proceed; it was a mouth like Mirabeau's.

"I have seen such a grand fellow in the street," said I to Juste on
coming in.

"It must be our neighbor," replied Juste, who described, in fact, the
man I had just met. "A man who lives like a wood-louse would be sure to
look like that," he added.

"What dejection and what dignity!"

"One is the consequence of the other."

"What ruined hopes! What schemes and failures!"

"Seven leagues of ruins! Obelisks--palaces--towers!--The ruins of
Palmyra in the desert!" said Juste, laughing.

So we called him the Ruins of Palmyra.

As we went out to dine at the wretched eating-house in the Rue de la
Harpe to which we subscribed, we asked the name of Number 37, and then
heard the weird name Z. Marcas. Like boys, as we were, we repeated
it more than a hundred times with all sorts of comments, absurd or
melancholy, and the name lent itself to a jest. Juste would fire off the
Z like a rocket rising, _z-z-z-z-zed_; and after pronouncing the first
syllable of the name with great importance, depicted a fall by the dull
brevity of the second.

"Now, how and where does the man live?"

From this query, to the innocent espionage of curiosity there was no
pause but that required for carrying out our plan. Instead of loitering
about the streets, we both came in, each armed with a novel. We read
with our ears open. And in the perfect silence of our attic rooms, we
heard the even, dull sound of a sleeping man breathing.

"He is asleep," said I to Juste, noticing this fact.

"At seven o'clock!" replied the Doctor.

This was the name by which I called Juste, and he called me the Keeper
of the Seals.

"A man must be wretched indeed to sleep as much as our neighbor!" cried
I, jumping on to the chest of drawers with a knife in my hand, to which
a corkscrew was attached.

I made a round hole at the top of the partition, about as big as a
five-sou piece. I had forgotten that there would be no light in the
room, and on putting my eye to the hole, I saw only darkness. At about
one in the morning, when we had finished our books and were about to
undress, we heard a noise in our neighbor's room. He got up, struck a
match, and lighted his dip. I got on to the drawers again, and I then
saw Marcas seated at his table and copying law-papers.

His room was about half the size of ours; the bed stood in a recess by
the door, for the passage ended there, and its breadth was added to
his garret; but th