Z. Marcas | Page 9

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.
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.
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.

"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?"
"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.
"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.
"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."
"What commotion?" asked Juste.
"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.
"Youth will explode like the boiler of a steam-engine. Youth has no
outlet in France; it is gathering an avalanche of