The Human Comedy by Honore de Balzac

Author:Honore de Balzac
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59017-698-6
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2013-12-13T16:00:00+00:00

That day went on echoing in our lives; Marcas confirmed us in our determination to leave France, where talented young people bursting with energy are being crushed beneath the weight of mediocre climbers, envious and insatiable.

We dined together on rue de la Harpe. From that night on we gave him our most respectful affection, and he gave us practical training in the sphere of ideas. The man knew everything; he had thought deeply about everything. He scanned the political globe, seeking the places where opportunities were the most plentiful and the most favorable for the success of our plans. He set out lines of study for us, and he urged us to move quickly, explaining the importance of timing, arguing that a massive exodus would soon begin, that its effect would be to strip France of its best energy, its young talent; that these necessarily nimble minds would choose the best destinations and that it was crucial to get there first. From then on, we would often work late by lamplight. Our generous teacher wrote us memoranda—two for Juste and three for me—marvelous instructions, full of the sort of information that only experience can yield, with guidelines that only genius can lay out. In those pages, perfumed with tobacco, jammed with writing in an almost hieroglyphic cacography, there were pointers toward fortune and uncanny predictions regarding various developments in America and Asia that have since, even before Juste and I could leave, come true.

Marcas, like us in fact, had reached utter destitution; he earned his daily living, but he had neither linen, nor coats, nor shoes. He didn’t pretend to be a better person than he was; he had dreamed of luxury along with his dream of power. He didn’t view his present self as the true Marcas; he left its current shape to the whim of daily life. He lived on the breath of his ambition, dreamed of revenge, and reproached himself for harboring so hollow an attitude. The true statesman ought above all to be indifferent to vulgar passions; like the scholar, he should care only for matters within his expertise. Through those days of poverty Marcas seemed to us a great, even an awesome man: There was something terrifying in his gaze, which looked onto a world past the one that strikes the eyes of ordinary men. He was the focus of our constant study and amazement, for youth feels an urgent need to admire (who among us has not experienced this?); the young are eager to attach to something and naturally lean toward offering themselves to the service of figures they think superior, just as they dedicate themselves to great causes. We were particularly bemused by his indifference to sentimental matters: Women had never disturbed his life. Whenever we mentioned the subject, that eternal topic of conversation among Frenchmen, he would only say, “Dresses cost too much!” He saw the look Juste and I exchanged, and he went on: “Yes, they cost far too much. The

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