The Elixir of Life

Produced by Dagny

THE ELIXIR OF LIFE

By Honore De Balzac

Translated By Clara Bell and James Waring

TO THE READER

At the very outset of the writer's literary career, a friend, long since

dead, gave him the subject of this Study. Later on he found the same

story in a collection published about the beginning of the present

century. To the best of his belief, it is some stray fancy of the brain

of Hoffmann of Berlin; probably it appeared in some German almanac,

and was omitted in the published editions of his collected works. The

_Comedie Humaine_ is sufficiently rich in original creations for the

author to own to this innocent piece of plagiarism; when, like the

worthy La Fontaine, he has told unwittingly, and after his own fashion,

a tale already related by another. This is not one of the hoaxes in

vogue in the year 1830, when every author wrote his "tale of horror"

for the amusement of young ladies. When you have read the account of

Don Juan's decorous parricide, try to picture to yourself the part which

would be played under very similar circumstances by honest folk who, in

this nineteenth century, will take a man's money and undertake to pay

him a life annuity on the faith of a chill, or let a house to an ancient

lady for the term of her natural life! Would they be for resuscitating

their clients? I should dearly like a connoisseur in consciences to

consider how far there is a resemblance between a Don Juan and fathers

who marry their children to great expectations. Does humanity, which,

according to certain philosophers, is making progress, look on the art

of waiting for dead men's shoes as a step in the right direction? To

this art we owe several honorable professions, which open up ways of

living on death. There are people who rely entirely on an expected

demise; who brood over it, crouching each morning upon a corpse, that

serves again for their pillow at night. To this class belong bishops'

coadjutors, cardinals' supernumeraries, _tontiniers_, and the like.

Add to the list many delicately scrupulous persons eager to buy landed

property beyond their means, who calculate with dry logic and in cold

blood the probable duration of the life of a father or of a step-mother,

some old man or woman of eighty or ninety, saying to themselves, "I

shall be sure to come in for it in three years' time, and then----" A

murderer is less loathsome to us than a spy. The murderer may have acted

on a sudden mad impulse; he may be penitent and amend; but a spy is

always a spy, night and day, in bed, at table, as he walks abroad; his

vileness pervades every moment of his life. Then what must it be to live

when every moment of your life is tainted with murder? And have we not

just admitted that a host of human creatures in our midst are led by

our laws, customs, and usages to dwell without ceasing on a

fellow-creature's death? There are men who put the weight of a coffin

into their deliberations as they bargain for Cashmere shawls for their

wives, as they go up the staircase of a theatre, or think of going to

the Bouffons, or of setting up a carriage; who are murderers in thought

when dear ones, with the irresistible charm of innocence, hold up

childish foreheads to be kissed with a "Good-night, father!" Hourly they

meet the gaze of eyes that they would fain close for ever, eyes that

still open each morning to the light, like Belvidero's in this Study.

God alone knows the number of those who are parricides in thought.

Picture to yourself the state of mind of a man who must pay a life

annuity to some old woman whom he scarcely knows; both live in

the country with a brook between them, both sides are free to hate

cordially, without offending against the social conventions that require

two brothers to wear a mask if the older will succeed to the entail,

and the other to the fortune of a younger son. The whole civilization

of Europe turns upon the principle of hereditary succession as upon a

pivot; it would be madness to subvert the principle; but could we not,

in an age that prides itself upon its mechanical inventions, perfect

this essential portion of the social machinery?

If the author has preserved the old-fashioned style of address _To the

Reader_ before a work wherein he endeavors to represent all literary

forms, it is for the purpose of making a remark that applies to

several of the Studies, and very specially to this. Every one of his

compositions has been based upon ideas more or less novel, which, as

it seemed to him, needed literary expression; he can claim priority for

certain forms and for certain ideas which have since passed into the

domain of literature, and have there, in some instances, become common

property; so that the date of the first publication of each Study cannot

be a matter of indifference to those of his readers who would fain do

him justice.

Reading brings us unknown friends, and what friend is like a reader?

We have friends in our own circle who read nothing of ours. The author

hopes to pay his debt, by dedicating this work _Diis ignotis_.

THE ELIXIR OF LIFE

One winter evening, in a princely palace at Ferrara, Don Juan Belvidero

was giving a banquet to a prince of the house of Este. A banquet in

those times was a marvelous spectacle which only royal wealth or the

power of a mightly [sic] lord could furnish forth. Seated about a

table lit up with perfumed tapers, seven laughter-loving women were

interchanging sweet talk. The white marble of the noble works of art

about them stood out against the red stucco walls, and made strong

contrasts with the rich Turkey carpets. Clad in satin, glittering with

gold, and covered with gems less brilliant than their eyes, each told

a tale of energetic passions as diverse as their styles of beauty.

They differed neither in their ideas nor in their language; but the

expression of their eyes, their glances, occasional gestures, or

the tones of their voices supplied a commentary, dissolute, wanton,

melancholy, or satirical, to their words.

One seemed to be saying--"The frozen heart of age might kindle at my

beauty."

Another--"I love to lounge upon cushions, and think with rapture of my

adorers."

A third, a neophyte at these banquets, was inclined to blush. "I feel

remorse in the depths of my heart! I am a Catholic, and afraid of hell.

But I love you, I love you so that I can sacrifice my hereafter to you."

The fourth drained a cup of Chian wine. "Give me a joyous life!" she

cried; "I begin life afresh each day with the dawn. Forgetful of the

past, with the intoxication of yesterday's rapture still upon me, I

drink deep of life--a whole lifetime of pleasure and of love!"

The woman who sat next to Juan Belvidero looked at him with a feverish

glitter in her eyes. She was silent. Then--"I should need no hired bravo

to kill my lover if he forsook me!" she cried at last, and laughed, but

the marvelously wrought gold comfit box in her fingers was crushed by

her convulsive clutch.

"When are you to be Grand Duke?" asked the sixth. There was the frenzy

of a Bacchante in her eyes, and her teeth gleamed between the lips

parted with a smile of cruel glee.

"Yes, when is that father of yours going to die?" asked the seventh,

throwing her bouquet at Don Juan with bewitching playfulness. It was

a childish girl who spoke, and the speaker was wont to make sport of

sacred things.

"Oh! don't talk about it," cried Don Juan, the young and handsome giver

of the banquet. "There is but one eternal father, and, as ill luck will

have it, he is mine."

The seven Ferrarese, Don Juan's friends, the Prince himself, gave a cry

of horror. Two hundred years later, in the days of Louis XV., people of

taste would have laughed at this witticism. Or was it, perhaps, that

at the outset of an orgy there is a certain unwonted lucidity of mind?

Despite the taper light, the clamor of the senses, the gleam of gold and

silver, the fumes of wine, and the exquisite beauty of the women,

there may perhaps have been in the depths of the revelers' hearts some

struggling glimmer of reverence for things divine and human, until it

was drowned in glowing floods of wine! Yet even then the flowers had

been crushed, eyes were growing dull, and drunkenness, in Rabelais'

phrase, had "taken possession of them down to their sandals."

During that brief pause a door opened; and as once the Divine presence

was revealed at Belshazzar's feast, so now it seemed to be manifest

in the apparition of an old white-haired servant, who tottered in,

and looked sadly from under knitted brows at the revelers. He gave

a withering glance at the garlands, the golden cups, the pyramids of

fruit, the dazzling lights of the banquet, the flushed scared faces, the

hues of the cushions pressed by the white arms of the women.

"My lord, your father is dying!" he said; and at those solemn words,

uttered in hollow tones, a veil of crape seemed to be drawn over the

wild mirth.

Don Juan rose to his feet with a gesture to his guests that might be

rendered by, "Excuse me; this kind of thing does not happen every day."

Does it so seldom happen that a father's death surprises youth in the

full-blown splendor of life, in the midst of the mad riot of an orgy?

Death is as unexpected in his caprice as a courtesan in her disdain; but

death is truer--Death has never forsaken any man.

Don Juan closed the door of the banqueting-hall; and as he went down

the long gallery, through the cold and darkness, he strove to assume an

expression in keeping with the part he had to play; he had thrown off

his mirthful mood, as he had thrown down his table napkin, at the first

thought of this role. The night was dark. The mute servitor, his guide

to the chamber where the dying man lay, lighted the way so dimly that

Death, aided by cold, silence, and darkness, and it may be by a reaction

of drunkenness, could send some sober thoughts through the spendthrift's

soul. He examined his life, and became thoughtful, like a man involved

in a lawsuit on his way to the Court.

Bartolommeo Belvidero, Don Juan's father, was an old man of ninety, who

had devoted the greatest part of his life to business pursuits. He had

acquired vast wealth in many a journey to magical Eastern lands, and

knowledge, so it was said, more valuable than the gold and diamonds,

which had almost ceased to have any value for him.

"I would give more to have a tooth in my head than for a ruby," he would

say at times with a smile. The indulgent father loved to hear Don Juan's

story of this and that wild freak of youth. "So long as these follies

amuse you, dear boy----" he would say laughingly, as he lavished money

on his son. Age never took such pleasure in the sight of youth; the fond

father did not remember his own decaying powers while he looked on that

brilliant young life.

Bartolommeo Belvidero, at the age of sixty, had fallen in love with an

angel of peace and beauty. Don Juan had been the sole fruit of this late

and short-lived love. For fifteen years the widower had mourned the

loss of his beloved Juana; and to this sorrow of age, his son and

his numerous household had attributed the strange habits that he had

contracted. He had shut himself up in the least comfortable wing of his

palace, and very seldom left his apartments; even Don Juan himself must

first ask permission before seeing his father. If this hermit, unbound

by vows, came or went in his palace or in the streets of Ferrara, he

walked as if he were in a dream, wholly engrossed, like a man at strife

with a memory, or a wrestler with some thought.

The young Don Juan might give princely banquets, the palace might echo

with clamorous mirth, horses pawed the ground in the courtyards, pages

quarreled and flung dice upon the stairs, but Bartolommeo ate his seven

ounces of bread daily and drank water. A fowl was occasionally dressed

for him, simply that the black poodle, his faithful companion, might

have the bones. Bartolommeo never complained of the noise. If the

huntsmen's horns and baying dogs disturbed his sleep during his illness,

he only said, "Ah! Don Juan has come back again." Never on earth

has there been a father so little exacting and so indulgent; and,

in consequence, young Belvidero, accustomed to treat his father

unceremoniously, had all the faults of a spoiled child. He treated

old Bartolommeo as a wilful courtesan treats an elderly adorer; buying

indemnity for insolence with a smile, selling good-humor, submitting to

be loved.

Don Juan, beholding scene after scene of his younger years, saw that it

would be a difficult task to find his father's indulgence at fault. Some

new-born remorse stirred the depths of his heart; he felt almost ready

to forgive this father now about to die for having lived so long. He

had an accession of filial piety, like a thief's return in thought to

honesty at the prospect of a million adroitly stolen.

Before long Don Juan had crossed the lofty, chilly suite of rooms in

which his father lived; the penetrating influences of the damp close

air, the mustiness diffused by old tapestries and presses thickly

covered with dust had passed into him, and now he stood in the old man's

antiquated room, in the repulsive presence of the deathbed, beside a

dying fire. A flickering lamp on a Gothic table sent broad uncertain

shafts of light, fainter or brighter, across the bed, so that the dying

man's face seemed to wear a different look at every moment. The bitter

wind whistled through the crannies of the ill-fitting casements; there

was a smothered sound of snow lashing the windows. The harsh contrast of

these sights and sounds with the scenes which Don Juan had just quitted

was so sudden that he could not help shuddering. He turned cold as he

came towards the bed; the lamp flared in a sudden vehement gust of

wind and lighted up his father's face; the features were wasted and

distorted; the skin that cleaved to their bony outlines had taken wan

livid hues, all the more ghastly by force of contrast with the white

pillows on which he lay. The muscles about the toothless mouth had

contracted with pain and drawn apart the lips; the moans that issued

between them with appalling energy found an accompaniment in the howling

of the storm without.

In spite of every sign of coming dissolution, the most striking thing

about the dying face was its incredible power. It was no ordinary spirit

that wrestled there with Death. The eyes glared with strange fixity of

gaze from the cavernous sockets hollowed by disease. It seemed as if

Bartolommeo sought to kill some enemy sitting at the foot of his bed by

the intent gaze of dying eyes. That steady remorseless look was the

more appalling because the head that lay upon the pillow was passive and

motionless as a skull upon a doctor's table. The outlines of the body,

revealed by the coverlet, were no less rigid and stiff; he lay there as

one dead, save for those eyes. There was something automatic about the

moaning sounds that came from the mouth. Don Juan felt something like

shame that he must be brought thus to his father's bedside, wearing a

courtesan's bouquet, redolent of the fragrance of the banqueting-chamber

and the fumes of wine.

"You were enjoying yourself!" the old man cried as he saw his son.

Even as he spoke the pure high notes of a woman's voice, sustained by

the sound of the viol on which she accompanied her song, rose above the

rattle of the storm against the casements, and floated up to the chamber

of death. Don Juan stopped his ears against the barbarous answer to his

father's speech.

"I bear you no grudge, my child," Bartolommeo went on.

The words were full of kindness, but they hurt Don Juan; he could not

pardon this heart-searching goodness on his father's part.

"What a remorseful memory for me!" he cried, hypocritically.

"Poor Juanino," the dying man went on, in a smothered voice, "I have

always been so kind to you, that you could not surely desire my death?"

"Oh, if it were only possible to keep you here by giving up a part of my

own life!" cried Don Juan.

("We can always _say_ this sort of thing," the spendthrift thought; "it

is as if I laid the whole world at my mistress' feet.")

The thought had scarcely crossed his mind when the old poodle barked.

Don Juan shivered; the response was so intelligent that he fancied the

dog must have understood him.

"I was sure that I could count upon you, my son!" cried the dying man.

"I shall live. So be it; you shall be satisfied. I shall live, but

without depriving you of a single day of your life."

"He is raving," thought Don Juan. Aloud he added, "Yes, dearest father,

yes; you shall live, of course, as long as I live, for your image will

be for ever in my heart."

"It is not that kind of life that I mean," said the old noble, summoning

all his strength to sit up in bed; for a thrill of doubt ran through

him, one of those suspicions that come into being under a dying man's

pillow. "Listen, my son," he went on, in a voice grown weak with that

last effort, "I have no more wish to give up life than you to give up

wine and mistresses, horses and hounds, and hawks and gold----"

"I can well believe it," thought the son; and he knelt down by the bed

and kissed Bartolommeo's cold hands. "But, father, my dear father," he

added aloud, "we must submit to the will of God."

"I am God!" muttered the dying man.

"Do not blaspheme!" cried the other, as he saw the menacing expression

on his father's face. "Beware what you say; you have received extreme

unction, and I should be inconsolable if you were to die before my eyes

in mortal sin."

"Will you listen to me?" cried Bartolommeo, and his mouth twitched.

Don Juan held his peace; an ugly silence prevailed. Yet above the

muffled sound of the beating of the snow against the windows rose the

sounds of the beautiful voice and the viol in unison, far off and faint

as the dawn. The dying man smiled.

"Thank you," he said, "for bringing those singing voices and the music,

a banquet, young and lovely women with fair faces and dark tresses, all

the pleasure of life! Bid them wait for me; for I am about to begin life

anew."

"The delirium is at its height," said Don Juan to himself.

"I have found out a way of coming to life again," the speaker went on.

"There, just look in that table drawer, press the spring hidden by the

griffin, and it will fly open."

"I have found it, father."

"Well, then, now take out a little phial of rock crystal."

"I have it."

"I have spent twenty years in----" but even as he spoke the old man felt

how very near the end had come, and summoned all his dying strength

to say, "As soon as the breath is out of me, rub me all over with that

liquid, and I shall come to life again."

"There is very little of it," his son remarked.

Though Bartolommeo could no longer speak, he could still hear and see.

When those words dropped from Don Juan, his head turned with appalling

quickness, his neck was twisted like the throat of some marble statue

which the sculptor had condemned to remain stretched out for ever, the

wide eyes had come to have a ghastly fixity.

He was dead, and in death he lost his last and sole illusion.

He had sought a shelter in his son's heart, and it had proved to be a

sepulchre, a pit deeper than men dig for their dead. The hair on his

head had risen and stiffened with horror, his agonized glance still

spoke. He was a father rising in just anger from his tomb, to demand

vengeance at the throne of God.

"There! it is all over with the old man!" cried Don Juan.

He had been so interested in holding the mysterious phial to the lamp,

as a drinker holds up the wine-bottle at the end of a meal, that he had

not seen his father's eyes fade. The cowering poodle looked from his

master to the elixir, just as Don Juan himself glanced again and again

from his father to the flask. The lamplight flickered. There was a

deep silence; the viol was mute. Juan Belvidero thought that he saw his

father stir, and trembled. The changeless gaze of those accusing eyes

frightened him; he closed them hastily, as he would have closed a

loose shutter swayed by the wind of an autumn night. He stood there

motionless, lost in a world of thought.

Suddenly the silence was broken by a shrill sound like the creaking of

a rusty spring. It startled Don Juan; he all but dropped the phial. A

sweat, colder than the blade of a dagger, issued through every pore. It

was only a piece of clockwork, a wooden cock that sprang out and crowed

three times, an ingenious contrivance by which the learned of that epoch

were wont to be awakened at the appointed hour to begin the labors of

the day. Through the windows there came already a flush of dawn. The

thing, composed of wood, and cords, and wheels, and pulleys, was more

faithful in its service than he in his duty to Bartolommeo--he, a man

with that peculiar piece of human mechanism within him that we call a

heart.

Don Juan the sceptic shut the flask again in the secret drawer in the

Gothic table--he meant to run no more risks of losing the mysterious

liquid.

Even at that solemn moment he heard the murmur of a crowd in the

gallery, a confused sound of voices, of stifled laughter and light

footfalls, and the rustling of silks--the sounds of a band of revelers

struggling for gravity. The door opened, and in came the Prince and Don

Juan's friends, the seven courtesans, and the singers, disheveled and

wild like dancers surprised by the dawn, when the tapers that have

burned through the night struggle with the sunlight.

They had come to offer the customary condolence to the young heir.

"Oho! is poor Don Juan really taking this seriously?" said the Prince in

Brambilla's ear.

"Well, his father was very good," she returned.

But Don Juan's night-thoughts had left such unmistakable traces on his

features, that the crew was awed into silence. The men stood motionless.

The women, with wine-parched lips and cheeks marbled with kisses, knelt

down and began a prayer. Don Juan could scarce help trembling when he

saw splendor and mirth and laughter and song and youth and beauty and

power bowed in reverence before Death. But in those times, in that

adorable Italy of the sixteenth century, religion and revelry went hand

in hand; and religious excess became a sort of debauch, and a debauch a

religious rite!

The Prince grasped Don Juan's hand affectionately, then when all

faces had simultaneously put on the same grimace--half-gloomy,

half-indifferent--the whole masque disappeared, and left the chamber of

death empty. It was like an allegory of life.

As they went down the staircase, the Prince spoke to Rivabarella:

"Now, who would have taken Don Juan's impiety for a boast? He loves his

father."

"Did you see that black dog?" asked La Brambilla.

"He is enormously rich now," sighed Bianca Cavatolino.

"What is that to me?" cried the proud Veronese (she who had crushed the

comfit-box).

"What does it matter to you, forsooth?" cried the Duke. "With his money

he is as much a prince as I am."

At first Don Juan was swayed hither and thither by countless thoughts,

and wavered between two decisions. He took counsel with the gold heaped

up by his father, and returned in the evening to the chamber of death,

his whole soul brimming over with hideous selfishness. He found all his

household busy there. "His lordship" was to lie in state to-morrow; all

Ferrara would flock to behold the wonderful spectacle; and the servants

were busy decking the room and the couch on which the dead man lay. At a

sign from Don Juan all his people stopped, dumfounded and trembling.

"Leave me alone here," he said, and his voice was changed, "and do not

return until I leave the room."

When the footsteps of the old servitor, who was the last to go, echoed

but faintly along the paved gallery, Don Juan hastily locked the door,

and sure that he was quite alone, "Let us try," he said to himself.

Bartolommeo's body was stretched on a long table. The embalmers had

laid a sheet over it, to hide from all eyes the dreadful spectacle of a

corpse so wasted and shrunken that it seemed like a skeleton, and only

the face was uncovered. This mummy-like figure lay in the middle of

the room. The limp clinging linen lent itself to the outlines it

shrouded--so sharp, bony, and thin. Large violet patches had already

begun to spread over the face; the embalmers' work had not been finished

too soon.

Don Juan, strong as he was in his scepticism, felt a tremor as he opened

the magic crystal flask. When he stood over that face, he was trembling

so violently, that he was actually obliged to wait for a moment. But Don

Juan had acquired an early familiarity with evil; his morals had been

corrupted by a licentious court, a reflection worthy of the Duke of

Urbino crossed his mind, and it was a keen sense of curiosity that

goaded him into boldness. The devil himself might have whispered the

words that were echoing through his brain, _Moisten one of the eyes with

the liquid_! He took up a linen cloth, moistened it sparingly with

the precious fluid, and passed it lightly over the right eyelid of the

corpse. The eye unclosed....

"Aha!" said Don Juan. He gripped the flask tightly, as we clutch in

dreams the branch from which we hang suspended over a precipice.

For the eye was full of life. It was a young child's eye set in a

death's head; the light quivered in the depths of its youthful liquid

brightness. Shaded by the long dark lashes, it sparkled like the strange

lights that travelers see in lonely places in winter nights. The eye

seemed as if it would fain dart fire at Don Juan; he saw it thinking,

upbraiding, condemning, uttering accusations, threatening doom; it cried

aloud, and gnashed upon him. All anguish that shakes human souls was

gathered there; supplications the most tender, the wrath of kings, the

love in a girl's heart pleading with the headsman; then, and after all

these, the deeply searching glance a man turns on his fellows as he

mounts the last step of the scaffold. Life so dilated in this fragment

of life that Don Juan shrank back; he walked up and down the room, he

dared not meet that gaze, but he saw nothing else. The ceiling and

the hangings, the whole room was sown with living points of fire and

intelligence. Everywhere those gleaming eyes haunted him.

"He might very likely have lived another hundred years!" he cried

involuntarily. Some diabolical influence had drawn him to his father,

and again he gazed at that luminous spark. The eyelid closed and

opened again abruptly; it was like a woman's sign of assent. It was an

intelligent movement. If a voice had cried "Yes!" Don Juan could not

have been more startled.

"What is to be done?" he thought.

He nerved himself to try to close the white eyelid. In vain.

"Kill it? That would perhaps be parricide," he debated with himself.

"Yes," the eye said, with a strange sardonic quiver of the lid.

"Aha!" said Don Juan to himself, "here is witchcraft at work!" And he

went closer to crush the thing. A great tear trickled over the hollow

cheeks, and fell on Don Juan's hand.

"It is scalding!" he cried. He sat down. The struggle exhausted him; it

was as if, like Jacob of old, he was wrestling with an angel.

At last he rose. "So long as there is no blood----" he muttered.

Then, summoning all the courage needed for a coward's crime, he

extinguished the eye, pressing it with the linen cloth, turning his head

away. A terrible groan startled him. It was the poor poodle, who died

with a long-drawn howl.

"Could the brute have been in the secret?" thought Don Juan, looking

down at the faithful creature.

Don Juan Belvidero was looked upon as a dutiful son. He reared a

white marble monument on his father's tomb, and employed the greatest

sculptors of the time upon it. He did not recover perfect ease of mind

till the day when his father knelt in marble before Religion, and the

heavy weight of the stone had sealed the mouth of the grave in which he

had laid the one feeling of remorse that sometimes flitted through his

soul in moments of physical weariness.

He had drawn up a list of the wealth heaped up by the old merchant in

the East, and he became a miser: had he not to provide for a second

lifetime? His views of life were the more profound and penetrating;

he grasped its significance, as a whole, the better, because he saw it

across a grave. All men, all things, he analyzed once and for all; he

summed up the Past, represented by its records; the Present in the law,

its crystallized form; the Future, revealed by religion. He took spirit

and matter, and flung them into his crucible, and found--Nothing.

Thenceforward he became DON JUAN.

At the outset of his life, in the prime of youth and the beauty of

youth, he knew the illusions of life for what they were; he despised

the world, and made the utmost of the world. His felicity could not

have been of the bourgeois kind, rejoicing in periodically recurrent

_bouilli_, in the comforts of a warming-pan, a lamp of a night, and

a new pair of slippers once a quarter. Nay, rather he seized upon

existence as a monkey snatches a nut, and after no long toying with it,

proceeds deftly to strip off the mere husks to reach the savory kernel

within.

Poetry and the sublime transports of passion scarcely reached

ankle-depth with him now. He in nowise fell into the error of strong

natures who flatter themselves now and again that little souls will

believe in a great soul, and are willing to barter their own lofty

thoughts of the future for the small change of our life-annuity ideas.

He, even as they, had he chosen, might well have walked with his feet

on the earth and his head in the skies; but he liked better to sit on

earth, to wither the soft, fresh, fragrant lips of a woman with kisses,

for like Death, he devoured everything without scruple as he passed; he

would have full fruition; he was an Oriental lover, seeking prolonged

pleasures easily obtained. He sought nothing but a woman in women, and

cultivated cynicism, until it became with him a habit of mind. When

his mistress, from the couch on which she lay, soared and was lost in

regions of ecstatic bliss, Don Juan followed suit, earnest, expansive,

serious as any German student. But he said I, while she, in the

transports of intoxication, said We. He understood to admiration the art

of abandoning himself to the influence of a woman; he was always clever

enough to make her believe that he trembled like some boy fresh from

college before his first partner at a dance, when he asks her, "Do

you like dancing?" But, no less, he could be terrible at need, could

unsheathe a formidable sword and make short work of Commandants. Banter

lurked beneath his simplicity, mocking laughter behind his tears--for

he had tears at need, like any woman nowadays who says to her husband,

"Give me a carriage, or I shall go into a consumption."

For the merchant the world is a bale of goods or a mass of circulating

bills; for most young men it is a woman, and for a woman here and there

it is a man; for a certain order of mind it is a salon, a coterie, a

quarter of the town, or some single city; but Don Juan found his world

in himself.

This model of grace and dignity, this captivating wit, moored his bark

by every shore; but wherever he was led he was never carried away, and

was only steered in a course of his own choosing. The more he saw,

the more he doubted. He watched men narrowly, and saw how, beneath

the surface, courage was often rashness; and prudence, cowardice;

generosity, a clever piece of calculation; justice, a wrong; delicacy,

pusillanimity; honesty, a _modus vivendi_; and by some strange

dispensation of fate, he must see that those who at heart were really

honest, scrupulous, just, generous, prudent, or brave were held cheaply

by their fellow-men.

"What a cold-blooded jest!" said he to himself. "It was not devised by a

God."

From that time forth he renounced a better world, and never uncovered

himself when a Name was pronounced, and for him the carven saints in the

churches became works of art. He understood the mechanism of society too

well to clash wantonly with its prejudices; for, after all, he was not

as powerful as the executioner, but he evaded social laws with the wit

and grace so well rendered in the scene with M. Dimanche. He was, in

fact, Moliere's Don Juan, Goethe's Faust, Byron's Manfred, Mathurin's

Melmoth--great allegorical figures drawn by the greatest men of genius

in Europe, to which Mozart's harmonies, perhaps, do no more justice than

Rossini's lyre. Terrible allegorical figures that shall endure as long

as the principle of evil existing in the heart of man shall produce

a few copies from century to century. Sometimes the type becomes

half-human when incarnate as a Mirabeau, sometimes it is an inarticulate

force in a Bonaparte, sometimes it overwhelms the universe with irony

as a Rabelais; or, yet again, it appears when a Marechal de Richelieu

elects to laugh at human beings instead of scoffing at things, or when

one of the most famous of our ambassadors goes a step further and

scoffs at both men and things. But the profound genius of Juan Belvidero

anticipated and resumed all these. All things were a jest to him.

His was the life of a mocking spirit. All men, all institutions, all

realities, all ideas were within its scope. As for eternity, after half

an hour of familiar conversation with Pope Julius II. he said, laughing:

"If it is absolutely necessary to make a choice, I would rather believe

in God than in the Devil; power combined with goodness always offers

more resources than the spirit of Evil can boast."

"Yes; still God requires repentance in this present world----"

"So you always think of your indulgences," returned Don Juan Belvidero.

"Well, well, I have another life in reserve in which to repent of the

sins of my previous existence."

"Oh, if you regard old age in that light," cried the Pope, "you are in

danger on canonization----"

"After your elevation to the Papacy nothing is incredible." And they

went to watch the workmen who were building the huge basilica dedicated

to Saint Peter.

"Saint Peter, as the man of genius who laid the foundation of our double

power," the Pope said to Don Juan, "deserves this monument. Sometimes,

though, at night, I think that a deluge will wipe all this out as with a

sponge, and it will be all to begin over again."

Don Juan and the Pope began to laugh; they understood each other. A

fool would have gone on the morrow to amuse himself with Julius II. in

Raphael's studio or at the delicious Villa Madama; not so Belvidero. He

went to see the Pope as pontiff, to be convinced of any doubts that he

(Don Juan) entertained. Over his cups the Rovere would have been capable

of denying his own infallibility and of commenting on the Apocalypse.

Nevertheless, this legend has not been undertaken to furnish materials

for future biographies of Don Juan; it is intended to prove to

honest folk that Belvidero did not die in a duel with stone, as some

lithographers would have us believe.

When Don Juan Belvidero reached the age of sixty he settled in Spain,

and there in his old age he married a young and charming Andalusian

wife. But of set purpose he was neither a good husband nor a good

father. He had observed that we are never so tenderly loved as by

women to whom we scarcely give a thought. Dona Elvira had been devoutly

brought up by an old aunt in a castle a few leagues from San-Lucar in

a remote part of Andalusia. She was a model of devotion and grace. Don

Juan foresaw that this would be a woman who would struggle long against

a passion before yielding, and therefore hoped to keep her virtuous

until his death. It was a jest undertaken in earnest, a game of chess

which he meant to reserve till his old age. Don Juan had learned wisdom

from the mistakes made by his father Bartolommeo; he determined that

the least details of his life in old age should be subordinated to one

object--the success of the drama which was to be played out upon his

death-bed.

For the same reason the largest part of his wealth was buried in the

cellars of his palace at Ferrara, whither he seldom went. As for the

rest of his fortune, it was invested in a life annuity, with a view to

give his wife and children an interest in keeping him alive; but this

Machiavellian piece of foresight was scarcely necessary. His son, young

Felipe Belvidero, grew up as a Spaniard as religiously conscientious

as his father was irreligious, in virtue, perhaps, of the old rule, "A

miser has a spendthrift son." The Abbot of San-Lucar was chosen by Don

Juan to be the director of the consciences of the Duchess of Belvidero

and her son Felipe. The ecclesiastic was a holy man, well shaped, and

admirably well proportioned. He had fine dark eyes, a head like that of

Tiberius, worn with fasting, bleached by an ascetic life, and, like all

dwellers in the wilderness, was daily tempted. The noble lord had hopes,

it may be, of despatching yet another monk before his term of life was

out.

But whether because the Abbot was every whit as clever as Don Juan

himself, or Dona Elvira possessed more discretion or more virtue than

Spanish wives are usually credited with, Don Juan was compelled to spend

his declining years beneath his own roof, with no more scandal under

it than if he had been an ancient country parson. Occasionally he would

take wife and son to task for negligence in the duties of religion,

peremptorily insisting that they should carry out to the letter the

obligations imposed upon the flock by the Court of Rome. Indeed, he was

never so well pleased as when he had set the courtly Abbot discussing

some case of conscience with Dona Elvira and Felipe.

At length, however, despite the prodigious care that the great

magnifico, Don Juan Belvidero, took of himself, the days of decrepitude

came upon him, and with those days the constant importunity of physical

feebleness, an importunity all the more distressing by contrast with the

wealth of memories of his impetuous youth and the sensual pleasures of

middle age. The unbeliever who in the height of his cynical humor had

been wont to persuade others to believe in laws and principles at which

he scoffed, must repose nightly upon a _perhaps_. The great Duke, the

pattern of good breeding, the champion of many a carouse, the proud

ornament of Courts, the man of genius, the graceful winner of hearts

that he had wrung as carelessly as a peasant twists an osier withe,

was now the victim of a cough, of a ruthless sciatica, of an unmannerly

gout. His teeth gradually deserted him, as at the end of an evening the

fairest and best-dressed women take their leave one by one till the room

is left empty and desolate. The active hands became palsy-stricken,

the shapely legs tottered as he walked. At last, one night, a stroke of

apoplexy caught him by the throat in its icy clutch. After that fatal

day he grew morose and stern.

He would reproach his wife and son with their devotion, casting it in

their teeth that the affecting and thoughtful care that they lavished

so tenderly upon him was bestowed because they knew that his money was

invested in a life annuity. Then Elvira and Felipe would shed bitter

tears and redouble their caresses, and the wicked old man's insinuating

voice would take an affectionate tone--"Ah, you will forgive me, will

you not, dear friends, dear wife? I am rather a nuisance. Alas, Lord in

heaven, how canst Thou use me as the instrument by which Thou provest

these two angelic creatures? I who should be the joy of their lives am

become their scourge..."

In this manner he kept them tethered to his pillow, blotting out the

memory of whole months of fretfulness and unkindness in one short

hour when he chose to display for them the ever-new treasures of his

pinchbeck tenderness and charm of manner--a system of paternity that

yielded him an infinitely better return than his own father's indulgence

had formerly gained. At length his bodily infirmities reached a point

when the task of laying him in bed became as difficult as the navigation

of a felucca in the perils of an intricate channel. Then came the day of

his death; and this brilliant sceptic, whose mental faculties alone had

survived the most dreadful of all destructions, found himself between

his two special antipathies--the doctor and the confessor. But he was

jovial with them. Did he not see a light gleaming in the future

beyond the veil? The pall that is like lead for other men was thin and

translucent for him; the light-footed, irresistible delights of youth

danced beyond it like shadows.

It was on a beautiful summer evening that Don Juan felt the near

approach of death. The sky of Spain was serene and cloudless; the air

was full of the scent of orange-blossom; the stars shed clear, pure

gleams of light; nature without seemed to give the dying man assurance

of resurrection; a dutiful and obedient son sat there watching him with

loving and respectful eyes. Towards eleven o'clock he desired to be left

alone with this single-hearted being.

"Felipe," said the father, in tones so soft and affectionate that the

young man trembled, and tears of gladness came to his eyes; never had

that stern father spoken his name in such a tone. "Listen, my son," the

dying man went on. "I am a great sinner. All my life long, however, I

have thought of my death. I was once the friend of the great Pope

Julius II.; and that illustrious Pontiff, fearing lest the excessive

excitability of my senses should entangle me in mortal sin between the

moment of my death and the time of my anointing with the holy oil, gave

me a flask that contains a little of the holy water that once issued

from the rock in the wilderness. I have kept the secret of this

squandering of a treasure belonging to Holy Church, but I am permitted

to reveal the mystery _in articulo mortis_ to my son. You will find the

flask in a drawer in that Gothic table that always stands by the head

of the bed.... The precious little crystal flask may be of use yet again

for you, dearest Felipe. Will you swear to me, by your salvation, to

carry out my instructions faithfully?"

Felipe looked at his father, and Don Juan was too deeply learned in the

lore of the human countenance not to die in peace with that look as his

warrant, as his own father had died in despair at meeting the expression

in his son's eyes.

"You deserved to have a better father," Don Juan went on. "I dare

to confess, my child, that while the reverend Abbot of San-Lucar was

administering the Viaticum I was thinking of the incompatibility of the

co-existence of two powers so infinite as God and the Devil----"

"Oh, father!"

"And I said to myself, when Satan makes his peace he ought surely to

stipulate for the pardon of his followers, or he will be the veriest

scoundrel. The thought haunted me; so I shall go to hell, my son, unless

you carry out my wishes."

"Oh, quick; tell me quickly, father."

"As soon as I have closed my eyes," Don Juan went on, "and that may be

in a few minutes, you must take my body before it grows cold and lay it

on a table in this room. Then put out the lamp; the light of the stars

should be sufficient. Take off my clothes, reciting Aves and Paters the

while, raising your soul to God in prayer, and carefully anoint my

lips and eyes with this holy water; begin with the face, and proceed

successively to my limbs and the rest of my body; my dear son, the power

of God is so great that you must be astonished at nothing."

Don Juan felt death so near, that he added in a terrible voice, "Be

careful not to drop the flask."

Then he breathed his last gently in the arms of his son, and his son's

tears fell fast over his sardonic, haggard features.

It was almost midnight when Don Felipe Belvidero laid his father's body

upon the table. He kissed the sinister brow and the gray hair; then he

put out the lamp.

By the soft moonlight that lit strange gleams across the country

without, Felipe could dimly see his father's body, a vague white thing

among the shadows. The dutiful son moistened a linen cloth with the

liquid, and, absorbed in prayer, he anointed the revered face. A deep

silence reigned. Felipe heard faint, indescribable rustlings; it was the

breeze in the tree-tops, he thought. But when he had moistened the right

arm, he felt himself caught by the throat, a young strong hand held him

in a tight grip--it was his father's hand! He shrieked aloud; the flask

dropped from his hand and broke in pieces. The liquid evaporated; the

whole household hurried into the room, holding torches aloft. That

shriek had startled them, and filled them with as much terror as if the

Trumpet of the Angel sounding on the Last Day had rung through earth and

sky. The room was full of people, and a horror-stricken crowd beheld the

fainting Felipe upheld by the strong arm of his father, who clutched

him by the throat. They saw another thing, an unearthly spectacle--Don

Juan's face grown young and beautiful as Antinous, with its dark hair

and brilliant eyes and red lips, a head that made horrible efforts, but

could not move the dead, wasted body.

An old servitor cried, "A miracle! a miracle!" and all the Spaniards

echoed, "A miracle! a miracle!"

Dona Elvira, too pious to attribute this to magic, sent for the Abbot of

San-Lucar; and the Prior beholding the miracle with his own eyes, being

a clever man, and withal an Abbot desirous of augmenting his revenues,

determined to turn the occasion to profit. He immediately gave out

that Don Juan would certainly be canonized; he appointed a day for the

celebration of the apotheosis in his convent, which thenceforward, he

said, should be called the convent of San Juan of Lucar. At these words

a sufficiently facetious grimace passed over the features of the late

Duke.

The taste of the Spanish people for ecclesiastical solemnities is so

well known, that it should not be difficult to imagine the religious

pantomime by which the Convent of San-Lucar celebrated the translation

of the _blessed Don Juan Belvidero_ to the abbey-church. The tale of the

partial resurrection had spread so quickly from village to village, that

a day or two after the death of the illustrious nobleman the report had

reached every place within fifty miles of San-Lucar, and it was as good

as a play to see the roads covered already with crowds flocking in on

all sides, their curiosity whetted still further by the prospect of

a _Te Deum_ sung by torchlight. The old abbey church of San-Lucar, a

marvelous building erected by the Moors, a mosque of Allah, which for

three centuries had heard the name of Christ, could not hold the throng

that poured in to see the ceremony. Hidalgos in their velvet mantles,

with their good swords at their sides, swarmed like ants, and were so

tightly packed in among the pillars that they had not room to bend the

knees, which never bent save to God. Charming peasant girls, in the

basquina that defines the luxuriant outlines of their figures, lent an

arm to white-haired old men. Young men, with eyes of fire, walked beside

aged crones in holiday array. Then came couples tremulous with joy,

young lovers led thither by curiosity, newly-wedded folk; children

timidly clasping each other by the hand. This throng, so rich in

coloring, in vivid contrasts, laden with flowers, enameled like a

meadow, sent up a soft murmur through the quiet night. Then the great

doors of the church opened.

Late comers who remained without saw afar, through the three great open

doorways, a scene of which the theatrical illusions of modern opera can

give but a faint idea. The vast church was lighted up by thousands of

candles, offered by saints and sinners alike eager to win the favor

of this new candidate for canonization, and these self-commending

illuminations turned the great building into an enchanted fairyland. The

black archways, the shafts and capitals, the recessed chapels with gold

and silver gleaming in their depths, the galleries, the Arab traceries,

all the most delicate outlines of that delicate sculpture, burned in

the excess of light like the fantastic figures in the red heart of a

brazier. At the further end of the church, above that blazing sea, rose

the high altar like a splendid dawn. All the glories of the golden lamps

and silver candlesticks, of banners and tassels, of the shrines of the

saints and votive offerings, paled before the gorgeous brightness of

the reliquary in which Don Juan lay. The blasphemer's body sparkled with

gems, and flowers, and crystal, with diamonds and gold, and plumes white

as the wings of seraphim; they had set it up on the altar, where the

pictures of Christ had stood. All about him blazed a host of tall

candles; the air quivered in the radiant light. The worthy Abbot of

San-Lucar, in pontifical robes, with his mitre set with precious stones,

his rochet and golden crosier, sat enthroned in imperial state among his

clergy in the choir. Rows of impassive aged faces, silver-haired old

men clad in fine linen albs, were grouped about him, as the saints who

confessed Christ on earth are set by painters, each in his place, about

the throne of God in heaven. The precentor and the dignitaries of the

chapter, adorned with the gorgeous insignia of ecclesiastical vanity,

came and went through the clouds of incense, like stars upon their

courses in the firmament.

When the hour of triumph arrived, the bells awoke the echoes far and

wide, and the whole vast crowd raised to God the first cry of praise

that begins the _Te Deum_. A sublime cry! High, pure notes, the voices

of women in ecstasy, mingled in it with the sterner and deeper voices of

men; thousands of voices sent up a volume of sound so mighty, that the

straining, groaning organ-pipes could not dominate that harmony. But

the shrill sound of children's singing among the choristers, the

reverberation of deep bass notes, awakened gracious associations,

visions of childhood, and of man in his strength, and rose above that

entrancing harmony of human voices blended in one sentiment of love.

_Te Deum laudamus_!

The chant went up from the black masses of men and women kneeling in

the cathedral, like a sudden breaking out of light in darkness, and the

silence was shattered as by a peal of thunder. The voices floated up

with the clouds of incense that had begun to cast thin bluish veils over

the fanciful marvels of the architecture, and the aisles were filled

with splendor and perfume and light and melody. Even at the moment when

that music of love and thanksgiving soared up to the altar, Don Juan,

too well bred not to express his acknowledgments, too witty not

to understand how to take a jest, bridled up in his reliquary, and

responded with an appalling burst of laughter. Then the Devil having put

him in mind of the risk he was running of being taken for an ordinary

man, a saint, a Boniface, a Pantaleone, he interrupted the melody of

love by a yell, the thousand voices of hell joined in it. Earth blessed,

Heaven banned. The church was shaken to its ancient foundations.

_Te Deum laudamus_! cried the many voices.

"Go to the devil, brute beasts that you are! _Dios! Dios! Garajos

demonios!_ Idiots! What fools you are with your dotard God!" and a

torrent of imprecations poured forth like a stream of red-hot lava from

the mouth of Vesuvius.

"_Deus Sabaoth!... Sabaoth_!" cried the believers.

"You are insulting the majesty of Hell," shouted Don Juan, gnashing his

teeth. In another moment the living arm struggled out of the reliquary,

and was brandished over the assembly in mockery and despair.

"The saint is blessing us," cried the old women, children, lovers, and

the credulous among the crowd.

And note how often we are deceived in the homage we pay; the great man

scoffs at those who praise him, and pays compliments now and again to

those whom he laughs at in the depths of his heart.

Just as the Abbot, prostrate before the altar, was chanting "_Sancte

Johannes, ora pro noblis_!" he heard a voice exclaim sufficiently

distinctly: "_O coglione_!"

"What can be going on up there?" cried the Sub-prior, as he saw the

reliquary move.

"The saint is playing the devil," replied the Abbot.

Even as he spoke the living head tore itself away from the lifeless

body, and dropped upon the sallow cranium of the officiating priest.

"Remember Dona Elvira!" cried the thing, with its teeth set fast in the

Abbot's head.

The Abbot's horror-stricken shriek disturbed the ceremony; all the

ecclesiastics hurried up and crowded about their chief.

"Idiot, tell us now if there is a God!" the voice cried, as the Abbot,

bitten through the brain, drew his last breath.

PARIS, October 1830.