stairs
squabbles.

"This is peace at the cost of the future," said he.

One evening Juste and I were at work, sitting in perfect silence. Marcas
had just risen to toil at his copying, for he had refused our assistance
in spite of our most earnest entreaties. We had offered to take it in
turns to copy a batch of manuscript, so that he should do but a third
of his distasteful task; he had been quite angry, and we had ceased to
insist.

We heard the sound of gentlemanly boots in the passage, and raised our
heads, looking at each other. There was a tap at Marcas' door--he never
took the key out of the lock--and we heard the hero answer:

"Come in." Then--"What, you here, monsieur?"

"I, myself," replied the retired minister.

It was the Diocletian of this unknown martyr.

For some time he and our neighbor conversed in an undertone. Suddenly
Marcas, whose voice had been heard but rarely, as is natural in a
dialogue in which the applicant begins by setting forth the situation,
broke out loudly in reply to some offer we had not overheard.

"You would laugh at me for a fool," cried he, "if I took you at your
word. Jesuits are a thing of the past, but Jesuitism is eternal. Your
Machiavelism and your generosity are equally hollow and untrustworthy.
You can make your own calculations, but who can calculate on you? Your
Court is made up of owls who fear the light, of old men who quake in the
presence of the young, or who simply disregard them. The Government is
formed on the same pattern as the Court. You have hunted up the remains
of the Empire, as the Restoration enlisted the Voltigeurs of Louis XIV.

"Hitherto the evasions of cowardice have been taken for the manoeuvring
of ability; but dangers will come, and the younger generation will rise
as they did in 1790. They did grand things then.--Just now you change
ministries as a sick man turns in his bed; these oscillations betray the
weakness of the Government. You work on an underhand system of policy
which will be turned against you, for France will be tired of your
shuffling. France will not tell you that she is tired of you; a man
never knows whence his ruin comes; it is the historian's task to find
out; but you will undoubtedly perish as the reward of not having the
youth of France to lend you its strength and energy; for having hated
really capable men; for not having lovingly chosen them from this noble
generation; for having in all cases preferred mediocrity.