"I should not be so wealthy."
"I fancied," said I, "that poetry alone, in these days, was amply
sufficient to provide a man with lodgings as bad as ours."
My remark made Marcas smile, and the smile gave a charm to his yellow
face.
"Ambition is not a less severe taskmaster to those who fail," said he.
"You, who are beginning life, walk in the beaten paths. Never dream of
rising superior, you will be ruined!"
"You advise us to stay just as we are?" said the Doctor, smiling.
There is something so infectious and childlike in the pleasantries of
youth, that Marcas smiled again in reply.
"What incidents can have given you this detestable philosophy?" asked
I.
"I forgot once more that chance is the result of an immense equation
of which we know not all the factors. When we start from zero to work
up to the unit, the chances are incalculable. To ambitious men Paris
is an immense roulette table, and every young man fancies he can hit
on a successful progression of numbers."
He offered us the tobacco I had brought that we might smoke with him;
the Doctor went to fetch our pipes; Marcas filled his, and then he
came to sit in our room, bringing the tobacco with him, since there
were but two chairs in his.
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