second
+      Bonaparte, he sought his Barras; the new Colbert hoped to find a Mazarin.
+      He did immense services, and he did them then and there; he assumed no
+      importance, he made no boast, he did not complain of ingratitude. He did
+      them in the hope that his patron would put him in a position to be elected
+      deputy; Marcas wished for nothing but a loan that might enable him to
+      purchase a house in Paris, the qualification required by law. Richard III.
+      asked for nothing but his horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In three years Marcas had made his man&mdash;one of the fifty supposed
+      great statesmen who are the battledores with which two cunning players
+      toss the ministerial portfolios exactly as the man behind the puppet-show
+      hits Punch against the constable in his street theatre, and counts on
+      always getting paid. This man existed only by Marcas, but he had just
+      brains enough to appreciate the value of his &ldquo;ghost&rdquo; and to know that
+      Marcas, if he ever came to the front, would remain there, would be
+      indispensable, while he himself would be translated to the polar zone of
+      Luxembourg. So he determined to put insurmountable obstacles in the way of
+      his Mentor&rsquo;s advancement, and hid his purpose under the semblance of the
+      utmost sincerity. Like all mean men, he could dissimulate to perfection,
+      and he soon made progress in the ways of ingratitude, for he felt that he
+      must kill Marcas, not to be killed by him. These two men, apparently so
+      united, hated each other as soon as one had deceived the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The politician was made one of a ministry; Marcas remained in the
+      opposition to hinder his man from being attacked; nay, by skilful tactics
+      he won him the applause of the opposition. To excuse himself for not
+      rewarding his subaltern, the chief pointed out the impossibility of
+      finding a place suddenly for a man on the other side, without a great deal
+      of manoeuvring. Marcas had hoped confidently for a place to enable him to
+      marry, and thus acquire the qualification he so ardently desired. He was
+      two-and-thirty, and the Chamber ere long must be dissolved. Having
+      detected his man in this flagrant act of bad faith, he overthrew him, or
+      at any rate contributed largely to his overthrow, and covered him with
+      mud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A fallen minister, if he is to rise again to power, must show that he is
+      to be feared; this man, intoxicated by Royal glibness, had fancied that
+      his position would be permanent; he acknowledged his delinquencies;
+      besides confessing them, he did Marcas a small money service, for Marcas
+      had got into debt. He subsidized the newspaper on which Marcas worked, and
+      made him the manager of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though he despised the man, Marcas, who, practically, was being subsidized
+      too, consented to take the part of the fallen minister. Without unmasking
+      at once all the batteries of his superior intellect, Marcas came a little
+      further than before; he showed half his shrewdness. The Ministry lasted
+      only a hundred and eighty days; it was swallowed up. Marcas had put
+      himself into communication with certain deputies, had moulded them like
+      dough, leaving each impressed with a high opinion of his talent; his
+      puppet again became a member of the Ministry, and then the paper was
+      ministerial. The Ministry united the paper with another, solely to squeeze
+      out Marcas, who in this fusion had to make way for a rich and insolent
+      rival, whose name was well known, and who already had his foot in the
+      stirrup.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marcas relapsed into utter destitution; his haughty patron well knew the
+      depths into which he had cast him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Where was he to go? The ministerial papers, privily warned, would have
+      nothing to say to him. The opposition papers did not care to admit him to
+      their offices. Marcas could side neither with the Republicans nor with the
+      Legitimists, two parties whose triumph would mean the overthrow of
+      everything that now is.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ambitious men like a fast hold on things,&rdquo; said he with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lived by writing a few articles on commercial affairs, and contributed
+      to one of those encyclopedias brought out by speculation and not by
+      learning. Finally a paper was founded, which was destined to live but two
+      years, but which secured his services. From that moment he renewed his
+      connection with the minister&rsquo;s enemies; he joined the party who were
+      working for the fall of the Government; and as soon as his pickaxe had
+      free play, it fell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This paper had now for six months ceased to exist; he had failed to find
+      employment of any kind; he was spoken of as a dangerous man, calumny
+      attacked him; he had unmasked a huge financial and mercantile job by a few
+      articles and a pamphlet. He was known to be a mouthpiece of a banker who
+      was said to have paid him largely, and from whom he was supposed to expect
+      some patronage in return for his championship. Marcas, disgusted by men
+      and things, worn out by five years of fighting, regarded as a free lance
+      rather than as a great leader, crushed by the necessity of earning his
+      daily bread, which hindered him from gaining ground, in despair at the
+      influence exerted by money over mind, and given over to dire poverty,
+      buried himself in a garret, to make thirty sous a day, the sum strictly
+      answering to his needs. Meditation had leveled a desert all round him. He
+      read the papers to be informed of what was going on. Pozzo di Borgo had
+      once lived like this for some time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marcas, no doubt, was planning a serious attack, accustoming himself to
+      dissimulation, and punishing himself for his blunders by Pythagorean
+      muteness. But he did not tell us the reasons for his conduct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is impossible to give you an idea of the scenes of the highest comedy
+      that lay behind this algebraic statement of his career; his useless
+      patience dogging the footsteps of fortune, which presently took wings, his
+      long tramps over the thorny brakes of Paris, his breathless chases as a
+      petitioner, his attempts to win over fools; the schemes laid only to fail
+      through the influence of some frivolous woman; the meetings with men of
+      business who expected their capital to bring them places and a peerage, as
+      well as large interest. Then the hopes rising in a towering wave only to
+      break in foam on the shoal; the wonders wrought in reconciling adverse
+      interests which, after working together for a week, fell asunder; the
+      annoyance, a thousand times repeated, of seeing a dunce decorated with the
+      Legion of Honor, and preferred, though as ignorant as a shop-boy, to a man
+      of talent. Then, what Marcas called the stratagems of stupidity&mdash;you
+      strike a man, and he seems convinced, he nods his head&mdash;everything is
+      settled; next day, this india-rubber ball, flattened for a moment, has
+      recovered itself in the course of the night; it is as full of wind as
+      ever; you must begin all over again; and you go on till you understand
+      that you are not dealing with a man, but with a lump of gum that loses
+      shape in the sunshine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These thousand annoyances, this vast waste of human energy on barren
+      spots, the difficulty of achieving any good, the incredible facility of
+      doing mischief; two strong games played out, twice won, and then twice
+      lost; the hatred of a statesman&mdash;a blockhead with a painted face and
+      a wig, but in whom the world believed&mdash;all these things, great and
+      small, had not crushed, but for the moment had dashed Marcas. In the days
+      when money had come into his hands, his fingers had not clutched it; he
+      had allowed himself the exquisite pleasure of sending it all to his family&mdash;to
+      his sisters, his brothers, his old father. Like Napoleon in his fall, he
+      asked for no more than thirty sous a day, and any man of energy can earn
+      thirty sous for a day&rsquo;s work in Paris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Marcas had finished the story of his life, intermingled with
+      reflections, maxims, and observations, revealing him as a great
+      politician, a few questions and answers on both sides as to the progress
+      of affairs in France and in Europe were enough to prove to us that he was
+      a real statesman; for a man may be quickly and easily judged when he can
+      be brought on to the ground of immediate difficulties: there is a certain
+      Shibboleth for men of superior talents, and we were of the tribe of modern
+      Levites without belonging as yet to the Temple. As I have said, our
+      frivolity covered certain purposes which Juste has carried out, and which
+      I am about to execute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we had done talking, we all three went out, cold as it was, to walk
+      in the Luxembourg gardens till the dinner hour. In the course of that walk
+      our conversation, grave throughout, turned on the painful aspects of the
+      political situation. Each of us contributed his remarks, his comment, or
+      his jest, a pleasantry or a proverb. This was no longer exclusively a
+      discussion of life on the colossal scale just described by Marcas, the
+      soldier of political warfare. Nor was it the distressful monologue of the
+      wrecked navigator, stranded in a garret in the Hotel Corneille; it was a
+      dialogue in which two well-informed young men, having gauged the times
+      they lived in, were endeavoring, under the guidance of a man of talent, to
+      gain some light on their own future prospects.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why,&rdquo; asked Juste, &ldquo;did you not wait patiently for an opportunity, and
+      imitate the only man who has been able to keep the lead since the
+      Revolution of July by holding his head above water?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have I not said that we never know where the roots of chance lie? Carrell
+      was in identically the same position as the orator you speak of. That
+      gloomy young man, of a bitter spirit, had a whole government in his head;
+      the man of whom you speak had no idea beyond mounting on the crupper of
+      every event. Of the two, Carrel was the better man. Well, one becomes a
+      minister, Carrel remained a journalist; the incomplete but craftier man is
+      living; Carrel is dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I may point out that your man has for fifteen years been making his way,
+      and is but making it still. He may yet be caught and crushed between two
+      cars full of intrigues on the highroad to power. He has no house; he has
+      not the favor of the palace like Metternich; nor, like Villele, the
+      protection of a compact majority.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not believe that the present state of things will last ten years
+      longer. Hence, supposing I should have such poor good luck, I am already
+      too late to avoid being swept away by the commotion I foresee. I should
+      need to be established in a superior position.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What commotion?&rdquo; asked Juste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;AUGUST, 1830,&rdquo; said Marcas in solemn tones, holding out his hand towards
+      Paris; &ldquo;AUGUST, the offspring of Youth which bound the sheaves, and of
+      Intellect which had ripened the harvest, forgot to provide for Youth and
+      Intellect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Youth will explode like the boiler of a steam-engine. Youth has no outlet
+      in France; it is gathering an avalanche of underrated capabilities, of
+      legitimate and restless ambitions; young men are not marrying now;
+      families cannot tell what to do with their children. What will the
+      thunderclap be that will shake down these masses? I know not, but they
+      will crash down into the midst of things, and overthrow everything. These
+      are laws of hydrostatics which act on the human race; the Roman Empire had
+      failed to understand them, and the Barbaric hordes came down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Barbaric hordes now are the intelligent class. The laws of
+      overpressure are at this moment acting slowly and silently in our midst.
+      The Government is the great criminal; it does not appreciate the two
+      powers to which it owes everything; it has allowed its hands to be tied by
+      the absurdities of the Contract; it is bound, ready to be the victim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Louis XIV., Napoleon, England, all were or are eager for intelligent
+      youth. In France the young are condemned by the new legislation, by the
+      blundering principles of elective rights, by the unsoundness of the
+      ministerial constitution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at the elective Chamber; you will find no deputies of thirty; the
+      youth of Richelieu and of Mazarin, of Turenne and of Colbert, of Pitt and
+      of Saint-Just, of Napoleon and of Prince Metternich, would find no
+      admission there; Burke, Sheridan, or Fox could not win seats. Even if
+      political majority had been fixed at one-and-twenty, and eligibility had
+      been relieved of every disabling qualification, the Departments would have
+      returned the very same members, men devoid of political talent, unable to
+      speak without murdering French grammar, and among whom, in ten years,
+      scarcely one statesman has been found.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The causes of an impending event may be seen, but the event itself cannot
+      be foretold. At this moment the youth of France is being driven into
+      Republicanism, because it believes that the Republic would bring it
+      emancipation. It will always remember the young representatives of the
+      people and the young army leaders! The imprudence of the Government is
+      only comparable to its avarice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That day left its echoes in our lives. Marcas confirmed us in our
+      resolution to leave France, where young men of talent and energy are
+      crushed under the weight of successful commonplace, envious, and
+      insatiable middle age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We dined together in the Rue de la Harpe. We thenceforth felt for Marcas
+      the most respectful affection; he gave us the most practical aid in the
+      sphere of the mind. That man knew everything; he had studied everything.
+      For us he cast his eye over the whole civilized world, seeking the country
+      where openings would be at once the most abundant and the most favorable
+      to the success of our plans. He indicated what should be the goal of our
+      studies; he bid us make haste, explaining to us that time was precious,
+      that emigration would presently begin, and that its effect would be to
+      deprive France of the cream of its powers and of its youthful talent; that
+      their intelligence, necessarily sharpened, would select the best places,
+      and that the great thing was to be first in the field.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thenceforward, we often sat late at work under the lamp. Our generous
+      instructor wrote some notes for our guidance&mdash;two pages for Juste and
+      three for me&mdash;full of invaluable advice&mdash;the sort of information
+      which experience alone can supply, such landmarks as only genius can
+      place. In those papers, smelling of tobacco, and covered with writing so
+      vile as to be almost hieroglyphic, there are suggestions for a fortune,
+      and forecasts of unerring acumen. There are hints as to certain parts of
+      America and Asia which have been fully justified, both before and since
+      Juste and I could set out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marcas, like us, was in the most abject poverty. He earned, indeed, his
+      daily bread, but he had neither linen, clothes, nor shoes. He did not make
+      himself out any better than he was; his dreams had been of luxury as well
+      as of power. He did not admit that this was the real Marcas; he abandoned
+      this person, indeed, to the caprices of life. What he lived by was the
+      breath of ambition; he dreamed of revenge while blaming himself for
+      yielding to so shallow a feeling. The true statesman ought, above all
+      things, to be superior to vulgar passions; like the man of science. It was
+      in these days of dire necessity that Marcas seemed to us so great&mdash;nay,
+      so terrible; there was something awful in the gaze which saw another world
+      than that which strikes the eye of ordinary men. To us he was a subject of
+      contemplation and astonishment; for the young&mdash;which of us has not
+      known it?&mdash;the young have a keen craving to admire; they love to
+      attach themselves, and are naturally inclined to submit to the men they
+      feel to be superior, as they are to devote themselves to a great cause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our surprise was chiefly roused by his indifference in matters of
+      sentiment; women had no place in his life. When we spoke of this matter, a
+      perennial theme of conversation among Frenchmen, he simply remarked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gowns cost too much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw the look that passed between Juste and me, and went on:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, far too much. The woman you buy&mdash;and she is the least expensive&mdash;takes
+      a great deal of money. The woman who gives herself takes all your time!
+      Woman extinguishes every energy, every ambition. Napoleon reduced her to
+      what she should be. From that point of view, he really was great. He did
+      not indulge such ruinous fancies of Louis XIV. and Louis XV.; at the same
+      time he could love in secret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We discovered that, like Pitt, who made England his wife, Marcas bore
+      France in his heart; he idolized his country; he had not a thought that
+      was not for his native land. His fury at feeling that he had in his hands
+      the remedy for the evils which so deeply saddened him, and could not apply
+      it, ate into his soul, and this rage was increased by the inferiority of
+      France at that time, as compared with Russia and England. France a
+      third-rate power! This cry came up again and again in his conversation.
+      The intestinal disorders of his country had entered into his soul. All the
+      contests between the Court and the Chamber, showing, as they did,
+      incessant change and constant vacillation, which must injure the
+      prosperity of the country, he scoffed at as backstairs squabbles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is peace at the cost of the future,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening Juste and I were at work, sitting in perfect silence. Marcas
+      had just risen to toil at his copying, for he had refused our assistance
+      in spite of our most earnest entreaties. We had offered to take it in
+      turns to copy a batch of manuscript, so that he should do but a third of
+      his distasteful task; he had been quite angry, and we had ceased to
+      insist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We heard the sound of gentlemanly boots in the passage, and raised our
+      heads, looking at each other. There was a tap at Marcas&rsquo; door&mdash;he
+      never took the key out of the lock&mdash;and we heard the hero answer:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come in.&rdquo; Then&mdash;&ldquo;What, you here, monsieur?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I, myself,&rdquo; replied the retired minister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the Diocletian of this unknown martyr.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For some time he and our neighbor conversed in an undertone. Suddenly
+      Marcas, whose voice had been heard but rarely, as is natural in a dialogue
+      in which the applicant begins by setting forth the situation, broke out
+      loudly in reply to some offer we had not overheard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would laugh at me for a fool,&rdquo; cried he, &ldquo;if I took you at your word.
+      Jesuits are a thing of the past, but Jesuitism is eternal. Your
+      Machiavelism and your generosity are equally hollow and untrustworthy. You
+      can make your own calculations, but who can calculate on you? Your Court
+      is made up of owls who fear the light, of old men who quake in the
+      presence of the young, or who simply disregard them. The Government is
+      formed on the same pattern as the Court. You have hunted up the remains of
+      the Empire, as the Restoration enlisted the Voltigeurs of Louis XIV.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hitherto the evasions of cowardice have been taken for the manoeuvring of
+      ability; but dangers will come, and the younger generation will rise as
+      they did in 1790. They did grand things then.&mdash;Just now you change
+      ministries as a sick man turns in his bed; these oscillations betray the
+      weakness of the Government. You work on an underhand system of policy
+      which will be turned against you, for France will be tired of your
+      shuffling. France will not tell you that she is tired of you; a man never
+      knows whence his ruin comes; it is the historian&rsquo;s task to find out; but
+      you will undoubtedly perish as the reward of not having the youth of
+      France to lend you its strength and energy; for having hated really
+      capable men; for not having lovingly chosen them from this noble
+      generation; for having in all cases preferred mediocrity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have come to ask my support, but you are an atom in that decrepit
+      heap which is made hideous by self-interest, which trembles and squirms,
+      and, because it is so mean, tries to make France mean too. My strong
+      nature, my ideas, would work like poison in you; twice you have tricked
+      me, twice have I overthrown you. If we unite a third time, it must be a
+      very serious matter. I should kill myself if I allowed myself to be duped;
+      for I should be to blame, not you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then we heard the humblest entreaties, the most fervent adjuration, not to
+      deprive the country of such superior talents. The man spoke of patriotism,
+      and Marcas uttered a significant &ldquo;<i>Ouh! ouh!</i>&rdquo; He laughed at his
+      would-be patron. Then the statesman was more explicit; he bowed to the
+      superiority of his erewhile counselor; he pledged himself to enable Marcas
+      to remain in office, to be elected deputy; then he offered him a high
+      appointment, promising him that he, the speaker, would thenceforth be the
+      subordinate of a man whose subaltern he was only worthy to be. He was in
+      the newly-formed ministry, and he would not return to power unless Marcas
+      had a post in proportion to his merit; he had already made it a condition,
+      Marcas had been regarded as indispensable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marcas refused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have never before been in a position to keep my promises; here is an
+      opportunity of proving myself faithful to my word, and you fail me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To this Marcas made no reply. The boots were again audible in the passage
+      on the way to the stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marcas! Marcas!&rdquo; we both cried, rushing into his room. &ldquo;Why refuse? He
+      really meant it. His offers are very handsome; at any rate, go to see the
+      ministers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a twinkling, we had given Marcas a hundred reasons. The minister&rsquo;s
+      voice was sincere; without seeing him, we had felt sure that he was
+      honest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have no clothes,&rdquo; replied Marcas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rely on us,&rdquo; said Juste, with a glance at me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marcas had the courage to trust us; a light flashed in his eye, he pushed
+      his fingers through his hair, lifting it from his forehead with a gesture
+      that showed some confidence in his luck and when he had thus unveiled his
+      face, so to speak, we saw in him a man absolutely unknown to us&mdash;Marcas
+      sublime, Marcas in his power! His mind was in its element&mdash;the bird
+      restored to the free air, the fish to the water, the horse galloping
+      across the plain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was transient. His brow clouded again, he had, it would seem, a vision
+      of his fate. Halting doubt had followed close on the heels of white-winged
+      hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We left him to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, then,&rdquo; said I to the Doctor, &ldquo;we have given our word; how are we to
+      keep it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will sleep upon it,&rdquo; said Juste, &ldquo;and to-morrow morning we will talk
+      it over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning we went for a walk in the Luxembourg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had had time to think over the incident of the past night, and were
+      both equally surprised at the lack of address shown by Marcas in the minor
+      difficulties of life&mdash;he, a man who never saw any difficulties in the
+      solution of the hardest problems of abstract or practical politics. But
+      these elevated characters can all be tripped up on a grain of sand, and
+      will, like the grandest enterprise, miss fire for want of a thousand
+      francs. It is the old story of Napoleon, who, for lack of a pair of boots,
+      did not set out for India.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what have you hit upon?&rdquo; asked Juste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have thought of a way to get him a complete outfit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From Humann.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Humann, my boy, never goes to his customers&mdash;his customers go to
+      him; so that he does not know whether I am rich or poor. He only knows
+      that I dress well and look decent in the clothes he makes for me. I shall
+      tell him that an uncle of mine has dropped in from the country, and that
+      his indifference in matters of dress is quite a discredit to me in the
+      upper circles where I am trying to find a wife.&mdash;It will not be
+      Humann if he sends in his bill before three months.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Doctor thought this a capital idea for a vaudeville, but poor enough
+      in real life, and doubted my success. But I give you my word of honor,
+      Humann dressed Marcas, and, being an artist, turned him out as a political
+      personage ought to be dressed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Juste lent Marcas two hundred francs in gold, the product of two watches
+      bought on credit, and pawned at the Mont-de-Piete. For my part, I had said
+      nothing of the six shirts and all necessary linen, which cost me no more
+      than the pleasure of asking for them from a forewoman in a shop whom I had
+      treated to Musard&rsquo;s during the carnival.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marcas accepted everything, thanking us no more than he ought. He only
+      inquired as to the means by which we had got possession of such riches,
+      and we made him laugh for the last time. We looked on our Marcas as
+      shipowners, when they have exhausted their credit and every resource at
+      their command it fit out a vessel, must look on it as it puts out to sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here Charles was silent; he seemed crushed by his memories.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; cried the audience, &ldquo;and what happened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will tell you in a few words&mdash;for this is not romance&mdash;it is
+      history.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We saw no more of Marcas. The administration lasted for three months; it
+      fell at the end of the session. Then Marcas came back to us, worked to
+      death. He had sounded the crater of power; he came away from it with the
+      beginnings of brain fever. The disease made rapid progress; we nursed him.
+      Juste at once called in the chief physician of the hospital where he was
+      working as house-surgeon. I was then living alone in our room, and I was
+      the most attentive attendant; but care and science alike were in vain. By
+      the month of January, 1838, Marcas himself felt that he had but a few days
+      to live.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man whose soul and brain he had been for six months never even sent to
+      inquire after him. Marcas expressed the greatest contempt for the
+      Government; he seemed to doubt what the fate of France might be, and it
+      was this doubt that had made him ill. He had, he thought, detected treason
+      in the heart of power, not tangible, seizable treason, the result of
+      facts, but the treason of a system, the subordination of national
+      interests to selfish ends. His belief in the degradation of the country
+      was enough to aggravate his complaint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I myself was witness to the proposals made to him by one of the leaders of
+      the antagonistic party which he had fought against. His hatred of the men
+      he had tried to serve was so virulent, that he would gladly have joined
+      the coalition that was about to be formed among certain ambitious spirits
+      who, at least, had one idea in common&mdash;that of shaking off the yoke
+      of the Court. But Marcas could only reply to the envoy in the words of the
+      Hotel de Ville:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is too late!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marcas did not leave money enough to pay for his funeral. Juste and I had
+      great difficulty in saving him from the ignominy of a pauper&rsquo;s bier, and
+      we alone followed the coffin of Z. Marcas, which was dropped into the
+      common grave of the cemetery of Mont-Parnasse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We looked sadly at each other as we listened to this tale, the last we
+      heard from the lips of Charles Rabourdin the day before he embarked at le
+      Havre on a brig that was to convey him to the islands of Malay. We all
+      knew more than one Marcas, more than one victim of his devotion to a
+      party, repaid by betrayal or neglect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LES JARDIES, May 1840.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      ADDENDUM
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      The following personage appears in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+    </h3>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Marcas, Zephirin
+       A Prince of Bohemia
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Z. Marcas, by Honore de Balzac
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK Z. MARCAS ***
+
+***** This file should be named 1841-h.htm or 1841-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/4/1841/
+
+Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny, and David Widger
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase &ldquo;Project
+Gutenberg&rdquo;), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  &ldquo;Project Gutenberg&rdquo; is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (&ldquo;the Foundation&rdquo;
+ or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase &ldquo;Project Gutenberg&rdquo; appears, or with which the phrase &ldquo;Project
+Gutenberg&rdquo; is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase &ldquo;Project Gutenberg&rdquo; associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+&ldquo;Plain Vanilla ASCII&rdquo; or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original &ldquo;Plain Vanilla ASCII&rdquo; or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, &ldquo;Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.&rdquo;
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+&ldquo;Defects,&rdquo; such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the &ldquo;Right
+of Replacement or Refund&rdquo; described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you &lsquo;AS-IS&rsquo; WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm&rsquo;s
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation&rsquo;s EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state&rsquo;s laws.
+
+The Foundation&rsquo;s principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation&rsquo;s web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+
+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
diff --git a/1841.txt b/1841.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dc79cfb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/1841.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,1480 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Z. Marcas, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Z. Marcas
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Clara Bell and Others
+
+Release Date: August, 1999  [Etext #1841]
+Posting Date: March 3, 2010
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK Z. MARCAS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
+
+
+
+
+
+Z. MARCAS
+
+
+By Honore De Balzac
+
+
+
+Translated by Clara Bell and Others
+
+
+
+
+                             DEDICATION
+
+  To His Highness Count William of Wurtemberg, as a token of the
+  Author's respectful gratitude.
+
+                                                      DE BALZAC.
+
+
+
+
+
+Z. MARCAS
+
+
+I never saw anybody, not even among the most remarkable men of the
+day, whose appearance was so striking as this man's; the study of his
+countenance at first gave me a feeling of great melancholy, and at last
+produced an almost painful impression.
+
+There was a certain harmony between the man and his name. The Z.
+preceding Marcas, which was seen on the addresses of his letters, and
+which he never omitted from his signature, as the last letter of the
+alphabet, suggested some mysterious fatality.
+
+MARCAS! say this two-syllabled name again and again; do you not feel as
+if it had some sinister meaning? Does it not seem to you that its owner
+must be doomed to martyrdom? Though foreign, savage, the name has a
+right to be handed down to posterity; it is well constructed, easily
+pronounced, and has the brevity that beseems a famous name. Is it not
+pleasant as well as odd? But does it not sound unfinished?
+
+I will not take it upon myself to assert that names have no influence on
+the destiny of men. There is a certain secret and inexplicable concord
+or a visible discord between the events of a man's life and his name
+which is truly surprising; often some remote but very real correlation
+is revealed. Our globe is round; everything is linked to everything
+else. Some day perhaps we shall revert to the occult sciences.
+
+Do you not discern in that letter Z an adverse influence? Does it not
+prefigure the wayward and fantastic progress of a storm-tossed life?
+What wind blew on that letter, which, whatever language we find it in,
+begins scarcely fifty words? Marcas' name was Zephirin; Saint Zephirin
+is highly venerated in Brittany, and Marcas was a Breton.
+
+Study the name once more: Z Marcas! The man's whole life lies in this
+fantastic juxtaposition of seven letters; seven! the most significant of
+all the cabalistic numbers. And he died at five-and-thirty, so his life
+extended over seven lustres.
+
+Marcas! Does it not hint of some precious object that is broken with a
+fall, with or without a crash?
+
+
+
+I had finished studying the law in Paris in 1836. I lived at that time
+in the Rue Corneille in a house where none but students came to lodge,
+one of those large houses where there is a winding staircase quite at
+the back lighted below from the street, higher up by borrowed
+lights, and at the top by a skylight. There were forty furnished
+rooms--furnished as students' rooms are! What does youth demand more
+than was here supplied? A bed, a few chairs, a chest of drawers, a
+looking-glass, and a table. As soon as the sky is blue the student opens
+his window.
+
+But in this street there are no fair neighbors to flirt with. In front
+is the Odeon, long since closed, presenting a wall that is beginning to
+go black, its tiny gallery windows and its vast expanse of slate roof.
+I was not rich enough to have a good room; I was not even rich enough
+to have a room to myself. Juste and I shared a double-bedded room on the
+fifth floor.
+
+On our side of the landing there were but two rooms--ours and a smaller
+one, occupied by Z. Marcas, our neighbor. For six months Juste and I
+remained in perfect ignorance of the fact. The old woman who managed the
+house had indeed told us that the room was inhabited, but she had added
+that we should not be disturbed, that the occupant was exceedingly
+quiet. In fact, for those six months, we never met our fellow-lodger,
+and we never heard a sound in his room, in spite of the thinness of the
+partition that divided us--one of those walls of lath and plaster which
+are common in Paris houses.
+
+Our room, a little over seven feet high, was hung with a vile cheap
+paper sprigged with blue. The floor was painted, and knew nothing of
+the polish given by the _frotteur's_ brush. By our beds there was only
+a scrap of thin carpet. The chimney opened immediately to the roof, and
+smoked so abominably that we were obliged to provide a stove at our own
+expense. Our beds were mere painted wooden cribs like those in schools;
+on the chimney shelf there were but two brass candlesticks, with or
+without tallow candles in them, and our two pipes with some tobacco in a
+pouch or strewn abroad, also the little piles of cigar-ash left there by
+our visitors or ourselves.
+
+A pair of calico curtains hung from the brass window rods, and on each
+side of the window was a small bookcase in cherry-wood, such as every
+one knows who has stared into the shop windows of the Quartier Latin,
+and in which we kept the few books necessary for our studies.
+
+The ink in the inkstand was always in the state of lava congealed in the
+crater of a volcano. May not any inkstand nowadays become a Vesuvius?
+The pens, all twisted, served to clean the stems of our pipes; and, in
+opposition to all the laws of credit, paper was even scarcer than coin.
+
+How can young men be expected to stay at home in such furnished
+lodgings? The students studied in the cafes, the theatre, the Luxembourg
+gardens, in _grisettes'_ rooms, even in the law schools--anywhere rather
+than in their horrible rooms--horrible for purposes of study, delightful
+as soon as they were used for gossiping and smoking in. Put a cloth on
+the table, and the impromptu dinner sent in from the best eating-house
+in the neighborhood--places for four--two of them in petticoats--show
+a lithograph of this "Interior" to the veriest bigot, and she will be
+bound to smile.
+
+We thought only of amusing ourselves. The reason for our dissipation lay
+in the most serious facts of the politics of the time. Juste and I could
+not see any room for us in the two professions our parents wished us to
+take up. There are a hundred doctors, a hundred lawyers, for one that is
+wanted. The crowd is choking these two paths which are supposed to lead
+to fortune, but which are merely two arenas; men kill each other there,
+fighting, not indeed with swords or fire-arms, but with intrigue and
+calumny, with tremendous toil, campaigns in the sphere of the intellect
+as murderous as those in Italy were to the soldiers of the Republic. In
+these days, when everything is an intellectual competition, a man must
+be able to sit forty-eight hours on end in his chair before a table, as
+a General could remain for two days on horseback and in his saddle.
+
+The throng of aspirants has necessitated a division of the Faculty of
+Medicine into categories. There is the physician who writes and the
+physician who practises, the political physician, and the physician
+militant--four different ways of being a physician, four classes already
+filled up. As to the fifth class, that of physicians who sell remedies,
+there is such a competition that they fight each other with disgusting
+advertisements on the walls of Paris.
+
+In all the law courts there are almost as many lawyers as there are
+cases. The pleader is thrown back on journalism, on politics, on
+literature. In fact, the State, besieged for the smallest appointments
+under the law, has ended by requiring that the applicants should
+have some little fortune. The pear-shaped head of the grocer's son is
+selected in preference to the square skull of a man of talent who has
+not a sou. Work as he will, with all his energy, a young man, starting
+from zero, may at the end of ten years find himself below the point
+he set out from. In these days, talent must have the good luck which
+secures success to the most incapable; nay, more, if it scorns the base
+compromises which insure advancement to crawling mediocrity, it will
+never get on.
+
+If we thoroughly knew our time, we also knew ourselves, and we preferred
+the indolence of dreamers to aimless stir, easy-going pleasure to the
+useless toil which would have exhausted our courage and worn out the
+edge of our intelligence. We had analyzed social life while smoking,
+laughing, and loafing. But, though elaborated by such means as these,
+our reflections were none the less judicious and profound.
+
+While we were fully conscious of the slavery to which youth is
+condemned, we were amazed at the brutal indifference of the authorities
+to everything connected with intellect, thought, and poetry. How often
+have Juste and I exchanged glances when reading the papers as we studied
+political events, or the debates in the Chamber, and discussed the
+proceedings of a Court whose wilful ignorance could find no parallel but
+in the platitude of the courtiers, the mediocrity of the men forming
+the hedge round the newly-restored throne, all alike devoid of talent or
+breadth of view, of distinction or learning, of influence or dignity!
+
+Could there be a higher tribute to the Court of Charles X. than the
+present Court, if Court it may be called? What a hatred of the country
+may be seen in the naturalization of vulgar foreigners, devoid of
+talent, who are enthroned in the Chamber of Peers! What a perversion of
+justice! What an insult to the distinguished youth, the ambitions native
+to the soil of France! We looked upon these things as upon a spectacle,
+and groaned over them, without taking upon ourselves to act.
+
+Juste, whom no one ever sought, and who never sought any one, was, at
+five-and-twenty, a great politician, a man with a wonderful aptitude for
+apprehending the correlation between remote history and the facts of the
+present and of the future. In 1831, he told me exactly what would and
+did happen--the murders, the conspiracies, the ascendency of the Jews,
+the difficulty of doing anything in France, the scarcity of talent in
+the higher circles, and the abundance of intellect in the lowest ranks,
+where the finest courage is smothered under cigar ashes.
+
+What was to become of him? His parents wished him to be a doctor. But if
+he were a doctor, must he not wait twenty years for a practice? You
+know what he did? No? Well, he is a doctor; but he left France, he is in
+Asia. At this moment he is perhaps sinking under fatigue in a desert, or
+dying of the lashes of a barbarous horde--or perhaps he is some Indian
+prince's prime minister.
+
+Action is my vocation. Leaving a civil college at the age of twenty, the
+only way for me to enter the army was by enlisting as a common soldier;
+so, weary of the dismal outlook that lay before a lawyer, I acquired the
+knowledge needed for a sailor. I imitate Juste, and keep out of France,
+where men waste, in the struggle to make way, the energy needed for the
+noblest works. Follow my example, friends; I am going where a man steers
+his destiny as he pleases.
+
+These great resolutions were formed in the little room in the
+lodging-house in the Rue Corneille, in spite of our haunting the Bal
+Musard, flirting with girls of the town, and leading a careless and
+apparently reckless life. Our plans and arguments long floated in the
+air.
+
+Marcas, our neighbor, was in some degree the guide who led us to the
+margin of the precipice or the torrent, who made us sound it, and showed
+us beforehand what our fate would be if we let ourselves fall into it.
+It was he who put us on our guard against the time-bargains a man
+makes with poverty under the sanction of hope, by accepting precarious
+situations whence he fights the battle, carried along by the devious
+tide of Paris--that great harlot who takes you up or leaves you
+stranded, smiles or turns her back on you with equal readiness, wears
+out the strongest will in vexatious waiting, and makes misfortune wait
+on chance.
+
+
+
+At our first meeting, Marcas, as it were, dazzled us. On our return from
+the schools, a little before the dinner-hour, we were accustomed to go
+up to our room and remain there a while, either waiting for the other,
+to learn whether there were any change in our plans for the evening. One
+day, at four o'clock, Juste met Marcas on the stairs, and I saw him in
+the street. It was in the month of November, and Marcas had no cloak;
+he wore shoes with heavy soles, corduroy trousers, and a blue
+double-breasted coat buttoned to the throat, which gave a military air
+to his broad chest, all the more so because he wore a black stock. The
+costume was not in itself extraordinary, but it agreed well with the
+man's mien and countenance.
+
+My first impression on seeing him was neither surprise, nor distress,
+nor interest, nor pity, but curiosity mingled with all these feelings.
+He walked slowly, with a step that betrayed deep melancholy, his head
+forward with a stoop, but not bent like that of a conscience-stricken
+man. That head, large and powerful, which might contain the treasures
+necessary for a man of the highest ambition, looked as if it were loaded
+with thought; it was weighted with grief of mind, but there was no touch
+of remorse in his expression. As to his face, it may be summed up in
+a word. A common superstition has it that every human countenance
+resembles some animal. The animal for Marcas was the lion. His hair was
+like a mane, his nose was sort and flat; broad and dented at the tip
+like a lion's; his brow, like a lion's, was strongly marked with a
+deep median furrow, dividing two powerful bosses. His high, hairy
+cheek-bones, all the more prominent because his cheeks were so thin,
+his enormous mouth and hollow jaws, were accentuated by lines of tawny
+shadows. This almost terrible countenance seemed illuminated by two
+lamps--two eyes, black indeed, but infinitely sweet, calm and deep, full
+of thought. If I may say so, those eyes had a humiliated expression.
+
+Marcas was afraid of looking directly at others, not for himself, but
+for those on whom his fascinating gaze might rest; he had a power, and
+he shunned using it; he would spare those he met, and he feared notice.
+This was not from modesty, but from resignation founded on reason, which
+had demonstrated the immediate inutility of his gifts, the impossibility
+of entering and living in the sphere for which he was fitted. Those eyes
+could at times flash lightnings. From those lips a voice of thunder must
+surely proceed; it was a mouth like Mirabeau's.
+
+"I have seen such a grand fellow in the street," said I to Juste on
+coming in.
+
+"It must be our neighbor," replied Juste, who described, in fact, the
+man I had just met. "A man who lives like a wood-louse would be sure to
+look like that," he added.
+
+"What dejection and what dignity!"
+
+"One is the consequence of the other."
+
+"What ruined hopes! What schemes and failures!"
+
+"Seven leagues of ruins! Obelisks--palaces--towers!--The ruins of
+Palmyra in the desert!" said Juste, laughing.
+
+So we called him the Ruins of Palmyra.
+
+As we went out to dine at the wretched eating-house in the Rue de la
+Harpe to which we subscribed, we asked the name of Number 37, and then
+heard the weird name Z. Marcas. Like boys, as we were, we repeated
+it more than a hundred times with all sorts of comments, absurd or
+melancholy, and the name lent itself to a jest. Juste would fire off the
+Z like a rocket rising, _z-z-z-z-zed_; and after pronouncing the first
+syllable of the name with great importance, depicted a fall by the dull
+brevity of the second.
+
+"Now, how and where does the man live?"
+
+From this query, to the innocent espionage of curiosity there was no
+pause but that required for carrying out our plan. Instead of loitering
+about the streets, we both came in, each armed with a novel. We read
+with our ears open. And in the perfect silence of our attic rooms, we
+heard the even, dull sound of a sleeping man breathing.
+
+"He is asleep," said I to Juste, noticing this fact.
+
+"At seven o'clock!" replied the Doctor.
+
+This was the name by which I called Juste, and he called me the Keeper
+of the Seals.
+
+"A man must be wretched indeed to sleep as much as our neighbor!" cried
+I, jumping on to the chest of drawers with a knife in my hand, to which
+a corkscrew was attached.
+
+I made a round hole at the top of the partition, about as big as a
+five-sou piece. I had forgotten that there would be no light in the
+room, and on putting my eye to the hole, I saw only darkness. At about
+one in the morning, when we had finished our books and were about to
+undress, we heard a noise in our neighbor's room. He got up, struck a
+match, and lighted his dip. I got on to the drawers again, and I then
+saw Marcas seated at his table and copying law-papers.
+
+His room was about half the size of ours; the bed stood in a recess by
+the door, for the passage ended there, and its breadth was added to
+his garret; but the ground on which the house was built was evidently
+irregular, for the party-wall formed an obtuse angle, and the room was
+not square. There was no fireplace, only a small earthenware stove,
+white blotched with green, of which the pipe went up through the roof.
+The window, in the skew side of the room, had shabby red curtains. The
+furniture consisted of an armchair, a table, a chair, and a wretched
+bed-table. A cupboard in the wall held his clothes. The wall-paper was
+horrible; evidently only a servant had ever been lodged there before
+Marcas.
+
+"What is to be seen?" asked the Doctor as I got down.
+
+"Look for yourself," said I.
+
+At nine next morning, Marcas was in bed. He had breakfasted off a
+saveloy; we saw on a plate, with some crumbs of bread, the remains of
+that too familiar delicacy. He was asleep; he did not wake till eleven.
+He then set to work again on the copy he had begun the night before,
+which was lying on the table.
+
+On going downstairs we asked the price of that room, and were told
+fifteen francs a month.
+
+In the course of a few days, we were fully informed as to the mode of
+life of Z. Marcas. He did copying, at so much a sheet no doubt, for a
+law-writer who lived in the courtyard of the Sainte-Chapelle. He worked
+half the night; after sleeping from six till ten, he began again and
+wrote till three. Then he went out to take the copy home before dinner,
+which he ate at Mizerai's in the Rue Michel-le-Comte, at a cost of nine
+sous, and came in to bed at six o'clock. It became known to us that
+Marcas did not utter fifteen sentences in a month; he never talked to
+anybody, nor said a word to himself in his dreadful garret.
+
+"The Ruins of Palmyra are terribly silent!" said Juste.
+
+This taciturnity in a man whose appearance was so imposing was strangely
+significant. Sometimes when we met him, we exchanged glances full of
+meaning on both sides, but they never led to any advances. Insensibly
+this man became the object of our secret admiration, though we knew no
+reason for it. Did it lie in his secretly simple habits, his monastic
+regularity, his hermit-like frugality, his idiotically mechanical labor,
+allowing his mind to remain neuter or to work on his own lines, seeming
+to us to hint at an expectation of some stroke of good luck, or at some
+foregone conclusion as to his life?
+
+After wandering for a long time among the Ruins of Palmyra, we forgot
+them--we were young! Then came the Carnival, the Paris Carnival,
+which, henceforth, will eclipse the old Carnival of Venice, unless some
+ill-advised Prefect of Police is antagonistic.
+
+Gambling ought to be allowed during the Carnival; but the stupid
+moralists who have had gambling suppressed are inert financiers, and
+this indispensable evil will be re-established among us when it is
+proved that France leaves millions at the German tables.
+
+This splendid Carnival brought us to utter penury, as it does every
+student. We got rid of every object of luxury; we sold our second coats,
+our second boots, our second waistcoats--everything of which we had a
+duplicate, except our friend. We ate bread and cold sausages; we looked
+where we walked; we had set to work in earnest. We owed two months'
+rent, and were sure of having a bill from the porter for sixty or eighty
+items each, and amounting to forty or fifty francs. We made no noise,
+and did not laugh as we crossed the little hall at the bottom of the
+stairs; we commonly took it at a flying leap from the lowest step into
+the street. On the day when we first found ourselves bereft of tobacco
+for our pipes, it struck us that for some days we had been eating bread
+without any kind of butter.
+
+Great was our distress.
+
+"No tobacco!" said the Doctor.
+
+"No cloak!" said the Keeper of the Seals.
+
+"Ah, you rascals, you would dress as the postillion de Longjumeau, you
+would appear as Debardeurs, sup in the morning, and breakfast at night
+at Very's--sometimes even at the _Rocher de Cancale_.--Dry bread for
+you, my boys! Why," said I, in a big bass voice, "you deserve to sleep
+under the bed, you are not worthy to lie in it--"
+
+"Yes, yes; but, Keeper of the Seals, there is no more tobacco!" said
+Juste.
+
+"It is high time to write home, to our aunts, our mothers, and our
+sisters, to tell them we have no underlinen left, that the wear and
+tear of Paris would ruin garments of wire. Then we will solve an elegant
+chemical problem by transmuting linen into silver."
+
+"But we must live till we get the answer."
+
+"Well, I will go and bring out a loan among such of our friends as may
+still have some capital to invest."
+
+"And how much will you find?"
+
+"Say ten francs!" replied I with pride.
+
+It was midnight. Marcas had heard everything. He knocked at our door.
+
+"Messieurs," said he, "here is some tobacco; you can repay me on the
+first opportunity."
+
+We were struck, not by the offer, which we accepted, but by the rich,
+deep, full voice in which it was made; a tone only comparable to the
+lowest string of Paganini's violin. Marcas vanished without waiting for
+our thanks.
+
+Juste and I looked at each other without a word. To be rescued by a man
+evidently poorer than ourselves! Juste sat down to write to every member
+of his family, and I went off to effect a loan. I brought in twenty
+francs lent me by a fellow-provincial. In that evil but happy day
+gambling was still tolerated, and in its lodes, as hard as the rocky ore
+of Brazil, young men, by risking a small sum, had a chance of winning a
+few gold pieces. My friend, too, had some Turkish tobacco brought home
+from Constantinople by a sailor, and he gave me quite as much as we had
+taken from Z. Marcas. I conveyed the splendid cargo into port, and
+we went in triumph to repay our neighbor with a tawny wig of Turkish
+tobacco for his dark _Caporal_.
+
+"You are determined not to be my debtors," said he. "You are giving me
+gold for copper.--You are boys--good boys----"
+
+The sentences, spoken in varying tones, were variously emphasized. The
+words were nothing, but the expression!--That made us friends of ten
+years' standing at once.
+
+Marcas, on hearing us coming, had covered up his papers; we understood
+that it would be taking a liberty to allude to his means of subsistence,
+and felt ashamed of having watched him. His cupboard stood open; in it
+there were two shirts, a white necktie and a razor. The razor made
+me shudder. A looking-glass, worth five francs perhaps, hung near the
+window.
+
+The man's few and simple movements had a sort of savage grandeur. The
+Doctor and I looked at each other, wondering what we could say in reply.
+Juste, seeing that I was speechless, asked Marcas jestingly:
+
+"You cultivate literature, monsieur?"
+
+"Far from it!" replied Marcas. "I should not be so wealthy."
+
+"I fancied," said I, "that poetry alone, in these days, was amply
+sufficient to provide a man with lodgings as bad as ours."
+
+My remark made Marcas smile, and the smile gave a charm to his yellow
+face.
+
+"Ambition is not a less severe taskmaster to those who fail," said he.
+"You, who are beginning life, walk in the beaten paths. Never dream of
+rising superior, you will be ruined!"
+
+"You advise us to stay just as we are?" said the Doctor, smiling.
+
+There is something so infectious and childlike in the pleasantries of
+youth, that Marcas smiled again in reply.
+
+"What incidents can have given you this detestable philosophy?" asked I.
+
+"I forgot once more that chance is the result of an immense equation of
+which we know not all the factors. When we start from zero to work up
+to the unit, the chances are incalculable. To ambitious men Paris is
+an immense roulette table, and every young man fancies he can hit on a
+successful progression of numbers."
+
+He offered us the tobacco I had brought that we might smoke with him;
+the Doctor went to fetch our pipes; Marcas filled his, and then he came
+to sit in our room, bringing the tobacco with him, since there were but
+two chairs in his. Juste, as brisk as a squirrel, ran out, and returned
+with a boy carrying three bottles of Bordeaux, some Brie cheese, and a
+loaf.
+
+"Hah!" said I to myself, "fifteen francs," and I was right to a sou.
+
+Juste gravely laid five francs on the chimney-shelf.
+
+There are immeasurable differences between the gregarious man and the
+man who lives closest to nature. Toussaint Louverture, after he was
+caught, died without speaking a word. Napoleon, transplanted to a rock,
+talked like a magpie--he wanted to account for himself. Z. Marcas erred
+in the same way, but for our benefit only. Silence in all its majesty is
+to be found only in the savage. There is never a criminal who, though he
+might let his secrets fall with his head into the basket of sawdust does
+not feel the purely social impulse to tell them to somebody.
+
+Nay, I am wrong. We have seen one Iroquois of the Faubourg Saint-Marceau
+who raised the Parisian to the level of the natural savage--a
+republican, a conspirator, a Frenchman, an old man, who outdid all we
+have heard of Negro determination, and all that Cooper tells us of
+the tenacity and coolness of the Redskins under defeat. Morey, the
+Guatimozin of the "Mountain," preserved an attitude unparalleled in the
+annals of European justice.
+
+
+
+This is what Marcas told us during the small hours, sandwiching his
+discourse with slices of bread spread with cheese and washed down with
+wine. All the tobacco was burned out. Now and then the hackney coaches
+clattering across the Place de l'Odeon, or the omnibuses toiling past,
+sent up their dull rumbling, as if to remind us that Paris was still
+close to us.
+
+His family lived at Vitre; his father and mother had fifteen hundred
+francs a year in the funds. He had received an education gratis in a
+Seminary, but had refused to enter the priesthood. He felt in himself
+the fires of immense ambition, and had come to Paris on foot at the age
+of twenty, the possessor of two hundred francs. He had studied the
+law, working in an attorney's office, where he had risen to be superior
+clerk. He had taken his doctor's degree in law, had mastered the old and
+modern codes, and could hold his own with the most famous pleaders. He
+had studied the law of nations, and was familiar with European treaties
+and international practice. He had studied men and things in five
+capitals--London, Berlin, Vienna, Petersburg, and Constantinople.
+
+No man was better informed than he as to the rules of the Chamber. For
+five years he had been reporter of the debates for a daily paper. He
+spoke extempore and admirably, and could go on for a long time in that
+deep, appealing voice which had struck us to the soul. Indeed, he proved
+by the narrative of his life that he was a great orator, a concise
+orator, serious and yet full of piercing eloquence; he resembled Berryer
+in his fervor and in the impetus which commands the sympathy of the
+masses, and was like Thiers in refinement and skill; but he would
+have been less diffuse, less in difficulties for a conclusion. He had
+intended to rise rapidly to power without burdening himself first with
+the doctrines necessary to begin with, for a man in opposition, but an
+incubus later to the statesman.
+
+Marcas had learned everything that a real statesman should know; indeed,
+his amazement was considerable when he had occasion to discern the utter
+ignorance of men who have risen to the administration of public affairs
+in France. Though in him it was vocation that had led to study, nature
+had been generous and bestowed all that cannot be acquired--keen
+perceptions, self-command, a nimble wit, rapid judgment, decisiveness,
+and, what is the genius of these men, fertility in resource.
+
+By the time when Marcas thought himself duly equipped, France was torn
+by intestine divisions arising from the triumph of the House of Orleans
+over the elder branch of the Bourbons.
+
+The field of political warfare is evidently changed. Civil war
+henceforth cannot last for long, and will not be fought out in the
+provinces. In France such struggles will be of brief duration and at
+the seat of government; and the battle will be the close of the moral
+contest which will have been brought to an issue by superior minds. This
+state of things will continue so long as France has her present singular
+form of government, which has no analogy with that of any other country;
+for there is no more resemblance between the English and the French
+constitutions than between the two lands.
+
+Thus Marcas' place was in the political press. Being poor and unable to
+secure his election, he hoped to make a sudden appearance. He resolved
+on making the greatest possible sacrifice for a man of superior
+intellect, to work as a subordinate to some rich and ambitious deputy.
+Like a second Bonaparte, he sought his Barras; the new Colbert hoped to
+find a Mazarin. He did immense services, and he did them then and there;
+he assumed no importance, he made no boast, he did not complain of
+ingratitude. He did them in the hope that his patron would put him in a
+position to be elected deputy; Marcas wished for nothing but a loan
+that might enable him to purchase a house in Paris, the qualification
+required by law. Richard III. asked for nothing but his horse.
+
+In three years Marcas had made his man--one of the fifty supposed great
+statesmen who are the battledores with which two cunning players toss
+the ministerial portfolios exactly as the man behind the puppet-show
+hits Punch against the constable in his street theatre, and counts on
+always getting paid. This man existed only by Marcas, but he had just
+brains enough to appreciate the value of his "ghost" and to know that
+Marcas, if he ever came to the front, would remain there, would be
+indispensable, while he himself would be translated to the polar zone of
+Luxembourg. So he determined to put insurmountable obstacles in the way
+of his Mentor's advancement, and hid his purpose under the semblance
+of the utmost sincerity. Like all mean men, he could dissimulate to
+perfection, and he soon made progress in the ways of ingratitude, for he
+felt that he must kill Marcas, not to be killed by him. These two men,
+apparently so united, hated each other as soon as one had deceived the
+other.
+
+The politician was made one of a ministry; Marcas remained in the
+opposition to hinder his man from being attacked; nay, by skilful
+tactics he won him the applause of the opposition. To excuse himself for
+not rewarding his subaltern, the chief pointed out the impossibility of
+finding a place suddenly for a man on the other side, without a great
+deal of manoeuvring. Marcas had hoped confidently for a place to enable
+him to marry, and thus acquire the qualification he so ardently desired.
+He was two-and-thirty, and the Chamber ere long must be dissolved.
+Having detected his man in this flagrant act of bad faith, he overthrew
+him, or at any rate contributed largely to his overthrow, and covered
+him with mud.
+
+A fallen minister, if he is to rise again to power, must show that he is
+to be feared; this man, intoxicated by Royal glibness, had fancied that
+his position would be permanent; he acknowledged his delinquencies;
+besides confessing them, he did Marcas a small money service, for Marcas
+had got into debt. He subsidized the newspaper on which Marcas worked,
+and made him the manager of it.
+
+Though he despised the man, Marcas, who, practically, was being
+subsidized too, consented to take the part of the fallen minister.
+Without unmasking at once all the batteries of his superior intellect,
+Marcas came a little further than before; he showed half his shrewdness.
+The Ministry lasted only a hundred and eighty days; it was swallowed
+up. Marcas had put himself into communication with certain deputies, had
+moulded them like dough, leaving each impressed with a high opinion of
+his talent; his puppet again became a member of the Ministry, and then
+the paper was ministerial. The Ministry united the paper with another,
+solely to squeeze out Marcas, who in this fusion had to make way for a
+rich and insolent rival, whose name was well known, and who already had
+his foot in the stirrup.
+
+Marcas relapsed into utter destitution; his haughty patron well knew the
+depths into which he had cast him.
+
+Where was he to go? The ministerial papers, privily warned, would have
+nothing to say to him. The opposition papers did not care to admit him
+to their offices. Marcas could side neither with the Republicans nor
+with the Legitimists, two parties whose triumph would mean the overthrow
+of everything that now is.
+
+"Ambitious men like a fast hold on things," said he with a smile.
+
+He lived by writing a few articles on commercial affairs, and
+contributed to one of those encyclopedias brought out by speculation and
+not by learning. Finally a paper was founded, which was destined to
+live but two years, but which secured his services. From that moment he
+renewed his connection with the minister's enemies; he joined the party
+who were working for the fall of the Government; and as soon as his
+pickaxe had free play, it fell.
+
+This paper had now for six months ceased to exist; he had failed to find
+employment of any kind; he was spoken of as a dangerous man, calumny
+attacked him; he had unmasked a huge financial and mercantile job by a
+few articles and a pamphlet. He was known to be a mouthpiece of a banker
+who was said to have paid him largely, and from whom he was supposed to
+expect some patronage in return for his championship. Marcas, disgusted
+by men and things, worn out by five years of fighting, regarded as a
+free lance rather than as a great leader, crushed by the necessity of
+earning his daily bread, which hindered him from gaining ground, in
+despair at the influence exerted by money over mind, and given over to
+dire poverty, buried himself in a garret, to make thirty sous a day, the
+sum strictly answering to his needs. Meditation had leveled a desert all
+round him. He read the papers to be informed of what was going on. Pozzo
+di Borgo had once lived like this for some time.
+
+Marcas, no doubt, was planning a serious attack, accustoming himself
+to dissimulation, and punishing himself for his blunders by Pythagorean
+muteness. But he did not tell us the reasons for his conduct.
+
+It is impossible to give you an idea of the scenes of the highest comedy
+that lay behind this algebraic statement of his career; his useless
+patience dogging the footsteps of fortune, which presently took wings,
+his long tramps over the thorny brakes of Paris, his breathless chases
+as a petitioner, his attempts to win over fools; the schemes laid only
+to fail through the influence of some frivolous woman; the meetings with
+men of business who expected their capital to bring them places and a
+peerage, as well as large interest. Then the hopes rising in a towering
+wave only to break in foam on the shoal; the wonders wrought in
+reconciling adverse interests which, after working together for a week,
+fell asunder; the annoyance, a thousand times repeated, of seeing a
+dunce decorated with the Legion of Honor, and preferred, though as
+ignorant as a shop-boy, to a man of talent. Then, what Marcas called the
+stratagems of stupidity--you strike a man, and he seems convinced, he
+nods his head--everything is settled; next day, this india-rubber ball,
+flattened for a moment, has recovered itself in the course of the night;
+it is as full of wind as ever; you must begin all over again; and you go
+on till you understand that you are not dealing with a man, but with a
+lump of gum that loses shape in the sunshine.
+
+These thousand annoyances, this vast waste of human energy on barren
+spots, the difficulty of achieving any good, the incredible facility of
+doing mischief; two strong games played out, twice won, and then twice
+lost; the hatred of a statesman--a blockhead with a painted face and a
+wig, but in whom the world believed--all these things, great and small,
+had not crushed, but for the moment had dashed Marcas. In the days when
+money had come into his hands, his fingers had not clutched it; he
+had allowed himself the exquisite pleasure of sending it all to his
+family--to his sisters, his brothers, his old father. Like Napoleon in
+his fall, he asked for no more than thirty sous a day, and any man of
+energy can earn thirty sous for a day's work in Paris.
+
+When Marcas had finished the story of his life, intermingled with
+reflections, maxims, and observations, revealing him as a great
+politician, a few questions and answers on both sides as to the progress
+of affairs in France and in Europe were enough to prove to us that he
+was a real statesman; for a man may be quickly and easily judged when
+he can be brought on to the ground of immediate difficulties: there is a
+certain Shibboleth for men of superior talents, and we were of the tribe
+of modern Levites without belonging as yet to the Temple. As I have
+said, our frivolity covered certain purposes which Juste has carried
+out, and which I am about to execute.
+
+When we had done talking, we all three went out, cold as it was, to walk
+in the Luxembourg gardens till the dinner hour. In the course of that
+walk our conversation, grave throughout, turned on the painful aspects
+of the political situation. Each of us contributed his remarks, his
+comment, or his jest, a pleasantry or a proverb. This was no longer
+exclusively a discussion of life on the colossal scale just described
+by Marcas, the soldier of political warfare. Nor was it the distressful
+monologue of the wrecked navigator, stranded in a garret in the Hotel
+Corneille; it was a dialogue in which two well-informed young men,
+having gauged the times they lived in, were endeavoring, under the
+guidance of a man of talent, to gain some light on their own future
+prospects.
+
+"Why," asked Juste, "did you not wait patiently for an opportunity,
+and imitate the only man who has been able to keep the lead since the
+Revolution of July by holding his head above water?"
+
+"Have I not said that we never know where the roots of chance lie?
+Carrell was in identically the same position as the orator you speak of.
+That gloomy young man, of a bitter spirit, had a whole government in
+his head; the man of whom you speak had no idea beyond mounting on the
+crupper of every event. Of the two, Carrel was the better man. Well,
+one becomes a minister, Carrel remained a journalist; the incomplete but
+craftier man is living; Carrel is dead.
+
+"I may point out that your man has for fifteen years been making his
+way, and is but making it still. He may yet be caught and crushed
+between two cars full of intrigues on the highroad to power. He has no
+house; he has not the favor of the palace like Metternich; nor, like
+Villele, the protection of a compact majority.
+
+"I do not believe that the present state of things will last ten years
+longer. Hence, supposing I should have such poor good luck, I am already
+too late to avoid being swept away by the commotion I foresee. I should
+need to be established in a superior position."
+
+"What commotion?" asked Juste.
+
+"AUGUST, 1830," said Marcas in solemn tones, holding out his hand
+towards Paris; "AUGUST, the offspring of Youth which bound the sheaves,
+and of Intellect which had ripened the harvest, forgot to provide for
+Youth and Intellect.
+
+"Youth will explode like the boiler of a steam-engine. Youth has
+no outlet in France; it is gathering an avalanche of underrated
+capabilities, of legitimate and restless ambitions; young men are not
+marrying now; families cannot tell what to do with their children. What
+will the thunderclap be that will shake down these masses? I know
+not, but they will crash down into the midst of things, and overthrow
+everything. These are laws of hydrostatics which act on the human race;
+the Roman Empire had failed to understand them, and the Barbaric hordes
+came down.
+
+"The Barbaric hordes now are the intelligent class. The laws of
+overpressure are at this moment acting slowly and silently in our midst.
+The Government is the great criminal; it does not appreciate the two
+powers to which it owes everything; it has allowed its hands to be tied
+by the absurdities of the Contract; it is bound, ready to be the victim.
+
+"Louis XIV., Napoleon, England, all were or are eager for intelligent
+youth. In France the young are condemned by the new legislation, by
+the blundering principles of elective rights, by the unsoundness of the
+ministerial constitution.
+
+"Look at the elective Chamber; you will find no deputies of thirty; the
+youth of Richelieu and of Mazarin, of Turenne and of Colbert, of Pitt
+and of Saint-Just, of Napoleon and of Prince Metternich, would find no
+admission there; Burke, Sheridan, or Fox could not win seats. Even if
+political majority had been fixed at one-and-twenty, and eligibility had
+been relieved of every disabling qualification, the Departments would
+have returned the very same members, men devoid of political talent,
+unable to speak without murdering French grammar, and among whom, in ten
+years, scarcely one statesman has been found.
+
+"The causes of an impending event may be seen, but the event itself
+cannot be foretold. At this moment the youth of France is being driven
+into Republicanism, because it believes that the Republic would bring it
+emancipation. It will always remember the young representatives of the
+people and the young army leaders! The imprudence of the Government is
+only comparable to its avarice."
+
+That day left its echoes in our lives. Marcas confirmed us in our
+resolution to leave France, where young men of talent and energy
+are crushed under the weight of successful commonplace, envious, and
+insatiable middle age.
+
+We dined together in the Rue de la Harpe. We thenceforth felt for Marcas
+the most respectful affection; he gave us the most practical aid in the
+sphere of the mind. That man knew everything; he had studied everything.
+For us he cast his eye over the whole civilized world, seeking the
+country where openings would be at once the most abundant and the most
+favorable to the success of our plans. He indicated what should be the
+goal of our studies; he bid us make haste, explaining to us that time
+was precious, that emigration would presently begin, and that its
+effect would be to deprive France of the cream of its powers and of its
+youthful talent; that their intelligence, necessarily sharpened, would
+select the best places, and that the great thing was to be first in the
+field.
+
+Thenceforward, we often sat late at work under the lamp. Our generous
+instructor wrote some notes for our guidance--two pages for Juste and
+three for me--full of invaluable advice--the sort of information which
+experience alone can supply, such landmarks as only genius can place. In
+those papers, smelling of tobacco, and covered with writing so vile
+as to be almost hieroglyphic, there are suggestions for a fortune, and
+forecasts of unerring acumen. There are hints as to certain parts of
+America and Asia which have been fully justified, both before and since
+Juste and I could set out.
+
+Marcas, like us, was in the most abject poverty. He earned, indeed, his
+daily bread, but he had neither linen, clothes, nor shoes. He did not
+make himself out any better than he was; his dreams had been of luxury
+as well as of power. He did not admit that this was the real Marcas; he
+abandoned this person, indeed, to the caprices of life. What he lived by
+was the breath of ambition; he dreamed of revenge while blaming himself
+for yielding to so shallow a feeling. The true statesman ought, above
+all things, to be superior to vulgar passions; like the man of science.
+It was in these days of dire necessity that Marcas seemed to us so
+great--nay, so terrible; there was something awful in the gaze which saw
+another world than that which strikes the eye of ordinary men. To us he
+was a subject of contemplation and astonishment; for the young--which of
+us has not known it?--the young have a keen craving to admire; they love
+to attach themselves, and are naturally inclined to submit to the men
+they feel to be superior, as they are to devote themselves to a great
+cause.
+
+Our surprise was chiefly roused by his indifference in matters of
+sentiment; women had no place in his life. When we spoke of this matter,
+a perennial theme of conversation among Frenchmen, he simply remarked:
+
+"Gowns cost too much."
+
+He saw the look that passed between Juste and me, and went on:
+
+"Yes, far too much. The woman you buy--and she is the least
+expensive--takes a great deal of money. The woman who gives herself
+takes all your time! Woman extinguishes every energy, every ambition.
+Napoleon reduced her to what she should be. From that point of view, he
+really was great. He did not indulge such ruinous fancies of Louis XIV.
+and Louis XV.; at the same time he could love in secret."
+
+We discovered that, like Pitt, who made England his wife, Marcas bore
+France in his heart; he idolized his country; he had not a thought that
+was not for his native land. His fury at feeling that he had in his
+hands the remedy for the evils which so deeply saddened him, and could
+not apply it, ate into his soul, and this rage was increased by the
+inferiority of France at that time, as compared with Russia and England.
+France a third-rate power! This cry came up again and again in his
+conversation. The intestinal disorders of his country had entered into
+his soul. All the contests between the Court and the Chamber, showing,
+as they did, incessant change and constant vacillation, which must
+injure the prosperity of the country, he scoffed at as backstairs
+squabbles.
+
+"This is peace at the cost of the future," said he.
+
+
+
+One evening Juste and I were at work, sitting in perfect silence. Marcas
+had just risen to toil at his copying, for he had refused our assistance
+in spite of our most earnest entreaties. We had offered to take it in
+turns to copy a batch of manuscript, so that he should do but a third
+of his distasteful task; he had been quite angry, and we had ceased to
+insist.
+
+We heard the sound of gentlemanly boots in the passage, and raised our
+heads, looking at each other. There was a tap at Marcas' door--he never
+took the key out of the lock--and we heard the hero answer:
+
+"Come in." Then--"What, you here, monsieur?"
+
+"I, myself," replied the retired minister.
+
+It was the Diocletian of this unknown martyr.
+
+For some time he and our neighbor conversed in an undertone. Suddenly
+Marcas, whose voice had been heard but rarely, as is natural in a
+dialogue in which the applicant begins by setting forth the situation,
+broke out loudly in reply to some offer we had not overheard.
+
+"You would laugh at me for a fool," cried he, "if I took you at your
+word. Jesuits are a thing of the past, but Jesuitism is eternal. Your
+Machiavelism and your generosity are equally hollow and untrustworthy.
+You can make your own calculations, but who can calculate on you? Your
+Court is made up of owls who fear the light, of old men who quake in the
+presence of the young, or who simply disregard them. The Government is
+formed on the same pattern as the Court. You have hunted up the remains
+of the Empire, as the Restoration enlisted the Voltigeurs of Louis XIV.
+
+"Hitherto the evasions of cowardice have been taken for the manoeuvring
+of ability; but dangers will come, and the younger generation will rise
+as they did in 1790. They did grand things then.--Just now you change
+ministries as a sick man turns in his bed; these oscillations betray the
+weakness of the Government. You work on an underhand system of policy
+which will be turned against you, for France will be tired of your
+shuffling. France will not tell you that she is tired of you; a man
+never knows whence his ruin comes; it is the historian's task to find
+out; but you will undoubtedly perish as the reward of not having the
+youth of France to lend you its strength and energy; for having hated
+really capable men; for not having lovingly chosen them from this noble
+generation; for having in all cases preferred mediocrity.
+
+"You have come to ask my support, but you are an atom in that decrepit
+heap which is made hideous by self-interest, which trembles and squirms,
+and, because it is so mean, tries to make France mean too. My strong
+nature, my ideas, would work like poison in you; twice you have tricked
+me, twice have I overthrown you. If we unite a third time, it must be
+a very serious matter. I should kill myself if I allowed myself to be
+duped; for I should be to blame, not you."
+
+Then we heard the humblest entreaties, the most fervent adjuration,
+not to deprive the country of such superior talents. The man spoke of
+patriotism, and Marcas uttered a significant "_Ouh! ouh!_" He laughed at
+his would-be patron. Then the statesman was more explicit; he bowed to
+the superiority of his erewhile counselor; he pledged himself to enable
+Marcas to remain in office, to be elected deputy; then he offered him a
+high appointment, promising him that he, the speaker, would thenceforth
+be the subordinate of a man whose subaltern he was only worthy to be.
+He was in the newly-formed ministry, and he would not return to power
+unless Marcas had a post in proportion to his merit; he had already made
+it a condition, Marcas had been regarded as indispensable.
+
+Marcas refused.
+
+"I have never before been in a position to keep my promises; here is an
+opportunity of proving myself faithful to my word, and you fail me."
+
+To this Marcas made no reply. The boots were again audible in the
+passage on the way to the stairs.
+
+"Marcas! Marcas!" we both cried, rushing into his room. "Why refuse? He
+really meant it. His offers are very handsome; at any rate, go to see
+the ministers."
+
+In a twinkling, we had given Marcas a hundred reasons. The minister's
+voice was sincere; without seeing him, we had felt sure that he was
+honest.
+
+"I have no clothes," replied Marcas.
+
+"Rely on us," said Juste, with a glance at me.
+
+Marcas had the courage to trust us; a light flashed in his eye, he
+pushed his fingers through his hair, lifting it from his forehead with
+a gesture that showed some confidence in his luck and when he had thus
+unveiled his face, so to speak, we saw in him a man absolutely unknown
+to us--Marcas sublime, Marcas in his power! His mind was in its
+element--the bird restored to the free air, the fish to the water, the
+horse galloping across the plain.
+
+It was transient. His brow clouded again, he had, it would seem, a
+vision of his fate. Halting doubt had followed close on the heels of
+white-winged hope.
+
+We left him to himself.
+
+"Now, then," said I to the Doctor, "we have given our word; how are we
+to keep it?"
+
+"We will sleep upon it," said Juste, "and to-morrow morning we will talk
+it over."
+
+Next morning we went for a walk in the Luxembourg.
+
+We had had time to think over the incident of the past night, and were
+both equally surprised at the lack of address shown by Marcas in the
+minor difficulties of life--he, a man who never saw any difficulties in
+the solution of the hardest problems of abstract or practical politics.
+But these elevated characters can all be tripped up on a grain of sand,
+and will, like the grandest enterprise, miss fire for want of a thousand
+francs. It is the old story of Napoleon, who, for lack of a pair of
+boots, did not set out for India.
+
+"Well, what have you hit upon?" asked Juste.
+
+"I have thought of a way to get him a complete outfit."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"From Humann."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Humann, my boy, never goes to his customers--his customers go to him;
+so that he does not know whether I am rich or poor. He only knows that I
+dress well and look decent in the clothes he makes for me. I shall tell
+him that an uncle of mine has dropped in from the country, and that his
+indifference in matters of dress is quite a discredit to me in the upper
+circles where I am trying to find a wife.--It will not be Humann if he
+sends in his bill before three months."
+
+The Doctor thought this a capital idea for a vaudeville, but poor enough
+in real life, and doubted my success. But I give you my word of honor,
+Humann dressed Marcas, and, being an artist, turned him out as a
+political personage ought to be dressed.
+
+Juste lent Marcas two hundred francs in gold, the product of two watches
+bought on credit, and pawned at the Mont-de-Piete. For my part, I had
+said nothing of the six shirts and all necessary linen, which cost me
+no more than the pleasure of asking for them from a forewoman in a shop
+whom I had treated to Musard's during the carnival.
+
+Marcas accepted everything, thanking us no more than he ought. He only
+inquired as to the means by which we had got possession of such riches,
+and we made him laugh for the last time. We looked on our Marcas as
+shipowners, when they have exhausted their credit and every resource
+at their command it fit out a vessel, must look on it as it puts out to
+sea.
+
+Here Charles was silent; he seemed crushed by his memories.
+
+"Well," cried the audience, "and what happened?"
+
+"I will tell you in a few words--for this is not romance--it is
+history."
+
+We saw no more of Marcas. The administration lasted for three months; it
+fell at the end of the session. Then Marcas came back to us, worked to
+death. He had sounded the crater of power; he came away from it with the
+beginnings of brain fever. The disease made rapid progress; we nursed
+him. Juste at once called in the chief physician of the hospital where
+he was working as house-surgeon. I was then living alone in our room,
+and I was the most attentive attendant; but care and science alike were
+in vain. By the month of January, 1838, Marcas himself felt that he had
+but a few days to live.
+
+The man whose soul and brain he had been for six months never even sent
+to inquire after him. Marcas expressed the greatest contempt for the
+Government; he seemed to doubt what the fate of France might be, and
+it was this doubt that had made him ill. He had, he thought, detected
+treason in the heart of power, not tangible, seizable treason, the
+result of facts, but the treason of a system, the subordination of
+national interests to selfish ends. His belief in the degradation of the
+country was enough to aggravate his complaint.
+
+I myself was witness to the proposals made to him by one of the leaders
+of the antagonistic party which he had fought against. His hatred of
+the men he had tried to serve was so virulent, that he would gladly have
+joined the coalition that was about to be formed among certain ambitious
+spirits who, at least, had one idea in common--that of shaking off the
+yoke of the Court. But Marcas could only reply to the envoy in the words
+of the Hotel de Ville:
+
+"It is too late!"
+
+Marcas did not leave money enough to pay for his funeral. Juste and I
+had great difficulty in saving him from the ignominy of a pauper's bier,
+and we alone followed the coffin of Z. Marcas, which was dropped into
+the common grave of the cemetery of Mont-Parnasse.
+
+
+
+We looked sadly at each other as we listened to this tale, the last we
+heard from the lips of Charles Rabourdin the day before he embarked at
+le Havre on a brig that was to convey him to the islands of Malay. We
+all knew more than one Marcas, more than one victim of his devotion to a
+party, repaid by betrayal or neglect.
+
+
+LES JARDIES, May 1840.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personage appears in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+     Marcas, Zephirin
+       A Prince of Bohemia
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Z. Marcas, by Honore de Balzac
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK Z. MARCAS ***
+
+***** This file should be named 1841.txt or 1841.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/4/1841/
+
+Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/1841.zip b/1841.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a257982
--- /dev/null
+++ b/1841.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9bc6b7c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #1841 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1841)
diff --git a/old/20051120-1841-h.zip b/old/20051120-1841-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..526f03a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/20051120-1841-h.zip
diff --git a/old/20051120-1841.txt b/old/20051120-1841.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a65fc9f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/20051120-1841.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,1507 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Z. Marcas, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
+
+
+Title: Z. Marcas
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Clara Bell and others
+
+Release Date: November 20, 2005 [EBook #1841]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK Z. MARCAS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny; and John Bickers
+
+
+
+
+
+                             Z. MARCAS
+
+                                 BY
+
+                          HONORE DE BALZAC
+
+
+
+                           Translated by
+                       Clara Bell and others
+
+
+
+
+                             DEDICATION
+
+  To His Highness Count William of Wurtemberg, as a token of the
+  Author's respectful gratitude.
+
+                                                      DE BALZAC.
+
+
+
+
+                             Z. MARCAS
+
+
+
+I never saw anybody, not even among the most remarkable men of the
+day, whose appearance was so striking as this man's; the study of his
+countenance at first gave me a feeling of great melancholy, and at
+last produced an almost painful impression.
+
+There was a certain harmony between the man and his name. The Z.
+preceding Marcas, which was seen on the addresses of his letters, and
+which he never omitted from his signature, as the last letter of the
+alphabet, suggested some mysterious fatality.
+
+MARCAS! say this two-syllabled name again and again; do you not feel
+as if it had some sinister meaning? Does it not seem to you that its
+owner must be doomed to martyrdom? Though foreign, savage, the name
+has a right to be handed down to posterity; it is well constructed,
+easily pronounced, and has the brevity that beseems a famous name. Is
+it not pleasant as well as odd? But does it not sound unfinished?
+
+I will not take it upon myself to assert that names have no influence
+on the destiny of men. There is a certain secret and inexplicable
+concord or a visible discord between the events of a man's life and
+his name which is truly surprising; often some remote but very real
+correlation is revealed. Our globe is round; everything is linked to
+everything else. Some day perhaps we shall revert to the occult
+sciences.
+
+Do you not discern in that letter Z an adverse influence? Does it not
+prefigure the wayward and fantastic progress of a storm-tossed life?
+What wind blew on that letter, which, whatever language we find it in,
+begins scarcely fifty words? Marcas' name was Zephirin; Saint Zephirin
+is highly venerated in Brittany, and Marcas was a Breton.
+
+Study the name once more: Z Marcas! The man's whole life lies in this
+fantastic juxtaposition of seven letters; seven! the most significant
+of all the cabalistic numbers. And he died at five-and-thirty, so his
+life extended over seven lustres.
+
+Marcas! Does it not hint of some precious object that is broken with a
+fall, with or without a crash?
+
+
+
+I had finished studying the law in Paris in 1836. I lived at that time
+in the Rue Corneille in a house where none but students came to lodge,
+one of those large houses where there is a winding staircase quite at
+the back lighted below from the street, higher up by borrowed lights,
+and at the top by a skylight. There were forty furnished rooms
+--furnished as students' rooms are! What does youth demand more than
+was here supplied? A bed, a few chairs, a chest of drawers, a
+looking-glass, and a table. As soon as the sky is blue the student
+opens his window.
+
+But in this street there are no fair neighbors to flirt with. In front
+is the Odeon, long since closed, presenting a wall that is beginning
+to go black, its tiny gallery windows and its vast expanse of slate
+roof. I was not rich enough to have a good room; I was not even rich
+enough to have a room to myself. Juste and I shared a double-bedded
+room on the fifth floor.
+
+On our side of the landing there were but two rooms--ours and a
+smaller one, occupied by Z. Marcas, our neighbor. For six months Juste
+and I remained in perfect ignorance of the fact. The old woman who
+managed the house had indeed told us that the room was inhabited, but
+she had added that we should not be disturbed, that the occupant was
+exceedingly quiet. In fact, for those six months, we never met our
+fellow-lodger, and we never heard a sound in his room, in spite of the
+thinness of the partition that divided us--one of those walls of lath
+and plaster which are common in Paris houses.
+
+Our room, a little over seven feet high, was hung with a vile cheap
+paper sprigged with blue. The floor was painted, and knew nothing of
+the polish given by the _frotteur's_ brush. By our beds there was only
+a scrap of thin carpet. The chimney opened immediately to the roof,
+and smoked so abominably that we were obliged to provide a stove at
+our own expense. Our beds were mere painted wooden cribs like those in
+schools; on the chimney shelf there were but two brass candlesticks,
+with or without tallow candles in them, and our two pipes with some
+tobacco in a pouch or strewn abroad, also the little piles of
+cigar-ash left there by our visitors or ourselves.
+
+A pair of calico curtains hung from the brass window rods, and on each
+side of the window was a small bookcase in cherry-wood, such as every
+one knows who has stared into the shop windows of the Quartier Latin,
+and in which we kept the few books necessary for our studies.
+
+The ink in the inkstand was always in the state of lava congealed in
+the crater of a volcano. May not any inkstand nowadays become a
+Vesuvius? The pens, all twisted, served to clean the stems of our
+pipes; and, in opposition to all the laws of credit, paper was even
+scarcer than coin.
+
+How can young men be expected to stay at home in such furnished
+lodgings? The students studied in the cafes, the theatre, the
+Luxembourg gardens, in _grisettes'_ rooms, even in the law schools
+--anywhere rather than in their horrible rooms--horrible for purposes
+of study, delightful as soon as they were used for gossiping and
+smoking in. Put a cloth on the table, and the impromptu dinner sent
+in from the best eating-house in the neighborhood--places for four
+--two of them in petticoats--show a lithograph of this "Interior"
+to the veriest bigot, and she will be bound to smile.
+
+We thought only of amusing ourselves. The reason for our dissipation
+lay in the most serious facts of the politics of the time. Juste and I
+could not see any room for us in the two professions our parents
+wished us to take up. There are a hundred doctors, a hundred lawyers,
+for one that is wanted. The crowd is choking these two paths which are
+supposed to lead to fortune, but which are merely two arenas; men kill
+each other there, fighting, not indeed with swords or fire-arms, but
+with intrigue and calumny, with tremendous toil, campaigns in the
+sphere of the intellect as murderous as those in Italy were to the
+soldiers of the Republic. In these days, when everything is an
+intellectual competition, a man must be able to sit forty-eight hours
+on end in his chair before a table, as a General could remain for two
+days on horseback and in his saddle.
+
+The throng of aspirants has necessitated a division of the Faculty of
+Medicine into categories. There is the physician who writes and the
+physician who practises, the political physician, and the physician
+militant--four different ways of being a physician, four classes
+already filled up. As to the fifth class, that of physicians who sell
+remedies, there is such a competition that they fight each other with
+disgusting advertisements on the walls of Paris.
+
+In all the law courts there are almost as many lawyers as there are
+cases. The pleader is thrown back on journalism, on politics, on
+literature. In fact, the State, besieged for the smallest appointments
+under the law, has ended by requiring that the applicants should have
+some little fortune. The pear-shaped head of the grocer's son is
+selected in preference to the square skull of a man of talent who has
+not a sou. Work as he will, with all his energy, a young man, starting
+from zero, may at the end of ten years find himself below the point he
+set out from. In these days, talent must have the good luck which
+secures success to the most incapable; nay, more, if it scorns the
+base compromises which insure advancement to crawling mediocrity, it
+will never get on.
+
+If we thoroughly knew our time, we also knew ourselves, and we
+preferred the indolence of dreamers to aimless stir, easy-going
+pleasure to the useless toil which would have exhausted our courage
+and worn out the edge of our intelligence. We had analyzed social life
+while smoking, laughing, and loafing. But, though elaborated by such
+means as these, our reflections were none the less judicious and
+profound.
+
+While we were fully conscious of the slavery to which youth is
+condemned, we were amazed at the brutal indifference of the
+authorities to everything connected with intellect, thought, and
+poetry. How often have Juste and I exchanged glances when reading the
+papers as we studied political events, or the debates in the Chamber,
+and discussed the proceedings of a Court whose wilful ignorance could
+find no parallel but in the platitude of the courtiers, the mediocrity
+of the men forming the hedge round the newly-restored throne, all
+alike devoid of talent or breadth of view, of distinction or learning,
+of influence or dignity!
+
+Could there be a higher tribute to the Court of Charles X. than the
+present Court, if Court it may be called? What a hatred of the country
+may be seen in the naturalization of vulgar foreigners, devoid of
+talent, who are enthroned in the Chamber of Peers! What a perversion
+of justice! What an insult to the distinguished youth, the ambitions
+native to the soil of France! We looked upon these things as upon a
+spectacle, and groaned over them, without taking upon ourselves to
+act.
+
+Juste, whom no one ever sought, and who never sought any one, was, at
+five-and-twenty, a great politician, a man with a wonderful aptitude
+for apprehending the correlation between remote history and the facts
+of the present and of the future. In 1831, he told me exactly what
+would and did happen--the murders, the conspiracies, the ascendency of
+the Jews, the difficulty of doing anything in France, the scarcity of
+talent in the higher circles, and the abundance of intellect in the
+lowest ranks, where the finest courage is smothered under cigar ashes.
+
+What was to become of him? His parents wished him to be a doctor. But
+if he were a doctor, must he not wait twenty years for a practice? You
+know what he did? No? Well, he is a doctor; but he left France, he is
+in Asia. At this moment he is perhaps sinking under fatigue in a
+desert, or dying of the lashes of a barbarous horde--or perhaps he is
+some Indian prince's prime minister.
+
+Action is my vocation. Leaving a civil college at the age of twenty,
+the only way for me to enter the army was by enlisting as a common
+soldier; so, weary of the dismal outlook that lay before a lawyer, I
+acquired the knowledge needed for a sailor. I imitate Juste, and keep
+out of France, where men waste, in the struggle to make way, the
+energy needed for the noblest works. Follow my example, friends; I am
+going where a man steers his destiny as he pleases.
+
+These great resolutions were formed in the little room in the
+lodging-house in the Rue Corneille, in spite of our haunting the Bal
+Musard, flirting with girls of the town, and leading a careless and
+apparently reckless life. Our plans and arguments long floated in the
+air.
+
+Marcas, our neighbor, was in some degree the guide who led us to the
+margin of the precipice or the torrent, who made us sound it, and
+showed us beforehand what our fate would be if we let ourselves fall
+into it. It was he who put us on our guard against the time-bargains a
+man makes with poverty under the sanction of hope, by accepting
+precarious situations whence he fights the battle, carried along by
+the devious tide of Paris--that great harlot who takes you up or
+leaves you stranded, smiles or turns her back on you with equal
+readiness, wears out the strongest will in vexatious waiting, and
+makes misfortune wait on chance.
+
+
+
+At our first meeting, Marcas, as it were, dazzled us. On our return
+from the schools, a little before the dinner-hour, we were accustomed
+to go up to our room and remain there a while, either waiting for the
+other, to learn whether there were any change in our plans for the
+evening. One day, at four o'clock, Juste met Marcas on the stairs, and
+I saw him in the street. It was in the month of November, and Marcas
+had no cloak; he wore shoes with heavy soles, corduroy trousers, and a
+blue double-breasted coat buttoned to the throat, which gave a
+military air to his broad chest, all the more so because he wore a
+black stock. The costume was not in itself extraordinary, but it
+agreed well with the man's mien and countenance.
+
+My first impression on seeing him was neither surprise, nor distress,
+nor interest, nor pity, but curiosity mingled with all these feelings.
+He walked slowly, with a step that betrayed deep melancholy, his head
+forward with a stoop, but not bent like that of a conscience-stricken
+man. That head, large and powerful, which might contain the treasures
+necessary for a man of the highest ambition, looked as if it were
+loaded with thought; it was weighted with grief of mind, but there was
+no touch of remorse in his expression. As to his face, it may be
+summed up in a word. A common superstition has it that every human
+countenance resembles some animal. The animal for Marcas was the lion.
+His hair was like a mane, his nose was sort and flat; broad and dented
+at the tip like a lion's; his brow, like a lion's, was strongly marked
+with a deep median furrow, dividing two powerful bosses. His high,
+hairy cheek-bones, all the more prominent because his cheeks were so
+thin, his enormous mouth and hollow jaws, were accentuated by lines of
+tawny shadows. This almost terrible countenance seemed illuminated by
+two lamps--two eyes, black indeed, but infinitely sweet, calm and
+deep, full of thought. If I may say so, those eyes had a humiliated
+expression.
+
+Marcas was afraid of looking directly at others, not for himself, but
+for those on whom his fascinating gaze might rest; he had a power, and
+he shunned using it; he would spare those he met, and he feared
+notice. This was not from modesty, but from resignation founded on
+reason, which had demonstrated the immediate inutility of his gifts,
+the impossibility of entering and living in the sphere for which he
+was fitted. Those eyes could at times flash lightnings. From those
+lips a voice of thunder must surely proceed; it was a mouth like
+Mirabeau's.
+
+"I have seen such a grand fellow in the street," said I to Juste on
+coming in.
+
+"It must be our neighbor," replied Juste, who described, in fact, the
+man I had just met. "A man who lives like a wood-louse would be sure
+to look like that," he added.
+
+"What dejection and what dignity!"
+
+"One is the consequence of the other."
+
+"What ruined hopes! What schemes and failures!"
+
+"Seven leagues of ruins! Obelisks--palaces--towers!--The ruins of
+Palmyra in the desert!" said Juste, laughing.
+
+So we called him the Ruins of Palmyra.
+
+As we went out to dine at the wretched eating-house in the Rue de la
+Harpe to which we subscribed, we asked the name of Number 37, and then
+heard the weird name Z. Marcas. Like boys, as we were, we repeated it
+more than a hundred times with all sorts of comments, absurd or
+melancholy, and the name lent itself to a jest. Juste would fire off
+the Z like a rocket rising, _z-z-z-z-zed_; and after pronouncing the
+first syllable of the name with great importance, depicted a fall by
+the dull brevity of the second.
+
+"Now, how and where does the man live?"
+
+From this query, to the innocent espionage of curiosity there was no
+pause but that required for carrying out our plan. Instead of
+loitering about the streets, we both came in, each armed with a novel.
+We read with our ears open. And in the perfect silence of our attic
+rooms, we heard the even, dull sound of a sleeping man breathing.
+
+"He is asleep," said I to Juste, noticing this fact.
+
+"At seven o'clock!" replied the Doctor.
+
+This was the name by which I called Juste, and he called me the Keeper
+of the Seals.
+
+"A man must be wretched indeed to sleep as much as our neighbor!"
+cried I, jumping on to the chest of drawers with a knife in my hand,
+to which a corkscrew was attached.
+
+I made a round hole at the top of the partition, about as big as a
+five-sou piece. I had forgotten that there would be no light in the
+room, and on putting my eye to the hole, I saw only darkness. At about
+one in the morning, when we had finished our books and were about to
+undress, we heard a noise in our neighbor's room. He got up, struck a
+match, and lighted his dip. I got on to the drawers again, and I then
+saw Marcas seated at his table and copying law-papers.
+
+His room was about half the size of ours; the bed stood in a recess by
+the door, for the passage ended there, and its breadth was added to
+his garret; but the ground on which the house was built was evidently
+irregular, for the party-wall formed an obtuse angle, and the room was
+not square. There was no fireplace, only a small earthenware stove,
+white blotched with green, of which the pipe went up through the roof.
+The window, in the skew side of the room, had shabby red curtains. The
+furniture consisted of an armchair, a table, a chair, and a wretched
+bed-table. A cupboard in the wall held his clothes. The wall-paper was
+horrible; evidently only a servant had ever been lodged there before
+Marcas.
+
+"What is to be seen?" asked the Doctor as I got down.
+
+"Look for yourself," said I.
+
+At nine next morning, Marcas was in bed. He had breakfasted off a
+saveloy; we saw on a plate, with some crumbs of bread, the remains of
+that too familiar delicacy. He was asleep; he did not wake till
+eleven. He then set to work again on the copy he had begun the night
+before, which was lying on the table.
+
+On going downstairs we asked the price of that room, and were told
+fifteen francs a month.
+
+In the course of a few days, we were fully informed as to the mode of
+life of Z. Marcas. He did copying, at so much a sheet no doubt, for a
+law-writer who lived in the courtyard of the Sainte-Chapelle. He
+worked half the night; after sleeping from six till ten, he began
+again and wrote till three. Then he went out to take the copy home
+before dinner, which he ate at Mizerai's in the Rue Michel-le-Comte,
+at a cost of nine sous, and came in to bed at six o'clock. It became
+known to us that Marcas did not utter fifteen sentences in a month; he
+never talked to anybody, nor said a word to himself in his dreadful
+garret.
+
+"The Ruins of Palmyra are terribly silent!" said Juste.
+
+This taciturnity in a man whose appearance was so imposing was
+strangely significant. Sometimes when we met him, we exchanged glances
+full of meaning on both sides, but they never led to any advances.
+Insensibly this man became the object of our secret admiration, though
+we knew no reason for it. Did it lie in his secretly simple habits,
+his monastic regularity, his hermit-like frugality, his idiotically
+mechanical labor, allowing his mind to remain neuter or to work on his
+own lines, seeming to us to hint at an expectation of some stroke of
+good luck, or at some foregone conclusion as to his life?
+
+After wandering for a long time among the Ruins of Palmyra, we forgot
+them--we were young! Then came the Carnival, the Paris Carnival,
+which, henceforth, will eclipse the old Carnival of Venice, unless
+some ill-advised Prefect of Police is antagonistic.
+
+Gambling ought to be allowed during the Carnival; but the stupid
+moralists who have had gambling suppressed are inert financiers, and
+this indispensable evil will be re-established among us when it is
+proved that France leaves millions at the German tables.
+
+This splendid Carnival brought us to utter penury, as it does every
+student. We got rid of every object of luxury; we sold our second
+coats, our second boots, our second waistcoats--everything of which we
+had a duplicate, except our friend. We ate bread and cold sausages; we
+looked where we walked; we had set to work in earnest. We owed two
+months' rent, and were sure of having a bill from the porter for sixty
+or eighty items each, and amounting to forty or fifty francs. We made
+no noise, and did not laugh as we crossed the little hall at the
+bottom of the stairs; we commonly took it at a flying leap from the
+lowest step into the street. On the day when we first found ourselves
+bereft of tobacco for our pipes, it struck us that for some days we
+had been eating bread without any kind of butter.
+
+Great was our distress.
+
+"No tobacco!" said the Doctor.
+
+"No cloak!" said the Keeper of the Seals.
+
+"Ah, you rascals, you would dress as the postillion de Longjumeau, you
+would appear as Debardeurs, sup in the morning, and breakfast at night
+at Very's--sometimes even at the _Rocher de Cancale_.--Dry bread for
+you, my boys! Why," said I, in a big bass voice, "you deserve to sleep
+under the bed, you are not worthy to lie in it--"
+
+"Yes, yes; but, Keeper of the Seals, there is no more tobacco!" said
+Juste.
+
+"It is high time to write home, to our aunts, our mothers, and our
+sisters, to tell them we have no underlinen left, that the wear and
+tear of Paris would ruin garments of wire. Then we will solve an
+elegant chemical problem by transmuting linen into silver."
+
+"But we must live till we get the answer."
+
+"Well, I will go and bring out a loan among such of our friends as may
+still have some capital to invest."
+
+"And how much will you find?"
+
+"Say ten francs!" replied I with pride.
+
+It was midnight. Marcas had heard everything. He knocked at our door.
+
+"Messieurs," said he, "here is some tobacco; you can repay me on the
+first opportunity."
+
+We were struck, not by the offer, which we accepted, but by the rich,
+deep, full voice in which it was made; a tone only comparable to the
+lowest string of Paganini's violin. Marcas vanished without waiting
+for our thanks.
+
+Juste and I looked at each other without a word. To be rescued by a
+man evidently poorer than ourselves! Juste sat down to write to every
+member of his family, and I went off to effect a loan. I brought in
+twenty francs lent me by a fellow-provincial. In that evil but happy
+day gambling was still tolerated, and in its lodes, as hard as the
+rocky ore of Brazil, young men, by risking a small sum, had a chance
+of winning a few gold pieces. My friend, too, had some Turkish tobacco
+brought home from Constantinople by a sailor, and he gave me quite as
+much as we had taken from Z. Marcas. I conveyed the splendid cargo
+into port, and we went in triumph to repay our neighbor with a tawny
+wig of Turkish tobacco for his dark _Caporal_.
+
+"You are determined not to be my debtors," said he. "You are giving me
+gold for copper.--You are boys--good boys----"
+
+The sentences, spoken in varying tones, were variously emphasized. The
+words were nothing, but the expression!--That made us friends of ten
+years' standing at once.
+
+Marcas, on hearing us coming, had covered up his papers; we understood
+that it would be taking a liberty to allude to his means of
+subsistence, and felt ashamed of having watched him. His cupboard
+stood open; in it there were two shirts, a white necktie and a razor.
+The razor made me shudder. A looking-glass, worth five francs perhaps,
+hung near the window.
+
+The man's few and simple movements had a sort of savage grandeur. The
+Doctor and I looked at each other, wondering what we could say in
+reply. Juste, seeing that I was speechless, asked Marcas jestingly:
+
+"You cultivate literature, monsieur?"
+
+"Far from it!" replied Marcas. "I should not be so wealthy."
+
+"I fancied," said I, "that poetry alone, in these days, was amply
+sufficient to provide a man with lodgings as bad as ours."
+
+My remark made Marcas smile, and the smile gave a charm to his yellow
+face.
+
+"Ambition is not a less severe taskmaster to those who fail," said he.
+"You, who are beginning life, walk in the beaten paths. Never dream of
+rising superior, you will be ruined!"
+
+"You advise us to stay just as we are?" said the Doctor, smiling.
+
+There is something so infectious and childlike in the pleasantries of
+youth, that Marcas smiled again in reply.
+
+"What incidents can have given you this detestable philosophy?" asked
+I.
+
+"I forgot once more that chance is the result of an immense equation
+of which we know not all the factors. When we start from zero to work
+up to the unit, the chances are incalculable. To ambitious men Paris
+is an immense roulette table, and every young man fancies he can hit
+on a successful progression of numbers."
+
+He offered us the tobacco I had brought that we might smoke with him;
+the Doctor went to fetch our pipes; Marcas filled his, and then he
+came to sit in our room, bringing the tobacco with him, since there
+were but two chairs in his. Juste, as brisk as a squirrel, ran out,
+and returned with a boy carrying three bottles of Bordeaux, some Brie
+cheese, and a loaf.
+
+"Hah!" said I to myself, "fifteen francs," and I was right to a sou.
+
+Juste gravely laid five francs on the chimney-shelf.
+
+There are immeasurable differences between the gregarious man and the
+man who lives closest to nature. Toussaint Louverture, after he was
+caught, died without speaking a word. Napoleon, transplanted to a
+rock, talked like a magpie--he wanted to account for himself. Z.
+Marcas erred in the same way, but for our benefit only. Silence in all
+its majesty is to be found only in the savage. There is never a
+criminal who, though he might let his secrets fall with his head into
+the basket of sawdust does not feel the purely social impulse to tell
+them to somebody.
+
+Nay, I am wrong. We have seen one Iroquois of the Faubourg
+Saint-Marceau who raised the Parisian to the level of the natural savage
+--a republican, a conspirator, a Frenchman, an old man, who outdid all
+we have heard of Negro determination, and all that Cooper tells us of
+the tenacity and coolness of the Redskins under defeat. Morey, the
+Guatimozin of the "Mountain," preserved an attitude unparalleled in
+the annals of European justice.
+
+
+
+This is what Marcas told us during the small hours, sandwiching his
+discourse with slices of bread spread with cheese and washed down with
+wine. All the tobacco was burned out. Now and then the hackney coaches
+clattering across the Place de l'Odeon, or the omnibuses toiling past,
+sent up their dull rumbling, as if to remind us that Paris was still
+close to us.
+
+His family lived at Vitre; his father and mother had fifteen hundred
+francs a year in the funds. He had received an education gratis in a
+Seminary, but had refused to enter the priesthood. He felt in himself
+the fires of immense ambition, and had come to Paris on foot at the
+age of twenty, the possessor of two hundred francs. He had studied the
+law, working in an attorney's office, where he had risen to be
+superior clerk. He had taken his doctor's degree in law, had mastered
+the old and modern codes, and could hold his own with the most famous
+pleaders. He had studied the law of nations, and was familiar with
+European treaties and international practice. He had studied men and
+things in five capitals--London, Berlin, Vienna, Petersburg, and
+Constantinople.
+
+No man was better informed than he as to the rules of the Chamber. For
+five years he had been reporter of the debates for a daily paper. He
+spoke extempore and admirably, and could go on for a long time in that
+deep, appealing voice which had struck us to the soul. Indeed, he
+proved by the narrative of his life that he was a great orator, a
+concise orator, serious and yet full of piercing eloquence; he
+resembled Berryer in his fervor and in the impetus which commands the
+sympathy of the masses, and was like Thiers in refinement and skill;
+but he would have been less diffuse, less in difficulties for a
+conclusion. He had intended to rise rapidly to power without burdening
+himself first with the doctrines necessary to begin with, for a man in
+opposition, but an incubus later to the statesman.
+
+Marcas had learned everything that a real statesman should know;
+indeed, his amazement was considerable when he had occasion to discern
+the utter ignorance of men who have risen to the administration of
+public affairs in France. Though in him it was vocation that had led
+to study, nature had been generous and bestowed all that cannot be
+acquired--keen perceptions, self-command, a nimble wit, rapid
+judgment, decisiveness, and, what is the genius of these men,
+fertility in resource.
+
+By the time when Marcas thought himself duly equipped, France was torn
+by intestine divisions arising from the triumph of the House of
+Orleans over the elder branch of the Bourbons.
+
+The field of political warfare is evidently changed. Civil war
+henceforth cannot last for long, and will not be fought out in the
+provinces. In France such struggles will be of brief duration and at
+the seat of government; and the battle will be the close of the moral
+contest which will have been brought to an issue by superior minds.
+This state of things will continue so long as France has her present
+singular form of government, which has no analogy with that of any
+other country; for there is no more resemblance between the English
+and the French constitutions than between the two lands.
+
+Thus Marcas' place was in the political press. Being poor and unable
+to secure his election, he hoped to make a sudden appearance. He
+resolved on making the greatest possible sacrifice for a man of
+superior intellect, to work as a subordinate to some rich and
+ambitious deputy. Like a second Bonaparte, he sought his Barras; the
+new Colbert hoped to find a Mazarin. He did immense services, and he
+did them then and there; he assumed no importance, he made no boast,
+he did not complain of ingratitude. He did them in the hope that his
+patron would put him in a position to be elected deputy; Marcas wished
+for nothing but a loan that might enable him to purchase a house in
+Paris, the qualification required by law. Richard III. asked for
+nothing but his horse.
+
+In three years Marcas had made his man--one of the fifty supposed
+great statesmen who are the battledores with which two cunning players
+toss the ministerial portfolios exactly as the man behind the
+puppet-show hits Punch against the constable in his street theatre, and
+counts on always getting paid. This man existed only by Marcas, but he
+had just brains enough to appreciate the value of his "ghost" and to
+know that Marcas, if he ever came to the front, would remain there,
+would be indispensable, while he himself would be translated to the
+polar zone of Luxembourg. So he determined to put insurmountable
+obstacles in the way of his Mentor's advancement, and hid his purpose
+under the semblance of the utmost sincerity. Like all mean men, he
+could dissimulate to perfection, and he soon made progress in the ways
+of ingratitude, for he felt that he must kill Marcas, not to be killed
+by him. These two men, apparently so united, hated each other as soon
+as one had deceived the other.
+
+The politician was made one of a ministry; Marcas remained in the
+opposition to hinder his man from being attacked; nay, by skilful
+tactics he won him the applause of the opposition. To excuse himself
+for not rewarding his subaltern, the chief pointed out the
+impossibility of finding a place suddenly for a man on the other side,
+without a great deal of manoeuvring. Marcas had hoped confidently for
+a place to enable him to marry, and thus acquire the qualification he
+so ardently desired. He was two-and-thirty, and the Chamber ere long
+must be dissolved. Having detected his man in this flagrant act of bad
+faith, he overthrew him, or at any rate contributed largely to his
+overthrow, and covered him with mud.
+
+A fallen minister, if he is to rise again to power, must show that he
+is to be feared; this man, intoxicated by Royal glibness, had fancied
+that his position would be permanent; he acknowledged his
+delinquencies; besides confessing them, he did Marcas a small money
+service, for Marcas had got into debt. He subsidized the newspaper on
+which Marcas worked, and made him the manager of it.
+
+Though he despised the man, Marcas, who, practically, was being
+subsidized too, consented to take the part of the fallen minister.
+Without unmasking at once all the batteries of his superior intellect,
+Marcas came a little further than before; he showed half his
+shrewdness. The Ministry lasted only a hundred and eighty days; it was
+swallowed up. Marcas had put himself into communication with certain
+deputies, had moulded them like dough, leaving each impressed with a
+high opinion of his talent; his puppet again became a member of the
+Ministry, and then the paper was ministerial. The Ministry united the
+paper with another, solely to squeeze out Marcas, who in this fusion
+had to make way for a rich and insolent rival, whose name was well
+known, and who already had his foot in the stirrup.
+
+Marcas relapsed into utter destitution; his haughty patron well knew
+the depths into which he had cast him.
+
+Where was he to go? The ministerial papers, privily warned, would have
+nothing to say to him. The opposition papers did not care to admit him
+to their offices. Marcas could side neither with the Republicans nor
+with the Legitimists, two parties whose triumph would mean the
+overthrow of everything that now is.
+
+"Ambitious men like a fast hold on things," said he with a smile.
+
+He lived by writing a few articles on commercial affairs, and
+contributed to one of those encyclopedias brought out by speculation
+and not by learning. Finally a paper was founded, which was destined
+to live but two years, but which secured his services. From that
+moment he renewed his connection with the minister's enemies; he
+joined the party who were working for the fall of the Government; and
+as soon as his pickaxe had free play, it fell.
+
+This paper had now for six months ceased to exist; he had failed to
+find employment of any kind; he was spoken of as a dangerous man,
+calumny attacked him; he had unmasked a huge financial and mercantile
+job by a few articles and a pamphlet. He was known to be a mouthpiece
+of a banker who was said to have paid him largely, and from whom he
+was supposed to expect some patronage in return for his championship.
+Marcas, disgusted by men and things, worn out by five years of
+fighting, regarded as a free lance rather than as a great leader,
+crushed by the necessity of earning his daily bread, which hindered
+him from gaining ground, in despair at the influence exerted by money
+over mind, and given over to dire poverty, buried himself in a garret,
+to make thirty sous a day, the sum strictly answering to his needs.
+Meditation had leveled a desert all round him. He read the papers to
+be informed of what was going on. Pozzo di Borgo had once lived like
+this for some time.
+
+Marcas, no doubt, was planning a serious attack, accustoming himself
+to dissimulation, and punishing himself for his blunders by
+Pythagorean muteness. But he did not tell us the reasons for his
+conduct.
+
+It is impossible to give you an idea of the scenes of the highest
+comedy that lay behind this algebraic statement of his career; his
+useless patience dogging the footsteps of fortune, which presently
+took wings, his long tramps over the thorny brakes of Paris, his
+breathless chases as a petitioner, his attempts to win over fools; the
+schemes laid only to fail through the influence of some frivolous
+woman; the meetings with men of business who expected their capital to
+bring them places and a peerage, as well as large interest. Then the
+hopes rising in a towering wave only to break in foam on the shoal;
+the wonders wrought in reconciling adverse interests which, after
+working together for a week, fell asunder; the annoyance, a thousand
+times repeated, of seeing a dunce decorated with the Legion of Honor,
+and preferred, though as ignorant as a shop-boy, to a man of talent.
+Then, what Marcas called the stratagems of stupidity--you strike a
+man, and he seems convinced, he nods his head--everything is settled;
+next day, this india-rubber ball, flattened for a moment, has
+recovered itself in the course of the night; it is as full of wind as
+ever; you must begin all over again; and you go on till you understand
+that you are not dealing with a man, but with a lump of gum that loses
+shape in the sunshine.
+
+These thousand annoyances, this vast waste of human energy on barren
+spots, the difficulty of achieving any good, the incredible facility
+of doing mischief; two strong games played out, twice won, and then
+twice lost; the hatred of a statesman--a blockhead with a painted face
+and a wig, but in whom the world believed--all these things, great and
+small, had not crushed, but for the moment had dashed Marcas. In the
+days when money had come into his hands, his fingers had not clutched
+it; he had allowed himself the exquisite pleasure of sending it all to
+his family--to his sisters, his brothers, his old father. Like
+Napoleon in his fall, he asked for no more than thirty sous a day, and
+any man of energy can earn thirty sous for a day's work in Paris.
+
+When Marcas had finished the story of his life, intermingled with
+reflections, maxims, and observations, revealing him as a great
+politician, a few questions and answers on both sides as to the
+progress of affairs in France and in Europe were enough to prove to us
+that he was a real statesman; for a man may be quickly and easily
+judged when he can be brought on to the ground of immediate
+difficulties: there is a certain Shibboleth for men of superior
+talents, and we were of the tribe of modern Levites without belonging
+as yet to the Temple. As I have said, our frivolity covered certain
+purposes which Juste has carried out, and which I am about to execute.
+
+When we had done talking, we all three went out, cold as it was, to
+walk in the Luxembourg gardens till the dinner hour. In the course of
+that walk our conversation, grave throughout, turned on the painful
+aspects of the political situation. Each of us contributed his
+remarks, his comment, or his jest, a pleasantry or a proverb. This was
+no longer exclusively a discussion of life on the colossal scale just
+described by Marcas, the soldier of political warfare. Nor was it the
+distressful monologue of the wrecked navigator, stranded in a garret
+in the Hotel Corneille; it was a dialogue in which two well-informed
+young men, having gauged the times they lived in, were endeavoring,
+under the guidance of a man of talent, to gain some light on their own
+future prospects.
+
+"Why," asked Juste, "did you not wait patiently for an opportunity,
+and imitate the only man who has been able to keep the lead since the
+Revolution of July by holding his head above water?"
+
+"Have I not said that we never know where the roots of chance lie?
+Carrell was in identically the same position as the orator you speak
+of. That gloomy young man, of a bitter spirit, had a whole government
+in his head; the man of whom you speak had no idea beyond mounting on
+the crupper of every event. Of the two, Carrel was the better man.
+Well, one becomes a minister, Carrel remained a journalist; the
+incomplete but craftier man is living; Carrel is dead.
+
+"I may point out that your man has for fifteen years been making his
+way, and is but making it still. He may yet be caught and crushed
+between two cars full of intrigues on the highroad to power. He has no
+house; he has not the favor of the palace like Metternich; nor, like
+Villele, the protection of a compact majority.
+
+"I do not believe that the present state of things will last ten
+years longer. Hence, supposing I should have such poor good luck,
+I am already too late to avoid being swept away by the commotion
+I foresee. I should need to be established in a superior
+position."
+
+"What commotion?" asked Juste.
+
+"AUGUST, 1830," said Marcas in solemn tones, holding out his hand
+towards Paris; "AUGUST, the offspring of Youth which bound the
+sheaves, and of Intellect which had ripened the harvest, forgot to
+provide for Youth and Intellect.
+
+"Youth will explode like the boiler of a steam-engine. Youth has no
+outlet in France; it is gathering an avalanche of underrated
+capabilities, of legitimate and restless ambitions; young men are not
+marrying now; families cannot tell what to do with their children.
+What will the thunderclap be that will shake down these masses? I know
+not, but they will crash down into the midst of things, and overthrow
+everything. These are laws of hydrostatics which act on the human
+race; the Roman Empire had failed to understand them, and the Barbaric
+hordes came down.
+
+"The Barbaric hordes now are the intelligent class. The laws of
+overpressure are at this moment acting slowly and silently in our
+midst. The Government is the great criminal; it does not appreciate
+the two powers to which it owes everything; it has allowed its hands
+to be tied by the absurdities of the Contract; it is bound, ready to
+be the victim.
+
+"Louis XIV., Napoleon, England, all were or are eager for intelligent
+youth. In France the young are condemned by the new legislation, by
+the blundering principles of elective rights, by the unsoundness of
+the ministerial constitution.
+
+"Look at the elective Chamber; you will find no deputies of thirty;
+the youth of Richelieu and of Mazarin, of Turenne and of Colbert, of
+Pitt and of Saint-Just, of Napoleon and of Prince Metternich, would
+find no admission there; Burke, Sheridan, or Fox could not win seats.
+Even if political majority had been fixed at one-and-twenty, and
+eligibility had been relieved of every disabling qualification, the
+Departments would have returned the very same members, men devoid of
+political talent, unable to speak without murdering French grammar,
+and among whom, in ten years, scarcely one statesman has been found.
+
+"The causes of an impending event may be seen, but the event itself
+cannot be foretold. At this moment the youth of France is being driven
+into Republicanism, because it believes that the Republic would bring
+it emancipation. It will always remember the young representatives of
+the people and the young army leaders! The imprudence of the
+Government is only comparable to its avarice."
+
+That day left its echoes in our lives. Marcas confirmed us in our
+resolution to leave France, where young men of talent and energy are
+crushed under the weight of successful commonplace, envious, and
+insatiable middle age.
+
+We dined together in the Rue de la Harpe. We thenceforth felt for
+Marcas the most respectful affection; he gave us the most practical
+aid in the sphere of the mind. That man knew everything; he had
+studied everything. For us he cast his eye over the whole civilized
+world, seeking the country where openings would be at once the most
+abundant and the most favorable to the success of our plans. He
+indicated what should be the goal of our studies; he bid us make
+haste, explaining to us that time was precious, that emigration would
+presently begin, and that its effect would be to deprive France of the
+cream of its powers and of its youthful talent; that their
+intelligence, necessarily sharpened, would select the best places, and
+that the great thing was to be first in the field.
+
+Thenceforward, we often sat late at work under the lamp. Our generous
+instructor wrote some notes for our guidance--two pages for Juste and
+three for me--full of invaluable advice--the sort of information which
+experience alone can supply, such landmarks as only genius can place.
+In those papers, smelling of tobacco, and covered with writing so vile
+as to be almost hieroglyphic, there are suggestions for a fortune, and
+forecasts of unerring acumen. There are hints as to certain parts of
+America and Asia which have been fully justified, both before and
+since Juste and I could set out.
+
+Marcas, like us, was in the most abject poverty. He earned, indeed,
+his daily bread, but he had neither linen, clothes, nor shoes. He did
+not make himself out any better than he was; his dreams had been of
+luxury as well as of power. He did not admit that this was the real
+Marcas; he abandoned this person, indeed, to the caprices of life.
+What he lived by was the breath of ambition; he dreamed of revenge
+while blaming himself for yielding to so shallow a feeling. The true
+statesman ought, above all things, to be superior to vulgar passions;
+like the man of science. It was in these days of dire necessity that
+Marcas seemed to us so great--nay, so terrible; there was something
+awful in the gaze which saw another world than that which strikes the
+eye of ordinary men. To us he was a subject of contemplation and
+astonishment; for the young--which of us has not known it?--the young
+have a keen craving to admire; they love to attach themselves, and are
+naturally inclined to submit to the men they feel to be superior, as
+they are to devote themselves to a great cause.
+
+Our surprise was chiefly roused by his indifference in matters of
+sentiment; women had no place in his life. When we spoke of this
+matter, a perennial theme of conversation among Frenchmen, he simply
+remarked:
+
+"Gowns cost too much."
+
+He saw the look that passed between Juste and me, and went on:
+
+"Yes, far too much. The woman you buy--and she is the least expensive
+--takes a great deal of money. The woman who gives herself takes all
+your time! Woman extinguishes every energy, every ambition. Napoleon
+reduced her to what she should be. From that point of view, he really
+was great. He did not indulge such ruinous fancies of Louis XIV. and
+Louis XV.; at the same time he could love in secret."
+
+We discovered that, like Pitt, who made England is wife, Marcas bore
+France in his heart; he idolized his country; he had not a thought
+that was not for his native land. His fury at feeling that he had in
+his hands the remedy for the evils which so deeply saddened him, and
+could not apply it, ate into his soul, and this rage was increased by
+the inferiority of France at that time, as compared with Russia and
+England. France a third-rate power! This cry came up again and again
+in his conversation. The intestinal disorders of his country had
+entered into his soul. All the contests between the Court and the
+Chamber, showing, as they did, incessant change and constant
+vacillation, which must injure the prosperity of the country, he
+scoffed at as backstairs squabbles.
+
+"This is peace at the cost of the future," said he.
+
+
+
+One evening Juste and I were at work, sitting in perfect silence.
+Marcas had just risen to toil at his copying, for he had refused our
+assistance in spite of our most earnest entreaties. We had offered to
+take it in turns to copy a batch of manuscript, so that he should do
+but a third of his distasteful task; he had been quite angry, and we
+had ceased to insist.
+
+We heard the sound of gentlemanly boots in the passage, and raised our
+heads, looking at each other. There was a tap at Marcas' door--he
+never took the key out of the lock--and we heard the hero answer:
+
+"Come in." Then--"What, you here, monsieur?"
+
+"I, myself," replied the retired minister.
+
+It was the Diocletian of this unknown martyr.
+
+For some time he and our neighbor conversed in an undertone. Suddenly
+Marcas, whose voice had been heard but rarely, as is natural in a
+dialogue in which the applicant begins by setting forth the situation,
+broke out loudly in reply to some offer we had not overheard.
+
+"You would laugh at me for a fool," cried he, "if I took you at your
+word. Jesuits are a thing of the past, but Jesuitism is eternal. Your
+Machiavelism and your generosity are equally hollow and untrustworthy.
+You can make your own calculations, but who can calculate on you? Your
+Court is made up of owls who fear the light, of old men who quake in
+the presence of the young, or who simply disregard them. The
+Government is formed on the same pattern as the Court. You have hunted
+up the remains of the Empire, as the Restoration enlisted the
+Voltigeurs of Louis XIV.
+
+"Hitherto the evasions of cowardice have been taken for the
+manoeuvring of ability; but dangers will come, and the younger
+generation will rise as they did in 1790. They did grand things then.
+--Just now you change ministries as a sick man turns in his bed; these
+oscillations betray the weakness of the Government. You work on an
+underhand system of policy which will be turned against you, for
+France will be tired of your shuffling. France will not tell you that
+she is tired of you; a man never knows whence his ruin comes; it is
+the historian's task to find out; but you will undoubtedly perish as
+the reward of not having the youth of France to lend you its strength
+and energy; for having hated really capable men; for not having
+lovingly chosen them from this noble generation; for having in all
+cases preferred mediocrity.
+
+"You have come to ask my support, but you are an atom in that decrepit
+heap which is made hideous by self-interest, which trembles and
+squirms, and, because it is so mean, tries to make France mean too. My
+strong nature, my ideas, would work like poison in you; twice you have
+tricked me, twice have I overthrown you. If we unite a third time, it
+must be a very serious matter. I should kill myself if I allowed
+myself to be duped; for I should be to blame, not you."
+
+Then we heard the humblest entreaties, the most fervent adjuration,
+not to deprive the country of such superior talents. The man spoke of
+patriotism, and Marcas uttered a significant "_Ouh! ouh!_" He laughed
+at his would-be patron. Then the statesman was more explicit; he bowed
+to the superiority of his erewhile counselor; he pledged himself to
+enable Marcas to remain in office, to be elected deputy; then he
+offered him a high appointment, promising him that he, the speaker,
+would thenceforth be the subordinate of a man whose subaltern he was
+only worthy to be. He was in the newly-formed ministry, and he would
+not return to power unless Marcas had a post in proportion to his
+merit; he had already made it a condition, Marcas had been regarded as
+indispensable.
+
+Marcas refused.
+
+"I have never before been in a position to keep my promises; here is
+an opportunity of proving myself faithful to my word, and you fail
+me."
+
+To this Marcas made no reply. The boots were again audible in the
+passage on the way to the stairs.
+
+"Marcas! Marcas!" we both cried, rushing into his room. "Why refuse?
+He really meant it. His offers are very handsome; at any rate, go to
+see the ministers."
+
+In a twinkling, we had given Marcas a hundred reasons. The minister's
+voice was sincere; without seeing him, we had felt sure that he was
+honest.
+
+"I have no clothes," replied Marcas.
+
+"Rely on us," said Juste, with a glance at me.
+
+Marcas had the courage to trust us; a light flashed in his eye, he
+pushed his fingers through his hair, lifting it from his forehead with
+a gesture that showed some confidence in his luck and when he had thus
+unveiled his face, so to speak, we saw in him a man absolutely unknown
+to us--Marcas sublime, Marcas in his power! His mind was in its
+element--the bird restored to the free air, the fish to the water, the
+horse galloping across the plain.
+
+It was transient. His brow clouded again, he had, it would seem, a
+vision of his fate. Halting doubt had followed close on the heels of
+white-winged hope.
+
+We left him to himself.
+
+"Now, then," said I to the Doctor, "we have given our word; how are we
+to keep it?"
+
+"We will sleep upon it," said Juste, "and to-morrow morning we will
+talk it over."
+
+Next morning we went for a walk in the Luxembourg.
+
+We had had time to think over the incident of the past night, and were
+both equally surprised at the lack of address shown by Marcas in the
+minor difficulties of life--he, a man who never saw any difficulties
+in the solution of the hardest problems of abstract or practical
+politics. But these elevated characters can all be tripped up on a
+grain of sand, and will, like the grandest enterprise, miss fire for
+want of a thousand francs. It is the old story of Napoleon, who, for
+lack of a pair of boots, did not set out for India.
+
+"Well, what have you hit upon?" asked Juste.
+
+"I have thought of a way to get him a complete outfit."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"From Humann."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Humann, my boy, never goes to his customers--his customers go to him;
+so that he does not know whether I am rich or poor. He only knows that
+I dress well and look decent in the clothes he makes for me. I shall
+tell him that an uncle of mine has dropped in from the country, and
+that his indifference in matters of dress is quite a discredit to me
+in the upper circles where I am trying to find a wife.--It will not be
+Humann if he sends in his bill before three months."
+
+The Doctor thought this a capital idea for a vaudeville, but poor
+enough in real life, and doubted my success. But I give you my word of
+honor, Humann dressed Marcas, and, being an artist, turned him out as
+a political personage ought to be dressed.
+
+Juste lent Marcas two hundred francs in gold, the product of two
+watches bought on credit, and pawned at the Mont-de-Piete. For my
+part, I had said nothing of the six shirts and all necessary linen,
+which cost me no more than the pleasure of asking for them from a
+forewoman in a shop whom I had treated to Musard's during the
+carnival.
+
+Marcas accepted everything, thanking us no more than he ought. He only
+inquired as to the means by which we had got possession of such
+riches, and we made him laugh for the last time. We looked on our
+Marcas as shipowners, when they have exhausted their credit and every
+resource at their command it fit out a vessel, must look on it as it
+puts out to sea.
+
+Here Charles was silent; he seemed crushed by his memories.
+
+"Well," cried the audience, "and what happened?"
+
+"I will tell you in a few words--for this is not romance--it is
+history."
+
+We saw no more of Marcas. The administration lasted for three months;
+it fell at the end of the session. Then Marcas came back to us, worked
+to death. He had sounded the crater of power; he came away from it
+with the beginnings of brain fever. The disease made rapid progress;
+we nursed him. Juste at once called in the chief physician of the
+hospital where he was working as house-surgeon. I was then living
+alone in our room, and I was the most attentive attendant; but care
+and science alike were in vain. By the month of January, 1838, Marcas
+himself felt that he had but a few days to live.
+
+The man whose soul and brain he had been for six months never even
+sent to inquire after him. Marcas expressed the greatest contempt for
+the Government; he seemed to doubt what the fate of France might be,
+and it was this doubt that had made him ill. He had, he thought,
+detected treason in the heart of power, not tangible, seizable
+treason, the result of facts, but the treason of a system, the
+subordination of national interests to selfish ends. His belief in the
+degradation of the country was enough to aggravate his complaint.
+
+I myself was witness to the proposals made to him by one of the
+leaders of the antagonistic party which he had fought against. His
+hatred of the men he had tried to serve was so virulent, that he would
+gladly have joined the coalition that was about to be formed among
+certain ambitious spirits who, at least, had one idea in common--that
+of shaking off the yoke of the Court. But Marcas could only reply to
+the envoy in the words of the Hotel de Ville:
+
+"It is too late!"
+
+Marcas did not leave money enough to pay for his funeral. Juste and I
+had great difficulty in saving him from the ignominy of a pauper's
+bier, and we alone followed the coffin of Z. Marcas, which was dropped
+into the common grave of the cemetery of Mont-Parnasse.
+
+
+
+We looked sadly at each other as we listened to this tale, the last we
+heard from the lips of Charles Rabourdin the day before he embarked at
+le Havre on a brig that was to convey him to the islands of Malay. We
+all knew more than one Marcas, more than one victim of his devotion to
+a party, repaid by betrayal or neglect.
+
+
+
+LES JARDIES, May 1840.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personage appears in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+Marcas, Zephirin
+  A Prince of Bohemia
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Z. Marcas, by Honore de Balzac
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK Z. MARCAS ***
+
+***** This file should be named 1841.txt or 1841.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/4/1841/
+
+Produced by Dagny; and John Bickers
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.net/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.net),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.net
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/old/20051120-1841.zip b/old/20051120-1841.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..44407e9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/20051120-1841.zip
diff --git a/old/zmrcs10.txt b/old/zmrcs10.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..580c707
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/zmrcs10.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,1400 @@
+*The Project Gutenberg Etext of Z. Marcas, by Honore de Balzac*
+#72 in our series by Honore de Balzac
+
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
+the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!!
+
+Please take a look at the important information in this header.
+We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an
+electronic path open for the next readers.  Do not remove this.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations*
+
+Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and
+further information is included below.  We need your donations.
+
+
+Z. Marcas
+
+by Honore de Balzac
+
+Translated by Clara Bell and others
+
+August, 1999  [Etext #1841]
+
+
+*The Project Gutenberg Etext of Z. Marcas, by Honore de Balzac*
+******This file should be named zmrcs10.txt or zmrcs10.zip******
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, zmrcs11.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, zmrcs10a.txt
+
+
+Etext prepared by Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com
+and John Bickers, jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions,
+all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a
+copyright notice is included.  Therefore, we do NOT keep these books
+in compliance with any particular paper edition, usually otherwise.
+
+
+We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance
+of the official release dates, for time for better editing.
+
+Please note:  neither this list nor its contents are final till
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.  To be sure you have an
+up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes
+in the first week of the next month.  Since our ftp program has
+a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a
+look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a
+new copy has at least one byte more or less.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take
+to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.  This
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If our value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-six text
+files per month, or 432 more Etexts in 1999 for a total of 2000+
+If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the
+total should reach over 200 billion Etexts given away this year.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
+Files by the December 31, 2001.  [10,000 x 100,000,000=Trillion]
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only ~5% of the present number of computer users.
+
+At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third
+of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 3,333 Etexts unless we
+manage to get some real funding; currently our funding is mostly
+from Michael Hart's salary at Carnegie-Mellon University, and an
+assortment of sporadic gifts; this salary is only good for a few
+more years, so we are looking for something to replace it, as we
+don't want Project Gutenberg to be so dependent on one person.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+
+All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/CMU": and are
+tax deductible to the extent allowable by law.  (CMU = Carnegie-
+Mellon University).
+
+For these and other matters, please mail to:
+
+Project Gutenberg
+P. O. Box  2782
+Champaign, IL 61825
+
+When all other email fails try our Executive Director:
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+We would prefer to send you this information by email.
+
+******
+
+To access Project Gutenberg etexts, use any Web browser
+to view http://promo.net/pg.  This site lists Etexts by
+author and by title, and includes information about how
+to get involved with Project Gutenberg.  You could also
+download our past Newsletters, or subscribe here.  This
+is one of our major sites, please email hart@pobox.com,
+for a more complete list of our various sites.
+
+To go directly to the etext collections, use FTP or any
+Web browser to visit a Project Gutenberg mirror (mirror
+sites are available on 7 continents; mirrors are listed
+at http://promo.net/pg).
+
+Mac users, do NOT point and click, typing works better.
+
+Example FTP session:
+
+ftp sunsite.unc.edu
+login: anonymous
+password: your@login
+cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg
+cd etext90 through etext99
+dir [to see files]
+get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
+GET GUTINDEX.??  [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99]
+GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books]
+
+***
+
+**Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor**
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here?  You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault.  So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you.  It also tells you how
+you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement.  If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from.  If you received this etext on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-
+tm etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor
+Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association at
+Carnegie-Mellon University (the "Project").  Among other
+things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
+under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works.  Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects".  Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this
+etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from.  If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy.  If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS".  NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors,
+officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost
+and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or
+indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause:
+[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification,
+or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     etext or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word pro-
+     cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the etext (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the
+     net profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon
+     University" within the 60 days following each
+     date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare)
+     your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time,
+scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty
+free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution
+you can think of.  Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg
+Association / Carnegie-Mellon University".
+
+*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
+
+
+
+
+
+Etext prepared by Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com
+and John Bickers, jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz
+
+
+
+
+
+Z. Marcas
+
+by Honore de Balzac
+
+Translated by Clara Bell and others
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+  To His Highness Count William of Wurtemberg, as a token of the
+  Author's respectful gratitude.
+
+DE BALZAC.
+
+
+
+
+Z. MARCAS
+
+
+
+I never saw anybody, not even among the most remarkable men of the
+day, whose appearance was so striking as this man's; the study of his
+countenance at first gave me a feeling of great melancholy, and at
+last produced an almost painful impression.
+
+There was a certain harmony between the man and his name. The Z.
+preceding Marcas, which was seen on the addresses of his letters, and
+which he never omitted from his signature, as the last letter of the
+alphabet, suggested some mysterious fatality.
+
+MARCAS! say this two-syllabled name again and again; do you not feel
+as if it had some sinister meaning? Does it not seem to you that its
+owner must be doomed to martyrdom? Though foreign, savage, the name
+has a right to be handed down to posterity; it is well constructed,
+easily pronounced, and has the brevity that beseems a famous name. Is
+it not pleasant as well as odd? But does it not sound unfinished?
+
+I will not take it upon myself to assert that names have no influence
+on the destiny of men. There is a certain secret and inexplicable
+concord or a visible discord between the events of a man's life and
+his name which is truly surprising; often some remote but very real
+correlation is revealed. Our globe is round; everything is linked to
+everything else. Some day perhaps we shall revert to the occult
+sciences.
+
+Do you not discern in that letter Z an adverse influence? Does it not
+prefigure the wayward and fantastic progress of a storm-tossed life?
+What wind blew on that letter, which, whatever language we find it in,
+begins scarcely fifty words? Marcas' name was Zephirin; Saint Zephirin
+is highly venerated in Brittany, and Marcas was a Breton.
+
+Study the name once more: Z Marcas! The man's whole life lies in this
+fantastic juxtaposition of seven letters; seven! the most significant
+of all the cabalistic numbers. And he died at five-and-thirty, so his
+life extended over seven lustres.
+
+Marcas! Does it not hint of some precious object that is broken with a
+fall, with or without a crash?
+
+
+
+I had finished studying the law in Paris in 1836. I lived at that time
+in the Rue Corneille in a house where none but students came to lodge,
+one of those large houses where there is a winding staircase quite at
+the back lighted below from the street, higher up by borrowed lights,
+and at the top by a skylight. There were forty furnished rooms--
+furnished as students' rooms are! What does youth demand more than was
+here supplied? A bed, a few chairs, a chest of drawers, a looking-
+glass, and a table. As soon as the sky is blue the student opens his
+window.
+
+But in this street there are no fair neighbors to flirt with. In front
+is the Odeon, long since closed, presenting a wall that is beginning
+to go black, its tiny gallery windows and its vast expanse of slate
+roof. I was not rich enough to have a good room; I was not even rich
+enough to have a room to myself. Juste and I shared a double-bedded
+room on the fifth floor.
+
+On our side of the landing there were but two rooms--ours and a
+smaller one, occupied by Z. Marcas, our neighbor. For six months Juste
+and I remained in perfect ignorance of the fact. The old woman who
+managed the house had indeed told us that the room was inhabited, but
+she had added that we should not be disturbed, that the occupant was
+exceedingly quiet. In fact, for those six months, we never met our
+fellow-lodger, and we never heard a sound in his room, in spite of the
+thinness of the partition that divided us--one of those walls of lath
+and plaster which are common in Paris houses.
+
+Our room, a little over seven feet high, was hung with a vile cheap
+paper sprigged with blue. The floor was painted, and knew nothing of
+the polish given by the /frotteur's/ brush. By our beds there was only
+a scrap of thin carpet. The chimney opened immediately to the roof,
+and smoked so abominably that we were obliged to provide a stove at
+our own expense. Our beds were mere painted wooden cribs like those in
+schools; on the chimney shelf there were but two brass candlesticks,
+with or without tallow candles in them, and our two pipes with some
+tobacco in a pouch or strewn abroad, also the little piles of cigar-
+ash left there by our visitors or ourselves.
+
+A pair of calico curtains hung from the brass window rods, and on each
+side of the window was a small bookcase in cherry-wood, such as every
+one knows who has stared into the shop windows of the Quartier Latin,
+and in which we kept the few books necessary for our studies.
+
+The ink in the inkstand was always in the state of lava congealed in
+the crater of a volcano. May not any inkstand nowadays become a
+Vesuvius? The pens, all twisted, served to clean the stems of our
+pipes; and, in opposition to all the laws of credit, paper was even
+scarcer than coin.
+
+How can young men be expected to stay at home in such furnished
+lodgings? The students studied in the cafes, the theatre, the
+Luxembourg gardens, in /grisettes'/ rooms, even in the law schools--
+anywhere rather than in their horrible rooms--horrible for purposes of
+study, delightful as soon as they were used for gossiping and smoking
+in. Put a cloth on the table, and the impromptu dinner sent in from
+the best eating-house in the neighborhood--places for four--two of
+them in petticoats--show a lithograph of this "Interior" to the
+veriest bigot, and she will be bound to smile.
+
+We thought only of amusing ourselves. The reason for our dissipation
+lay in the most serious facts of the politics of the time. Juste and I
+could not see any room for us in the two professions our parents
+wished us to take up. There are a hundred doctors, a hundred lawyers,
+for one that is wanted. The crowd is choking these two paths which are
+supposed to lead to fortune, but which are merely two arenas; men kill
+each other there, fighting, not indeed with swords or fire-arms, but
+with intrigue and calumny, with tremendous toil, campaigns in the
+sphere of the intellect as murderous as those in Italy were to the
+soldiers of the Republic. In these days, when everything is an
+intellectual competition, a man must be able to sit forty-eight hours
+on end in his chair before a table, as a General could remain for two
+days on horseback and in his saddle.
+
+The throng of aspirants has necessitated a division of the Faculty of
+Medicine into categories. There is the physician who writes and the
+physician who practises, the political physician, and the physician
+militant--four different ways of being a physician, four classes
+already filled up. As to the fifth class, that of physicians who sell
+remedies, there is such a competition that they fight each other with
+disgusting advertisements on the walls of Paris.
+
+In all the law courts there are almost as many lawyers as there are
+cases. The pleader is thrown back on journalism, on politics, on
+literature. In fact, the State, besieged for the smallest appointments
+under the law, has ended by requiring that the applicants should have
+some little fortune. The pear-shaped head of the grocer's son is
+selected in preference to the square skull of a man of talent who has
+not a sou. Work as he will, with all his energy, a young man, starting
+from zero, may at the end of ten years find himself below the point he
+set out from. In these days, talent must have the good luck which
+secures success to the most incapable; nay, more, if it scorns the
+base compromises which insure advancement to crawling mediocrity, it
+will never get on.
+
+If we thoroughly knew our time, we also knew ourselves, and we
+preferred the indolence of dreamers to aimless stir, easy-going
+pleasure to the useless toil which would have exhausted our courage
+and worn out the edge of our intelligence. We had analyzed social life
+while smoking, laughing, and loafing. But, though elaborated by such
+means as these, our reflections were none the less judicious and
+profound.
+
+While we were fully conscious of the slavery to which youth is
+condemned, we were amazed at the brutal indifference of the
+authorities to everything connected with intellect, thought, and
+poetry. How often have Juste and I exchanged glances when reading the
+papers as we studied political events, or the debates in the Chamber,
+and discussed the proceedings of a Court whose wilful ignorance could
+find no parallel but in the platitude of the courtiers, the mediocrity
+of the men forming the hedge round the newly-restored throne, all
+alike devoid of talent or breadth of view, of distinction or learning,
+of influence or dignity!
+
+Could there be a higher tribute to the Court of Charles X. than the
+present Court, if Court it may be called? What a hatred of the country
+may be seen in the naturalization of vulgar foreigners, devoid of
+talent, who are enthroned in the Chamber of Peers! What a perversion
+of justice! What an insult to the distinguished youth, the ambitions
+native to the soil of France! We looked upon these things as upon a
+spectacle, and groaned over them, without taking upon ourselves to
+act.
+
+Juste, whom no one ever sought, and who never sought any one, was, at
+five-and-twenty, a great politician, a man with a wonderful aptitude
+for apprehending the correlation between remote history and the facts
+of the present and of the future. In 1831, he told me exactly what
+would and did happen--the murders, the conspiracies, the ascendency of
+the Jews, the difficulty of doing anything in France, the scarcity of
+talent in the higher circles, and the abundance of intellect in the
+lowest ranks, where the finest courage is smothered under cigar ashes.
+
+What was to become of him? His parents wished him to be a doctor. But
+if he were a doctor, must he not wait twenty years for a practice? You
+know what he did? No? Well, he is a doctor; but he left France, he is
+in Asia. At this moment he is perhaps sinking under fatigue in a
+desert, or dying of the lashes of a barbarous horde--or perhaps he is
+some Indian prince's prime minister.
+
+Action is my vocation. Leaving a civil college at the age of twenty,
+the only way for me to enter the army was by enlisting as a common
+soldier; so, weary of the dismal outlook that lay before a lawyer, I
+acquired the knowledge needed for a sailor. I imitate Juste, and keep
+out of France, where men waste, in the struggle to make way, the
+energy needed for the noblest works. Follow my example, friends; I am
+going where a man steers his destiny as he pleases.
+
+These great resolutions were formed in the little room in the lodging-
+house in the Rue Corneille, in spite of our haunting the Bal Musard,
+flirting with girls of the town, and leading a careless and apparently
+reckless life. Our plans and arguments long floated in the air.
+
+Marcas, our neighbor, was in some degree the guide who led us to the
+margin of the precipice or the torrent, who made us sound it, and
+showed us beforehand what our fate would be if we let ourselves fall
+into it. It was he who put us on our guard against the time-bargains a
+man makes with poverty under the sanction of hope, by accepting
+precarious situations whence he fights the battle, carried along by
+the devious tide of Paris--that great harlot who takes you up or
+leaves you stranded, smiles or turns her back on you with equal
+readiness, wears out the strongest will in vexatious waiting, and
+makes misfortune wait on chance.
+
+
+
+At our first meeting, Marcas, as it were, dazzled us. On our return
+from the schools, a little before the dinner-hour, we were accustomed
+to go up to our room and remain there a while, either waiting for the
+other, to learn whether there were any change in our plans for the
+evening. One day, at four o'clock, Juste met Marcas on the stairs, and
+I saw him in the street. It was in the month of November, and Marcas
+had no cloak; he wore shoes with heavy soles, corduroy trousers, and a
+blue double-breasted coat buttoned to the throat, which gave a
+military air to his broad chest, all the more so because he wore a
+black stock. The costume was not in itself extraordinary, but it
+agreed well with the man's mien and countenance.
+
+My first impression on seeing him was neither surprise, nor distress,
+nor interest, nor pity, but curiosity mingled with all these feelings.
+He walked slowly, with a step that betrayed deep melancholy, his head
+forward with a stoop, but not bent like that of a conscience-stricken
+man. That head, large and powerful, which might contain the treasures
+necessary for a man of the highest ambition, looked as if it were
+loaded with thought; it was weighted with grief of mind, but there was
+no touch of remorse in his expression. As to his face, it may be
+summed up in a word. A common superstition has it that every human
+countenance resembles some animal. The animal for Marcas was the lion.
+His hair was like a mane, his nose was sort and flat; broad and dented
+at the tip like a lion's; his brow, like a lion's, was strongly marked
+with a deep median furrow, dividing two powerful bosses. His high,
+hairy cheek-bones, all the more prominent because his cheeks were so
+thin, his enormous mouth and hollow jaws, were accentuated by lines of
+tawny shadows. This almost terrible countenance seemed illuminated by
+two lamps--two eyes, black indeed, but infinitely sweet, calm and
+deep, full of thought. If I may say so, those eyes had a humiliated
+expression.
+
+Marcas was afraid of looking directly at others, not for himself, but
+for those on whom his fascinating gaze might rest; he had a power, and
+he shunned using it; he would spare those he met, and he feared
+notice. This was not from modesty, but from resignation founded on
+reason, which had demonstrated the immediate inutility of his gifts,
+the impossibility of entering and living in the sphere for which he
+was fitted. Those eyes could at times flash lightnings. From those
+lips a voice of thunder must surely proceed; it was a mouth like
+Mirabeau's.
+
+"I have seen such a grand fellow in the street," said I to Juste on
+coming in.
+
+"It must be our neighbor," replied Juste, who described, in fact, the
+man I had just met. "A man who lives like a wood-louse would be sure
+to look like that," he added.
+
+"What dejection and what dignity!"
+
+"One is the consequence of the other."
+
+"What ruined hopes! What schemes and failures!"
+
+"Seven leagues of ruins! Obelisks--palaces--towers!--The ruins of
+Palmyra in the desert!" said Juste, laughing.
+
+So we called him the Ruins of Palmyra.
+
+As we went out to dine at the wretched eating-house in the Rue de la
+Harpe to which we subscribed, we asked the name of Number 37, and then
+heard the weird name Z. Marcas. Like boys, as we were, we repeated it
+more than a hundred times with all sorts of comments, absurd or
+melancholy, and the name lent itself to a jest. Juste would fire off
+the Z like a rocket rising, /z-z-z-z-zed/; and after pronouncing the
+first syllable of the name with great importance, depicted a fall by
+the dull brevity of the second.
+
+"Now, how and where does the man live?"
+
+From this query, to the innocent espionage of curiosity there was no
+pause but that required for carrying out our plan. Instead of
+loitering about the streets, we both came in, each armed with a novel.
+We read with our ears open. And in the perfect silence of our attic
+rooms, we heard the even, dull sound of a sleeping man breathing.
+
+"He is asleep," said I to Juste, noticing this fact.
+
+"At seven o'clock!" replied the Doctor.
+
+This was the name by which I called Juste, and he called me the Keeper
+of the Seals.
+
+"A man must be wretched indeed to sleep as much as our neighbor!"
+cried I, jumping on to the chest of drawers with a knife in my hand,
+to which a corkscrew was attached.
+
+I made a round hole at the top of the partition, about as big as a
+five-sou piece. I had forgotten that there would be no light in the
+room, and on putting my eye to the hole, I saw only darkness. At about
+one in the morning, when we had finished our books and were about to
+undress, we heard a noise in our neighbor's room. He got up, struck a
+match, and lighted his dip. I got on to the drawers again, and I then
+saw Marcas seated at his table and copying law-papers.
+
+His room was about half the size of ours; the bed stood in a recess by
+the door, for the passage ended there, and its breadth was added to
+his garret; but the ground on which the house was built was evidently
+irregular, for the party-wall formed an obtuse angle, and the room was
+not square. There was no fireplace, only a small earthenware stove,
+white blotched with green, of which the pipe went up through the roof.
+The window, in the skew side of the room, had shabby red curtains. The
+furniture consisted of an armchair, a table, a chair, and a wretched
+bed-table. A cupboard in the wall held his clothes. The wall-paper was
+horrible; evidently only a servant had ever been lodged there before
+Marcas.
+
+"What is to be seen?" asked the Doctor as I got down.
+
+"Look for yourself," said I.
+
+At nine next morning, Marcas was in bed. He had breakfasted off a
+saveloy; we saw on a plate, with some crumbs of bread, the remains of
+that too familiar delicacy. He was asleep; he did not wake till
+eleven. He then set to work again on the copy he had begun the night
+before, which was lying on the table.
+
+On going downstairs we asked the price of that room, and were told
+fifteen francs a month.
+
+In the course of a few days, we were fully informed as to the mode of
+life of Z. Marcas. He did copying, at so much a sheet no doubt, for a
+law-writer who lived in the courtyard of the Sainte-Chapelle. He
+worked half the night; after sleeping from six till ten, he began
+again and wrote till three. Then he went out to take the copy home
+before dinner, which he ate at Mizerai's in the Rue Michel-le-Comte,
+at a cost of nine sous, and came in to bed at six o'clock. It became
+known to us that Marcas did not utter fifteen sentences in a month; he
+never talked to anybody, nor said a word to himself in his dreadful
+garret.
+
+"The Ruins of Palmyra are terribly silent!" said Juste.
+
+This taciturnity in a man whose appearance was so imposing was
+strangely significant. Sometimes when we met him, we exchanged glances
+full of meaning on both sides, but they never led to any advances.
+Insensibly this man became the object of our secret admiration, though
+we knew no reason for it. Did it lie in his secretly simple habits,
+his monastic regularity, his hermit-like frugality, his idiotically
+mechanical labor, allowing his mind to remain neuter or to work on his
+own lines, seeming to us to hint at an expectation of some stroke of
+good luck, or at some foregone conclusion as to his life?
+
+After wandering for a long time among the Ruins of Palmyra, we forgot
+them--we were young! Then came the Carnival, the Paris Carnival,
+which, henceforth, will eclipse the old Carnival of Venice, unless
+some ill-advised Prefect of Police is antagonistic.
+
+Gambling ought to be allowed during the Carnival; but the stupid
+moralists who have had gambling suppressed are inert financiers, and
+this indispensable evil will be re-established among us when it is
+proved that France leaves millions at the German tables.
+
+This splendid Carnival brought us to utter penury, as it does every
+student. We got rid of every object of luxury; we sold our second
+coats, our second boots, our second waistcoats--everything of which we
+had a duplicate, except our friend. We ate bread and cold sausages; we
+looked where we walked; we had set to work in earnest. We owed two
+months' rent, and were sure of having a bill from the porter for sixty
+or eighty items each, and amounting to forty or fifty francs. We made
+no noise, and did not laugh as we crossed the little hall at the
+bottom of the stairs; we commonly took it at a flying leap from the
+lowest step into the street. On the day when we first found ourselves
+bereft of tobacco for our pipes, it struck us that for some days we
+had been eating bread without any kind of butter.
+
+Great was our distress.
+
+"No tobacco!" said the Doctor.
+
+"No cloak!" said the Keeper of the Seals.
+
+"Ah, you rascals, you would dress as the postillion de Longjumeau, you
+would appear as Debardeurs, sup in the morning, and breakfast at night
+at Very's--sometimes even at the /Rocher de Cancale/.--Dry bread for
+you, my boys! Why," said I, in a big bass voice, "you deserve to sleep
+under the bed, you are not worthy to lie in it--"
+
+"Yes, yes; but, Keeper of the Seals, there is no more tobacco!" said
+Juste.
+
+"It is high time to write home, to our aunts, our mothers, and our
+sisters, to tell them we have no underlinen left, that the wear and
+tear of Paris would ruin garments of wire. Then we will solve an
+elegant chemical problem by transmuting linen into silver."
+
+"But we must live till we get the answer."
+
+"Well, I will go and bring out a loan among such of our friends as may
+still have some capital to invest."
+
+"And how much will you find?"
+
+"Say ten francs!" replied I with pride.
+
+It was midnight. Marcas had heard everything. He knocked at our door.
+
+"Messieurs," said he, "here is some tobacco; you can repay me on the
+first opportunity."
+
+We were struck, not by the offer, which we accepted, but by the rich,
+deep, full voice in which it was made; a tone only comparable to the
+lowest string of Paganini's violin. Marcas vanished without waiting
+for our thanks.
+
+Juste and I looked at each other without a word. To be rescued by a
+man evidently poorer than ourselves! Juste sat down to write to every
+member of his family, and I went off to effect a loan. I brought in
+twenty francs lent me by a fellow-provincial. In that evil but happy
+day gambling was still tolerated, and in its lodes, as hard as the
+rocky ore of Brazil, young men, by risking a small sum, had a chance
+of winning a few gold pieces. My friend, too, had some Turkish tobacco
+brought home from Constantinople by a sailor, and he gave me quite as
+much as we had taken from Z. Marcas. I conveyed the splendid cargo
+into port, and we went in triumph to repay our neighbor with a tawny
+wig of Turkish tobacco for his dark /Caporal/.
+
+"You are determined not to be my debtors," said he. "You are giving me
+gold for copper.--You are boys--good boys----"
+
+The sentences, spoken in varying tones, were variously emphasized. The
+words were nothing, but the expression!--That made us friends of ten
+years' standing at once.
+
+Marcas, on hearing us coming, had covered up his papers; we understood
+that it would be taking a liberty to allude to his means of
+subsistence, and felt ashamed of having watched him. His cupboard
+stood open; in it there were two shirts, a white necktie and a razor.
+The razor made me shudder. A looking-glass, worth five francs perhaps,
+hung near the window.
+
+The man's few and simple movements had a sort of savage grandeur. The
+Doctor and I looked at each other, wondering what we could say in
+reply. Juste, seeing that I was speechless, asked Marcas jestingly:
+
+"You cultivate literature, monsieur?"
+
+"Far from it!" replied Marcas. "I should not be so wealthy."
+
+"I fancied," said I, "that poetry alone, in these days, was amply
+sufficient to provide a man with lodgings as bad as ours."
+
+My remark made Marcas smile, and the smile gave a charm to his yellow
+face.
+
+"Ambition is not a less severe taskmaster to those who fail," said he.
+"You, who are beginning life, walk in the beaten paths. Never dream of
+rising superior, you will be ruined!"
+
+"You advise us to stay just as we are?" said the Doctor, smiling.
+
+There is something so infectious and childlike in the pleasantries of
+youth, that Marcas smiled again in reply.
+
+"What incidents can have given you this detestable philosophy?" asked
+I.
+
+"I forgot once more that chance is the result of an immense equation
+of which we know not all the factors. When we start from zero to work
+up to the unit, the chances are incalculable. To ambitious men Paris
+is an immense roulette table, and every young man fancies he can hit
+on a successful progression of numbers."
+
+He offered us the tobacco I had brought that we might smoke with him;
+the Doctor went to fetch our pipes; Marcas filled his, and then he
+came to sit in our room, bringing the tobacco with him, since there
+were but two chairs in his. Juste, as brisk as a squirrel, ran out,
+and returned with a boy carrying three bottles of Bordeaux, some Brie
+cheese, and a loaf.
+
+"Hah!" said I to myself, "fifteen francs," and I was right to a sou.
+
+Juste gravely laid five francs on the chimney-shelf.
+
+There are immeasurable differences between the gregarious man and the
+man who lives closest to nature. Toussaint Louverture, after he was
+caught, died without speaking a word. Napoleon, transplanted to a
+rock, talked like a magpie--he wanted to account for himself. Z.
+Marcas erred in the same way, but for our benefit only. Silence in all
+its majesty is to be found only in the savage. There is never a
+criminal who, though he might let his secrets fall with his head into
+the basket of sawdust does not feel the purely social impulse to tell
+them to somebody.
+
+Nay, I am wrong. We have seen one Iroquois of the Faubourg Saint-
+Marceau who raised the Parisian to the level of the natural savage--a
+republican, a conspirator, a Frenchman, an old man, who outdid all we
+have heard of Negro determination, and all that Cooper tells us of the
+tenacity and coolness of the Redskins under defeat. Morey, the
+Guatimozin of the "Mountain," preserved an attitude unparalleled in
+the annals of European justice.
+
+
+
+This is what Marcas told us during the small hours, sandwiching his
+discourse with slices of bread spread with cheese and washed down with
+wine. All the tobacco was burned out. Now and then the hackney coaches
+clattering across the Place de l'Odeon, or the omnibuses toiling past,
+sent up their dull rumbling, as if to remind us that Paris was still
+close to us.
+
+His family lived at Vitre; his father and mother had fifteen hundred
+francs a year in the funds. He had received an education gratis in a
+Seminary, but had refused to enter the priesthood. He felt in himself
+the fires of immense ambition, and had come to Paris on foot at the
+age of twenty, the possessor of two hundred francs. He had studied the
+law, working in an attorney's office, where he had risen to be
+superior clerk. He had taken his doctor's degree in law, had mastered
+the old and modern codes, and could hold his own with the most famous
+pleaders. He had studied the law of nations, and was familiar with
+European treaties and international practice. He had studied men and
+things in five capitals--London, Berlin, Vienna, Petersburg, and
+Constantinople.
+
+No man was better informed than he as to the rules of the Chamber. For
+five years he had been reporter of the debates for a daily paper. He
+spoke extempore and admirably, and could go on for a long time in that
+deep, appealing voice which had struck us to the soul. Indeed, he
+proved by the narrative of his life that he was a great orator, a
+concise orator, serious and yet full of piercing eloquence; he
+resembled Berryer in his fervor and in the impetus which commands the
+sympathy of the masses, and was like Thiers in refinement and skill;
+but he would have been less diffuse, less in difficulties for a
+conclusion. He had intended to rise rapidly to power without burdening
+himself first with the doctrines necessary to begin with, for a man in
+opposition, but an incubus later to the statesman.
+
+Marcas had learned everything that a real statesman should know;
+indeed, his amazement was considerable when he had occasion to discern
+the utter ignorance of men who have risen to the administration of
+public affairs in France. Though in him it was vocation that had led
+to study, nature had been generous and bestowed all that cannot be
+acquired--keen perceptions, self-command, a nimble wit, rapid
+judgment, decisiveness, and, what is the genius of these men,
+fertility in resource.
+
+By the time when Marcas thought himself duly equipped, France was torn
+by intestine divisions arising from the triumph of the House of
+Orleans over the elder branch of the Bourbons.
+
+The field of political warfare is evidently changed. Civil war
+henceforth cannot last for long, and will not be fought out in the
+provinces. In France such struggles will be of brief duration and at
+the seat of government; and the battle will be the close of the moral
+contest which will have been brought to an issue by superior minds.
+This state of things will continue so long as France has her present
+singular form of government, which has no analogy with that of any
+other country; for there is no more resemblance between the English
+and the French constitutions than between the two lands.
+
+Thus Marcas' place was in the political press. Being poor and unable
+to secure his election, he hoped to make a sudden appearance. He
+resolved on making the greatest possible sacrifice for a man of
+superior intellect, to work as a subordinate to some rich and
+ambitious deputy. Like a second Bonaparte, he sought his Barras; the
+new Colbert hoped to find a Mazarin. He did immense services, and he
+did them then and there; he assumed no importance, he made no boast,
+he did not complain of ingratitude. He did them in the hope that his
+patron would put him in a position to be elected deputy; Marcas wished
+for nothing but a loan that might enable him to purchase a house in
+Paris, the qualification required by law. Richard III. asked for
+nothing but his horse.
+
+In three years Marcas had made his man--one of the fifty supposed
+great statesmen who are the battledores with which two cunning players
+toss the ministerial portfolios exactly as the man behind the puppet-
+show hits Punch against the constable in his street theatre, and
+counts on always getting paid. This man existed only by Marcas, but he
+had just brains enough to appreciate the value of his "ghost" and to
+know that Marcas, if he ever came to the front, would remain there,
+would be indispensable, while he himself would be translated to the
+polar zone of Luxembourg. So he determined to put insurmountable
+obstacles in the way of his Mentor's advancement, and hid his purpose
+under the semblance of the utmost sincerity. Like all mean men, he
+could dissimulate to perfection, and he soon made progress in the ways
+of ingratitude, for he felt that he must kill Marcas, not to be killed
+by him. These two men, apparently so united, hated each other as soon
+as one had deceived the other.
+
+The politician was made one of a ministry; Marcas remained in the
+opposition to hinder his man from being attacked; nay, by skilful
+tactics he won him the applause of the opposition. To excuse himself
+for not rewarding his subaltern, the chief pointed out the
+impossibility of finding a place suddenly for a man on the other side,
+without a great deal of manoeuvring. Marcas had hoped confidently for
+a place to enable him to marry, and thus acquire the qualification he
+so ardently desired. He was two-and-thirty, and the Chamber ere long
+must be dissolved. Having detected his man in this flagrant act of bad
+faith, he overthrew him, or at any rate contributed largely to his
+overthrow, and covered him with mud.
+
+A fallen minister, if he is to rise again to power, must show that he
+is to be feared; this man, intoxicated by Royal glibness, had fancied
+that his position would be permanent; he acknowledged his
+delinquencies; besides confessing them, he did Marcas a small money
+service, for Marcas had got into debt. He subsidized the newspaper on
+which Marcas worked, and made him the manager of it.
+
+Though he despised the man, Marcas, who, practically, was being
+subsidized too, consented to take the part of the fallen minister.
+Without unmasking at once all the batteries of his superior intellect,
+Marcas came a little further than before; he showed half his
+shrewdness. The Ministry lasted only a hundred and eighty days; it was
+swallowed up. Marcas had put himself into communication with certain
+deputies, had moulded them like dough, leaving each impressed with a
+high opinion of his talent; his puppet again became a member of the
+Ministry, and then the paper was ministerial. The Ministry united the
+paper with another, solely to squeeze out Marcas, who in this fusion
+had to make way for a rich and insolent rival, whose name was well
+known, and who already had his foot in the stirrup.
+
+Marcas relapsed into utter destitution; his haughty patron well knew
+the depths into which he had cast him.
+
+Where was he to go? The ministerial papers, privily warned, would have
+nothing to say to him. The opposition papers did not care to admit him
+to their offices. Marcas could side neither with the Republicans nor
+with the Legitimists, two parties whose triumph would mean the
+overthrow of everything that now is.
+
+"Ambitious men like a fast hold on things," said he with a smile.
+
+He lived by writing a few articles on commercial affairs, and
+contributed to one of those encyclopedias brought out by speculation
+and not by learning. Finally a paper was founded, which was destined
+to live but two years, but which secured his services. From that
+moment he renewed his connection with the minister's enemies; he
+joined the party who were working for the fall of the Government; and
+as soon as his pickaxe had free play, it fell.
+
+This paper had now for six months ceased to exist; he had failed to
+find employment of any kind; he was spoken of as a dangerous man,
+calumny attacked him; he had unmasked a huge financial and mercantile
+job by a few articles and a pamphlet. He was known to be a mouthpiece
+of a banker who was said to have paid him largely, and from whom he
+was supposed to expect some patronage in return for his championship.
+Marcas, disgusted by men and things, worn out by five years of
+fighting, regarded as a free lance rather than as a great leader,
+crushed by the necessity of earning his daily bread, which hindered
+him from gaining ground, in despair at the influence exerted by money
+over mind, and given over to dire poverty, buried himself in a garret,
+to make thirty sous a day, the sum strictly answering to his needs.
+Meditation had leveled a desert all round him. He read the papers to
+be informed of what was going on. Pozzo di Borgo had once lived like
+this for some time.
+
+Marcas, no doubt, was planning a serious attack, accustoming himself
+to dissimulation, and punishing himself for his blunders by
+Pythagorean muteness. But he did not tell us the reasons for his
+conduct.
+
+It is impossible to give you an idea of the scenes of the highest
+comedy that lay behind this algebraic statement of his career; his
+useless patience dogging the footsteps of fortune, which presently
+took wings, his long tramps over the thorny brakes of Paris, his
+breathless chases as a petitioner, his attempts to win over fools; the
+schemes laid only to fail through the influence of some frivolous
+woman; the meetings with men of business who expected their capital to
+bring them places and a peerage, as well as large interest. Then the
+hopes rising in a towering wave only to break in foam on the shoal;
+the wonders wrought in reconciling adverse interests which, after
+working together for a week, fell asunder; the annoyance, a thousand
+times repeated, of seeing a dunce decorated with the Legion of Honor,
+and preferred, though as ignorant as a shop-boy, to a man of talent.
+Then, what Marcas called the stratagems of stupidity--you strike a
+man, and he seems convinced, he nods his head--everything is settled;
+next day, this india-rubber ball, flattened for a moment, has
+recovered itself in the course of the night; it is as full of wind as
+ever; you must begin all over again; and you go on till you understand
+that you are not dealing with a man, but with a lump of gum that loses
+shape in the sunshine.
+
+These thousand annoyances, this vast waste of human energy on barren
+spots, the difficulty of achieving any good, the incredible facility
+of doing mischief; two strong games played out, twice won, and then
+twice lost; the hatred of a statesman--a blockhead with a painted face
+and a wig, but in whom the world believed--all these things, great and
+small, had not crushed, but for the moment had dashed Marcas. In the
+days when money had come into his hands, his fingers had not clutched
+it; he had allowed himself the exquisite pleasure of sending it all to
+his family--to his sisters, his brothers, his old father. Like
+Napoleon in his fall, he asked for no more than thirty sous a day, and
+any man of energy can earn thirty sous for a day's work in Paris.
+
+When Marcas had finished the story of his life, intermingled with
+reflections, maxims, and observations, revealing him as a great
+politician, a few questions and answers on both sides as to the
+progress of affairs in France and in Europe were enough to prove to us
+that he was a real statesman; for a man may be quickly and easily
+judged when he can be brought on to the ground of immediate
+difficulties: there is a certain Shibboleth for men of superior
+talents, and we were of the tribe of modern Levites without belonging
+as yet to the Temple. As I have said, our frivolity covered certain
+purposes which Juste has carried out, and which I am about to execute.
+
+When we had done talking, we all three went out, cold as it was, to
+walk in the Luxembourg gardens till the dinner hour. In the course of
+that walk our conversation, grave throughout, turned on the painful
+aspects of the political situation. Each of us contributed his
+remarks, his comment, or his jest, a pleasantry or a proverb. This was
+no longer exclusively a discussion of life on the colossal scale just
+described by Marcas, the soldier of political warfare. Nor was it the
+distressful monologue of the wrecked navigator, stranded in a garret
+in the Hotel Corneille; it was a dialogue in which two well-informed
+young men, having gauged the times they lived in, were endeavoring,
+under the guidance of a man of talent, to gain some light on their own
+future prospects.
+
+"Why," asked Juste, "did you not wait patiently for an opportunity,
+and imitate the only man who has been able to keep the lead since the
+Revolution of July by holding his head above water?"
+
+"Have I not said that we never know where the roots of chance lie?
+Carrell was in identically the same position as the orator you speak
+of. That gloomy young man, of a bitter spirit, had a whole government
+in his head; the man of whom you speak had no idea beyond mounting on
+the crupper of every event. Of the two, Carrel was the better man.
+Well, one becomes a minister, Carrel remained a journalist; the
+incomplete but craftier man is living; Carrel is dead.
+
+"I may point out that your man has for fifteen years been making his
+way, and is but making it still. He may yet be caught and crushed
+between two cars full of intrigues on the highroad to power. He has no
+house; he has not the favor of the palace like Metternich; nor, like
+Villele, the protection of a compact majority.
+
+"I do not believe that the present state of things will last ten
+years longer. Hence, supposing I should have such poor good luck,
+I am already too late to avoid being swept away by the commotion
+I foresee. I should need to be established in a superior
+position."
+
+"What commotion?" asked Juste.
+
+"AUGUST, 1830," said Marcas in solemn tones, holding out his hand
+towards Paris; "AUGUST, the offspring of Youth which bound the
+sheaves, and of Intellect which had ripened the harvest, forgot to
+provide for Youth and Intellect.
+
+"Youth will explode like the boiler of a steam-engine. Youth has no
+outlet in France; it is gathering an avalanche of underrated
+capabilities, of legitimate and restless ambitions; young men are not
+marrying now; families cannot tell what to do with their children.
+What will the thunderclap be that will shake down these masses? I know
+not, but they will crash down into the midst of things, and overthrow
+everything. These are laws of hydrostatics which act on the human
+race; the Roman Empire had failed to understand them, and the Barbaric
+hordes came down.
+
+"The Barbaric hordes now are the intelligent class. The laws of
+overpressure are at this moment acting slowly and silently in our
+midst. The Government is the great criminal; it does not appreciate
+the two powers to which it owes everything; it has allowed its hands
+to be tied by the absurdities of the Contract; it is bound, ready to
+be the victim.
+
+"Louis XIV., Napoleon, England, all were or are eager for intelligent
+youth. In France the young are condemned by the new legislation, by
+the blundering principles of elective rights, by the unsoundness of
+the ministerial constitution.
+
+"Look at the elective Chamber; you will find no deputies of thirty;
+the youth of Richelieu and of Mazarin, of Turenne and of Colbert, of
+Pitt and of Saint-Just, of Napoleon and of Prince Metternich, would
+find no admission there; Burke, Sheridan, or Fox could not win seats.
+Even if political majority had been fixed at one-and-twenty, and
+eligibility had been relieved of every disabling qualification, the
+Departments would have returned the very same members, men devoid of
+political talent, unable to speak without murdering French grammar,
+and among whom, in ten years, scarcely one statesman has been found.
+
+"The causes of an impending event may be seen, but the event itself
+cannot be foretold. At this moment the youth of France is being driven
+into Republicanism, because it believes that the Republic would bring
+it emancipation. It will always remember the young representatives of
+the people and the young army leaders! The imprudence of the
+Government is only comparable to its avarice."
+
+That day left its echoes in our lives. Marcas confirmed us in our
+resolution to leave France, where young men of talent and energy are
+crushed under the weight of successful commonplace, envious, and
+insatiable middle age.
+
+We dined together in the Rue de la Harpe. We thenceforth felt for
+Marcas the most respectful affection; he gave us the most practical
+aid in the sphere of the mind. That man knew everything; he had
+studied everything. For us he cast his eye over the whole civilized
+world, seeking the country where openings would be at once the most
+abundant and the most favorable to the success of our plans. He
+indicated what should be the goal of our studies; he bid us make
+haste, explaining to us that time was precious, that emigration would
+presently begin, and that its effect would be to deprive France of the
+cream of its powers and of its youthful talent; that their
+intelligence, necessarily sharpened, would select the best places, and
+that the great thing was to be first in the field.
+
+Thenceforward, we often sat late at work under the lamp. Our generous
+instructor wrote some notes for our guidance--two pages for Juste and
+three for me--full of invaluable advice--the sort of information which
+experience alone can supply, such landmarks as only genius can place.
+In those papers, smelling of tobacco, and covered with writing so vile
+as to be almost hieroglyphic, there are suggestions for a fortune, and
+forecasts of unerring acumen. There are hints as to certain parts of
+America and Asia which have been fully justified, both before and
+since Juste and I could set out.
+
+Marcas, like us, was in the most abject poverty. He earned, indeed,
+his daily bread, but he had neither linen, clothes, nor shoes. He did
+not make himself out any better than he was; his dreams had been of
+luxury as well as of power. He did not admit that this was the real
+Marcas; he abandoned this person, indeed, to the caprices of life.
+What he lived by was the breath of ambition; he dreamed of revenge
+while blaming himself for yielding to so shallow a feeling. The true
+statesman ought, above all things, to be superior to vulgar passions;
+like the man of science. It was in these days of dire necessity that
+Marcas seemed to us so great--nay, so terrible; there was something
+awful in the gaze which saw another world than that which strikes the
+eye of ordinary men. To us he was a subject of contemplation and
+astonishment; for the young--which of us has not known it?--the young
+have a keen craving to admire; they love to attach themselves, and are
+naturally inclined to submit to the men they feel to be superior, as
+they are to devote themselves to a great cause.
+
+Our surprise was chiefly roused by his indifference in matters of
+sentiment; women had no place in his life. When we spoke of this
+matter, a perennial theme of conversation among Frenchmen, he simply
+remarked:
+
+"Gowns cost too much."
+
+He saw the look that passed between Juste and me, and went on:
+
+"Yes, far too much. The woman you buy--and she is the least expensive
+--takes a great deal of money. The woman who gives herself takes all
+your time! Woman extinguishes every energy, every ambition. Napoleon
+reduced her to what she should be. From that point of view, he really
+was great. He did not indulge such ruinous fancies of Louis XIV. and
+Louis XV.; at the same time he could love in secret."
+
+We discovered that, like Pitt, who made England is wife, Marcas bore
+France in his heart; he idolized his country; he had not a thought
+that was not for his native land. His fury at feeling that he had in
+his hands the remedy for the evils which so deeply saddened him, and
+could not apply it, ate into his soul, and this rage was increased by
+the inferiority of France at that time, as compared with Russia and
+England. France a third-rate power! This cry came up again and again
+in his conversation. The intestinal disorders of his country had
+entered into his soul. All the contests between the Court and the
+Chamber, showing, as they did, incessant change and constant
+vacillation, which must injure the prosperity of the country, he
+scoffed at as backstairs squabbles.
+
+"This is peace at the cost of the future," said he.
+
+
+
+One evening Juste and I were at work, sitting in perfect silence.
+Marcas had just risen to toil at his copying, for he had refused our
+assistance in spite of our most earnest entreaties. We had offered to
+take it in turns to copy a batch of manuscript, so that he should do
+but a third of his distasteful task; he had been quite angry, and we
+had ceased to insist.
+
+We heard the sound of gentlemanly boots in the passage, and raised our
+heads, looking at each other. There was a tap at Marcas' door--he
+never took the key out of the lock--and we heard the hero answer:
+
+"Come in." Then--"What, you here, monsieur?"
+
+"I, myself," replied the retired minister.
+
+It was the Diocletian of this unknown martyr.
+
+For some time he and our neighbor conversed in an undertone. Suddenly
+Marcas, whose voice had been heard but rarely, as is natural in a
+dialogue in which the applicant begins by setting forth the situation,
+broke out loudly in reply to some offer we had not overheard.
+
+"You would laugh at me for a fool," cried he, "if I took you at your
+word. Jesuits are a thing of the past, but Jesuitism is eternal. Your
+Machiavelism and your generosity are equally hollow and untrustworthy.
+You can make your own calculations, but who can calculate on you? Your
+Court is made up of owls who fear the light, of old men who quake in
+the presence of the young, or who simply disregard them. The
+Government is formed on the same pattern as the Court. You have hunted
+up the remains of the Empire, as the Restoration enlisted the
+Voltigeurs of Louis XIV.
+
+"Hitherto the evasions of cowardice have been taken for the
+manoeuvring of ability; but dangers will come, and the younger
+generation will rise as they did in 1790. They did grand things then.
+--Just now you change ministries as a sick man turns in his bed; these
+oscillations betray the weakness of the Government. You work on an
+underhand system of policy which will be turned against you, for
+France will be tired of your shuffling. France will not tell you that
+she is tired of you; a man never knows whence his ruin comes; it is
+the historian's task to find out; but you will undoubtedly perish as
+the reward of not having the youth of France to lend you its strength
+and energy; for having hated really capable men; for not having
+lovingly chosen them from this noble generation; for having in all
+cases preferred mediocrity.
+
+"You have come to ask my support, but you are an atom in that decrepit
+heap which is made hideous by self-interest, which trembles and
+squirms, and, because it is so mean, tries to make France mean too. My
+strong nature, my ideas, would work like poison in you; twice you have
+tricked me, twice have I overthrown you. If we unite a third time, it
+must be a very serious matter. I should kill myself if I allowed
+myself to be duped; for I should be to blame, not you."
+
+Then we heard the humblest entreaties, the most fervent adjuration,
+not to deprive the country of such superior talents. The man spoke of
+patriotism, and Marcas uttered a significant "/Ouh! ouh!/" He laughed
+at his would-be patron. Then the statesman was more explicit; he bowed
+to the superiority of his erewhile counselor; he pledged himself to
+enable Marcas to remain in office, to be elected deputy; then he
+offered him a high appointment, promising him that he, the speaker,
+would thenceforth be the subordinate of a man whose subaltern he was
+only worthy to be. He was in the newly-formed ministry, and he would
+not return to power unless Marcas had a post in proportion to his
+merit; he had already made it a condition, Marcas had been regarded as
+indispensable.
+
+Marcas refused.
+
+"I have never before been in a position to keep my promises; here is
+an opportunity of proving myself faithful to my word, and you fail
+me."
+
+To this Marcas made no reply. The boots were again audible in the
+passage on the way to the stairs.
+
+"Marcas! Marcas!" we both cried, rushing into his room. "Why refuse?
+He really meant it. His offers are very handsome; at any rate, go to
+see the ministers."
+
+In a twinkling, we had given Marcas a hundred reasons. The minister's
+voice was sincere; without seeing him, we had felt sure that he was
+honest.
+
+"I have no clothes," replied Marcas.
+
+"Rely on us," said Juste, with a glance at me.
+
+Marcas had the courage to trust us; a light flashed in his eye, he
+pushed his fingers through his hair, lifting it from his forehead with
+a gesture that showed some confidence in his luck and when he had thus
+unveiled his face, so to speak, we saw in him a man absolutely unknown
+to us--Marcas sublime, Marcas in his power! His mind was in its
+element--the bird restored to the free air, the fish to the water, the
+horse galloping across the plain.
+
+It was transient. His brow clouded again, he had, it would seem, a
+vision of his fate. Halting doubt had followed close on the heels of
+white-winged hope.
+
+We left him to himself.
+
+"Now, then," said I to the Doctor, "we have given our word; how are we
+to keep it?"
+
+"We will sleep upon it," said Juste, "and to-morrow morning we will
+talk it over."
+
+Next morning we went for a walk in the Luxembourg.
+
+We had had time to think over the incident of the past night, and were
+both equally surprised at the lack of address shown by Marcas in the
+minor difficulties of life--he, a man who never saw any difficulties
+in the solution of the hardest problems of abstract or practical
+politics. But these elevated characters can all be tripped up on a
+grain of sand, and will, like the grandest enterprise, miss fire for
+want of a thousand francs. It is the old story of Napoleon, who, for
+lack of a pair of boots, did not set out for India.
+
+"Well, what have you hit upon?" asked Juste.
+
+"I have thought of a way to get him a complete outfit."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"From Humann."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Humann, my boy, never goes to his customers--his customers go to him;
+so that he does not know whether I am rich or poor. He only knows that
+I dress well and look decent in the clothes he makes for me. I shall
+tell him that an uncle of mine has dropped in from the country, and
+that his indifference in matters of dress is quite a discredit to me
+in the upper circles where I am trying to find a wife.--It will not be
+Humann if he sends in his bill before three months."
+
+The Doctor thought this a capital idea for a vaudeville, but poor
+enough in real life, and doubted my success. But I give you my word of
+honor, Humann dressed Marcas, and, being an artist, turned him out as
+a political personage ought to be dressed.
+
+Juste lent Marcas two hundred francs in gold, the product of two
+watches bought on credit, and pawned at the Mont-de-Piete. For my
+part, I had said nothing of the six shirts and all necessary linen,
+which cost me no more than the pleasure of asking for them from a
+forewoman in a shop whom I had treated to Musard's during the
+carnival.
+
+Marcas accepted everything, thanking us no more than he ought. He only
+inquired as to the means by which we had got possession of such
+riches, and we made him laugh for the last time. We looked on our
+Marcas as shipowners, when they have exhausted their credit and every
+resource at their command it fit out a vessel, must look on it as it
+puts out to sea.
+
+Here Charles was silent; he seemed crushed by his memories.
+
+"Well," cried the audience, "and what happened?"
+
+"I will tell you in a few words--for this is not romance--it is
+history."
+
+We saw no more of Marcas. The administration lasted for three months;
+it fell at the end of the session. Then Marcas came back to us, worked
+to death. He had sounded the crater of power; he came away from it
+with the beginnings of brain fever. The disease made rapid progress;
+we nursed him. Juste at once called in the chief physician of the
+hospital where he was working as house-surgeon. I was then living
+alone in our room, and I was the most attentive attendant; but care
+and science alike were in vain. By the month of January, 1838, Marcas
+himself felt that he had but a few days to live.
+
+The man whose soul and brain he had been for six months never even
+sent to inquire after him. Marcas expressed the greatest contempt for
+the Government; he seemed to doubt what the fate of France might be,
+and it was this doubt that had made him ill. He had, he thought,
+detected treason in the heart of power, not tangible, seizable
+treason, the result of facts, but the treason of a system, the
+subordination of national interests to selfish ends. His belief in the
+degradation of the country was enough to aggravate his complaint.
+
+I myself was witness to the proposals made to him by one of the
+leaders of the antagonistic party which he had fought against. His
+hatred of the men he had tried to serve was so virulent, that he would
+gladly have joined the coalition that was about to be formed among
+certain ambitious spirits who, at least, had one idea in common--that
+of shaking off the yoke of the Court. But Marcas could only reply to
+the envoy in the words of the Hotel de Ville:
+
+"It is too late!"
+
+Marcas did not leave money enough to pay for his funeral. Juste and I
+had great difficulty in saving him from the ignominy of a pauper's
+bier, and we alone followed the coffin of Z. Marcas, which was dropped
+into the common grave of the cemetery of Mont-Parnasse.
+
+
+
+We looked sadly at each other as we listened to this tale, the last we
+heard from the lips of Charles Rabourdin the day before he embarked at
+le Havre on a brig that was to convey him to the islands of Malay. We
+all knew more than one Marcas, more than one victim of his devotion to
+a party, repaid by betrayal or neglect.
+
+
+
+LES JARDIES, May 1840.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personage appears in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+Marcas, Zephirin
+  A Prince of Bohemia
+
+
+
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Z. Marcas, by Honore de Balzac
+
diff --git a/old/zmrcs10.zip b/old/zmrcs10.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9357d58
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/zmrcs10.zip
diff --git a/old/zmrcs10h.htm b/old/zmrcs10h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3340e4a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/zmrcs10h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,1563 @@
+<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
+<html>
+<head>
+<title>New File</title>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content=
+"text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
+<style type="text/css">
+<!--
+body {margin:10%; text-align:justify}
+blockquote {font-size:14pt}
+P {font-size:14pt}
+-->
+</style>
+</head>
+<body>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Z. Marcas,<br>
+by Honore de Balzac</h1>
+
+<pre>
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
+this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
+
+This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
+Gutenberg file.  Please do not remove it.  Do not change or edit the
+header without written permission.
+
+Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
+eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file.  Included is
+important information about your specific rights and restrictions in
+how the file may be used.  You can also find out about how to make a
+donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: Z. Marcas
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Release Date: August, 1999  [EBook #1841]
+[Most recently updated: February 17, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, Z. MARCAS ***
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+Etext prepared by Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com and John Bickers,
+jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz 
+
+<p>Z. Marcas</p>
+
+<p>by Honore de Balzac</p>
+
+<p>Translated by Clara Bell and others</p>
+
+<p>�</p>
+
+<p>DEDICATION</p>
+
+<p>To His Highness Count William of Wurtemberg, as a token of the
+Author's respectful gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>DE BALZAC.</p>
+
+<p>�</p>
+
+<p>�</p>
+
+<h1 align="center">Z. MARCAS</h1>
+
+<p>I never saw anybody, not even among the most remarkable men of
+the day, whose appearance was so striking as this man's; the
+study of his countenance at first gave me a feeling of great
+melancholy, and at last produced an almost painful
+impression.</p>
+
+<p>There was a certain harmony between the man and his name. The
+Z. preceding Marcas, which was seen on the addresses of his
+letters, and which he never omitted from his signature, as the
+last letter of the alphabet, suggested some mysterious
+fatality.</p>
+
+<p>MARCAS! say this two-syllabled name again and again; do you
+not feel as if it had some sinister meaning? Does it not seem to
+you that its owner must be doomed to martyrdom? Though foreign,
+savage, the name has a right to be handed down to posterity; it
+is well constructed, easily pronounced, and has the brevity that
+beseems a famous name. Is it not pleasant as well as odd? But
+does it not sound unfinished?</p>
+
+<p>I will not take it upon myself to assert that names have no
+influence on the destiny of men. There is a certain secret and
+inexplicable concord or a visible discord between the events of a
+man's life and his name which is truly surprising; often some
+remote but very real correlation is revealed. Our globe is round;
+everything is linked to everything else. Some day perhaps we
+shall revert to the occult sciences.</p>
+
+<p>Do you not discern in that letter Z an adverse influence? Does
+it not prefigure the wayward and fantastic progress of a
+storm-tossed life? What wind blew on that letter, which, whatever
+language we find it in, begins scarcely fifty words? Marcas' name
+was Zephirin; Saint Zephirin is highly venerated in Brittany, and
+Marcas was a Breton.</p>
+
+<p>Study the name once more: Z Marcas! The man's whole life lies
+in this fantastic juxtaposition of seven letters; seven! the most
+significant of all the cabalistic numbers. And he died at
+five-and-thirty, so his life extended over seven lustres.</p>
+
+<p>Marcas! Does it not hint of some precious object that is
+broken with a fall, with or without a crash?</p>
+
+<p>I had finished studying the law in Paris in 1836. I lived at
+that time in the Rue Corneille in a house where none but students
+came to lodge, one of those large houses where there is a winding
+staircase quite at the back lighted below from the street, higher
+up by borrowed lights, and at the top by a skylight. There were
+forty furnished rooms-- furnished as students' rooms are! What
+does youth demand more than was here supplied? A bed, a few
+chairs, a chest of drawers, a looking- glass, and a table. As
+soon as the sky is blue the student opens his window.</p>
+
+<p>But in this street there are no fair neighbors to flirt with.
+In front is the Odeon, long since closed, presenting a wall that
+is beginning to go black, its tiny gallery windows and its vast
+expanse of slate roof. I was not rich enough to have a good room;
+I was not even rich enough to have a room to myself. Juste and I
+shared a double-bedded room on the fifth floor.</p>
+
+<p>On our side of the landing there were but two rooms--ours and
+a smaller one, occupied by Z. Marcas, our neighbor. For six
+months Juste and I remained in perfect ignorance of the fact. The
+old woman who managed the house had indeed told us that the room
+was inhabited, but she had added that we should not be disturbed,
+that the occupant was exceedingly quiet. In fact, for those six
+months, we never met our fellow-lodger, and we never heard a
+sound in his room, in spite of the thinness of the partition that
+divided us--one of those walls of lath and plaster which are
+common in Paris houses.</p>
+
+<p>Our room, a little over seven feet high, was hung with a vile
+cheap paper sprigged with blue. The floor was painted, and knew
+nothing of the polish given by the <i>frotteur's</i> brush. By
+our beds there was only a scrap of thin carpet. The chimney
+opened immediately to the roof, and smoked so abominably that we
+were obliged to provide a stove at our own expense. Our beds were
+mere painted wooden cribs like those in schools; on the chimney
+shelf there were but two brass candlesticks, with or without
+tallow candles in them, and our two pipes with some tobacco in a
+pouch or strewn abroad, also the little piles of cigar- ash left
+there by our visitors or ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>A pair of calico curtains hung from the brass window rods, and
+on each side of the window was a small bookcase in cherry-wood,
+such as every one knows who has stared into the shop windows of
+the Quartier Latin, and in which we kept the few books necessary
+for our studies.</p>
+
+<p>The ink in the inkstand was always in the state of lava
+congealed in the crater of a volcano. May not any inkstand
+nowadays become a Vesuvius? The pens, all twisted, served to
+clean the stems of our pipes; and, in opposition to all the laws
+of credit, paper was even scarcer than coin.</p>
+
+<p>How can young men be expected to stay at home in such
+furnished lodgings? The students studied in the cafes, the
+theatre, the Luxembourg gardens, in <i>grisettes'</i> rooms, even
+in the law schools-- anywhere rather than in their horrible
+rooms--horrible for purposes of study, delightful as soon as they
+were used for gossiping and smoking in. Put a cloth on the table,
+and the impromptu dinner sent in from the best eating-house in
+the neighborhood--places for four--two of them in
+petticoats--show a lithograph of this "Interior" to the veriest
+bigot, and she will be bound to smile.</p>
+
+<p>We thought only of amusing ourselves. The reason for our
+dissipation lay in the most serious facts of the politics of the
+time. Juste and I could not see any room for us in the two
+professions our parents wished us to take up. There are a hundred
+doctors, a hundred lawyers, for one that is wanted. The crowd is
+choking these two paths which are supposed to lead to fortune,
+but which are merely two arenas; men kill each other there,
+fighting, not indeed with swords or fire-arms, but with intrigue
+and calumny, with tremendous toil, campaigns in the sphere of the
+intellect as murderous as those in Italy were to the soldiers of
+the Republic. In these days, when everything is an intellectual
+competition, a man must be able to sit forty-eight hours on end
+in his chair before a table, as a General could remain for two
+days on horseback and in his saddle.</p>
+
+<p>The throng of aspirants has necessitated a division of the
+Faculty of Medicine into categories. There is the physician who
+writes and the physician who practises, the political physician,
+and the physician militant--four different ways of being a
+physician, four classes already filled up. As to the fifth class,
+that of physicians who sell remedies, there is such a competition
+that they fight each other with disgusting advertisements on the
+walls of Paris.</p>
+
+<p>In all the law courts there are almost as many lawyers as
+there are cases. The pleader is thrown back on journalism, on
+politics, on literature. In fact, the State, besieged for the
+smallest appointments under the law, has ended by requiring that
+the applicants should have some little fortune. The pear-shaped
+head of the grocer's son is selected in preference to the square
+skull of a man of talent who has not a sou. Work as he will, with
+all his energy, a young man, starting from zero, may at the end
+of ten years find himself below the point he set out from. In
+these days, talent must have the good luck which secures success
+to the most incapable; nay, more, if it scorns the base
+compromises which insure advancement to crawling mediocrity, it
+will never get on.</p>
+
+<p>If we thoroughly knew our time, we also knew ourselves, and we
+preferred the indolence of dreamers to aimless stir, easy-going
+pleasure to the useless toil which would have exhausted our
+courage and worn out the edge of our intelligence. We had
+analyzed social life while smoking, laughing, and loafing. But,
+though elaborated by such means as these, our reflections were
+none the less judicious and profound.</p>
+
+<p>While we were fully conscious of the slavery to which youth is
+condemned, we were amazed at the brutal indifference of the
+authorities to everything connected with intellect, thought, and
+poetry. How often have Juste and I exchanged glances when reading
+the papers as we studied political events, or the debates in the
+Chamber, and discussed the proceedings of a Court whose wilful
+ignorance could find no parallel but in the platitude of the
+courtiers, the mediocrity of the men forming the hedge round the
+newly-restored throne, all alike devoid of talent or breadth of
+view, of distinction or learning, of influence or dignity!</p>
+
+<p>Could there be a higher tribute to the Court of Charles X.
+than the present Court, if Court it may be called? What a hatred
+of the country may be seen in the naturalization of vulgar
+foreigners, devoid of talent, who are enthroned in the Chamber of
+Peers! What a perversion of justice! What an insult to the
+distinguished youth, the ambitions native to the soil of France!
+We looked upon these things as upon a spectacle, and groaned over
+them, without taking upon ourselves to act.</p>
+
+<p>Juste, whom no one ever sought, and who never sought any one,
+was, at five-and-twenty, a great politician, a man with a
+wonderful aptitude for apprehending the correlation between
+remote history and the facts of the present and of the future. In
+1831, he told me exactly what would and did happen--the murders,
+the conspiracies, the ascendency of the Jews, the difficulty of
+doing anything in France, the scarcity of talent in the higher
+circles, and the abundance of intellect in the lowest ranks,
+where the finest courage is smothered under cigar ashes.</p>
+
+<p>What was to become of him? His parents wished him to be a
+doctor. But if he were a doctor, must he not wait twenty years
+for a practice? You know what he did? No? Well, he is a doctor;
+but he left France, he is in Asia. At this moment he is perhaps
+sinking under fatigue in a desert, or dying of the lashes of a
+barbarous horde--or perhaps he is some Indian prince's prime
+minister.</p>
+
+<p>Action is my vocation. Leaving a civil college at the age of
+twenty, the only way for me to enter the army was by enlisting as
+a common soldier; so, weary of the dismal outlook that lay before
+a lawyer, I acquired the knowledge needed for a sailor. I imitate
+Juste, and keep out of France, where men waste, in the struggle
+to make way, the energy needed for the noblest works. Follow my
+example, friends; I am going where a man steers his destiny as he
+pleases.</p>
+
+<p>These great resolutions were formed in the little room in the
+lodging- house in the Rue Corneille, in spite of our haunting the
+Bal Musard, flirting with girls of the town, and leading a
+careless and apparently reckless life. Our plans and arguments
+long floated in the air.</p>
+
+<p>Marcas, our neighbor, was in some degree the guide who led us
+to the margin of the precipice or the torrent, who made us sound
+it, and showed us beforehand what our fate would be if we let
+ourselves fall into it. It was he who put us on our guard against
+the time-bargains a man makes with poverty under the sanction of
+hope, by accepting precarious situations whence he fights the
+battle, carried along by the devious tide of Paris--that great
+harlot who takes you up or leaves you stranded, smiles or turns
+her back on you with equal readiness, wears out the strongest
+will in vexatious waiting, and makes misfortune wait on
+chance.</p>
+
+<p>At our first meeting, Marcas, as it were, dazzled us. On our
+return from the schools, a little before the dinner-hour, we were
+accustomed to go up to our room and remain there a while, either
+waiting for the other, to learn whether there were any change in
+our plans for the evening. One day, at four o'clock, Juste met
+Marcas on the stairs, and I saw him in the street. It was in the
+month of November, and Marcas had no cloak; he wore shoes with
+heavy soles, corduroy trousers, and a blue double-breasted coat
+buttoned to the throat, which gave a military air to his broad
+chest, all the more so because he wore a black stock. The costume
+was not in itself extraordinary, but it agreed well with the
+man's mien and countenance.</p>
+
+<p>My first impression on seeing him was neither surprise, nor
+distress, nor interest, nor pity, but curiosity mingled with all
+these feelings. He walked slowly, with a step that betrayed deep
+melancholy, his head forward with a stoop, but not bent like that
+of a conscience-stricken man. That head, large and powerful,
+which might contain the treasures necessary for a man of the
+highest ambition, looked as if it were loaded with thought; it
+was weighted with grief of mind, but there was no touch of
+remorse in his expression. As to his face, it may be summed up in
+a word. A common superstition has it that every human countenance
+resembles some animal. The animal for Marcas was the lion. His
+hair was like a mane, his nose was sort and flat; broad and
+dented at the tip like a lion's; his brow, like a lion's, was
+strongly marked with a deep median furrow, dividing two powerful
+bosses. His high, hairy cheek-bones, all the more prominent
+because his cheeks were so thin, his enormous mouth and hollow
+jaws, were accentuated by lines of tawny shadows. This almost
+terrible countenance seemed illuminated by two lamps--two eyes,
+black indeed, but infinitely sweet, calm and deep, full of
+thought. If I may say so, those eyes had a humiliated
+expression.</p>
+
+<p>Marcas was afraid of looking directly at others, not for
+himself, but for those on whom his fascinating gaze might rest;
+he had a power, and he shunned using it; he would spare those he
+met, and he feared notice. This was not from modesty, but from
+resignation founded on reason, which had demonstrated the
+immediate inutility of his gifts, the impossibility of entering
+and living in the sphere for which he was fitted. Those eyes
+could at times flash lightnings. From those lips a voice of
+thunder must surely proceed; it was a mouth like Mirabeau's.</p>
+
+<p>"I have seen such a grand fellow in the street," said I to
+Juste on coming in.</p>
+
+<p>"It must be our neighbor," replied Juste, who described, in
+fact, the man I had just met. "A man who lives like a wood-louse
+would be sure to look like that," he added.</p>
+
+<p>"What dejection and what dignity!"</p>
+
+<p>"One is the consequence of the other."</p>
+
+<p>"What ruined hopes! What schemes and failures!"</p>
+
+<p>"Seven leagues of ruins! Obelisks--palaces--towers!--The ruins
+of Palmyra in the desert!" said Juste, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>So we called him the Ruins of Palmyra.</p>
+
+<p>As we went out to dine at the wretched eating-house in the Rue
+de la Harpe to which we subscribed, we asked the name of Number
+37, and then heard the weird name Z. Marcas. Like boys, as we
+were, we repeated it more than a hundred times with all sorts of
+comments, absurd or melancholy, and the name lent itself to a
+jest. Juste would fire off the Z like a rocket rising,
+<i>z-z-z-z-zed</i>; and after pronouncing the first syllable of
+the name with great importance, depicted a fall by the dull
+brevity of the second.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, how and where does the man live?"</p>
+
+<p>From this query, to the innocent espionage of curiosity there
+was no pause but that required for carrying out our plan. Instead
+of loitering about the streets, we both came in, each armed with
+a novel. We read with our ears open. And in the perfect silence
+of our attic rooms, we heard the even, dull sound of a sleeping
+man breathing.</p>
+
+<p>"He is asleep," said I to Juste, noticing this fact.</p>
+
+<p>"At seven o'clock!" replied the Doctor.</p>
+
+<p>This was the name by which I called Juste, and he called me
+the Keeper of the Seals.</p>
+
+<p>"A man must be wretched indeed to sleep as much as our
+neighbor!" cried I, jumping on to the chest of drawers with a
+knife in my hand, to which a corkscrew was attached.</p>
+
+<p>I made a round hole at the top of the partition, about as big
+as a five-sou piece. I had forgotten that there would be no light
+in the room, and on putting my eye to the hole, I saw only
+darkness. At about one in the morning, when we had finished our
+books and were about to undress, we heard a noise in our
+neighbor's room. He got up, struck a match, and lighted his dip.
+I got on to the drawers again, and I then saw Marcas seated at
+his table and copying law-papers.</p>
+
+<p>His room was about half the size of ours; the bed stood in a
+recess by the door, for the passage ended there, and its breadth
+was added to his garret; but the ground on which the house was
+built was evidently irregular, for the party-wall formed an
+obtuse angle, and the room was not square. There was no
+fireplace, only a small earthenware stove, white blotched with
+green, of which the pipe went up through the roof. The window, in
+the skew side of the room, had shabby red curtains. The furniture
+consisted of an armchair, a table, a chair, and a wretched
+bed-table. A cupboard in the wall held his clothes. The
+wall-paper was horrible; evidently only a servant had ever been
+lodged there before Marcas.</p>
+
+<p>"What is to be seen?" asked the Doctor as I got down.</p>
+
+<p>"Look for yourself," said I.</p>
+
+<p>At nine next morning, Marcas was in bed. He had breakfasted
+off a saveloy; we saw on a plate, with some crumbs of bread, the
+remains of that too familiar delicacy. He was asleep; he did not
+wake till eleven. He then set to work again on the copy he had
+begun the night before, which was lying on the table.</p>
+
+<p>On going downstairs we asked the price of that room, and were
+told fifteen francs a month.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of a few days, we were fully informed as to the
+mode of life of Z. Marcas. He did copying, at so much a sheet no
+doubt, for a law-writer who lived in the courtyard of the
+Sainte-Chapelle. He worked half the night; after sleeping from
+six till ten, he began again and wrote till three. Then he went
+out to take the copy home before dinner, which he ate at
+Mizerai's in the Rue Michel-le-Comte, at a cost of nine sous, and
+came in to bed at six o'clock. It became known to us that Marcas
+did not utter fifteen sentences in a month; he never talked to
+anybody, nor said a word to himself in his dreadful garret.</p>
+
+<p>"The Ruins of Palmyra are terribly silent!" said Juste.</p>
+
+<p>This taciturnity in a man whose appearance was so imposing was
+strangely significant. Sometimes when we met him, we exchanged
+glances full of meaning on both sides, but they never led to any
+advances. Insensibly this man became the object of our secret
+admiration, though we knew no reason for it. Did it lie in his
+secretly simple habits, his monastic regularity, his hermit-like
+frugality, his idiotically mechanical labor, allowing his mind to
+remain neuter or to work on his own lines, seeming to us to hint
+at an expectation of some stroke of good luck, or at some
+foregone conclusion as to his life?</p>
+
+<p>After wandering for a long time among the Ruins of Palmyra, we
+forgot them--we were young! Then came the Carnival, the Paris
+Carnival, which, henceforth, will eclipse the old Carnival of
+Venice, unless some ill-advised Prefect of Police is
+antagonistic.</p>
+
+<p>Gambling ought to be allowed during the Carnival; but the
+stupid moralists who have had gambling suppressed are inert
+financiers, and this indispensable evil will be re-established
+among us when it is proved that France leaves millions at the
+German tables.</p>
+
+<p>This splendid Carnival brought us to utter penury, as it does
+every student. We got rid of every object of luxury; we sold our
+second coats, our second boots, our second waistcoats--everything
+of which we had a duplicate, except our friend. We ate bread and
+cold sausages; we looked where we walked; we had set to work in
+earnest. We owed two months' rent, and were sure of having a bill
+from the porter for sixty or eighty items each, and amounting to
+forty or fifty francs. We made no noise, and did not laugh as we
+crossed the little hall at the bottom of the stairs; we commonly
+took it at a flying leap from the lowest step into the street. On
+the day when we first found ourselves bereft of tobacco for our
+pipes, it struck us that for some days we had been eating bread
+without any kind of butter.</p>
+
+<p>Great was our distress.</p>
+
+<p>"No tobacco!" said the Doctor.</p>
+
+<p>"No cloak!" said the Keeper of the Seals.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you rascals, you would dress as the postillion de
+Longjumeau, you would appear as Debardeurs, sup in the morning,
+and breakfast at night at Very's--sometimes even at the <i>Rocher
+de Cancale</i>.--Dry bread for you, my boys! Why," said I, in a
+big bass voice, "you deserve to sleep under the bed, you are not
+worthy to lie in it--"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes; but, Keeper of the Seals, there is no more
+tobacco!" said Juste.</p>
+
+<p>"It is high time to write home, to our aunts, our mothers, and
+our sisters, to tell them we have no underlinen left, that the
+wear and tear of Paris would ruin garments of wire. Then we will
+solve an elegant chemical problem by transmuting linen into
+silver."</p>
+
+<p>"But we must live till we get the answer."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I will go and bring out a loan among such of our
+friends as may still have some capital to invest."</p>
+
+<p>"And how much will you find?"</p>
+
+<p>"Say ten francs!" replied I with pride.</p>
+
+<p>It was midnight. Marcas had heard everything. He knocked at
+our door.</p>
+
+<p>"Messieurs," said he, "here is some tobacco; you can repay me
+on the first opportunity."</p>
+
+<p>We were struck, not by the offer, which we accepted, but by
+the rich, deep, full voice in which it was made; a tone only
+comparable to the lowest string of Paganini's violin. Marcas
+vanished without waiting for our thanks.</p>
+
+<p>Juste and I looked at each other without a word. To be rescued
+by a man evidently poorer than ourselves! Juste sat down to write
+to every member of his family, and I went off to effect a loan. I
+brought in twenty francs lent me by a fellow-provincial. In that
+evil but happy day gambling was still tolerated, and in its
+lodes, as hard as the rocky ore of Brazil, young men, by risking
+a small sum, had a chance of winning a few gold pieces. My
+friend, too, had some Turkish tobacco brought home from
+Constantinople by a sailor, and he gave me quite as much as we
+had taken from Z. Marcas. I conveyed the splendid cargo into
+port, and we went in triumph to repay our neighbor with a tawny
+wig of Turkish tobacco for his dark <i>Caporal</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"You are determined not to be my debtors," said he. "You are
+giving me gold for copper.--You are boys--good boys----"</p>
+
+<p>The sentences, spoken in varying tones, were variously
+emphasized. The words were nothing, but the expression!--That
+made us friends of ten years' standing at once.</p>
+
+<p>Marcas, on hearing us coming, had covered up his papers; we
+understood that it would be taking a liberty to allude to his
+means of subsistence, and felt ashamed of having watched him. His
+cupboard stood open; in it there were two shirts, a white necktie
+and a razor. The razor made me shudder. A looking-glass, worth
+five francs perhaps, hung near the window.</p>
+
+<p>The man's few and simple movements had a sort of savage
+grandeur. The Doctor and I looked at each other, wondering what
+we could say in reply. Juste, seeing that I was speechless, asked
+Marcas jestingly:</p>
+
+<p>"You cultivate literature, monsieur?"</p>
+
+<p>"Far from it!" replied Marcas. "I should not be so
+wealthy."</p>
+
+<p>"I fancied," said I, "that poetry alone, in these days, was
+amply sufficient to provide a man with lodgings as bad as
+ours."</p>
+
+<p>My remark made Marcas smile, and the smile gave a charm to his
+yellow face.</p>
+
+<p>"Ambition is not a less severe taskmaster to those who fail,"
+said he. "You, who are beginning life, walk in the beaten paths.
+Never dream of rising superior, you will be ruined!"</p>
+
+<p>"You advise us to stay just as we are?" said the Doctor,
+smiling.</p>
+
+<p>There is something so infectious and childlike in the
+pleasantries of youth, that Marcas smiled again in reply.</p>
+
+<p>"What incidents can have given you this detestable
+philosophy?" asked I.</p>
+
+<p>"I forgot once more that chance is the result of an immense
+equation of which we know not all the factors. When we start from
+zero to work up to the unit, the chances are incalculable. To
+ambitious men Paris is an immense roulette table, and every young
+man fancies he can hit on a successful progression of
+numbers."</p>
+
+<p>He offered us the tobacco I had brought that we might smoke
+with him; the Doctor went to fetch our pipes; Marcas filled his,
+and then he came to sit in our room, bringing the tobacco with
+him, since there were but two chairs in his. Juste, as brisk as a
+squirrel, ran out, and returned with a boy carrying three bottles
+of Bordeaux, some Brie cheese, and a loaf.</p>
+
+<p>"Hah!" said I to myself, "fifteen francs," and I was right to
+a sou.</p>
+
+<p>Juste gravely laid five francs on the chimney-shelf.</p>
+
+<p>There are immeasurable differences between the gregarious man
+and the man who lives closest to nature. Toussaint Louverture,
+after he was caught, died without speaking a word. Napoleon,
+transplanted to a rock, talked like a magpie--he wanted to
+account for himself. Z. Marcas erred in the same way, but for our
+benefit only. Silence in all its majesty is to be found only in
+the savage. There is never a criminal who, though he might let
+his secrets fall with his head into the basket of sawdust does
+not feel the purely social impulse to tell them to somebody.</p>
+
+<p>Nay, I am wrong. We have seen one Iroquois of the Faubourg
+Saint- Marceau who raised the Parisian to the level of the
+natural savage--a republican, a conspirator, a Frenchman, an old
+man, who outdid all we have heard of Negro determination, and all
+that Cooper tells us of the tenacity and coolness of the Redskins
+under defeat. Morey, the Guatimozin of the "Mountain," preserved
+an attitude unparalleled in the annals of European justice.</p>
+
+<p>This is what Marcas told us during the small hours,
+sandwiching his discourse with slices of bread spread with cheese
+and washed down with wine. All the tobacco was burned out. Now
+and then the hackney coaches clattering across the Place de
+l'Odeon, or the omnibuses toiling past, sent up their dull
+rumbling, as if to remind us that Paris was still close to
+us.</p>
+
+<p>His family lived at Vitre; his father and mother had fifteen
+hundred francs a year in the funds. He had received an education
+gratis in a Seminary, but had refused to enter the priesthood. He
+felt in himself the fires of immense ambition, and had come to
+Paris on foot at the age of twenty, the possessor of two hundred
+francs. He had studied the law, working in an attorney's office,
+where he had risen to be superior clerk. He had taken his
+doctor's degree in law, had mastered the old and modern codes,
+and could hold his own with the most famous pleaders. He had
+studied the law of nations, and was familiar with European
+treaties and international practice. He had studied men and
+things in five capitals--London, Berlin, Vienna, Petersburg, and
+Constantinople.</p>
+
+<p>No man was better informed than he as to the rules of the
+Chamber. For five years he had been reporter of the debates for a
+daily paper. He spoke extempore and admirably, and could go on
+for a long time in that deep, appealing voice which had struck us
+to the soul. Indeed, he proved by the narrative of his life that
+he was a great orator, a concise orator, serious and yet full of
+piercing eloquence; he resembled Berryer in his fervor and in the
+impetus which commands the sympathy of the masses, and was like
+Thiers in refinement and skill; but he would have been less
+diffuse, less in difficulties for a conclusion. He had intended
+to rise rapidly to power without burdening himself first with the
+doctrines necessary to begin with, for a man in opposition, but
+an incubus later to the statesman.</p>
+
+<p>Marcas had learned everything that a real statesman should
+know; indeed, his amazement was considerable when he had occasion
+to discern the utter ignorance of men who have risen to the
+administration of public affairs in France. Though in him it was
+vocation that had led to study, nature had been generous and
+bestowed all that cannot be acquired--keen perceptions,
+self-command, a nimble wit, rapid judgment, decisiveness, and,
+what is the genius of these men, fertility in resource.</p>
+
+<p>By the time when Marcas thought himself duly equipped, France
+was torn by intestine divisions arising from the triumph of the
+House of Orleans over the elder branch of the Bourbons.</p>
+
+<p>The field of political warfare is evidently changed. Civil war
+henceforth cannot last for long, and will not be fought out in
+the provinces. In France such struggles will be of brief duration
+and at the seat of government; and the battle will be the close
+of the moral contest which will have been brought to an issue by
+superior minds. This state of things will continue so long as
+France has her present singular form of government, which has no
+analogy with that of any other country; for there is no more
+resemblance between the English and the French constitutions than
+between the two lands.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Marcas' place was in the political press. Being poor and
+unable to secure his election, he hoped to make a sudden
+appearance. He resolved on making the greatest possible sacrifice
+for a man of superior intellect, to work as a subordinate to some
+rich and ambitious deputy. Like a second Bonaparte, he sought his
+Barras; the new Colbert hoped to find a Mazarin. He did immense
+services, and he did them then and there; he assumed no
+importance, he made no boast, he did not complain of ingratitude.
+He did them in the hope that his patron would put him in a
+position to be elected deputy; Marcas wished for nothing but a
+loan that might enable him to purchase a house in Paris, the
+qualification required by law. Richard III. asked for nothing but
+his horse.</p>
+
+<p>In three years Marcas had made his man--one of the fifty
+supposed great statesmen who are the battledores with which two
+cunning players toss the ministerial portfolios exactly as the
+man behind the puppet- show hits Punch against the constable in
+his street theatre, and counts on always getting paid. This man
+existed only by Marcas, but he had just brains enough to
+appreciate the value of his "ghost" and to know that Marcas, if
+he ever came to the front, would remain there, would be
+indispensable, while he himself would be translated to the polar
+zone of Luxembourg. So he determined to put insurmountable
+obstacles in the way of his Mentor's advancement, and hid his
+purpose under the semblance of the utmost sincerity. Like all
+mean men, he could dissimulate to perfection, and he soon made
+progress in the ways of ingratitude, for he felt that he must
+kill Marcas, not to be killed by him. These two men, apparently
+so united, hated each other as soon as one had deceived the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>The politician was made one of a ministry; Marcas remained in
+the opposition to hinder his man from being attacked; nay, by
+skilful tactics he won him the applause of the opposition. To
+excuse himself for not rewarding his subaltern, the chief pointed
+out the impossibility of finding a place suddenly for a man on
+the other side, without a great deal of manoeuvring. Marcas had
+hoped confidently for a place to enable him to marry, and thus
+acquire the qualification he so ardently desired. He was
+two-and-thirty, and the Chamber ere long must be dissolved.
+Having detected his man in this flagrant act of bad faith, he
+overthrew him, or at any rate contributed largely to his
+overthrow, and covered him with mud.</p>
+
+<p>A fallen minister, if he is to rise again to power, must show
+that he is to be feared; this man, intoxicated by Royal glibness,
+had fancied that his position would be permanent; he acknowledged
+his delinquencies; besides confessing them, he did Marcas a small
+money service, for Marcas had got into debt. He subsidized the
+newspaper on which Marcas worked, and made him the manager of
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Though he despised the man, Marcas, who, practically, was
+being subsidized too, consented to take the part of the fallen
+minister. Without unmasking at once all the batteries of his
+superior intellect, Marcas came a little further than before; he
+showed half his shrewdness. The Ministry lasted only a hundred
+and eighty days; it was swallowed up. Marcas had put himself into
+communication with certain deputies, had moulded them like dough,
+leaving each impressed with a high opinion of his talent; his
+puppet again became a member of the Ministry, and then the paper
+was ministerial. The Ministry united the paper with another,
+solely to squeeze out Marcas, who in this fusion had to make way
+for a rich and insolent rival, whose name was well known, and who
+already had his foot in the stirrup.</p>
+
+<p>Marcas relapsed into utter destitution; his haughty patron
+well knew the depths into which he had cast him.</p>
+
+<p>Where was he to go? The ministerial papers, privily warned,
+would have nothing to say to him. The opposition papers did not
+care to admit him to their offices. Marcas could side neither
+with the Republicans nor with the Legitimists, two parties whose
+triumph would mean the overthrow of everything that now is.</p>
+
+<p>"Ambitious men like a fast hold on things," said he with a
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>He lived by writing a few articles on commercial affairs, and
+contributed to one of those encyclopedias brought out by
+speculation and not by learning. Finally a paper was founded,
+which was destined to live but two years, but which secured his
+services. From that moment he renewed his connection with the
+minister's enemies; he joined the party who were working for the
+fall of the Government; and as soon as his pickaxe had free play,
+it fell.</p>
+
+<p>This paper had now for six months ceased to exist; he had
+failed to find employment of any kind; he was spoken of as a
+dangerous man, calumny attacked him; he had unmasked a huge
+financial and mercantile job by a few articles and a pamphlet. He
+was known to be a mouthpiece of a banker who was said to have
+paid him largely, and from whom he was supposed to expect some
+patronage in return for his championship. Marcas, disgusted by
+men and things, worn out by five years of fighting, regarded as a
+free lance rather than as a great leader, crushed by the
+necessity of earning his daily bread, which hindered him from
+gaining ground, in despair at the influence exerted by money over
+mind, and given over to dire poverty, buried himself in a garret,
+to make thirty sous a day, the sum strictly answering to his
+needs. Meditation had leveled a desert all round him. He read the
+papers to be informed of what was going on. Pozzo di Borgo had
+once lived like this for some time.</p>
+
+<p>Marcas, no doubt, was planning a serious attack, accustoming
+himself to dissimulation, and punishing himself for his blunders
+by Pythagorean muteness. But he did not tell us the reasons for
+his conduct.</p>
+
+<p>It is impossible to give you an idea of the scenes of the
+highest comedy that lay behind this algebraic statement of his
+career; his useless patience dogging the footsteps of fortune,
+which presently took wings, his long tramps over the thorny
+brakes of Paris, his breathless chases as a petitioner, his
+attempts to win over fools; the schemes laid only to fail through
+the influence of some frivolous woman; the meetings with men of
+business who expected their capital to bring them places and a
+peerage, as well as large interest. Then the hopes rising in a
+towering wave only to break in foam on the shoal; the wonders
+wrought in reconciling adverse interests which, after working
+together for a week, fell asunder; the annoyance, a thousand
+times repeated, of seeing a dunce decorated with the Legion of
+Honor, and preferred, though as ignorant as a shop-boy, to a man
+of talent. Then, what Marcas called the stratagems of
+stupidity--you strike a man, and he seems convinced, he nods his
+head--everything is settled; next day, this india-rubber ball,
+flattened for a moment, has recovered itself in the course of the
+night; it is as full of wind as ever; you must begin all over
+again; and you go on till you understand that you are not dealing
+with a man, but with a lump of gum that loses shape in the
+sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>These thousand annoyances, this vast waste of human energy on
+barren spots, the difficulty of achieving any good, the
+incredible facility of doing mischief; two strong games played
+out, twice won, and then twice lost; the hatred of a statesman--a
+blockhead with a painted face and a wig, but in whom the world
+believed--all these things, great and small, had not crushed, but
+for the moment had dashed Marcas. In the days when money had come
+into his hands, his fingers had not clutched it; he had allowed
+himself the exquisite pleasure of sending it all to his
+family--to his sisters, his brothers, his old father. Like
+Napoleon in his fall, he asked for no more than thirty sous a
+day, and any man of energy can earn thirty sous for a day's work
+in Paris.</p>
+
+<p>When Marcas had finished the story of his life, intermingled
+with reflections, maxims, and observations, revealing him as a
+great politician, a few questions and answers on both sides as to
+the progress of affairs in France and in Europe were enough to
+prove to us that he was a real statesman; for a man may be
+quickly and easily judged when he can be brought on to the ground
+of immediate difficulties: there is a certain Shibboleth for men
+of superior talents, and we were of the tribe of modern Levites
+without belonging as yet to the Temple. As I have said, our
+frivolity covered certain purposes which Juste has carried out,
+and which I am about to execute.</p>
+
+<p>When we had done talking, we all three went out, cold as it
+was, to walk in the Luxembourg gardens till the dinner hour. In
+the course of that walk our conversation, grave throughout,
+turned on the painful aspects of the political situation. Each of
+us contributed his remarks, his comment, or his jest, a
+pleasantry or a proverb. This was no longer exclusively a
+discussion of life on the colossal scale just described by
+Marcas, the soldier of political warfare. Nor was it the
+distressful monologue of the wrecked navigator, stranded in a
+garret in the Hotel Corneille; it was a dialogue in which two
+well-informed young men, having gauged the times they lived in,
+were endeavoring, under the guidance of a man of talent, to gain
+some light on their own future prospects.</p>
+
+<p>"Why," asked Juste, "did you not wait patiently for an
+opportunity, and imitate the only man who has been able to keep
+the lead since the Revolution of July by holding his head above
+water?"</p>
+
+<p>"Have I not said that we never know where the roots of chance
+lie? Carrell was in identically the same position as the orator
+you speak of. That gloomy young man, of a bitter spirit, had a
+whole government in his head; the man of whom you speak had no
+idea beyond mounting on the crupper of every event. Of the two,
+Carrel was the better man. Well, one becomes a minister, Carrel
+remained a journalist; the incomplete but craftier man is living;
+Carrel is dead.</p>
+
+<p>"I may point out that your man has for fifteen years been
+making his way, and is but making it still. He may yet be caught
+and crushed between two cars full of intrigues on the highroad to
+power. He has no house; he has not the favor of the palace like
+Metternich; nor, like Villele, the protection of a compact
+majority.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not believe that the present state of things will last
+ten years longer. Hence, supposing I should have such poor good
+luck, I am already too late to avoid being swept away by the
+commotion I foresee. I should need to be established in a
+superior position."</p>
+
+<p>"What commotion?" asked Juste.</p>
+
+<p>"AUGUST, 1830," said Marcas in solemn tones, holding out his
+hand towards Paris; "AUGUST, the offspring of Youth which bound
+the sheaves, and of Intellect which had ripened the harvest,
+forgot to provide for Youth and Intellect.</p>
+
+<p>"Youth will explode like the boiler of a steam-engine. Youth
+has no outlet in France; it is gathering an avalanche of
+underrated capabilities, of legitimate and restless ambitions;
+young men are not marrying now; families cannot tell what to do
+with their children. What will the thunderclap be that will shake
+down these masses? I know not, but they will crash down into the
+midst of things, and overthrow everything. These are laws of
+hydrostatics which act on the human race; the Roman Empire had
+failed to understand them, and the Barbaric hordes came down.</p>
+
+<p>"The Barbaric hordes now are the intelligent class. The laws
+of overpressure are at this moment acting slowly and silently in
+our midst. The Government is the great criminal; it does not
+appreciate the two powers to which it owes everything; it has
+allowed its hands to be tied by the absurdities of the Contract;
+it is bound, ready to be the victim.</p>
+
+<p>"Louis XIV., Napoleon, England, all were or are eager for
+intelligent youth. In France the young are condemned by the new
+legislation, by the blundering principles of elective rights, by
+the unsoundness of the ministerial constitution.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at the elective Chamber; you will find no deputies of
+thirty; the youth of Richelieu and of Mazarin, of Turenne and of
+Colbert, of Pitt and of Saint-Just, of Napoleon and of Prince
+Metternich, would find no admission there; Burke, Sheridan, or
+Fox could not win seats. Even if political majority had been
+fixed at one-and-twenty, and eligibility had been relieved of
+every disabling qualification, the Departments would have
+returned the very same members, men devoid of political talent,
+unable to speak without murdering French grammar, and among whom,
+in ten years, scarcely one statesman has been found.</p>
+
+<p>"The causes of an impending event may be seen, but the event
+itself cannot be foretold. At this moment the youth of France is
+being driven into Republicanism, because it believes that the
+Republic would bring it emancipation. It will always remember the
+young representatives of the people and the young army leaders!
+The imprudence of the Government is only comparable to its
+avarice."</p>
+
+<p>That day left its echoes in our lives. Marcas confirmed us in
+our resolution to leave France, where young men of talent and
+energy are crushed under the weight of successful commonplace,
+envious, and insatiable middle age.</p>
+
+<p>We dined together in the Rue de la Harpe. We thenceforth felt
+for Marcas the most respectful affection; he gave us the most
+practical aid in the sphere of the mind. That man knew
+everything; he had studied everything. For us he cast his eye
+over the whole civilized world, seeking the country where
+openings would be at once the most abundant and the most
+favorable to the success of our plans. He indicated what should
+be the goal of our studies; he bid us make haste, explaining to
+us that time was precious, that emigration would presently begin,
+and that its effect would be to deprive France of the cream of
+its powers and of its youthful talent; that their intelligence,
+necessarily sharpened, would select the best places, and that the
+great thing was to be first in the field.</p>
+
+<p>Thenceforward, we often sat late at work under the lamp. Our
+generous instructor wrote some notes for our guidance--two pages
+for Juste and three for me--full of invaluable advice--the sort
+of information which experience alone can supply, such landmarks
+as only genius can place. In those papers, smelling of tobacco,
+and covered with writing so vile as to be almost hieroglyphic,
+there are suggestions for a fortune, and forecasts of unerring
+acumen. There are hints as to certain parts of America and Asia
+which have been fully justified, both before and since Juste and
+I could set out.</p>
+
+<p>Marcas, like us, was in the most abject poverty. He earned,
+indeed, his daily bread, but he had neither linen, clothes, nor
+shoes. He did not make himself out any better than he was; his
+dreams had been of luxury as well as of power. He did not admit
+that this was the real Marcas; he abandoned this person, indeed,
+to the caprices of life. What he lived by was the breath of
+ambition; he dreamed of revenge while blaming himself for
+yielding to so shallow a feeling. The true statesman ought, above
+all things, to be superior to vulgar passions; like the man of
+science. It was in these days of dire necessity that Marcas
+seemed to us so great--nay, so terrible; there was something
+awful in the gaze which saw another world than that which strikes
+the eye of ordinary men. To us he was a subject of contemplation
+and astonishment; for the young--which of us has not known
+it?--the young have a keen craving to admire; they love to attach
+themselves, and are naturally inclined to submit to the men they
+feel to be superior, as they are to devote themselves to a great
+cause.</p>
+
+<p>Our surprise was chiefly roused by his indifference in matters
+of sentiment; women had no place in his life. When we spoke of
+this matter, a perennial theme of conversation among Frenchmen,
+he simply remarked:</p>
+
+<p>"Gowns cost too much."</p>
+
+<p>He saw the look that passed between Juste and me, and went
+on:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, far too much. The woman you buy--and she is the least
+expensive --takes a great deal of money. The woman who gives
+herself takes all your time! Woman extinguishes every energy,
+every ambition. Napoleon reduced her to what she should be. From
+that point of view, he really was great. He did not indulge such
+ruinous fancies of Louis XIV. and Louis XV.; at the same time he
+could love in secret."</p>
+
+<p>We discovered that, like Pitt, who made England is wife,
+Marcas bore France in his heart; he idolized his country; he had
+not a thought that was not for his native land. His fury at
+feeling that he had in his hands the remedy for the evils which
+so deeply saddened him, and could not apply it, ate into his
+soul, and this rage was increased by the inferiority of France at
+that time, as compared with Russia and England. France a
+third-rate power! This cry came up again and again in his
+conversation. The intestinal disorders of his country had entered
+into his soul. All the contests between the Court and the
+Chamber, showing, as they did, incessant change and constant
+vacillation, which must injure the prosperity of the country, he
+scoffed at as backstairs squabbles.</p>
+
+<p>"This is peace at the cost of the future," said he.</p>
+
+<p>One evening Juste and I were at work, sitting in perfect
+silence. Marcas had just risen to toil at his copying, for he had
+refused our assistance in spite of our most earnest entreaties.
+We had offered to take it in turns to copy a batch of manuscript,
+so that he should do but a third of his distasteful task; he had
+been quite angry, and we had ceased to insist.</p>
+
+<p>We heard the sound of gentlemanly boots in the passage, and
+raised our heads, looking at each other. There was a tap at
+Marcas' door--he never took the key out of the lock--and we heard
+the hero answer:</p>
+
+<p>"Come in." Then--"What, you here, monsieur?"</p>
+
+<p>"I, myself," replied the retired minister.</p>
+
+<p>It was the Diocletian of this unknown martyr.</p>
+
+<p>For some time he and our neighbor conversed in an undertone.
+Suddenly Marcas, whose voice had been heard but rarely, as is
+natural in a dialogue in which the applicant begins by setting
+forth the situation, broke out loudly in reply to some offer we
+had not overheard.</p>
+
+<p>"You would laugh at me for a fool," cried he, "if I took you
+at your word. Jesuits are a thing of the past, but Jesuitism is
+eternal. Your Machiavelism and your generosity are equally hollow
+and untrustworthy. You can make your own calculations, but who
+can calculate on you? Your Court is made up of owls who fear the
+light, of old men who quake in the presence of the young, or who
+simply disregard them. The Government is formed on the same
+pattern as the Court. You have hunted up the remains of the
+Empire, as the Restoration enlisted the Voltigeurs of Louis
+XIV.</p>
+
+<p>"Hitherto the evasions of cowardice have been taken for the
+manoeuvring of ability; but dangers will come, and the younger
+generation will rise as they did in 1790. They did grand things
+then. --Just now you change ministries as a sick man turns in his
+bed; these oscillations betray the weakness of the Government.
+You work on an underhand system of policy which will be turned
+against you, for France will be tired of your shuffling. France
+will not tell you that she is tired of you; a man never knows
+whence his ruin comes; it is the historian's task to find out;
+but you will undoubtedly perish as the reward of not having the
+youth of France to lend you its strength and energy; for having
+hated really capable men; for not having lovingly chosen them
+from this noble generation; for having in all cases preferred
+mediocrity.</p>
+
+<p>"You have come to ask my support, but you are an atom in that
+decrepit heap which is made hideous by self-interest, which
+trembles and squirms, and, because it is so mean, tries to make
+France mean too. My strong nature, my ideas, would work like
+poison in you; twice you have tricked me, twice have I overthrown
+you. If we unite a third time, it must be a very serious matter.
+I should kill myself if I allowed myself to be duped; for I
+should be to blame, not you."</p>
+
+<p>Then we heard the humblest entreaties, the most fervent
+adjuration, not to deprive the country of such superior talents.
+The man spoke of patriotism, and Marcas uttered a significant
+"/Ouh! ouh!/" He laughed at his would-be patron. Then the
+statesman was more explicit; he bowed to the superiority of his
+erewhile counselor; he pledged himself to enable Marcas to remain
+in office, to be elected deputy; then he offered him a high
+appointment, promising him that he, the speaker, would
+thenceforth be the subordinate of a man whose subaltern he was
+only worthy to be. He was in the newly-formed ministry, and he
+would not return to power unless Marcas had a post in proportion
+to his merit; he had already made it a condition, Marcas had been
+regarded as indispensable.</p>
+
+<p>Marcas refused.</p>
+
+<p>"I have never before been in a position to keep my promises;
+here is an opportunity of proving myself faithful to my word, and
+you fail me."</p>
+
+<p>To this Marcas made no reply. The boots were again audible in
+the passage on the way to the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"Marcas! Marcas!" we both cried, rushing into his room. "Why
+refuse? He really meant it. His offers are very handsome; at any
+rate, go to see the ministers."</p>
+
+<p>In a twinkling, we had given Marcas a hundred reasons. The
+minister's voice was sincere; without seeing him, we had felt
+sure that he was honest.</p>
+
+<p>"I have no clothes," replied Marcas.</p>
+
+<p>"Rely on us," said Juste, with a glance at me.</p>
+
+<p>Marcas had the courage to trust us; a light flashed in his
+eye, he pushed his fingers through his hair, lifting it from his
+forehead with a gesture that showed some confidence in his luck
+and when he had thus unveiled his face, so to speak, we saw in
+him a man absolutely unknown to us--Marcas sublime, Marcas in his
+power! His mind was in its element--the bird restored to the free
+air, the fish to the water, the horse galloping across the
+plain.</p>
+
+<p>It was transient. His brow clouded again, he had, it would
+seem, a vision of his fate. Halting doubt had followed close on
+the heels of white-winged hope.</p>
+
+<p>We left him to himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, then," said I to the Doctor, "we have given our word;
+how are we to keep it?"</p>
+
+<p>"We will sleep upon it," said Juste, "and to-morrow morning we
+will talk it over."</p>
+
+<p>Next morning we went for a walk in the Luxembourg.</p>
+
+<p>We had had time to think over the incident of the past night,
+and were both equally surprised at the lack of address shown by
+Marcas in the minor difficulties of life--he, a man who never saw
+any difficulties in the solution of the hardest problems of
+abstract or practical politics. But these elevated characters can
+all be tripped up on a grain of sand, and will, like the grandest
+enterprise, miss fire for want of a thousand francs. It is the
+old story of Napoleon, who, for lack of a pair of boots, did not
+set out for India.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what have you hit upon?" asked Juste.</p>
+
+<p>"I have thought of a way to get him a complete outfit."</p>
+
+<p>"Where?"</p>
+
+<p>"From Humann."</p>
+
+<p>"How?"</p>
+
+<p>"Humann, my boy, never goes to his customers--his customers go
+to him; so that he does not know whether I am rich or poor. He
+only knows that I dress well and look decent in the clothes he
+makes for me. I shall tell him that an uncle of mine has dropped
+in from the country, and that his indifference in matters of
+dress is quite a discredit to me in the upper circles where I am
+trying to find a wife.--It will not be Humann if he sends in his
+bill before three months."</p>
+
+<p>The Doctor thought this a capital idea for a vaudeville, but
+poor enough in real life, and doubted my success. But I give you
+my word of honor, Humann dressed Marcas, and, being an artist,
+turned him out as a political personage ought to be dressed.</p>
+
+<p>Juste lent Marcas two hundred francs in gold, the product of
+two watches bought on credit, and pawned at the Mont-de-Piete.
+For my part, I had said nothing of the six shirts and all
+necessary linen, which cost me no more than the pleasure of
+asking for them from a forewoman in a shop whom I had treated to
+Musard's during the carnival.</p>
+
+<p>Marcas accepted everything, thanking us no more than he ought.
+He only inquired as to the means by which we had got possession
+of such riches, and we made him laugh for the last time. We
+looked on our Marcas as shipowners, when they have exhausted
+their credit and every resource at their command it fit out a
+vessel, must look on it as it puts out to sea.</p>
+
+<p>Here Charles was silent; he seemed crushed by his
+memories.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," cried the audience, "and what happened?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will tell you in a few words--for this is not romance--it
+is history."</p>
+
+<p>We saw no more of Marcas. The administration lasted for three
+months; it fell at the end of the session. Then Marcas came back
+to us, worked to death. He had sounded the crater of power; he
+came away from it with the beginnings of brain fever. The disease
+made rapid progress; we nursed him. Juste at once called in the
+chief physician of the hospital where he was working as
+house-surgeon. I was then living alone in our room, and I was the
+most attentive attendant; but care and science alike were in
+vain. By the month of January, 1838, Marcas himself felt that he
+had but a few days to live.</p>
+
+<p>The man whose soul and brain he had been for six months never
+even sent to inquire after him. Marcas expressed the greatest
+contempt for the Government; he seemed to doubt what the fate of
+France might be, and it was this doubt that had made him ill. He
+had, he thought, detected treason in the heart of power, not
+tangible, seizable treason, the result of facts, but the treason
+of a system, the subordination of national interests to selfish
+ends. His belief in the degradation of the country was enough to
+aggravate his complaint.</p>
+
+<p>I myself was witness to the proposals made to him by one of
+the leaders of the antagonistic party which he had fought
+against. His hatred of the men he had tried to serve was so
+virulent, that he would gladly have joined the coalition that was
+about to be formed among certain ambitious spirits who, at least,
+had one idea in common--that of shaking off the yoke of the
+Court. But Marcas could only reply to the envoy in the words of
+the Hotel de Ville:</p>
+
+<p>"It is too late!"</p>
+
+<p>Marcas did not leave money enough to pay for his funeral.
+Juste and I had great difficulty in saving him from the ignominy
+of a pauper's bier, and we alone followed the coffin of Z.
+Marcas, which was dropped into the common grave of the cemetery
+of Mont-Parnasse.</p>
+
+<p>We looked sadly at each other as we listened to this tale, the
+last we heard from the lips of Charles Rabourdin the day before
+he embarked at le Havre on a brig that was to convey him to the
+islands of Malay. We all knew more than one Marcas, more than one
+victim of his devotion to a party, repaid by betrayal or
+neglect.</p>
+
+<p>LES JARDIES, May 1840.</p>
+
+<p>ADDENDUM</p>
+
+<p>The following personage appears in other stories of the Human
+Comedy.</p>
+
+<p>Marcas, Zephirin A Prince of Bohemia</p>
+
+<p>�</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<pre>
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, Z. MARCAS ***
+
+This file should be named zmrcs10h.htm or zmrcs10h.zip
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, zmrcs11h.htm
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, zmrcs10ah.htm
+
+
+Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we usually do not
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections,
+even years after the official publication date.
+
+Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.
+
+Most people start at our Web sites at:
+http://gutenberg.net or
+http://promo.net/pg
+
+These Web sites include award-winning information about Project
+Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new
+eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).
+
+
+Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement
+can get to them as follows, and just download by date.  This is
+also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
+indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
+announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
+
+http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext04 or
+ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext04
+
+Or /etext03, 02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
+
+Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
+as it appears in our Newsletters.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.   Our
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If the value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text
+files per month:  1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+
+We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002
+If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
+will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks!
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
+
+Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated):
+
+eBooks Year Month
+
+    1  1971 July
+   10  1991 January
+  100  1994 January
+ 1000  1997 August
+ 1500  1998 October
+ 2000  1999 December
+ 2500  2000 December
+ 3000  2001 November
+ 4000  2001 October/November
+ 6000  2002 December*
+ 9000  2003 November*
+10000  2004 January*
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
+to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people
+and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut,
+Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,
+Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts,
+Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
+Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,
+Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South
+Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West
+Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
+
+We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones
+that have responded.
+
+As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list
+will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states.
+Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.
+
+In answer to various questions we have received on this:
+
+We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally
+request donations in all 50 states.  If your state is not listed and
+you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have,
+just ask.
+
+While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are
+not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting
+donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to
+donate.
+
+International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about
+how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made
+deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are
+ways.
+
+Donations by check or money order may be sent to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Ave.
+Oxford, MS 38655-4109
+
+Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment
+method other than by check or money order.
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by
+the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN
+[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154.  Donations are
+tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law.  As fund-raising
+requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be
+made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+You can get up to date donation information online at:
+
+http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html
+
+
+***
+
+If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
+you can always email directly to:
+
+Michael S. Hart [hart@pobox.com]
+
+Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.
+
+We would prefer to send you information by email.
+
+
+**The Legal Small Print**
+
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
+you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks,
+is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
+through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
+Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook
+under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
+any commercial products without permission.
+
+To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
+receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims
+all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from. If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
+and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
+with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
+legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
+following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this eBook,
+[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook,
+or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     eBook or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word
+     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the eBook (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
+     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
+     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
+     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
+     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
+     let us know your plans and to work out the details.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
+public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
+in machine readable form.
+
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
+public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
+Money should be paid to the:
+"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
+software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
+hart@pobox.com
+
+[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only
+when distributed free of all fees.  Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by
+Michael S. Hart.  Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be
+used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be
+they hardware or software or any other related product without
+express permission.]
+
+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END*
+</pre>
+</body>
+</html>
+
+
diff --git a/old/zmrcs10h.zip b/old/zmrcs10h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fd590c2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/zmrcs10h.zip