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Updated: June 5, 2025
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.
I was not rich enough to have a good room; I was not even rich enough to have a room to myself. Juste and I shared a double-bedded room on the fifth floor. On our side of the landing there were but two rooms ours and a smaller one, occupied by Z. Marcas, our neighbor. For six months Juste and I remained in perfect ignorance of the fact.
His despondency did not abate his powers of work, as from April to December he published "Z. Marcas," "Un Prince de la Boheme," and "Pierre Grassou"; while in 1841, among other masterpieces, appeared "La Fausse Maitresse," "Une Tenebreuse Affaire," "Un Menage de Garcon," "Ursule Mirouet," and "Les Memoires de deux Jeunes Mariees."
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.
The hero is the same ideal personification already seen in Louis Lambert and Z. Marcas. A barrister, he suddenly settles in a provincial town, bringing with him a past history that no one can penetrate and every one would like to know.
"That's what I've been looking for," he cried. "It exactly suits my man. The person that owns the name ought to be some one out of the common, an artist, a worker in gold, or something of the kind." Inquiry proved that the real Marcas was a modest tailor.
In those papers, smelling of tobacco, and covered with writing so vile as to be almost hieroglyphic, there are suggestions for a fortune, and forecasts of unerring acumen. There are hints as to certain parts of America and Asia which have been fully justified, both before and since Juste and I could set out. Marcas, like us, was in the most abject poverty.
Z. Marcas lived next door to me in my ungainly, ill-smelling hotel of the Rue Racine; I dined at my villainous restaurant with Lousteau and with Rastignac: if a curricle nearly ran me down at a street-crossing, Maxime de Trailles would be the driver. I dined, I say, at a poor restaurant and lived in a poor hotel; and this was not from need, but sentiment.
Marcas it was, from that moment; and Balzac gradually evolved a Christian name for him. First he considered what initial was most appropriate; and then, having decided upon Z, he went on to expand this into Zepherin, explaining minutely just why the whole name Zepherin Marcas, was the only possible one for the character in the novel. In many ways Balzac and Evelina Hanska were mated by nature.
This state of things will continue so long as France has her present singular form of government, which has no analogy with that of any other country; for there is no more resemblance between the English and the French constitutions than between the two lands. Thus Marcas' place was in the political press. Being poor and unable to secure his election, he hoped to make a sudden appearance.
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