By the time when Marcas thought himself duly equipped, France was torn
by intestine divisions arising from the triumph of the House of
Orleans over the elder branch of the Bourbons.

The field of political warfare is evidently changed. Civil war
henceforth cannot last for long, and will not be fought out in the
provinces. In France such struggles will be of brief duration and at
the seat of government; and the battle will be the close of the moral
contest which will have been brought to an issue by superior minds.
This state of things will continue so long as France has her present
singular form of government, which has no analogy with that of any
other country; for there is no more resemblance between the English
and the French constitutions than between the two lands.

Thus Marcas' place was in the political press. Being poor and unable
to secure his election, he hoped to make a sudden appearance. He
resolved on making the greatest possible sacrifice for a man of
superior intellect, to work as a subordinate to some rich and
ambitious deputy. Like a second Bonaparte, he sought his Barras; the
new Colbert hoped to find a Mazarin. He did immense services, and he
did them then and there; he assumed no importance, he made no boast,
he did not complain of ingratitude. He did them in the hope that his
patron would put him in a position to be elected deputy; Marcas wished
for nothing but a loan that might enable him to purchase a house in
Paris, the qualification required by law. Richard III. asked for
nothing but his horse.

In three years Marcas had made his man--one of the fifty supposed
great statesmen who are the battledores with which two cunning players