t 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.

There is something so infectious and childlike in the pleasantries of
youth, that Marcas smiled again in reply.

"What incidents can have given you this detestable philosophy?" aske