But this supernatural alliance of man and name was not immediately discoverable, and Balzac, who had put into circulation as many cognomens as are contained in the “Almanach de Gotha,” expressed himself incapable of manufacturing it. A name, he considered, could no more be fabricated than could granite or marble. They were all three the work of time and revolutions. They made themselves.
As a last and supreme resource, therefore, he set out one day, in company with Léon Gozlan, on a journey, in search of a baptismal signboard for his hero; and from the Barrière de l’Étoile to the summits of Montmartre they zigzagged across Paris, subjecting every name they encountered to the closest scrutiny.
Thousands of names were examined, analyzed, and rejected, until at last Gozlan, utterly worn out, refused to walk another step.
Balzac looked at him, it is to be supposed, very much as Columbus looked at his mutinous sailors, and by force of entreaties obtained, not three days’ grace, but three streets more.
In the first two nothing was found, but at the extremity of the third Balzac suddenly changed color, and cried in a voice broken by emotion,—
“There, there! Read that name!”
Above a narrow, oblong door, which opened on a sombre courtyard, there hung a sign which bore for device the name of Marcas.
“Our journey is at an end!” Balzac exclaimed; “it terminates in a blaze of glory. The name of my hero shall be Marcas. Marcas contains the philosopher, the statesman, and the poet. I will call him Z. Marcas, and thereby add to his name a flame, a tiara, and a star. Nothing could be better. I wonder, however, who this Marcas is; surely some great artist.”
“He is a tailor,” Gozlan brutally replied; “there is another sign of his in the courtyard.”
Balzac looked deeply chagrined.