V

"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.