reason, which had demonstrated the immediate inutility of his gifts,
the impossibility of entering and living in the sphere for which he
was fitted. Those eyes could at times flash lightnings. From those
lips a voice of thunder must surely proceed; it was a mouth like
Mirabeau's.

"I have seen such a grand fellow in the street," said I to Juste on
coming in.

"It must be our neighbor," replied Juste, who described, in fact, the
man I had just met. "A man who lives like a wood-louse would be sure
to look like that," he added.

"What dejection and what dignity!"

"One is the consequence of the other."

"What ruined hopes! What schemes and failures!"

"Seven leagues of ruins! Obelisks--palaces--towers!--The ruins of
Palmyra in the desert!" said Juste, laughing.

So we called him the Ruins of Palmyra.

As we went out to dine at the wretched eating-house in the Rue de la
Harpe to which we subscribed, we asked the name of Number 37, and then
heard the weird name Z. Marcas. Like boys, as we were, we repeated it
more than a hundred times with all sorts of comments, absurd or
melancholy, and the name lent itself to a jest. Juste would fire off
the Z like a rocket rising, _z-z-z-z-zed_; and after pronouncing the