Marcas had the courage to trust us; a light flashed in his eye, he pushed his fingers through his hair, lifting it from his forehead with a gesture that showed some confidence in his luck and when he had thus unveiled his face, so to speak, we saw in him a man absolutely unknown to us—Marcas sublime, Marcas in his power! His mind was in its element—the bird restored to the free air, the fish to the water, the horse galloping across the plain.
It was transient. His brow clouded again, he had, it would seem, a vision of his fate. Halting doubt had followed close on the heels of white-winged hope.
We left him to himself.
“Now, then,” said I to the Doctor, “we have given our word; how are we to keep it?”
“We will sleep upon it,” said Juste, “and to-morrow morning we will talk it over.”
Next morning we went for a walk in the Luxembourg.
We had had time to think over the incident of the past night, and were both equally surprised at the lack of address shown by Marcas in the minor difficulties of life—he, a man who never saw any difficulties in the solution of the hardest problems of abstract or practical politics. But these elevated characters can all be tripped up on a grain of sand, and will, like the grandest enterprise, miss fire for want of a thousand francs. It is the old story of Napoleon, who, for lack of a pair of boots, did not set out for India.
“Well, what have you hit upon?” asked Juste.
“I have thought of a way to get him a complete outfit.”
“Where?”