Z. Marcas | Page 5

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