Nay, I am wrong. We have seen one Iroquois of the Faubourg Saint-Marceau
who raised the Parisian to the level of the natural savage--a
republican, a conspirator, a Frenchman, an old man, who outdid all we
have heard of Negro determination, and all that Cooper tells us of
the tenacity and coolness of the Redskins under defeat. Morey, the
Guatimozin of the “Mountain,” preserved an attitude unparalleled in the
annals of European justice.
This is what Marcas told us during the small hours, sandwiching his
discourse with slices of bread spread with cheese and washed down with
wine. All the tobacco was burned out. Now and then the hackney coaches
clattering across the Place de l’Odeon, or the omnibuses toiling past,
sent up their dull rumbling, as if to remind us that Paris was still
close to us.
His family lived at Vitre; his father and mother had fifteen hundred
francs a year in the funds. He had received an education gratis in a
Seminary, but had refused to enter the priesthood. He felt in himself
the fires of immense ambition, and had come to Paris on foot at the age
of twenty, the possessor of two hundred francs. He had studied the
law, working in an attorney’s office, where he had risen to be superior
clerk. He had taken his doctor’s degree in law, had mastered the old and
modern codes, and could hold his own with the most famous pleaders. He
had studied the law of nations, and was familiar with European treaties
and international practice. He had studied men and things in five
capitals--London, Berlin, Vienna, Petersburg, and Constantinople.
No man was better informed than he as to the rules of the Chamber. For
five years he had been reporter of the debates for a daily paper. He
spoke extempore and admirably, and could go on for a long time in that
deep, appealing voice which had struck us to the soul. Indeed, he proved
by the narrative of his life that he was a great orator, a concise
orator, serious and yet full of piercing eloquence; he resembled Berryer
in his fervor and in the impetus which commands the sympathy of the
masses, and was like Thiers in refinement and skill; but he would
have been less diffuse, less in difficulties for a conclusion. He had
intended to rise rapidly to power without burdening himself first with
the doctrines necessary to begin with, for a man in opposition, but an
incubus later to the statesman.
Marcas had learned everything that a real statesman should know; indeed,
his amazement was considerable when he had occasion to discern the utter
ignorance of men who have risen to the administration of public affairs
in France. Though in him it was vocation that had led to study, nature
had been generous and bestowed all that cannot be acquired--keen
perceptions, self-command, a nimble wit, rapid judgment, decisiveness,
and, what is the genius of these men, fertility in resource.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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