VI

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.