VII

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.