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 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.