My friend, too, had some Turkish tobacco
brought home from Constantinople by a sailor, and he gave me quite as
much as we had taken from Z. Marcas. I conveyed the splendid cargo
into port, and we went in triumph to repay our neighbor with a tawny
wig of Turkish tobacco for his dark _Caporal_.
"You are determined not to be my debtors," said he. "You are giving me
gold for copper.--You are boys--good boys----"
The sentences, spoken in varying tones, were variously emphasized. The
words were nothing, but the expression!--That made us friends of ten
years' standing at once.
Marcas, on hearing us coming, had covered up his papers; we understood
that it would be taking a liberty to allude to his means of
subsistence, and felt ashamed of having watched him. His cupboard
stood open; in it there were two shirts, a white necktie and a razor.
The razor made me shudder. A looking-glass, worth five francs perhaps,
hung near the window.
The man's few and simple movements had a sort of savage grandeur. The
Doctor and I looked at each other, wondering what we could say in
reply. Juste, seeing that I was speechless, asked Marcas jestingly:
"You cultivate literature, monsieur?"
"Far from it!" replied Marcas.
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