service, for Marcas had got into debt. He subsidized the newspaper on
which Marcas worked, and made him the manager of it.

Though he despised the man, Marcas, who, practically, was being
subsidized too, consented to take the part of the fallen minister.
Without unmasking at once all the batteries of his superior intellect,
Marcas came a little further than before; he showed half his
shrewdness. The Ministry lasted only a hundred and eighty days; it was
swallowed up. Marcas had put himself into communication with certain
deputies, had moulded them like dough, leaving each impressed with a
high opinion of his talent; his puppet again became a member of the
Ministry, and then the paper was ministerial. The Ministry united the
paper with another, solely to squeeze out Marcas, who in this fusion
had to make way for a rich and insolent rival, whose name was well
known, and who already had his foot in the stirrup.

Marcas relapsed into utter destitution; his haughty patron well knew
the depths into which he had cast him.

Where was he to go? The ministerial papers, privily warned, would have
nothing to say to him. The opposition papers did not care to admit him
to their offices. Marcas could side neither with the Republicans nor
with the Legitimists, two parties whose triumph would mean the
overthrow of everything that now is.

"Ambitious men like a fast hold on things," said he with a smile.

He lived by writing a few articles on commercial affairs, and
contributed to one of those encyclopedias brought out by speculation
and not by learning. Finally a paper was founded, which was destined