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<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Z. Marcas,<br>
by Honore de Balzac</h1>
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Title: Z. Marcas
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Etext prepared by Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com and John Bickers,
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<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>
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