At length, Gozlan, like Columbus' sailors, having
more than enough of the tramp, refused to play follow-my-leader any
longer; and only after a long palaver was he dragged up one last
narrow street dubbed variously the Rue du Bouloi, du Coq Heron, and de
la Jussienne throughout its course. Here, suddenly, Balzac stopped
dead, and pointed to the word _Marcas_, inscribed over a door. "That's
what I've been looking for," he cried. "It exactly suits my man. The
person that owns the name ought to be some one out of the common,--an
artist, a worker in gold, or something of the kind." Inquiry proved
that the real Marcas was a modest tailor. However, his name was
selected, and the initial Z was tacked on to it for the book, Z being
by the novelist's interpretation a letter of mystic import.
Another rather longer tale than this, belonging to the year 1840, was
_Pierrette_, which the author dedicated to Madame Hanska's daughter
Anna, characterizing it as a pearl "sweated through suffering," and
telling her that there was nothing in it improper--he used the English
word. The story is a painful one, and is scarcely suitable for a young
girl's perusal, the heroine, a simple Breton maid, being the victim of
an avaricious Provins family, the Rogrons, who under cover of the law,
inflict on her such terrible ill-treatment that she ultimately dies
from it.
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