The Magic Skin

THE MAGIC SKIN

By Honore De Balzac

Translated by Ellen Marriage

To Monsieur Savary, Member of Le Academie des Sciences.

[omitted: a drawing representing the serpentine

path made by the tip of a stick when flourished.]

STERNE--Tristram Shandy, ch. cccxxii.

THE MAGIC SKIN

I. THE TALISMAN

Towards the end of the month of October 1829 a young man entered the

Palais-Royal just as the gaming-houses opened, agreeably to the law

which protects a passion by its very nature easily excisable. He mounted

the staircase of one of the gambling hells distinguished by the number

36, without too much deliberation.

“Your hat, sir, if you please?” a thin, querulous voice called out. A

little old man, crouching in the darkness behind a railing, suddenly

rose and exhibited his features, carved after a mean design.

As you enter a gaming-house the law despoils you of your hat at the

outset. Is it by way of a parable, a divine revelation? Or by exacting

some pledge or other, is not an infernal compact implied? Is it done to

compel you to preserve a respectful demeanor towards those who are about

to gain money of you? Or must the detective, who squats in our social

sewers, know the name of your hatter, or your own, if you happen to have

written it on the lining inside? Or, after all, is the measurement of

your skull required for the compilation of statistics as to the cerebral

capacity of gamblers? The executive is absolutely silent on this point.

But be sure of this, that though you have scarcely taken a step towards

the tables, your hat no more belongs to you now than you belong to

yourself. Play possesses you, your fortune, your cap, your cane, your

cloak.

As you go out, it will be made clear to you, by a savage irony, that

Play has yet spared you something, since your property is returned. For

all that, if you bring a new hat with you, you will have to pay for the

knowledge that a special costume is needed for a gambler.

The evident astonishment with which the young man took a numbered tally

in exchange for his hat, which was fortunately somewhat rubbed at the

brim, showed clearly enough that his mind was yet untainted; and the

little old man, who had wallowed from his youth up in the furious

pleasures of a gambler’s life, cast a dull, indifferent glance over

him, in which a philosopher might have seen wretchedness lying in the

hospital, the vagrant lives of ruined folk, inquests on numberless

suicides, life-long penal servitude and transportations to Guazacoalco.

His pallid, lengthy visage appeared like a haggard embodiment of the

passion reduced to its simplest terms. There were traces of past anguish

in its wrinkles. He supported life on the glutinous soups at Darcet’s,

and gambled away his meagre earnings day by day. Like some old hackney

which takes no heed of the strokes of the whip, nothing could move him

now. The stifled groans of ruined players, as they passed out, their

mute imprecations, their stupefied faces, found him impassive. He was

the spirit of Play incarnate. If the young man had noticed this sorry

Cerberus, perhaps he would have said, “There is only a pack of cards in

that heart of his.”

The stranger did not heed this warning writ in flesh and blood, put

here, no doubt, by Providence, who has set loathing on the threshold of

all evil haunts. He walked boldly into the saloon, where the rattle of

coin brought his senses under the dazzling spell of an agony of greed.

Most likely he had been drawn thither by that most convincing of Jean

Jacques’ eloquent periods, which expresses, I think, this melancholy

thought, “Yes, I can imagine that a man may take to gambling when he

sees only his last shilling between him and death.”

There is an illusion about a gambling saloon at night as vulgar as that

of a bloodthirsty drama, and just as effective. The rooms are filled

with players and onlookers, with poverty-stricken age, which drags

itself thither in search of stimulation, with excited faces, and revels

that began in wine, to end shortly in the Seine. The passion is there

in full measure, but the great number of the actors prevents you from

seeing the gambling-demon face to face. The evening is a harmony or

chorus in which all take part, to which each instrument in the orchestra

contributes his share. You would see there plenty of respectable people

who have come in search of diversion, for which they pay as they pay for

the pleasures of the theatre, or of gluttony, or they come hither as

to some garret where they cheapen poignant regrets for three months to

come.

Do you understand all the force and frenzy in a soul which impatiently

waits for the opening of a gambling hell? Between the daylight gambler

and the player at night there is the same difference that lies between

a careless husband and the lover swooning under his lady’s window. Only

with morning comes the real throb of the passion and the craving in

its stark horror. Then you can admire the real gambler, who has neither

eaten, slept, thought, nor lived, he has so smarted under the scourge

of his martingale, so suffered on the rack of his desire for a coup of

_trente-et-quarante_. At that accursed hour you encounter eyes whose

calmness terrifies you, faces that fascinate, glances that seem as if

they had power to turn the cards over and consume them. The grandest

hours of a gambling saloon are not the opening ones. If Spain has

bull-fights, and Rome once had her gladiators, Paris waxes proud of her

Palais-Royal, where the inevitable _roulettes_ cause blood to flow in

streams, and the public can have the pleasure of watching without fear

of their feet slipping in it.

Take a quiet peep at the arena. How bare it looks! The paper on the

walls is greasy to the height of your head, there is nothing to bring

one reviving thought. There is not so much as a nail for the convenience

of suicides. The floor is worn and dirty. An oblong table stands in the

middle of the room, the tablecloth is worn by the friction of gold,

but the straw-bottomed chairs about it indicate an odd indifference to

luxury in the men who will lose their lives here in the quest of the

fortune that is to put luxury within their reach.

This contradiction in humanity is seen wherever the soul reacts

powerfully upon itself. The gallant would clothe his mistress in silks,

would deck her out in soft Eastern fabrics, though he and she must lie

on a truckle-bed. The ambitious dreamer sees himself at the summit of

power, while he slavishly prostrates himself in the mire. The tradesman

stagnates in his damp, unhealthy shop, while he builds a great mansion

for his son to inherit prematurely, only to be ejected from it by law

proceedings at his own brother’s instance.

After all, is there a less pleasing thing in the world than a house of

pleasure? Singular question! Man is always at strife with himself. His

present woes give the lie to his hopes; yet he looks to a future which

is not his, to indemnify him for these present sufferings; setting upon

all his actions the seal of inconsequence and of the weakness of his

nature. We have nothing here below in full measure but misfortune.

There were several gamblers in the room already when the young man

entered. Three bald-headed seniors were lounging round the green table.

Imperturbable as diplomatists, those plaster-cast faces of theirs

betokened blunted sensibilities, and hearts which had long forgotten

how to throb, even when a woman’s dowry was the stake. A young Italian,

olive-hued and dark-haired, sat at one end, with his elbows on the

table, seeming to listen to the presentiments of luck that dictate a

gambler’s “Yes” or “No.” The glow of fire and gold was on that southern

face. Some seven or eight onlookers stood by way of an audience,

awaiting a drama composed of the strokes of chance, the faces of the

actors, the circulation of coin, and the motion of the croupier’s rake,

much as a silent, motionless crowd watches the headsman in the Place de

Greve. A tall, thin man, in a threadbare coat, held a card in one hand,

and a pin in the other, to mark the numbers of Red or Black. He seemed

a modern Tantalus, with all the pleasures of his epoch at his lips, a

hoardless miser drawing in imaginary gains, a sane species of lunatic

who consoles himself in his misery by chimerical dreams, a man who

touches peril and vice as a young priest handles the unconsecrated wafer

in the white mass.

One or two experts at the game, shrewd speculators, had placed

themselves opposite the bank, like old convicts who have lost all fear

of the hulks; they meant to try two or three coups, and then to depart

at once with the expected gains, on which they lived. Two elderly

waiters dawdled about with their arms folded, looking from time to time

into the garden from the windows, as if to show their insignificant

faces as a sign to passers-by.

The croupier and banker threw a ghastly and withering glance at the

punters, and cried, in a sharp voice, “Make your game!” as the young man

came in. The silence seemed to grow deeper as all heads turned curiously

towards the new arrival. Who would have thought it? The jaded elders,

the fossilized waiters, the onlookers, the fanatical Italian himself,

felt an indefinable dread at sight of the stranger. Is he not wretched

indeed who can excite pity here? Must he not be very helpless to receive

sympathy, ghastly in appearance to raise a shudder in these places,

where pain utters no cry, where wretchedness looks gay, and despair is

decorous? Such thoughts as these produced a new emotion in these torpid

hearts as the young man entered. Were not executioners known to shed

tears over the fair-haired, girlish heads that had to fall at the

bidding of the Revolution?

The gamblers saw at a glance a dreadful mystery in the novice’s face.

His young features were stamped with a melancholy grace, his looks told

of unsuccess and many blighted hopes. The dull apathy of the suicide

had made his forehead so deadly pale, a bitter smile carved faint lines

about the corners of his mouth, and there was an abandonment about him

that was painful to see. Some sort of demon sparkled in the depths of

his eye, which drooped, wearied perhaps with pleasure. Could it have

been dissipation that had set its foul mark on the proud face, once pure

and bright, and now brought low? Any doctor seeing the yellow circles

about his eyelids, and the color in his cheeks, would have set them

down to some affection of the heart or lungs, while poets would have

attributed them to the havoc brought by the search for knowledge and to

night-vigils by the student’s lamp.

But a complaint more fatal than any disease, a disease more merciless

than genius or study, had drawn this young face, and had wrung a heart

which dissipation, study, and sickness had scarcely disturbed. When

a notorious criminal is taken to the convict’s prison, the prisoners

welcome him respectfully, and these evil spirits in human shape,

experienced in torments, bowed before an unheard-of anguish. By the

depth of the wound which met their eyes, they recognized a prince among

them, by the majesty of his unspoken irony, by the refined wretchedness

of his garb. The frock-coat that he wore was well cut, but his cravat

was on terms so intimate with his waistcoat that no one could suspect

him of underlinen. His hands, shapely as a woman’s were not perfectly

clean; for two days past indeed he had ceased to wear gloves. If the

very croupier and the waiters shuddered, it was because some traces

of the spell of innocence yet hung about his meagre, delicately-shaped

form, and his scanty fair hair in its natural curls.

He looked only about twenty-five years of age, and any trace of vice

in his face seemed to be there by accident. A young constitution still

resisted the inroads of lubricity. Darkness and light, annihilation and

existence, seemed to struggle in him, with effects of mingled beauty

and terror. There he stood like some erring angel that has lost his

radiance; and these emeritus-professors of vice and shame were ready to

bid the novice depart, even as some toothless crone might be seized with

pity for a beautiful girl who offers herself up to infamy.

The young man went straight up to the table, and, as he stood

there, flung down a piece of gold which he held in his hand, without

deliberation. It rolled on to the Black; then, as strong natures can,

he looked calmly, if anxiously, at the croupier, as if he held useless

subterfuges in scorn.

The interest this coup awakened was so great that the old gamesters laid

nothing upon it; only the Italian, inspired by a gambler’s enthusiasm,

smiled suddenly at some thought, and punted his heap of coin against the

stranger’s stake.

The banker forgot to pronounce the phrases that use and wont have

reduced to an inarticulate cry--“Make your game.... The game is made....

Bets are closed.” The croupier spread out the cards, and seemed to wish

luck to the newcomer, indifferent as he was to the losses or gains of

those who took part in these sombre pleasures. Every bystander thought

he saw a drama, the closing scene of a noble life, in the fortunes of

that bit of gold; and eagerly fixed his eyes on the prophetic cards; but

however closely they watched the young man, they could discover not the

least sign of feeling on his cool but restless face.

“Even! red wins,” said the croupier officially. A dumb sort of rattle

came from the Italian’s throat when he saw the folded notes that

the banker showered upon him, one after another. The young man only

understood his calamity when the croupiers’s rake was extended to sweep

away his last napoleon. The ivory touched the coin with a little click,

as it swept it with the speed of an arrow into the heap of gold before

the bank. The stranger turned pale at the lips, and softly shut his

eyes, but he unclosed them again at once, and the red color returned

as he affected the airs of an Englishman, to whom life can offer no

new sensation, and disappeared without the glance full of entreaty for

compassion that a desperate gamester will often give the bystanders. How

much can happen in a second’s space; how many things depend on a throw

of the die!

“That was his last cartridge, of course,” said the croupier, smiling

after a moment’s silence, during which he picked up the coin between his

finger and thumb and held it up.

“He is a cracked brain that will go and drown himself,” said a

frequenter of the place. He looked round about at the other players, who

all knew each other.

“Bah!” said a waiter, as he took a pinch of snuff.

“If we had but followed _his_ example,” said an old gamester to the

others, as he pointed out the Italian.

Everybody looked at the lucky player, whose hands shook as he counted

his bank-notes.

“A voice seemed to whisper to me,” he said. “The luck is sure to go

against that young man’s despair.”

“He is a new hand,” said the banker, “or he would have divided his money

into three parts to give himself more chance.”

The young man went out without asking for his hat; but the old

watch-dog, who had noted its shabby condition, returned it to him

without a word. The gambler mechanically gave up the tally, and went

downstairs whistling _Di tanti Palpiti_ so feebly, that he himself

scarcely heard the delicious notes.

He found himself immediately under the arcades of the Palais-Royal,

reached the Rue Saint Honore, took the direction of the Tuileries, and

crossed the gardens with an undecided step. He walked as if he were in

some desert, elbowed by men whom he did not see, hearing through all the

voices of the crowd one voice alone--the voice of Death. He was lost in

the thoughts that benumbed him at last, like the criminals who used

to be taken in carts from the Palais de Justice to the Place de Greve,

where the scaffold awaited them reddened with all the blood spilt here

since 1793.

There is something great and terrible about suicide. Most people’s

downfalls are not dangerous; they are like children who have not far to

fall, and cannot injure themselves; but when a great nature is dashed

down, he is bound to fall from a height. He must have been raised almost

to the skies; he has caught glimpses of some heaven beyond his reach.

Vehement must the storms be which compel a soul to seek for peace from

the trigger of a pistol.

How much young power starves and pines away in a garret for want of a

friend, for lack of a woman’s consolation, in the midst of millions of

fellow-creatures, in the presence of a listless crowd that is burdened

by its wealth! When one remembers all this, suicide looms large. Between

a self-sought death and the abundant hopes whose voices call a young man

to Paris, God only knows what may intervene; what contending ideas have

striven within the soul; what poems have been set aside; what moans and

what despair have been repressed; what abortive masterpieces and vain

endeavors! Every suicide is an awful poem of sorrow. Where will you find

a work of genius floating above the seas of literature that can compare

with this paragraph:

“Yesterday, at four o’clock, a young woman threw herself into the

Seine from the Pont des Arts.”

Dramas and romances pale before this concise Parisian phrase; so must

even that old frontispiece, _The Lamentations of the glorious king of

Kaernavan, put in prison by his children_, the sole remaining fragment

of a lost work that drew tears from Sterne at the bare perusal--the same

Sterne who deserted his own wife and family.

The stranger was beset with such thoughts as these, which passed in

fragments through his mind, like tattered flags fluttering above the

combat. If he set aside for a moment the burdens of consciousness and of

memory, to watch the flower heads gently swayed by the breeze among the

green thickets, a revulsion came over him, life struggled against

the oppressive thought of suicide, and his eyes rose to the sky: gray

clouds, melancholy gusts of the wind, the stormy atmosphere, all decreed

that he should die.

He bent his way toward the Pont Royal, musing over the last fancies of

others who had gone before him. He smiled to himself as he remembered

that Lord Castlereagh had satisfied the humblest of our needs before

he cut his throat, and that the academician Auger had sought for his

snuff-box as he went to his death. He analyzed these extravagances,

and even examined himself; for as he stood aside against the parapet

to allow a porter to pass, his coat had been whitened somewhat by the

contact, and he carefully brushed the dust from his sleeve, to his own

surprise. He reached the middle of the arch, and looked forebodingly at

the water.

“Wretched weather for drowning yourself,” said a ragged old woman, who

grinned at him; “isn’t the Seine cold and dirty?”

His answer was a ready smile, which showed the frenzied nature of his

courage; then he shivered all at once as he saw at a distance, by the

door of the Tuileries, a shed with an inscription above it in letters

twelve inches high: THE ROYAL HUMANE SOCIETY’S APPARATUS.

A vision of M. Dacheux rose before him, equipped by his philanthropy,

calling out and setting in motion the too efficacious oars which break

the heads of drowning men, if unluckily they should rise to the surface;

he saw a curious crowd collecting, running for a doctor, preparing

fumigations, he read the maundering paragraph in the papers, put between

notes on a festivity and on the smiles of a ballet-dancer; he heard

the francs counted down by the prefect of police to the watermen. As a

corpse, he was worth fifteen francs; but now while he lived he was only

a man of talent without patrons, without friends, without a mattress

to lie on, or any one to speak a word for him--a perfect social cipher,

useless to a State which gave itself no trouble about him.

A death in broad daylight seemed degrading to him; he made up his mind

to die at night so as to bequeath an unrecognizable corpse to a world

which had disregarded the greatness of life. He began his wanderings

again, turning towards the Quai Voltaire, imitating the lagging gait of

an idler seeking to kill time. As he came down the steps at the end of

the bridge, his notice was attracted by the second-hand books displayed

on the parapet, and he was on the point of bargaining for some. He

smiled, thrust his hands philosophically into his pockets, and fell to

strolling on again with a proud disdain in his manner, when he heard to

his surprise some coin rattling fantastically in his pocket.

A smile of hope lit his face, and slid from his lips over his features,

over his brow, and brought a joyful light to his eyes and his dark

cheeks. It was a spark of happiness like one of the red dots that flit

over the remains of a burnt scrap of paper; but as it is with the black

ashes, so it was with his face, it became dull again when the stranger

quickly drew out his hand and perceived three pennies. “Ah, kind

gentleman! _carita_, _carita_; for the love of St. Catherine! only a

halfpenny to buy some bread!”

A little chimney sweeper, with puffed cheeks, all black with soot, and

clad in tatters, held out his hand to beg for the man’s last pence.

Two paces from the little Savoyard stood an old _pauvre honteux_, sickly

and feeble, in wretched garments of ragged druggeting, who asked in a

thick, muffled voice:

“Anything you like to give, monsieur; I will pray to God for you...”

But the young man turned his eyes on him, and the old beggar stopped

without another word, discerning in that mournful face an abandonment of

wretchedness more bitter than his own.

“_La carita_! _la carita_!”

The stranger threw the coins to the old man and the child, left the

footway, and turned towards the houses; the harrowing sight of the Seine

fretted him beyond endurance.

“May God lengthen your days!” cried the two beggars.

As he reached the shop window of a print-seller, this man on the brink

of death met a young woman alighting from a showy carriage. He looked in

delight at her prettiness, at the pale face appropriately framed by the

satin of her fashionable bonnet. Her slender form and graceful movements

entranced him. Her skirt had been slightly raised as she stepped to the

pavement, disclosing a daintily fitting white stocking over the delicate

outlines beneath. The young lady went into the shop, purchased albums

and sets of lithographs; giving several gold coins for them, which

glittered and rang upon the counter. The young man, seemingly occupied

with the prints in the window, fixed upon the fair stranger a gaze as

eager as man can give, to receive in exchange an indifferent glance,

such as lights by accident on a passer-by. For him it was a leave-taking

of love and of woman; but his final and strenuous questioning glance was

neither understood nor felt by the slight-natured woman there; her color

did not rise, her eyes did not droop. What was it to her? one more piece

of adulation, yet another sigh only prompted the delightful thought at

night, “I looked rather well to-day.”

The young man quickly turned to another picture, and only left it when

she returned to her carriage. The horses started off, the final vision

of luxury and refinement went under an eclipse, just as that life of his

would soon do also. Slowly and sadly he followed the line of the shops,

listlessly examining the specimens on view. When the shops came to an

end, he reviewed the Louvre, the Institute, the towers of Notre Dame, of

the Palais, the Pont des Arts; all these public monuments seemed to have

taken their tone from the heavy gray sky.

Fitful gleams of light gave a foreboding look to Paris; like a pretty

woman, the city has mysterious fits of ugliness or beauty. So the outer

world seemed to be in a plot to steep this man about to die in a painful

trance. A prey to the maleficent power which acts relaxingly upon us

by the fluid circulating through our nerves, his whole frame seemed

gradually to experience a dissolving process. He felt the anguish of

these throes passing through him in waves, and the houses and the crowd

seemed to surge to and fro in a mist before his eyes. He tried to escape

the agitation wrought in his mind by the revulsions of his physical

nature, and went toward the shop of a dealer in antiquities, thinking to

give a treat to his senses, and to spend the interval till nightfall in

bargaining over curiosities.

He sought, one might say, to regain courage and to find a stimulant,

like a criminal who doubts his power to reach the scaffold. The

consciousness of approaching death gave him, for the time being, the

intrepidity of a duchess with a couple of lovers, so that he entered the

place with an abstracted look, while his lips displayed a set smile like

a drunkard’s. Had not life, or rather had not death, intoxicated him?

Dizziness soon overcame him again. Things appeared to him in strange

colors, or as making slight movements; his irregular pulse was no

doubt the cause; the blood that sometimes rushed like a burning torrent

through his veins, and sometimes lay torpid and stagnant as tepid water.

He merely asked leave to see if the shop contained any curiosities which

he required.

A plump-faced young shopman with red hair, in an otter-skin cap, left

an old peasant woman in charge of the shop--a sort of feminine Caliban,

employed in cleaning a stove made marvelous by Bernard Palissy’s work.

This youth remarked carelessly:

“Look round, _monsieur_! We have nothing very remarkable here

downstairs; but if I may trouble you to go up to the first floor, I will

show you some very fine mummies from Cairo, some inlaid pottery, and

some carved ebony--_genuine Renaissance_ work, just come in, and of

perfect beauty.”

In the stranger’s fearful position this cicerone’s prattle and shopman’s

empty talk seemed like the petty vexations by which narrow minds destroy

a man of genius. But as he must even go through with it, he appeared

to listen to his guide, answering him by gestures or monosyllables; but

imperceptibly he arrogated the privilege of saying nothing, and gave

himself up without hindrance to his closing meditations, which were

appalling. He had a poet’s temperament, his mind had entered by chance

on a vast field; and he must see perforce the dry bones of twenty future

worlds.

At a first glance the place presented a confused picture in which every

achievement, human and divine, was mingled. Crocodiles, monkeys, and

serpents stuffed with straw grinned at glass from church windows,

seemed to wish to bite sculptured heads, to chase lacquered work, or to

scramble up chandeliers. A Sevres vase, bearing Napoleon’s portrait

by Mme. Jacotot, stood beside a sphinx dedicated to Sesostris. The

beginnings of the world and the events of yesterday were mingled

with grotesque cheerfulness. A kitchen jack leaned against a pyx, a

republican sabre on a mediaeval hackbut. Mme. du Barry, with a star

above her head, naked, and surrounded by a cloud, seemed to look

longingly out of Latour’s pastel at an Indian chibook, while she tried

to guess the purpose of the spiral curves that wound towards her.

Instruments of death, poniards, curious pistols, and disguised weapons

had been flung down pell-mell among the paraphernalia of daily life;

porcelain tureens, Dresden plates, translucent cups from china, old

salt-cellars, comfit-boxes belonging to feudal times. A carved ivory

ship sped full sail on the back of a motionless tortoise.

The Emperor Augustus remained unmoved and imperial with an air-pump

thrust into one eye. Portraits of French sheriffs and Dutch

burgomasters, phlegmatic now as when in life, looked down pallid and

unconcerned on the chaos of past ages below them.

Every land of earth seemed to have contributed some stray fragment of

its learning, some example of its art. Nothing seemed lacking to this

philosophical kitchen-midden, from a redskin’s calumet, a green and

golden slipper from the seraglio, a Moorish yataghan, a Tartar idol, to

the soldier’s tobacco pouch, to the priest’s ciborium, and the plumes

that once adorned a throne. This extraordinary combination was rendered

yet more bizarre by the accidents of lighting, by a multitude of

confused reflections of various hues, by the sharp contrast of blacks

and whites. Broken cries seemed to reach the ear, unfinished dramas

seized upon the imagination, smothered lights caught the eye. A thin

coating of inevitable dust covered all the multitudinous corners and

convolutions of these objects of various shapes which gave highly

picturesque effects.

First of all, the stranger compared the three galleries which

civilization, cults, divinities, masterpieces, dominions, carousals,

sanity, and madness had filled to repletion, to a mirror with numerous

facets, each depicting a world. After this first hazy idea he would fain

have selected his pleasures; but by dint of using his eyes, thinking and

musing, a fever began to possess him, caused perhaps by the gnawing pain

of hunger. The spectacle of so much existence, individual or national,

to which these pledges bore witness, ended by numbing his senses--the

purpose with which he entered the shop was fulfilled. He had left the

real behind, and had climbed gradually up to an ideal world; he had

attained to the enchanted palace of ecstasy, whence the universe

appeared to him by fragments and in shapes of flame, as once the future

blazed out before the eyes of St. John in Patmos.

A crowd of sorrowing faces, beneficent and appalling, dark and luminous,

far and near, gathered in numbers, in myriads, in whole generations.

Egypt, rigid and mysterious, arose from her sands in the form of a mummy

swathed in black bandages; then the Pharaohs swallowed up nations, that

they might build themselves a tomb; and he beheld Moses and the Hebrews

and the desert, and a solemn antique world. Fresh and joyous, a marble

statue spoke to him from a twisted column of the pleasure-loving myths

of Greece and Ionia. Ah! who would not have smiled with him to see,

against the earthen red background, the brown-faced maiden dancing with

gleeful reverence before the god Priapus, wrought in the fine clay of an

Etruscan vase? The Latin queen caressed her chimera.

The whims of Imperial Rome were there in life, the bath was disclosed,

the toilette of a languid Julia, dreaming, waiting for her Tibullus.

Strong with the might of Arabic spells, the head of Cicero evoked

memories of a free Rome, and unrolled before him the scrolls of Titus

Livius. The young man beheld _Senatus Populusque Romanus_; consuls,

lictors, togas with purple fringes; the fighting in the Forum, the angry

people, passed in review before him like the cloudy faces of a dream.

Then Christian Rome predominated in his vision. A painter had laid

heaven open; he beheld the Virgin Mary wrapped in a golden cloud among

the angels, shining more brightly than the sun, receiving the prayers of

sufferers, on whom this second Eve Regenerate smiles pityingly. At the

touch of a mosaic, made of various lavas from Vesuvius and Etna, his

fancy fled to the hot tawny south of Italy. He was present at Borgia’s

orgies, he roved among the Abruzzi, sought for Italian love intrigues,

grew ardent over pale faces and dark, almond-shaped eyes. He shivered

over midnight adventures, cut short by the cool thrust of a jealous

blade, as he saw a mediaeval dagger with a hilt wrought like lace, and

spots of rust like splashes of blood upon it.

India and its religions took the shape of the idol with his peaked cap

of fantastic form, with little bells, clad in silk and gold. Close by,

a mat, as pretty as the bayadere who once lay upon it, still gave out

a faint scent of sandal wood. His fancy was stirred by a goggle-eyed

Chinese monster, with mouth awry and twisted limbs, the invention of

a people who, grown weary of the monotony of beauty, found an

indescribable pleasure in an infinite variety of ugliness. A salt-cellar

from Benvenuto Cellini’s workshop carried him back to the Renaissance

at its height, to the time when there was no restraint on art or morals,

when torture was the sport of sovereigns; and from their councils,

churchmen with courtesans’ arms about them issued decrees of chastity

for simple priests.

On a cameo he saw the conquests of Alexander, the massacres of Pizarro

in a matchbox, and religious wars disorderly, fanatical, and cruel, in

the shadows of a helmet. Joyous pictures of chivalry were called up by

a suit of Milanese armor, brightly polished and richly wrought; a

paladin’s eyes seemed to sparkle yet under the visor.

This sea of inventions, fashions, furniture, works of art and fiascos,

made for him a poem without end. Shapes and colors and projects

all lived again for him, but his mind received no clear and perfect

conception. It was the poet’s task to complete the sketches of the

great master, who had scornfully mingled on his palette the hues of the

numberless vicissitudes of human life. When the world at large at last

released him, when he had pondered over many lands, many epochs, and

various empires, the young man came back to the life of the individual.

He impersonated fresh characters, and turned his mind to details,

rejecting the life of nations as a burden too overwhelming for a single

soul.

Yonder was a sleeping child modeled in wax, a relic of Ruysch’s

collection, an enchanting creation which brought back the happiness of

his own childhood. The cotton garment of a Tahitian maid next fascinated

him; he beheld the primitive life of nature, the real modesty of naked

chastity, the joys of an idleness natural to mankind, a peaceful fate

by a slow river of sweet water under a plantain tree that bears its

pleasant manna without the toil of man. Then all at once he became a

corsair, investing himself with the terrible poetry that Lara has given

to the part: the thought came at the sight of the mother-of-pearl tints

of a myriad sea-shells, and grew as he saw madrepores redolent of the

sea-weeds and the storms of the Atlantic.

The sea was forgotten again at a distant view of exquisite miniatures;

he admired a precious missal in manuscript, adorned with arabesques in

gold and blue. Thoughts of peaceful life swayed him; he devoted himself

afresh to study and research, longing for the easy life of the monk,

devoid alike of cares and pleasures; and from the depths of his cell

he looked out upon the meadows, woods, and vineyards of his convent.

Pausing before some work of Teniers, he took for his own the helmet

of the soldier or the poverty of the artisan; he wished to wear a

smoke-begrimed cap with these Flemings, to drink their beer and join

their game at cards, and smiled upon the comely plumpness of a peasant

woman. He shivered at a snowstorm by Mieris; he seemed to take part in

Salvator Rosa’s battle-piece; he ran his fingers over a tomahawk

form Illinois, and felt his own hair rise as he touched a Cherokee

scalping-knife. He marveled over the rebec that he set in the hands of

some lady of the land, drank in the musical notes of her ballad, and in

the twilight by the gothic arch above the hearth he told his love in a

gloom so deep that he could not read his answer in her eyes.

He caught at all delights, at all sorrows; grasped at existence in every

form; and endowed the phantoms conjured up from that inert and plastic

material so liberally with his own life and feelings, that the sound of

his own footsteps reached him as if from another world, or as the hum of

Paris reaches the towers of Notre Dame.

He ascended the inner staircase which led to the first floor, with its

votive shields, panoplies, carved shrines, and figures on the wall at

every step. Haunted by the strangest shapes, by marvelous creations

belonging to the borderland betwixt life and death, he walked as if

under the spell of a dream. His own existence became a matter of doubt

to him; he was neither wholly alive nor dead, like the curious objects

about him. The light began to fade as he reached the show-rooms, but

the treasures of gold and silver heaped up there scarcely seemed to need

illumination from without. The most extravagant whims of prodigals, who

have run through millions to perish in garrets, had left their traces

here in this vast bazar of human follies. Here, beside a writing desk,

made at the cost of 100,000 francs, and sold for a hundred pence, lay a

lock with a secret worth a king’s ransom. The human race was revealed

in all the grandeur of its wretchedness; in all the splendor of its

infinite littleness. An ebony table that an artist might worship,

carved after Jean Goujon’s designs, in years of toil, had been purchased

perhaps at the price of firewood. Precious caskets, and things that

fairy hands might have fashioned, lay there in heaps like rubbish.

“You must have the worth of millions here!” cried the young man as he

entered the last of an immense suite of rooms, all decorated and gilt by

eighteenth century artists.

“Thousands of millions, you might say,” said the florid shopman; “but

you have seen nothing as yet. Go up to the third floor, and you shall

see!”

The stranger followed his guide to a fourth gallery, where one by one

there passed before his wearied eyes several pictures by Poussin, a

magnificent statue by Michael Angelo, enchanting landscapes by Claude

Lorraine, a Gerard Dow (like a stray page from Sterne), Rembrandts,

Murillos, and pictures by Velasquez, as dark and full of color as a poem

of Byron’s; then came classic bas-reliefs, finely-cut agates, wonderful

cameos! Works of art upon works of art, till the craftsman’s skill

palled on the mind, masterpiece after masterpiece till art itself became

hateful at last and enthusiasm died. He came upon a Madonna by Raphael,

but he was tired of Raphael; a figure by Correggio never received the

glance it demanded of him. A priceless vase of antique porphyry carved

round about with pictures of the most grotesquely wanton of Roman

divinities, the pride of some Corinna, scarcely drew a smile from him.

The ruins of fifteen hundred vanished years oppressed him; he sickened

under all this human thought; felt bored by all this luxury and art. He

struggled in vain against the constantly renewed fantastic shapes that

sprang up from under his feet, like children of some sportive demon.

Are not fearful poisons set up in the soul by a swift concentration of

all her energies, her enjoyments, or ideas; as modern chemistry, in its

caprice, repeats the action of creation by some gas or other? Do not

many men perish under the shock of the sudden expansion of some moral

acid within them?

“What is there in that box?” he inquired, as he reached a large

closet--final triumph of human skill, originality, wealth, and splendor,

in which there hung a large, square mahogany coffer, suspended from a

nail by a silver chain.

“Ah, _monsieur_ keeps the key of it,” said the stout assistant

mysteriously. “If you wish to see the portrait, I will gladly venture to

tell him.”

“Venture!” said the young man; “then is your master a prince?”

“I don’t know what he is,” the other answered. Equally astonished, each

looked for a moment at the other. Then construing the stranger’s silence

as an order, the apprentice left him alone in the closet.

Have you never launched into the immensity of time and space as you read

the geological writings of Cuvier? Carried by his fancy, have you hung

as if suspended by a magician’s wand over the illimitable abyss of the

past? When the fossil bones of animals belonging to civilizations before

the Flood are turned up in bed after bed and layer upon layer of the

quarries of Montmartre or among the schists of the Ural range, the

soul receives with dismay a glimpse of millions of peoples forgotten

by feeble human memory and unrecognized by permanent divine tradition,

peoples whose ashes cover our globe with two feet of earth that yields

bread to us and flowers.

Is not Cuvier the great poet of our era? Byron has given admirable

expression to certain moral conflicts, but our immortal naturalist has

reconstructed past worlds from a few bleached bones; has rebuilt cities,

like Cadmus, with monsters’ teeth; has animated forests with all the

secrets of zoology gleaned from a piece of coal; has discovered a giant

population from the footprints of a mammoth. These forms stand erect,

grow large, and fill regions commensurate with their giant size. He

treats figures like a poet; a naught set beside a seven by him produces

awe.

He can call up nothingness before you without the phrases of a

charlatan. He searches a lump of gypsum, finds an impression in it, says

to you, “Behold!” All at once marble takes an animal shape, the dead

come to life, the history of the world is laid open before you. After

countless dynasties of giant creatures, races of fish and clans of

mollusks, the race of man appears at last as the degenerate copy of a

splendid model, which the Creator has perchance destroyed. Emboldened

by his gaze into the past, this petty race, children of yesterday,

can overstep chaos, can raise a psalm without end, and outline for

themselves the story of the Universe in an Apocalypse that reveals the

past. After the tremendous resurrection that took place at the voice

of this man, the little drop in the nameless Infinite, common to all

spheres, that is ours to use, and that we call Time, seems to us a

pitiable moment of life. We ask ourselves the purpose of our triumphs,

our hatreds, our loves, overwhelmed as we are by the destruction of so

many past universes, and whether it is worth while to accept the pain of

life in order that hereafter we may become an intangible speck. Then we

remain as if dead, completely torn away from the present till the _valet

de chambre_ comes in and says, “_Madame la comtesse_ answers that she is

expecting _monsieur_.”

All the wonders which had brought the known world before the young man’s

mind wrought in his soul much the same feeling of dejection that besets

the philosopher investigating unknown creatures. He longed more than

ever for death as he flung himself back in a curule chair and let his

eyes wander across the illusions composing a panorama of the past.

The pictures seemed to light up, the Virgin’s heads smiled on him, the

statues seemed alive. Everything danced and swayed around him, with a

motion due to the gloom and the tormenting fever that racked his brain;

each monstrosity grimaced at him, while the portraits on the canvas

closed their eyes for a little relief. Every shape seemed to tremble

and start, and to leave its place gravely or flippantly, gracefully or

awkwardly, according to its fashion, character, and surroundings.

A mysterious Sabbath began, rivaling the fantastic scenes witnessed

by Faust upon the Brocken. But these optical illusions, produced by

weariness, overstrained eyesight, or the accidents of twilight, could

not alarm the stranger. The terrors of life had no power over a soul

grown familiar with the terrors of death. He even gave himself up, half

amused by its bizarre eccentricities, to the influence of this moral

galvanism; its phenomena, closely connected with his last thoughts,

assured him that he was still alive. The silence about him was so deep

that he embarked once more in dreams that grew gradually darker and

darker as if by magic, as the light slowly faded. A last struggling ray

from the sun lit up rosy answering lights. He raised his head and saw a

skeleton dimly visible, with its skull bent doubtfully to one side, as

if to say, “The dead will none of thee as yet.”

He passed his hand over his forehead to shake off the drowsiness, and

felt a cold breath of air as an unknown furry something swept past his

cheeks. He shivered. A muffled clatter of the windows followed; it was

a bat, he fancied, that had given him this chilly sepulchral caress. He

could yet dimly see for a moment the shapes that surrounded him, by the

vague light in the west; then all these inanimate objects were blotted

out in uniform darkness. Night and the hour of death had suddenly come.

Thenceforward, for a while, he lost consciousness of the things about

him; he was either buried in deep meditation or sleep overcame him,

brought on by weariness or by the stress of those many thoughts that

lacerated his heart.

Suddenly he thought that an awful voice called him by name; it was like

some feverish nightmare, when at a step the dreamer falls headlong over

into an abyss, and he trembled. He closed his eyes, dazzled by bright

rays from a red circle of light that shone out from the shadows. In the

midst of the circle stood a little old man who turned the light of the

lamp upon him, yet he had not heard him enter, nor move, nor speak.

There was something magical about the apparition. The boldest man,

awakened in such a sort, would have felt alarmed at the sight of this

figure, which might have issued from some sarcophagus hard by.

A curiously youthful look in the unmoving eyes of the spectre forbade

the idea of anything supernatural; but for all that, in the brief space

between his dreaming and waking life, the young man’s judgment remained

philosophically suspended, as Descartes advises. He was, in spite

of himself, under the influence of an unaccountable hallucination, a

mystery that our pride rejects, and that our imperfect science vainly

tries to resolve.

Imagine a short old man, thin and spare, in a long black velvet gown

girded round him by a thick silk cord. His long white hair escaped on

either side of his face from under a black velvet cap which closely

fitted his head and made a formal setting for his countenance. His

gown enveloped his body like a winding sheet, so that all that was left

visible was a narrow bleached human face. But for the wasted arm, thin

as a draper’s wand, which held aloft the lamp that cast all its light

upon him, the face would have seemed to hang in mid air. A gray pointed

beard concealed the chin of this fantastical appearance, and gave him

the look of one of those Jewish types which serve artists as models

for Moses. His lips were so thin and colorless that it needed a close

inspection to find the lines of his mouth at all in the pallid face. His

great wrinkled brow and hollow bloodless cheeks, the inexorably stern

expression of his small green eyes that no longer possessed eyebrows

or lashes, might have convinced the stranger that Gerard Dow’s “Money

Changer” had come down from his frame. The craftiness of an inquisitor,

revealed in those curving wrinkles and creases that wound about his

temples, indicated a profound knowledge of life. There was no deceiving

this man, who seemed to possess a power of detecting the secrets of the

wariest heart.

The wisdom and the moral codes of every people seemed gathered up in his

passive face, just as all the productions of the globe had been heaped

up in his dusty showrooms. He seemed to possess the tranquil luminous

vision of some god before whom all things are open, or the haughty power

of a man who knows all things.

With two strokes of the brush a painter could have so altered the

expression of this face, that what had been a serene representation

of the Eternal Father should change to the sneering mask of a

Mephistopheles; for though sovereign power was revealed by the forehead,

mocking folds lurked about the mouth. He must have sacrificed all the

joys of earth, as he had crushed all human sorrows beneath his potent

will. The man at the brink of death shivered at the thought of the life

led by this spirit, so solitary and remote from our world; joyless,

since he had no one illusion left; painless, because pleasure had ceased

to exist for him. There he stood, motionless and serene as a star in a

bright mist. His lamp lit up the obscure closet, just as his green eyes,

with their quiet malevolence, seemed to shed a light on the moral world.

This was the strange spectacle that startled the young man’s returning

sight, as he shook off the dreamy fancies and thoughts of death that

had lulled him. An instant of dismay, a momentary return to belief

in nursery tales, may be forgiven him, seeing that his senses were

obscured. Much thought had wearied his mind, and his nerves were

exhausted with the strain of the tremendous drama within him, and by the

scenes that had heaped on him all the horrid pleasures that a piece of

opium can produce.

But this apparition had appeared in Paris, on the Quai Voltaire, and in

the nineteenth century; the time and place made sorcery impossible.

The idol of French scepticism had died in the house just opposite,

the disciple of Gay-Lussac and Arago, who had held the charlatanism of

intellect in contempt. And yet the stranger submitted himself to the

influence of an imaginative spell, as all of us do at times, when we

wish to escape from an inevitable certainty, or to tempt the power of

Providence. So some mysterious apprehension of a strange force made him

tremble before the old man with the lamp. All of us have been stirred in

the same way by the sight of Napoleon, or of some other great man, made

illustrious by his genius or by fame.

“You wish to see Raphael’s portrait of Jesus Christ, monsieur?” the old

man asked politely. There was something metallic in the clear, sharp

ring of his voice.

He set the lamp upon a broken column, so that all its light might fall

on the brown case.

At the sacred names of Christ and Raphael the young man showed some

curiosity. The merchant, who no doubt looked for this, pressed a spring,

and suddenly the mahogany panel slid noiselessly back in its groove, and

discovered the canvas to the stranger’s admiring gaze. At sight of this

deathless creation, he forgot his fancies in the show-rooms and the

freaks of his dreams, and became himself again. The old man became a

being of flesh and blood, very much alive, with nothing chimerical about

him, and took up his existence at once upon solid earth.

The sympathy and love, and the gentle serenity in the divine face,

exerted an instant sway over the younger spectator. Some influence

falling from heaven bade cease the burning torment that consumed the

marrow of his bones. The head of the Saviour of mankind seemed to issue

from among the shadows represented by a dark background; an aureole of

light shone out brightly from his hair; an impassioned belief seemed to

glow through him, and to thrill every feature. The word of life had just

been uttered by those red lips, the sacred sounds seemed to linger still

in the air; the spectator besought the silence for those captivating

parables, hearkened for them in the future, and had to turn to the

teachings of the past. The untroubled peace of the divine eyes, the

comfort of sorrowing souls, seemed an interpretation of the Evangel.

The sweet triumphant smile revealed the secret of the Catholic religion,

which sums up all things in the precept, “Love one another.” This

picture breathed the spirit of prayer, enjoined forgiveness, overcame

self, caused sleeping powers of good to waken. For this work of

Raphael’s had the imperious charm of music; you were brought under the

spell of memories of the past; his triumph was so absolute that the

artist was forgotten. The witchery of the lamplight heightened the

wonder; the head seemed at times to flicker in the distance, enveloped

in cloud.

“I covered the surface of that picture with gold pieces,” said the

merchant carelessly.

“And now for death!” cried the young man, awakened from his musings. His

last thought had recalled his fate to him, as it led him imperceptibly

back from the forlorn hopes to which he had clung.

“Ah, ha! then my suspicions were well founded!” said the other, and his

hands held the young man’s wrists in a grip like that of a vice.

The younger man smiled wearily at his mistake, and said gently:

“You, sir, have nothing to fear; it is not your life, but my own that

is in question.... But why should I hide a harmless fraud?” he went on,

after a look at the anxious old man. “I came to see your treasures to

while away the time till night should come and I could drown myself

decently. Who would grudge this last pleasure to a poet and a man of

science?”

While he spoke, the jealous merchant watched the haggard face of his

pretended customer with keen eyes. Perhaps the mournful tones of his

voice reassured him, or he also read the dark signs of fate in the faded

features that had made the gamblers shudder; he released his hands, but,

with a touch of caution, due to the experience of some hundred years at

least, he stretched his arm out to a sideboard as if to steady himself,

took up a little dagger, and said:

“Have you been a supernumerary clerk of the Treasury for three years

without receiving any perquisites?”

The stranger could scarcely suppress a smile as he shook his head.

“Perhaps your father has expressed his regret for your birth a little

too sharply? Or have you disgraced yourself?”

“If I meant to be disgraced, I should live.”

“You have been hissed perhaps at the Funambules? Or you have had to

compose couplets to pay for your mistress’ funeral? Do you want to be

cured of the gold fever? Or to be quit of the spleen? For what blunder

is your life forfeit?”

“You must not look among the common motives that impel suicides for the

reason of my death. To spare myself the task of disclosing my unheard-of

sufferings, for which language has no name, I will tell you this--that

I am in the deepest, most humiliating, and most cruel trouble, and,” he

went on in proud tones that harmonized ill with the words just uttered,

“I have no wish to beg for either help or sympathy.”

“Eh! eh!”

The two syllables which the old man pronounced resembled the sound of a

rattle. Then he went on thus:

“Without compelling you to entreat me, without making you blush for

it, and without giving you so much as a French centime, a para from the

Levant, a German heller, a Russian kopeck, a Scottish farthing, a single

obolus or sestertius from the ancient world, or one piastre from the

new, without offering you anything whatever in gold, silver, or copper,

notes or drafts, I will make you richer, more powerful, and of more

consequence than a constitutional king.”

The young man thought that the older was in his dotage, and waited in

bewilderment without venturing to reply.

“Turn round,” said the merchant, suddenly catching up the lamp in order

to light up the opposite wall; “look at that leathern skin,” he went on.

The young man rose abruptly, and showed some surprise at the sight of a

piece of shagreen which hung on the wall behind his chair. It was only

about the size of a fox’s skin, but it seemed to fill the deep shadows

of the place with such brilliant rays that it looked like a small comet,

an appearance at first sight inexplicable. The young sceptic went up

to this so-called talisman, which was to rescue him from all points of

view, and he soon found out the cause of its singular brilliancy. The

dark grain of the leather had been so carefully burnished and polished,

the striped markings of the graining were so sharp and clear, that every

particle of the surface of the bit of Oriental leather was in itself a

focus which concentrated the light, and reflected it vividly.

He accounted for this phenomenon categorically to the old man, who only

smiled meaningly by way of answer. His superior smile led the young

scientific man to fancy that he himself had been deceived by some

imposture. He had no wish to carry one more puzzle to his grave, and

hastily turned the skin over, like some child eager to find out the

mysteries of a new toy.

“Ah,” he cried, “here is the mark of the seal which they call in the

East the Signet of Solomon.”

“So you know that, then?” asked the merchant. His peculiar method of

laughter, two or three quick breathings through the nostrils, said more

than any words however eloquent.

“Is there anybody in the world simple enough to believe in that idle

fancy?” said the young man, nettled by the spitefulness of the silent

chuckle. “Don’t you know,” he continued, “that the superstitions of the

East have perpetuated the mystical form and the counterfeit characters

of the symbol, which represents a mythical dominion? I have no more

laid myself open to a charge of credulity in this case, than if I had

mentioned sphinxes or griffins, whose existence mythology in a manner

admits.”

“As you are an Orientalist,” replied the other, “perhaps you can read

that sentence.”

He held the lamp close to the talisman, which the young man held towards

him, and pointed out some characters inlaid in the surface of the

wonderful skin, as if they had grown on the animal to which it once

belonged.

“I must admit,” said the stranger, “that I have no idea how the letters

could be engraved so deeply on the skin of a wild ass.” And he turned

quickly to the tables strewn with curiosities and seemed to look for

something.

“What is it that you want?” asked the old man.

“Something that will cut the leather, so that I can see whether the

letters are printed or inlaid.”

The old man held out his stiletto. The stranger took it and tried to cut

the skin above the lettering; but when he had removed a thin shaving of

leather from them, the characters still appeared below, so clear and so

exactly like the surface impression, that for a moment he was not sure

that he had cut anything away after all.

“The craftsmen of the Levant have secrets known only to themselves,”

he said, half in vexation, as he eyed the characters of this Oriental

sentence.

“Yes,” said the old man, “it is better to attribute it to man’s agency

than to God’s.”

The mysterious words were thus arranged:

[Drawing of apparently Sanskrit characters omitted]

Or, as it runs in English:

POSSESSING ME THOU SHALT POSSESS ALL THINGS.

BUT THY LIFE IS MINE, FOR GOD HAS SO WILLED IT.

WISH, AND THY WISHES SHALL BE FULFILLED;

BUT MEASURE THY DESIRES, ACCORDING

TO THE LIFE THAT IS IN THEE.

THIS IS THY LIFE,

WITH EACH WISH I MUST SHRINK

EVEN AS THY OWN DAYS.

WILT THOU HAVE ME? TAKE ME.

GOD WILL HEARKEN UNTO THEE.

SO BE IT!

“So you read Sanskrit fluently,” said the old man. “You have been in

Persia perhaps, or in Bengal?”

“No, sir,” said the stranger, as he felt the emblematical skin

curiously. It was almost as rigid as a sheet of metal.

The old merchant set the lamp back again upon the column, giving

the other a look as he did so. “He has given up the notion of dying

already,” the glance said with phlegmatic irony.

“Is it a jest, or is it an enigma?” asked the younger man.

The other shook his head and said soberly:

“I don’t know how to answer you. I have offered this talisman with its

terrible powers to men with more energy in them than you seem to me to

have; but though they laughed at the questionable power it might exert

over their futures, not one of them was ready to venture to conclude the

fateful contract proposed by an unknown force. I am of their opinion, I

have doubted and refrained, and----”

“Have you never even tried its power?” interrupted the young stranger.

“Tried it!” exclaimed the old man. “Suppose that you were on the column

in the Place Vendome, would you try flinging yourself into space? Is it

possible to stay the course of life? Has a man ever been known to die

by halves? Before you came here, you had made up your mind to kill

yourself, but all at once a mystery fills your mind, and you think no

more about death. You child! Does not any one day of your life afford

mysteries more absorbing? Listen to me. I saw the licentious days of

Regency. I was like you, then, in poverty; I have begged my bread; but

for all that, I am now a centenarian with a couple of years to spare,

and a millionaire to boot. Misery was the making of me, ignorance has

made me learned. I will tell you in a few words the great secret of

human life. By two instinctive processes man exhausts the springs of

life within him. Two verbs cover all the forms which these two causes of

death may take--To Will and To have your Will. Between these two limits

of human activity the wise have discovered an intermediate formula, to

which I owe my good fortune and long life. To Will consumes us, and To

have our Will destroys us, but To Know steeps our feeble organisms

in perpetual calm. In me Thought has destroyed Will, so that Power is

relegated to the ordinary functions of my economy. In a word, it is not

in the heart which can be broken, or in the senses that become deadened,

but it is in the brain that cannot waste away and survives everything

else, that I have set my life. Moderation has kept mind and body

unruffled. Yet, I have seen the whole world. I have learned all

languages, lived after every manner. I have lent a Chinaman money,

taking his father’s corpse as a pledge, slept in an Arab’s tent on the

security of his bare word, signed contracts in every capital of Europe,

and left my gold without hesitation in savage wigwams. I have attained

everything, because I have known how to despise all things.

“My one ambition has been to see. Is not Sight in a manner Insight?

And to have knowledge or insight, is not that to have instinctive

possession? To be able to discover the very substance of fact and to

unite its essence to our essence? Of material possession what abides

with you but an idea? Think, then, how glorious must be the life of a

man who can stamp all realities upon his thought, place the springs of

happiness within himself, and draw thence uncounted pleasures in idea,

unspoiled by earthly stains. Thought is a key to all treasures; the

miser’s gains are ours without his cares. Thus I have soared above this

world, where my enjoyments have been intellectual joys. I have reveled

in the contemplation of seas, peoples, forests, and mountains! I have

seen all things, calmly, and without weariness; I have set my desires

on nothing; I have waited in expectation of everything. I have walked

to and fro in the world as in a garden round about my own dwelling.

Troubles, loves, ambitions, losses, and sorrows, as men call them,

are for me ideas, which I transmute into waking dreams; I express and

transpose instead of feeling them; instead of permitting them to prey

upon my life, I dramatize and expand them; I divert myself with them as

if they were romances which I could read by the power of vision within

me. As I have never overtaxed my constitution, I still enjoy robust

health; and as my mind is endowed with all the force that I have not

wasted, this head of mine is even better furnished than my galleries.

The true millions lie here,” he said, striking his forehead. “I spend

delicious days in communings with the past; I summon before me whole

countries, places, extents of sea, the fair faces of history. In my

imaginary seraglio I have all the women that I have never possessed.

Your wars and revolutions come up before me for judgment. What is a

feverish fugitive admiration for some more or less brightly colored

piece of flesh and blood; some more or less rounded human form; what

are all the disasters that wait on your erratic whims, compared with

the magnificent power of conjuring up the whole world within your soul,

compared with the immeasurable joys of movement, unstrangled by the

cords of time, unclogged by the fetters of space; the joys of beholding

all things, of comprehending all things, of leaning over the parapet of

the world to question the other spheres, to hearken to the voice of God?

There,” he burst out, vehemently, “there are To Will and To have your

Will, both together,” he pointed to the bit of shagreen; “there are your

social ideas, your immoderate desires, your excesses, your pleasures

that end in death, your sorrows that quicken the pace of life, for pain

is perhaps but a violent pleasure. Who could determine the point where

pleasure becomes pain, where pain is still a pleasure? Is not the utmost

brightness of the ideal world soothing to us, while the lightest shadows

of the physical world annoy? Is not knowledge the secret of wisdom? And

what is folly but a riotous expenditure of Will or Power?”

“Very good then, a life of riotous excess for me!” said the stranger,

pouncing upon the piece of shagreen.

“Young man, beware!” cried the other with incredible vehemence.

“I had resolved my existence into thought and study,” the stranger

replied; “and yet they have not even supported me. I am not to be gulled

by a sermon worthy of Swedenborg, nor by your Oriental amulet, nor yet

by your charitable endeavors to keep me in a world wherein existence is

no longer possible for me.... Let me see now,” he added, clutching the

talisman convulsively, as he looked at the old man, “I wish for a

royal banquet, a carouse worthy of this century, which, it is said, has

brought everything to perfection! Let me have young boon companions,

witty, unwarped by prejudice, merry to the verge of madness! Let one

wine succeed another, each more biting and perfumed than the last, and

strong enough to bring about three days of delirium! Passionate women’s

forms should grace that night! I would be borne away to unknown regions

beyond the confines of this world, by the car and four-winged steed of

a frantic and uproarious orgy. Let us ascend to the skies, or plunge

ourselves in the mire. I do not know if one soars or sinks at such

moments, and I do not care! Next, I bid this enigmatical power

to concentrate all delights for me in one single joy. Yes, I must

comprehend every pleasure of earth and heaven in the final embrace that

is to kill me. Therefore, after the wine, I wish to hold high festival

to Priapus, with songs that might rouse the dead, and kisses without

end; the sound of them should pass like the crackling of flame through

Paris, should revive the heat of youth and passion in husband and wife,

even in hearts of seventy years.”

A laugh burst from the little old man. It rang in the young man’s ears

like an echo from hell; and tyrannously cut him short. He said no more.

“Do you imagine that my floors are going to open suddenly, so that

luxuriously-appointed tables may rise through them, and guests from

another world? No, no, young madcap. You have entered into the compact

now, and there is an end of it. Henceforward, your wishes will be

accurately fulfilled, but at the expense of your life. The compass of

your days, visible in that skin, will contract according to the strength

and number of your desires, from the least to the most extravagant. The

Brahmin from whom I had this skin once explained to me that it would

bring about a mysterious connection between the fortunes and wishes of

its possessor. Your first wish is a vulgar one, which I could fulfil,

but I leave that to the issues of your new existence. After all, you

were wishing to die; very well, your suicide is only put off for a

time.”

The stranger was surprised and irritated that this peculiar old man

persisted in not taking him seriously. A half philanthropic intention

peeped so clearly forth from his last jesting observation, that he

exclaimed:

“I shall soon see, sir, if any change comes over my fortunes in the time

it will take to cross the width of the quay. But I should like us to be

quits for such a momentous service; that is, if you are not laughing

at an unlucky wretch, so I wish that you may fall in love with an

opera-dancer. You would understand the pleasures of intemperance then,

and might perhaps grow lavish of the wealth that you have husbanded so

philosophically.”

He went out without heeding the old man’s heavy sigh, went back through

the galleries and down the staircase, followed by the stout assistant

who vainly tried to light his passage; he fled with the haste of a

robber caught in the act. Blinded by a kind of delirium, he did not even

notice the unexpected flexibility of the piece of shagreen, which coiled

itself up, pliant as a glove in his excited fingers, till it would go

into the pocket of his coat, where he mechanically thrust it. As he

rushed out of the door into the street, he ran up against three young

men who were passing arm-in-arm.

“Brute!”

“Idiot!”

Such were the gratifying expressions exchanged between them.

“Why, it is Raphael!”

“Good! we were looking for you.”

“What! it is you, then?”

These three friendly exclamations quickly followed the insults, as the

light of a street lamp, flickering in the wind, fell upon the astonished

faces of the group.

“My dear fellow, you must come with us!” said the young man that Raphael

had all but knocked down.

“What is all this about?”

“Come along, and I will tell you the history of it as we go.”

By fair means or foul, Raphael must go along with his friends towards

the Pont des Arts; they surrounded him, and linked him by the arm among

their merry band.

“We have been after you for about a week,” the speaker went on. “At your

respectable hotel _de Saint Quentin_, where, by the way, the sign with

the alternate black and red letters cannot be removed, and hangs out

just as it did in the time of Jean Jacques, that Leonarda of yours told

us that you were off into the country. For all that, we certainly did

not look like duns, creditors, sheriff’s officers, or the like. But no

matter! Rastignac had seen you the evening before at the Bouffons; we

took courage again, and made it a point of honor to find out whether

you were roosting in a tree in the Champs-Elysees, or in one of those

philanthropic abodes where the beggars sleep on a twopenny rope, or if,

more luckily, you were bivouacking in some boudoir or other. We could

not find you anywhere. Your name was not in the jailers’ registers

at the St. Pelagie nor at La Force! Government departments, cafes,

libraries, lists of prefects’ names, newspaper offices, restaurants,

greenrooms--to cut it short, every lurking place in Paris, good or bad,

has been explored in the most expert manner. We bewailed the loss of a

man endowed with such genius, that one might look to find him at Court

or in the common jails. We talked of canonizing you as a hero of July,

and, upon my word, we regretted you!”

As he spoke, the friends were crossing the Pont des Arts. Without

listening to them, Raphael looked at the Seine, at the clamoring waves

that reflected the lights of Paris. Above that river, in which but

now he had thought to fling himself, the old man’s prediction had been

fulfilled, the hour of his death had been already put back by fate.

“We really regretted you,” said his friend, still pursuing his theme.

“It was a question of a plan in which we included you as a superior

person, that is to say, somebody who can put himself above other people.

The constitutional thimble-rig is carried on to-day, dear boy, more

seriously than ever. The infamous monarchy, displaced by the heroism of

the people, was a sort of drab, you could laugh and revel with her; but

La Patrie is a shrewish and virtuous wife, and willy-nilly you must take

her prescribed endearments. Then besides, as you know, authority passed

over from the Tuileries to the journalists, at the time when the Budget

changed its quarters and went from the Faubourg Saint-Germain to the

Chaussee de Antin. But this you may not know perhaps. The Government,

that is, the aristocracy of lawyers and bankers who represent the

country to-day, just as the priests used to do in the time of the

monarchy, has felt the necessity of mystifying the worthy people of

France with a few new words and old ideas, like philosophers of

every school, and all strong intellects ever since time began. So now

Royalist-national ideas must be inculcated, by proving to us that it

is far better to pay twelve million francs, thirty-three centimes to

La Patrie, represented by Messieurs Such-and-Such, than to pay eleven

hundred million francs, nine centimes to a king who used to say _I_

instead of _we_. In a word, a journal, with two or three hundred

thousand francs, good, at the back of it, has just been started, with a

view to making an opposition paper to content the discontented, without

prejudice to the national government of the citizen-king. We scoff

at liberty as at despotism now, and at religion or incredulity quite

impartially. And since, for us, ‘our country’ means a capital where

ideas circulate and are sold at so much a line, a succulent dinner every

day, and the play at frequent intervals, where profligate women swarm,

where suppers last on into the next day, and light loves are hired by

the hour like cabs; and since Paris will always be the most adorable of

all countries, the country of joy, liberty, wit, pretty women, _mauvais

sujets_, and good wine; where the truncheon of authority never makes

itself disagreeably felt, because one is so close to those who wield

it,--we, therefore, sectaries of the god Mephistopheles, have engaged to

whitewash the public mind, to give fresh costumes to the actors, to put

a new plank or two in the government booth, to doctor doctrinaires,

and warm up old Republicans, to touch up the Bonapartists a bit, and

revictual the Centre; provided that we are allowed to laugh _in petto_

at both kings and peoples, to think one thing in the morning and another

at night, and to lead a merry life _a la_ Panurge, or to recline upon

soft cushions, _more orientali_.

“The sceptre of this burlesque and macaronic kingdom,” he went on, “we

have reserved for you; so we are taking you straightway to a dinner

given by the founder of the said newspaper, a retired banker, who, at a

loss to know what to do with his money, is going to buy some brains

with it. You will be welcomed as a brother, we shall hail you as king

of these free lances who will undertake anything; whose perspicacity

discovers the intentions of Austria, England, or Russia before either

Russia, Austria or England have formed any. Yes, we will invest you with

the sovereignty of those puissant intellects which give to the world its

Mirabeaus, Talleyrands, Pitts, and Metternichs--all the clever Crispins

who treat the destinies of a kingdom as gamblers’ stakes, just as

ordinary men play dominoes for _kirschenwasser_. We have given you out

to be the most undaunted champion who ever wrestled in a drinking-bout

at close quarters with the monster called Carousal, whom all bold

spirits wish to try a fall with; we have gone so far as to say that

you have never yet been worsted. I hope you will not make liars of us.

Taillefer, our amphitryon, has undertaken to surpass the circumscribed

saturnalias of the petty modern Lucullus. He is rich enough to infuse

pomp into trifles, and style and charm into dissipation... Are you

listening, Raphael?” asked the orator, interrupting himself.

“Yes,” answered the young man, less surprised by the accomplishment

of his wishes than by the natural manner in which the events had come

about.

He could not bring himself to believe in magic, but he marveled at the

accidents of human fate.

“Yes, you say, just as if you were thinking of your grandfather’s

demise,” remarked one of his neighbors.

“Ah!” cried Raphael, “I was thinking, my friends, that we are in a fair

way to become very great scoundrels,” and there was an ingenuousness in

his tones that set these writers, the hope of young France, in a roar.

“So far our blasphemies have been uttered over our cups; we have passed

our judgments on life while drunk, and taken men and affairs in an

after-dinner frame of mind. We were innocent of action; we were bold in

words. But now we are to be branded with the hot iron of politics;

we are going to enter the convict’s prison and to drop our illusions.

Although one has no belief left, except in the devil, one may regret

the paradise of one’s youth and the age of innocence, when we devoutly

offered the tip of our tongue to some good priest for the consecrated

wafer of the sacrament. Ah, my good friends, our first peccadilloes gave

us so much pleasure because the consequent remorse set them off and lent

a keen relish to them; but nowadays----”

“Oh! now,” said the first speaker, “there is still left----”

“What?” asked another.

“Crime----”

“There is a word as high as the gallows and deeper than the Seine,” said

Raphael.

“Oh, you don’t understand me; I mean political crime. Since this

morning, a conspirator’s life is the only one I covet. I don’t know that

the fancy will last over to-morrow, but to-night at least my gorge rises

at the anaemic life of our civilization and its railroad evenness. I am

seized with a passion for the miseries of retreat from Moscow, for the

excitements of the Red Corsair, or for a smuggler’s life. I should like

to go to Botany Bay, as we have no Chartreaux left us here in France;

it is a sort of infirmary reserved for little Lord Byrons who, having

crumpled up their lives like a serviette after dinner, have nothing left

to do but to set their country ablaze, blow their own brains out, plot

for a republic or clamor for a war----”

“Emile,” Raphael’s neighbor called eagerly to the speaker, “on my honor,

but for the revolution of July I would have taken orders, and gone off

down into the country somewhere to lead the life of an animal, and----”

“And you would have read your breviary through every day.”

“Yes.”

“You are a coxcomb!”

“Why, we read the newspapers as it is!”

“Not bad that, for a journalist! But hold your tongue, we are going

through a crowd of subscribers. Journalism, look you, is the religion of

modern society, and has even gone a little further.”

“What do you mean?”

“Its pontiffs are not obliged to believe in it any more than the people

are.”

Chatting thus, like good fellows who have known their _De Viris

illustribus_ for years past, they reached a mansion in the Rue Joubert.

Emile was a journalist who had acquired more reputation by dint of

doing nothing than others had derived from their achievements. A bold,

caustic, and powerful critic, he possessed all the qualities that his

defects permitted. An outspoken giber, he made numberless epigrams on

a friend to his face; but would defend him, if absent, with courage

and loyalty. He laughed at everything, even at his own career. Always

impecunious, he yet lived, like all men of his calibre, plunged in

unspeakable indolence. He would fling some word containing volumes

in the teeth of folk who could not put a syllable of sense into their

books. He lavished promises that he never fulfilled; he made a pillow of

his luck and reputation, on which he slept, and ran the risk of waking

up to old age in a workhouse. A steadfast friend to the gallows foot,

a cynical swaggerer with a child’s simplicity, a worker only from

necessity or caprice.

“In the language of Maitre Alcofribas, we are about to make a famous

_troncon de chiere lie_,” he remarked to Raphael as he pointed out the

flower-stands that made a perfumed forest of the staircase.

“I like a vestibule to be well warmed and richly carpeted,” Raphael

said. “Luxury in the peristyle is not common in France. I feel as if

life had begun anew here.”

“And up above we are going to drink and make merry once more, my dear

Raphael. Ah! yes,” he went on, “and I hope we are going to come off

conquerors, too, and walk over everybody else’s head.”

As he spoke, he jestingly pointed to the guests. They were entering

a large room which shone with gilding and lights, and there all the

younger men of note in Paris welcomed them. Here was one who had just

revealed fresh powers, his first picture vied with the glories of

Imperial art. There, another, who but yesterday had launched forth a

volume, an acrid book filled with a sort of literary arrogance, which

opened up new ways to the modern school. A sculptor, not far away, with

vigorous power visible in his rough features, was chatting with one of

those unenthusiastic scoffers who can either see excellence anywhere or

nowhere, as it happens. Here, the cleverest of our caricaturists,

with mischievous eyes and bitter tongue, lay in wait for epigrams to

translate into pencil strokes; there, stood the young and audacious

writer, who distilled the quintessence of political ideas better than

any other man, or compressed the work of some prolific writer as he held

him up to ridicule; he was talking with the poet whose works would

have eclipsed all the writings of the time if his ability had been as

strenuous as his hatreds. Both were trying not to say the truth while

they kept clear of lies, as they exchanged flattering speeches. A famous

musician administered soothing consolation in a rallying fashion, to

a young politician who had just fallen quite unhurt, from his rostrum.

Young writers who lacked style stood beside other young writers who

lacked ideas, and authors of poetical prose by prosaic poets.

At the sight of all these incomplete beings, a simple Saint Simonian,

ingenuous enough to believe in his own doctrine, charitably paired them

off, designing, no doubt, to convert them into monks of his order. A

few men of science mingled in the conversation, like nitrogen in the

atmosphere, and several _vaudevillistes_ shed rays like the sparking

diamonds that give neither light nor heat. A few paradox-mongers,

laughing up their sleeves at any folk who embraced their likes or

dislikes in men or affairs, had already begun a two-edged policy,

conspiring against all systems, without committing themselves to any

side. Then there was the self-appointed critic who admires nothing, and

will blow his nose in the middle of a _cavatina_ at the Bouffons, who

applauds before any one else begins, and contradicts every one who says

what he himself was about to say; he was there giving out the sayings

of wittier men for his own. Of all the assembled guests, a future lay

before some five; ten or so should acquire a fleeting renown; as for the

rest, like all mediocrities, they might apply to themselves the famous

falsehood of Louis XVIII., Union and oblivion.

The anxious jocularity of a man who is expending two thousand crowns sat

on their host. His eyes turned impatiently towards the door from time to

time, seeking one of his guests who kept him waiting. Very soon a stout

little person appeared, who was greeted by a complimentary murmur;

it was the notary who had invented the newspaper that very morning.

A valet-de-chambre in black opened the doors of a vast dining-room,

whither every one went without ceremony, and took his place at an

enormous table.

Raphael took a last look round the room before he left it. His wish had

been realized to the full. The rooms were adorned with silk and gold.

Countless wax tapers set in handsome candelabra lit up the slightest

details of gilded friezes, the delicate bronze sculpture, and the

splendid colors of the furniture. The sweet scent of rare flowers, set

in stands tastefully made of bamboo, filled the air. Everything, even

the curtains, was pervaded by elegance without pretension, and there was

a certain imaginative charm about it all which acted like a spell on the

mind of a needy man.

“An income of a hundred thousand livres a year is a very nice beginning

of the catechism, and a wonderful assistance to putting morality into

our actions,” he said, sighing. “Truly my sort of virtue can scarcely

go afoot, and vice means, to my thinking, a garret, a threadbare coat, a

gray hat in winter time, and sums owing to the porter.... I should like

to live in the lap of luxury a year, or six months, no matter! And then

afterwards, die. I should have known, exhausted, and consumed a thousand

lives, at any rate.”

“Why, you are taking the tone of a stockbroker in good luck,” said

Emile, who overheard him. “Pooh! your riches would be a burden to you as

soon as you found that they would spoil your chances of coming out above

the rest of us. Hasn’t the artist always kept the balance true between

the poverty of riches and the riches of poverty? And isn’t struggle a

necessity to some of us? Look out for your digestion, and only look,”

he added, with a mock-heroic gesture, “at the majestic, thrice holy, and

edifying appearance of this amiable capitalist’s dining-room. That man

has in reality only made his money for our benefit. Isn’t he a kind of

sponge of the polyp order, overlooked by naturalists, which should be

carefully squeezed before he is left for his heirs to feed upon? There

is style, isn’t there, about those bas-reliefs that adorn the walls? And

the lustres, and the pictures, what luxury well carried out! If one may

believe those who envy him, or who know, or think they know, the origins

of his life, then this man got rid of a German and some others--his best

friend for one, and the mother of that friend, during the Revolution.

Could you house crimes under the venerable Taillefer’s silvering locks?

He looks to me a very worthy man. Only see how the silver sparkles, and

is every glittering ray like a stab of a dagger to him?... Let us go in,

one might as well believe in Mahomet. If common report speak truth, here

are thirty men of talent, and good fellows too, prepared to dine off the

flesh and blood of a whole family;... and here are we ourselves, a pair

of youngsters full of open-hearted enthusiasm, and we shall be partakers

in his guilt. I have a mind to ask our capitalist whether he is a

respectable character....”

“No, not now,” cried Raphael, “but when he is dead drunk, we shall have

had our dinner then.”

The two friends sat down laughing. First of all, by a glance more rapid

than a word, each paid his tribute of admiration to the splendid general

effect of the long table, white as a bank of freshly-fallen snow, with

its symmetrical line of covers, crowned with their pale golden rolls of

bread. Rainbow colors gleamed in the starry rays of light reflected by

the glass; the lights of the tapers crossed and recrossed each other

indefinitely; the dishes covered with their silver domes whetted both

appetite and curiosity.

Few words were spoken. Neighbors exchanged glances as the Maderia

circulated. Then the first course appeared in all its glory; it would

have done honor to the late Cambaceres, Brillat-Savarin would have

celebrated it. The wines of Bordeaux and Burgundy, white and red, were

royally lavished. This first part of the banquet might been compared in

every way to a rendering of some classical tragedy. The second act grew

a trifle noisier. Every guest had had a fair amount to drink, and had

tried various crus at this pleasure, so that as the remains of the

magnificent first course were removed, tumultuous discussions began;

a pale brow here and there began to flush, sundry noses took a purpler

hue, faces lit up, and eyes sparkled.

While intoxication was only dawning, the conversation did not overstep

the bounds of civility; but banter and bon mots slipped by degrees from

every tongue; and then slander began to rear its little snake’s heard,

and spoke in dulcet tones; a few shrewd ones here and there gave heed to

it, hoping to keep their heads. So the second course found their minds

somewhat heated. Every one ate as he spoke, spoke while he ate, and

drank without heeding the quantity of the liquor, the wine was so

biting, the bouquet so fragrant, the example around so infectious.

Taillefer made a point of stimulating his guests, and plied them with

the formidable wines of the Rhone, with fierce Tokay, and heady old

Roussillon.

The champagne, impatiently expected and lavishly poured out, was a

scourge of fiery sparks to these men; released like post-horses from

some mail-coach by a relay; they let their spirits gallop away into the

wilds of argument to which no one listened, began to tell stories which

had no auditors, and repeatedly asked questions to which no answer was

made. Only the loud voice of wassail could be heard, a voice made up

of a hundred confused clamors, which rose and grew like a crescendo of

Rossini’s. Insidious toasts, swagger, and challenges followed.

Each renounced any pride in his own intellectual capacity, in order to

vindicate that of hogsheads, casks, and vats; and each made noise enough

for two. A time came when the footmen smiled, while their masters all

talked at once. A philosopher would have been interested, doubtless, by

the singularity of the thoughts expressed, a politician would have been

amazed by the incongruity of the methods discussed in the melee of words

or doubtfully luminous paradoxes, where truths, grotesquely caparisoned,

met in conflict across the uproar of brawling judgments, of arbitrary

decisions and folly, much as bullets, shells, and grapeshot are hurled

across a battlefield.

It was at once a volume and a picture. Every philosophy, religion, and

moral code differing so greatly in every latitude, every government,

every great achievement of the human intellect, fell before a scythe as

long as Time’s own; and you might have found it hard to decide whether

it was wielded by Gravity intoxicated, or by Inebriation grown sober and

clear-sighted. Borne away by a kind of tempest, their minds, like the

sea raging against the cliffs, seemed ready to shake the laws which

confine the ebb and flow of civilization; unconsciously fulfilling the

will of God, who has suffered evil and good to abide in nature, and

reserved the secret of their continual strife to Himself. A frantic

travesty of debate ensued, a Walpurgis-revel of intellects. Between the

dreary jests of these children of the Revolution over the inauguration

of a newspaper, and the talk of the joyous gossips at Gargantua’s

birth, stretched the gulf that divides the nineteenth century from the

sixteenth. Laughingly they had begun the work of destruction, and our

journalists laughed amid the ruins.

“What is the name of that young man over there?” said the notary,

indicating Raphael. “I thought I heard some one call him Valentin.”

“What stuff is this?” said Emile, laughing; “plain Valentin, say you?

Raphael DE Valentin, if you please. We bear an eagle or, on a field

sable, with a silver crown, beak and claws gules, and a fine motto:

NON CECIDIT ANIMUS. We are no foundling child, but a descendant of the

Emperor Valens, of the stock of the Valentinois, founders of the cities

of Valence in France, and Valencia in Spain, rightful heirs to the

Empire of the East. If we suffer Mahmoud on the throne of Byzantium, it

is out of pure condescension, and for lack of funds and soldiers.”

With a fork flourished above Raphael’s head, Emile outlined a crown upon

it. The notary bethought himself a moment, but soon fell to drinking

again, with a gesture peculiar to himself; it was quite impossible,

it seemed to say to secure in his clientele the cities of Valence and

Byzantium, the Emperor Valens, Mahmoud, and the house of Valentinois.

“Should not the destruction of those ant-hills, Babylon, Tyre, Carthage,

and Venice, each crushed beneath the foot of a passing giant, serve as

a warning to man, vouchsafed by some mocking power?” said Claude Vignon,

who must play the Bossuet, as a sort of purchased slave, at the rate of

fivepence a line.

“Perhaps Moses, Sylla, Louis XI., Richelieu, Robespierre, and Napoleon

were but the same man who crosses our civilizations now and again, like

a comet across the sky,” said a disciple of Ballanche.

“Why try to fathom the designs of Providence?” said Canalis, maker of

ballads.

“Come, now,” said the man who set up for a critic, “there is nothing

more elastic in the world than your Providence.”

“Well, sir, Louis XIV. sacrificed more lives over digging the

foundations of the Maintenon’s aqueducts, than the Convention expended

in order to assess the taxes justly, to make one law for everybody, and

one nation of France, and to establish the rule of equal inheritance,”

said Massol, whom the lack of a syllable before his name had made a

Republican.

“Are you going to leave our heads on our shoulders?” asked Moreau (of

the Oise), a substantial farmer. “You, sir, who took blood for wine just

now?”

“Where is the use? Aren’t the principles of social order worth some

sacrifices, sir?”

“Hi! Bixiou! What’s-his-name, the Republican, considers a landowner’s

head a sacrifice!” said a young man to his neighbor.

“Men and events count for nothing,” said the Republican, following out

his theory in spite of hiccoughs; “in politics, as in philosophy, there

are only principles and ideas.”

“What an abomination! Then you would ruthlessly put your friends to

death for a shibboleth?”

“Eh, sir! the man who feels compunction is your thorough scoundrel, for

he has some notion of virtue; while Peter the Great and the Duke of Alva

were embodied systems, and the pirate Monbard an organization.”

“But can’t society rid itself of your systems and organizations?” said

Canalis.

“Oh, granted!” cried the Republican.

“That stupid Republic of yours makes me feel queasy. We sha’n’t be able

to carve a capon in peace, because we shall find the agrarian law inside

it.”

“Ah, my little Brutus, stuffed with truffles, your principles are all

right enough. But you are like my valet, the rogue is so frightfully

possessed with a mania for property that if I left him to clean my

clothes after his fashion, he would soon clean me out.”

“Crass idiots!” replied the Republican, “you are for setting a nation

straight with toothpicks. To your way of thinking, justice is more

dangerous than thieves.”

“Oh, dear!” cried the attorney Deroches.

“Aren’t they a bore with their politics!” said the notary Cardot. “Shut

up. That’s enough of it. There is no knowledge nor virtue worth shedding

a drop of blood for. If Truth were brought into liquidation, we might

find her insolvent.”

“It would be much less trouble, no doubt, to amuse ourselves with evil,

rather than dispute about good. Moreover, I would give all the speeches

made for forty years past at the Tribune for a trout, for one of

Perrault’s tales or Charlet’s sketches.”

“Quite right!... Hand me the asparagus. Because, after all, liberty

begets anarchy, anarchy leads to despotism, and despotism back again

to liberty. Millions have died without securing a triumph for any one

system. Is not that the vicious circle in which the whole moral world

revolves? Man believes that he has reached perfection, when in fact he

has but rearranged matters.”

“Oh! oh!” cried Cursy, the _vaudevilliste_; “in that case, gentlemen,

here’s to Charles X., the father of liberty.”

“Why not?” asked Emile. “When law becomes despotic, morals are relaxed,

and vice versa.

“Let us drink to the imbecility of authority, which gives us such an

authority over imbeciles!” said the good banker.

“Napoleon left us glory, at any rate, my good friend!” exclaimed a naval

officer who had never left Brest.

“Glory is a poor bargain; you buy it dear, and it will not keep.

Does not the egotism of the great take the form of glory, just as for

nobodies it is their own well-being?”

“You are very fortunate, sir----”

“The first inventor of ditches must have been a weakling, for society

is only useful to the puny. The savage and the philosopher, at either

extreme of the moral scale, hold property in equal horror.”

“All very fine!” said Cardot; “but if there were no property, there

would be no documents to draw up.”

“These green peas are excessively delicious!”

“And the _cure_ was found dead in his bed in the morning....”

“Who is talking about death? Pray don’t trifle, I have an uncle.”

“Could you bear his loss with resignation?”

“No question.”

“Gentlemen, listen to me! _How to kill an uncle_. Silence! (Cries of

“Hush! hush!”) In the first place, take an uncle, large and stout,

seventy years old at least, they are the best uncles. (Sensation.) Get

him to eat a pate de foie gras, any pretext will do.”

“Ah, but my uncle is a thin, tall man, and very niggardly and

abstemious.”

“That sort of uncle is a monster; he misappropriates existence.”

“Then,” the speaker on uncles went on, “tell him, while he is digesting

it, that his banker has failed.”

“How if he bears up?”

“Let loose a pretty girl on him.”

“And if----?” asked the other, with a shake of the head.

“Then he wouldn’t be an uncle--an uncle is a gay dog by nature.”

“Malibran has lost two notes in her voice.”

“No, sir, she has not.”

“Yes, sir, she has.”

“Oh, ho! No and yes, is not that the sum-up of all religious, political,

or literary dissertations? Man is a clown dancing on the edge of an

abyss.”

“You would make out that I am a fool.”

“On the contrary, you cannot make me out.”

“Education, there’s a pretty piece of tomfoolery. M. Heineffettermach

estimates the number of printed volumes at more than a thousand

millions; and a man cannot read more than a hundred and fifty thousand

in his lifetime. So, just tell me what that word _education_ means. For

some it consists in knowing the name of Alexander’s horse, of the dog

Berecillo, of the Seigneur d’Accords, and in ignorance of the man to

whom we owe the discovery of rafting and the manufacture of porcelain.

For others it is the knowledge how to burn a will and live respected, be

looked up to and popular, instead of stealing a watch with half-a-dozen

aggravating circumstances, after a previous conviction, and so

perishing, hated and dishonored, in the Place de Greve.”

“Will Nathan’s work live?”

“He has very clever collaborators, sir.”

“Or Canalis?”

“He is a great man; let us say no more about him.”

“You are all drunk!”

“The consequence of a Constitution is the immediate stultification of

intellects. Art, science, public works, everything, is consumed by a

horribly egoistic feeling, the leprosy of the time. Three hundred of

your bourgeoisie, set down on benches, will only think of planting

poplars. Tyranny does great things lawlessly, while Liberty will

scarcely trouble herself to do petty ones lawfully.”

“Your reciprocal instruction will turn out counters in human flesh,”

broke in an Absolutist. “All individuality will disappear in a people

brought to a dead level by education.”

“For all that, is not the aim of society to secure happiness to each

member of it?” asked the Saint-Simonian.

“If you had an income of fifty thousand livres, you would not think much

about the people. If you are smitten with a tender passion for the race,

go to Madagascar; there you will find a nice little nation all ready to

Saint-Simonize, classify, and cork up in your phials, but here every one

fits into his niche like a peg in a hole. A porter is a porter, and a

blockhead is a fool, without a college of fathers to promote them to

those positions.”

“You are a Carlist.”

“And why not? Despotism pleases me; it implies a certain contempt for

the human race. I have no animosity against kings, they are so amusing.

Is it nothing to sit enthroned in a room, at a distance of thirty

million leagues from the sun?”

“Let us once more take a broad view of civilization,” said the man of

learning who, for the benefit of the inattentive sculptor, had opened a

discussion on primitive society and autochthonous races. “The vigor of a

nation in its origin was in a way physical, unitary, and crude; then as

aggregations increased, government advanced by a decomposition of the

primitive rule, more or less skilfully managed. For example, in remote

ages national strength lay in theocracy, the priest held both sword and

censer; a little later there were two priests, the pontiff and the king.

To-day our society, the latest word of civilization, has distributed

power according to the number of combinations, and we come to the forces

called business, thought, money, and eloquence. Authority thus divided

is steadily approaching a social dissolution, with interest as its one

opposing barrier. We depend no longer on either religion or physical

force, but upon intellect. Can a book replace the sword? Can discussion

be a substitute for action? That is the question.”

“Intellect has made an end of everything,” cried the Carlist. “Come now!

Absolute freedom has brought about national suicides; their triumph left

them as listless as an English millionaire.”

“Won’t you tell us something new? You have made fun of authority of all

sorts to-day, which is every bit as vulgar as denying the existence of

God. So you have no belief left, and the century is like an old Sultan

worn out by debauchery! Your Byron, in short, sings of crime and its

emotions in a final despair of poetry.”

“Don’t you know,” replied Bianchon, quite drunk by this time, “that

a dose of phosphorus more or less makes the man of genius or the

scoundrel, a clever man or an idiot, a virtuous person or a criminal?”

“Can any one treat of virtue thus?” cried Cursy. “Virtue, the subject of

every drama at the theatre, the denoument of every play, the foundation

of every court of law....”

“Be quiet, you ass. You are an Achilles for virtue, without his heel,”

said Bixiou.

“Some drink!”

“What will you bet that I will drink a bottle of champagne like a flash,

at one pull?”

“What a flash of wit!”

“Drunk as lords,” muttered a young man gravely, trying to give some wine

to his waistcoat.

“Yes, sir; real government is the art of ruling by public opinion.”

“Opinion? That is the most vicious jade of all. According to you

moralists and politicians, the laws you set up are always to go before

those of nature, and opinion before conscience. You are right and wrong

both. Suppose society bestows down pillows on us, that benefit is made

up for by the gout; and justice is likewise tempered by red-tape, and

colds accompany cashmere shawls.”

“Wretch!” Emile broke in upon the misanthrope, “how can you slander

civilization here at table, up to the eyes in wines and exquisite

dishes? Eat away at that roebuck with the gilded horns and feet, and do

not carp at your mother...”

“Is it any fault of mine if Catholicism puts a million deities in a sack

of flour, that Republics will end in a Napoleon, that monarchy dwells

between the assassination of Henry IV. and the trial of Louis XVI., and

Liberalism produces Lafayettes?”

“Didn’t you embrace him in July?”

“No.”

“Then hold your tongue, you sceptic.”

“Sceptics are the most conscientious of men.”

“They have no conscience.”

“What are you saying? They have two apiece at least!”

“So you want to discount heaven, a thoroughly commercial notion. Ancient

religions were but the unchecked development of physical pleasure, but

we have developed a soul and expectations; some advance has been made.”

“What can you expect, my friends, of a century filled with politics

to repletion?” asked Nathan. “What befell _The History of the King of

Bohemia and his Seven Castles_, a most entrancing conception?...”

“I say,” the would-be critic cried down the whole length of the table.

“The phrases might have been drawn at hap-hazard from a hat, ‘twas a

work written ‘down to Charenton.’”

“You are a fool!”

“And you are a rogue!”

“Oh! oh!”

“Ah! ah!”

“They are going to fight.”

“No, they aren’t.”

“You will find me to-morrow, sir.”

“This very moment,” Nathan answered.

“Come, come, you pair of fire-eaters!”

“You are another!” said the prime mover in the quarrel.

“Ah, I can’t stand upright, perhaps?” asked the pugnacious Nathan,

straightening himself up like a stag-beetle about to fly.

He stared stupidly round the table, then, completely exhausted by the

effort, sank back into his chair, and mutely hung his head.

“Would it not have been nice,” the critic said to his neighbor, “to

fight about a book I have neither read nor seen?”

“Emile, look out for your coat; your neighbor is growing pale,” said

Bixiou.

“Kant? Yet another ball flung out for fools to sport with, sir!

Materialism and spiritualism are a fine pair of battledores with which

charlatans in long gowns keep a shuttlecock a-going. Suppose that God

is everywhere, as Spinoza says, or that all things proceed from God, as

says St. Paul... the nincompoops, the door shuts or opens, but isn’t the

movement the same? Does the fowl come from the egg, or the egg from the

fowl?... Just hand me some duck... and there, you have all science.”

“Simpleton!” cried the man of science, “your problem is settled by

fact!”

“What fact?”

“Professors’ chairs were not made for philosophy, but philosophy for the

professors’ chairs. Put on a pair of spectacles and read the budget.”

“Thieves!”

“Nincompoops!”

“Knaves!”

“Gulls!”

“Where but in Paris will you find such a ready and rapid exchange of

thought?” cried Bixiou in a deep, bass voice.

“Bixiou! Act a classical farce for us! Come now.”

“Would you like me to depict the nineteenth century?”

“Silence.”

“Pay attention.”

“Clap a muffle on your trumpets.”

“Shut up, you Turk!”

“Give him some wine, and let that fellow keep quiet.”

“Now, then, Bixiou!”

The artist buttoned his black coat to the collar, put on yellow gloves,

and began to burlesque the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ by acting a squinting

old lady; but the uproar drowned his voice, and no one heard a word of

the satire. Still, if he did not catch the spirit of the century, he

represented the _Revue_ at any rate, for his own intentions were not

very clear to him.

Dessert was served as if by magic. A huge epergne of gilded bronze

from Thomire’s studio overshadowed the table. Tall statuettes, which a

celebrated artist had endued with ideal beauty according to conventional

European notions, sustained and carried pyramids of strawberries, pines,

fresh dates, golden grapes, clear-skinned peaches, oranges brought

from Setubal by steamer, pomegranates, Chinese fruit; in short, all

the surprises of luxury, miracles of confectionery, the most tempting

dainties, and choicest delicacies. The coloring of this epicurean work

of art was enhanced by the splendors of porcelain, by sparkling outlines

of gold, by the chasing of the vases. Poussin’s landscapes, copied

on Sevres ware, were crowned with graceful fringes of moss, green,

translucent, and fragile as ocean weeds.

The revenue of a German prince would not have defrayed the cost of this

arrogant display. Silver and mother-of-pearl, gold and crystal, were

lavished afresh in new forms; but scarcely a vague idea of this almost

Oriental fairyland penetrated eyes now heavy with wine, or crossed the

delirium of intoxication. The fire and fragrance of the wines acted like

potent philters and magical fumes, producing a kind of mirage in the

brain, binding feet, and weighing down hands. The clamor increased.

Words were no longer distinct, glasses flew in pieces, senseless peals

of laughter broke out. Cursy snatched up a horn and struck up a flourish

on it. It acted like a signal given by the devil. Yells, hisses, songs,

cries, and groans went up from the maddened crew. You might have smiled

to see men, light-hearted by nature, grow tragical as Crebillon’s

dramas, and pensive as a sailor in a coach. Hard-headed men blabbed

secrets to the inquisitive, who were long past heeding them. Saturnine

faces were wreathed in smiles worthy of a pirouetting dancer. Claude

Vignon shuffled about like a bear in a cage. Intimate friends began to

fight.

Animal likenesses, so curiously traced by physiologists in human faces,

came out in gestures and behavior. A book lay open for a Bichat if he

had repaired thither fasting and collected. The master of the house,

knowing his condition, did not dare stir, but encouraged his guests’

extravangances with a fixed grimacing smile, meant to be hospitable and

appropriate. His large face, turning from blue and red to a purple shade

terrible to see, partook of the general commotion by movements like the

heaving and pitching of a brig.

“Now, did you murder them?” Emile asked him.

“Capital punishment is going to be abolished, they say, in favor of

the Revolution of July,” answered Taillefer, raising his eyebrows with

drunken sagacity.

“Don’t they rise up before you in dreams at times?” Raphael persisted.

“There’s a statute of limitations,” said the murderer-Croesus.

“And on his tombstone,” Emile began, with a sardonic laugh, “the

stonemason will carve ‘Passer-by, accord a tear, in memory of one that’s

here!’ Oh,” he continued, “I would cheerfully pay a hundred sous to

any mathematician who would prove the existence of hell to me by an

algebraical equation.”

He flung up a coin and cried:

“Heads for the existence of God!”

“Don’t look!” Raphael cried, pouncing upon it. “Who knows? Suspense is

so pleasant.”

“Unluckily,” Emile said, with burlesque melancholy, “I can see no

halting-place between the unbeliever’s arithmetic and the papal _Pater

noster_. Pshaw! let us drink. _Trinq_ was, I believe, the oracular

answer of the _dive bouteille_ and the final conclusion of Pantagruel.”

“We owe our arts and monuments to the _Pater noster_, and our knowledge,

too, perhaps; and a still greater benefit--modern government--whereby a

vast and teeming society is wondrously represented by some five hundred

intellects. It neutralizes opposing forces and gives free play to

_Civilization_, that Titan queen who has succeeded the ancient terrible

figure of the _King_, that sham Providence, reared by man between

himself and heaven. In the face of such achievements, atheism seems like

a barren skeleton. What do you say?”

“I am thinking of the seas of blood shed by Catholicism.” Emile replied,

quite unimpressed. “It has drained our hearts and veins dry to make a

mimic deluge. No matter! Every man who thinks must range himself beneath

the banner of Christ, for He alone has consummated the triumph of spirit

over matter; He alone has revealed to us, like a poet, an intermediate

world that separates us from the Deity.”

“Believest thou?” asked Raphael with an unaccountable drunken smile.

“Very good; we must not commit ourselves; so we will drink the

celebrated toast, _Diis ignotis_!”

And they drained the chalice filled up with science, carbonic acid gas,

perfumes, poetry, and incredulity.

“If the gentlemen will go to the drawing-room, coffee is ready for

them,” said the major-domo.

There was scarcely one of those present whose mind was not floundering

by this time in the delights of chaos, where every spark of intelligence

is quenched, and the body, set free from its tyranny, gives itself up

to the frenetic joys of liberty. Some who had arrived at the apogee of

intoxication were dejected, as they painfully tried to arrest a single

thought which might assure them of their own existence; others, deep in

the heavy morasses of indigestion, denied the possibility of movement.

The noisy and the silent were oddly assorted.

For all that, when new joys were announced to them by the stentorian

tones of the servant, who spoke on his master’s behalf, they all rose,

leaning upon, dragging or carrying one another. But on the threshold

of the room the entire crew paused for a moment, motionless, as if

fascinated. The intemperate pleasures of the banquet seemed to fade away

at this titillating spectacle, prepared by their amphitryon to appeal to

the most sensual of their instincts.

Beneath the shining wax-lights in a golden chandelier, round about a

table inlaid with gilded metal, a group of women, whose eyes shone

like diamonds, suddenly met the stupefied stare of the revelers. Their

toilettes were splendid, but less magnificent than their beauty, which

eclipsed the other marvels of this palace. A light shone from their

eyes, bewitching as those of sirens, more brilliant and ardent than the

blaze that streamed down upon the snowy marble, the delicately carved

surfaces of bronze, and lit up the satin sheen of the tapestry. The

contrasts of their attitudes and the slight movements of their heads,

each differing in character and nature of attraction, set the heart

afire. It was like a thicket, where blossoms mingled with rubies,

sapphires, and coral; a combination of gossamer scarves that flickered

like beacon-lights; of black ribbons about snowy throats; of gorgeous

turbans and demurely enticing apparel. It was a seraglio that appealed

to every eye, and fulfilled every fancy. Each form posed to admiration

was scarcely concealed by the folds of cashmere, and half hidden, half

revealed by transparent gauze and diaphanous silk. The little slender

feet were eloquent, though the fresh red lips uttered no sound.

Demure and fragile-looking girls, pictures of maidenly innocence, with

a semblance of conventional unction about their heads, were there like

apparitions that a breath might dissipate. Aristocratic beauties with

haughty glances, languid, flexible, slender, and complaisant, bent their

heads as though there were royal protectors still in the market. An

English-woman seemed like a spirit of melancholy--some coy, pale,

shadowy form among Ossian’s mists, or a type of remorse flying from

crime. The Parisienne was not wanting in all her beauty that consists

in an indescribable charm; armed with her irresistible weakness, vain of

her costume and her wit, pliant and hard, a heartless, passionless siren

that yet can create factitious treasures of passion and counterfeit

emotion.

Italians shone in the throng, serene and self-possessed in their bliss;

handsome Normans, with splendid figures; women of the south, with black

hair and well-shaped eyes. Lebel might have summoned together all the

fair women of Versailles, who since morning had perfected all their

wiles, and now came like a troupe of Oriental women, bidden by the slave

merchant to be ready to set out at dawn. They stood disconcerted and

confused about the table, huddled together in a murmuring group

like bees in a hive. The combination of timid embarrassment with

coquettishness and a sort of expostulation was the result either of

calculated effect or a spontaneous modesty. Perhaps a sentiment of which

women are never utterly divested prescribed to them the cloak of modesty

to heighten and enhance the charms of wantonness. So the venerable

Taillefer’s designs seemed on the point of collapse, for these unbridled

natures were subdued from the very first by the majesty with which woman

is invested. There was a murmur of admiration, which vibrated like a

soft musical note. Wine had not taken love for traveling companion;

instead of a violent tumult of passions, the guests thus taken by

surprise, in a moment of weakness, gave themselves up to luxurious

raptures of delight.

Artists obeyed the voice of poetry which constrains them, and studied

with pleasure the different delicate tints of these chosen examples of

beauty. Sobered by a thought perhaps due to some emanation from a

bubble of carbonic acid in the champagne, a philosopher shuddered at the

misfortunes which had brought these women, once perhaps worthy of the

truest devotion, to this. Each one doubtless could have unfolded a cruel

tragedy. Infernal tortures followed in the train of most of them, and

they drew after them faithless men, broken vows, and pleasures atoned

for in wretchedness. Polite advances were made by the guests, and

conversations began, as varied in character as the speakers. They broke

up into groups. It might have been a fashionable drawing-room where

ladies and young girls offer after dinner the assistance that coffee,

liqueurs, and sugar afford to diners who are struggling in the toils

of a perverse digestion. But in a little while laughter broke out,

the murmur grew, and voices were raised. The saturnalia, subdued for a

moment, threatened at times to renew itself. The alternations of sound

and silence bore a distant resemblance to a symphony of Beethoven’s.

The two friends, seated on a silken divan, were first approached by

a tall, well-proportioned girl of stately bearing; her features were

irregular, but her face was striking and vehement in expression, and

impressed the mind by the vigor of its contrasts. Her dark hair fell

in luxuriant curls, with which some hand seemed to have played havoc

already, for the locks fell lightly over the splendid shoulders that

thus attracted attention. The long brown curls half hid her queenly

throat, though where the light fell upon it, the delicacy of its fine

outlines was revealed. Her warm and vivid coloring was set off by the

dead white of her complexion. Bold and ardent glances came from under

the long eyelashes; the damp, red, half-open lips challenged a kiss. Her

frame was strong but compliant; with a bust and arms strongly developed,

as in figures drawn by the Caracci, she yet seemed active and elastic,

with a panther’s strength and suppleness, and in the same way the

energetic grace of her figure suggested fierce pleasures.

But though she might romp perhaps and laugh, there was something

terrible in her eyes and her smile. Like a pythoness possessed by the

demon, she inspired awe rather than pleasure. All changes, one after

another, flashed like lightning over every mobile feature of her face.

She might captivate a jaded fancy, but a young man would have feared

her. She was like some colossal statue fallen from the height of a Greek

temple, so grand when seen afar, too roughly hewn to be seen anear.

And yet, in spite of all, her terrible beauty could have stimulated

exhaustion; her voice might charm the deaf; her glances might put life

into the bones of the dead; and therefore Emile was vaguely reminded of

one of Shakespeare’s tragedies--a wonderful maze, in which joy

groans, and there is something wild even about love, and the magic of

forgiveness and the warmth of happiness succeed to cruel storms of rage.

She was a siren that can both kiss and devour; laugh like a devil, or

weep as angels can. She could concentrate in one instant all a woman’s

powers of attraction in a single effort (the sighs of melancholy and

the charms of maiden’s shyness alone excepted), then in a moment rise

in fury like a nation in revolt, and tear herself, her passion, and her

lover, in pieces.

Dressed in red velvet, she trampled under her reckless feet the stray

flowers fallen from other heads, and held out a salver to the two

friends, with careless hands. The white arms stood out in bold relief

against the velvet. Proud of her beauty; proud (who knows?) of her

corruption, she stood like a queen of pleasure, like an incarnation of

enjoyment; the enjoyment that comes of squandering the accumulations of

three generations; that scoffs at its progenitors, and makes merry over

a corpse; that will dissolve pearls and wreck thrones, turn old men into

boys, and make young men prematurely old; enjoyment only possible to

giants weary of their power, tormented by reflection, or for whom strife

has become a plaything.

“What is your name?” asked Raphael.

“Aquilina.”

“Out of _Venice Preserved_!” exclaimed Emile.

“Yes,” she answered. “Just as a pope takes a new name when he is exalted

above all other men, I, too, took another name when I raised myself

above women’s level.”

“Then have you, like your patron saint, a terrible and noble lover, a

conspirator, who would die for you?” cried Emile eagerly--this gleam of

poetry had aroused his interest.

“Once I had,” she answered. “But I had a rival too in La Guillotine. I

have worn something red about me ever since, lest any happiness should

carry me away.”

“Oh, if you are going to get her on to the story of those four lads

of La Rochelle, she will never get to the end of it. That’s enough,

Aquilina. As if every woman could not bewail some lover or other, though

not every one has the luck to lose him on the scaffold, as you have

done. I would a great deal sooner see a lover of mine in a trench at the

back of Clamart than in a rival’s arms.”

All this in the gentlest and most melodious accents, and pronounced by

the prettiest, gentlest, and most innocent-looking little person that

a fairy wand ever drew from an enchanted eggshell. She had come

up noiselessly, and they became aware of a slender, dainty figure,

charmingly timid blue eyes, and white transparent brows. No ingenue

among the naiads, a truant from her river spring, could have been shyer,

whiter, more ingenuous than this young girl, seemingly about sixteen

years old, ignorant of evil and of the storms of life, and fresh from

some church in which she must have prayed the angels to call her to

heaven before the time. Only in Paris are such natures as this to be

found, concealing depths of depravity behind a fair mask, and the most

artificial vices beneath a brow as young and fair as an opening flower.

At first the angelic promise of those soft lineaments misled the

friends. Raphael and Emile took the coffee which she poured into the

cups brought by Aquilina, and began to talk with her. In the eyes of the

two poets she soon became transformed into some sombre allegory, of

I know not what aspect of human life. She opposed to the vigorous

and ardent expression of her commanding acquaintance a revelation

of heartless corruption and voluptuous cruelty. Heedless enough to

perpetrate a crime, hardy enough to feel no misgivings; a pitiless demon

that wrings larger and kinder natures with torments that it is incapable

of knowing, that simpers over a traffic in love, sheds tears over a

victim’s funeral, and beams with joy over the reading of the will.

A poet might have admired the magnificent Aquilina; but the winning

Euphrasia must be repulsive to every one--the first was the soul of sin;

the second, sin without a soul in it.

“I should dearly like to know,” Emile remarked to this pleasing being,

“if you ever reflect upon your future?”

“My future!” she answered with a laugh. “What do you mean by my future?

Why should I think about something that does not exist as yet? I never

look before or behind. Isn’t one day at a time more than I can concern

myself with as it is? And besides, the future, as we know, means the

hospital.”

“How can you forsee a future in the hospital, and make no effort to

avert it?”

“What is there so alarming about the hospital?” asked the terrific

Aquilina. “When we are neither wives nor mothers, when old age draws

black stockings over our limbs, sets wrinkles on our brows, withers up

the woman in us, and darkens the light in our lover’s eyes, what could

we need when that comes to pass? You would look on us then as mere

human clay; we with our habiliments shall be for you like so much

mud--worthless, lifeless, crumbling to pieces, going about with the

rustle of dead leaves. Rags or the daintiest finery will be as one to us

then; the ambergris of the boudoir will breathe an odor of death and dry

bones; and suppose there is a heart there in that mud, not one of you

but would make mock of it, not so much as a memory will you spare to

us. Is not our existence precisely the same whether we live in a fine

mansion with lap-dogs to tend, or sort rags in a workhouse? Does it make

much difference whether we shall hide our gray heads beneath lace or a

handkerchief striped with blue and red; whether we sweep a crossing with

a birch broom, or the steps of the Tuileries with satins; whether we sit

beside a gilded hearth, or cower over the ashes in a red earthen pot;

whether we go to the Opera or look on in the Place de Greve?”

“_Aquilina mia_, you have never shown more sense than in this depressing

fit of yours,” Euphrasia remarked. “Yes, cashmere, _point d’Alencon_,

perfumes, gold, silks, luxury, everything that sparkles, everything

pleasant, belongs to youth alone. Time alone may show us our folly, but

good fortune will acquit us. You are laughing at me,” she went on, with

a malicious glance at the friends; “but am I not right? I would sooner

die of pleasure than of illness. I am not afflicted with a mania for

perpetuity, nor have I a great veneration for human nature, such as God

has made it. Give me millions, and I would squander them; I should not

keep one centime for the year to come. Live to be charming and have

power, that is the decree of my every heartbeat. Society sanctions my

life; does it not pay for my extravagances? Why does Providence pay me

every morning my income, which I spend every evening? Why are hospitals

built for us? And Providence did not put good and evil on either hand

for us to select what tires and pains us. I should be very foolish if I

did not amuse myself.”

“And how about others?” asked Emile.

“Others? Oh, well, they must manage for themselves. I prefer laughing

at their woes to weeping over my own. I defy any man to give me the

slightest uneasiness.”

“What have you suffered to make you think like this?” asked Raphael.

“I myself have been forsaken for an inheritance,” she said, striking an

attitude that displayed all her charms; “and yet I had worked night and

day to keep my lover! I am not to be gulled by any smile or vow, and I

have set myself to make one long entertainment of my life.”

“But does not happiness come from the soul within?” cried Raphael.

“It may be so,” Aquilina answered; “but is it nothing to be conscious of

admiration and flattery; to triumph over other women, even over the most

virtuous, humiliating them before our beauty and our splendor? Not only

so; one day of our life is worth ten years of a bourgeoise existence,

and so it is all summed up.”

“Is not a woman hateful without virtue?” Emile said to Raphael.

Euphrasia’s glance was like a viper’s, as she said, with an irony in her

voice that cannot be rendered:

“Virtue! we leave that to deformity and to ugly women. What would the

poor things be without it?”

“Hush, be quiet,” Emile broke in. “Don’t talk about something you have

never known.”

“That I have never known!” Euphrasia answered. “You give yourself for

life to some person you abominate; you must bring up children who will

neglect you, who wound your very heart, and you must say, ‘Thank you!’

for it; and these are the virtues you prescribe to woman. And that is

not enough. By way of requiting her self-denial, you must come and

add to her sorrows by trying to lead her astray; and though you are

rebuffed, she is compromised. A nice life! How far better to keep one’s

freedom, to follow one’s inclinations in love, and die young!”

“Have you no fear of the price to be paid some day for all this?”

“Even then,” she said, “instead of mingling pleasures and troubles, my

life will consist of two separate parts--a youth of happiness is secure,

and there may come a hazy, uncertain old age, during which I can suffer

at my leisure.”

“She has never loved,” came in the deep tones of Aquilina’s voice. “She

never went a hundred leagues to drink in one look and a denial with

untold raptures. She has not hung her own life on a thread, nor tried

to stab more than one man to save her sovereign lord, her king, her

divinity.... Love, for her, meant a fascinating colonel.”

“Here she is with her La Rochelle,” Euphrasia made answer. “Love comes

like the wind, no one knows whence. And, for that matter, if one of

those brutes had once fallen in love with you, you would hold sensible

men in horror.”

“Brutes are put out of the question by the Code,” said the tall,

sarcastic Aquilina.

“I thought you had more kindness for the army,” laughed Euphrasia.

“How happy they are in their power of dethroning their reason in this

way,” Raphael exclaimed.

“Happy?” asked Aquilina, with dreadful look, and a smile full of pity

and terror. “Ah, you do not know what it is to be condemned to a life of

pleasure, with your dead hidden in your heart....”

A moment’s consideration of the rooms was like a foretaste of Milton’s

Pandemonium. The faces of those still capable of drinking wore a hideous

blue tint, from burning draughts of punch. Mad dances were kept up with

wild energy; excited laughter and outcries broke out like the explosion

of fireworks. The boudoir and a small adjoining room were strewn like

a battlefield with the insensible and incapable. Wine, pleasure,

and dispute had heated the atmosphere. Wine and love, delirium and

unconsciousness possessed them, and were written upon all faces, upon

the furniture; were expressed by the surrounding disorder, and brought

light films over the vision of those assembled, so that the air seemed

full of intoxicating vapor. A glittering dust arose, as in the luminous

paths made by a ray of sunlight, the most bizarre forms flitted through

it, grotesque struggles were seen athwart it. Groups of interlaced

figures blended with the white marbles, the noble masterpieces of

sculpture that adorned the rooms.

Though the two friends yet preserved a sort of fallacious clearness

in their ideas and voices, a feeble appearance and faint thrill of

animation, it was yet almost impossible to distinguish what was real

among the fantastic absurdities before them, or what foundation there

was for the impossible pictures that passed unceasingly before their

weary eyes. The strangest phenomena of dreams beset them, the lowering

heavens, the fervid sweetness caught by faces in our visions, and

unheard-of agility under a load of chains,--all these so vividly, that

they took the pranks of the orgy about them for the freaks of some

nightmare in which all movement is silent, and cries never reach

the ear. The valet de chambre succeeded just then, after some little

difficulty, in drawing his master into the ante-chamber to whisper to

him:

“The neighbors are all at their windows, complaining of the racket,

sir.”

“If noise alarms them, why don’t they lay down straw before their

doors?” was Taillefer’s rejoinder.

Raphael’s sudden burst of laughter was so unseasonable and abrupt, that

his friend demanded the reason of his unseemly hilarity.

“You will hardly understand me,” he replied. “In the first place, I must

admit that you stopped me on the Quai Voltaire just as I was about to

throw myself into the Seine, and you would like to know, no doubt, my

motives for dying. And when I proceed to tell you that by an almost

miraculous chance the most poetic memorials of the material world had

but just then been summed up for me as a symbolical interpretation of

human wisdom; whilst at this minute the remains of all the intellectual

treasures ravaged by us at table are comprised in these two women, the

living and authentic types of folly, would you be any the wiser? Our

profound apathy towards men and things supplied the half-tones in a

crudely contrasted picture of two theories of life so diametrically

opposed. If you were not drunk, you might perhaps catch a gleam of

philosophy in this.”

“And if you had not both feet on that fascinating Aquilina, whose

heavy breathing suggests an analogy with the sounds of a storm about

to burst,” replied Emile, absently engaged in the harmless amusement of

winding and unwinding Euphrasia’s hair, “you would be ashamed of your

inebriated garrulity. Both your systems can be packed in a phrase, and

reduced to a single idea. The mere routine of living brings a stupid

kind of wisdom with it, by blunting our intelligence with work; and on

the other hand, a life passed in the limbo of the abstract or in the

abysses of the moral world, produces a sort of wisdom run mad. The

conditions may be summed up in brief; we may extinguish emotion, and so

live to old age, or we may choose to die young as martyrs to contending

passions. And yet this decree is at variance with the temperaments with

which we were endowed by the bitter jester who modeled all creatures.”

“Idiot!” Raphael burst in. “Go on epitomizing yourself after that

fashion, and you will fill volumes. If I attempted to formulate those

two ideas clearly, I might as well say that man is corrupted by the

exercise of his wits, and purified by ignorance. You are calling the

whole fabric of society to account. But whether we live with the wise

or perish with the fool, isn’t the result the same sooner or later? And

have not the prime constituents of the quintessence of both systems been

before expressed in a couple of words--_Carymary_, _Carymara_.”

“You make me doubt the existence of a God, for your stupidity is greater

than His power,” said Emile. “Our beloved Rabelais summed it all up in

a shorter word than your ‘_Carymary_, _Carymara_’; from his _Peut-etre_

Montaigne derived his own _Que sais-je_? After all, this last word of

moral science is scarcely more than the cry of Pyrrhus set betwixt good

and evil, or Buridan’s ass between the two measures of oats. But let

this everlasting question alone, resolved to-day by a ‘Yes’ and a ‘No.’

What experience did you look to find by a jump into the Seine? Were you

jealous of the hydraulic machine on the Pont Notre Dame?”

“Ah, if you but knew my history!”

“Pooh,” said Emile; “I did not think you could be so commonplace; that

remark is hackneyed. Don’t you know that every one of us claims to have

suffered as no other ever did?”

“Ah!” Raphael sighed.

“What a mountebank art thou with thy ‘Ah’! Look here, now. Does some

disease of the mind or body, by contracting your muscles, bring back

of a morning the wild horses that tear you in pieces at night, as with

Damiens once upon a time? Were you driven to sup off your own dog in a

garret, uncooked and without salt? Have your children ever cried, ‘I am

hungry’? Have you sold your mistress’ hair to hazard the money at play?

Have you ever drawn a sham bill of exchange on a fictitious uncle at a

sham address, and feared lest you should not be in time to take it up?

Come now, I am attending! If you were going to drown yourself for some

woman, or by way of a protest, or out of sheer dulness, I disown you.

Make your confession, and no lies! I don’t at all want a historical

memoir. And, above all things, be as concise as your clouded intellect

permits; I am as critical as a professor, and as sleepy as a woman at

her vespers.”

“You silly fool!” said Raphael. “When has not suffering been keener for

a more susceptible nature? Some day when science has attained to a pitch

that enables us to study the natural history of hearts, when they

are named and classified in genera, sub-genera, and families; into

crustaceae, fossils, saurians, infusoria, or whatever it is,--then, my

dear fellow, it will be ascertained that there are natures as tender

and fragile as flowers, that are broken by the slight bruises that some

stony hearts do not even feel----”

“For pity’s sake, spare me thy exordium,” said Emile, as, half

plaintive, half amused, he took Raphael’s hand.

II. A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART

After a moment’s silence, Raphael said with a careless gesture:

“Perhaps it is an effect of the fumes of punch--I really cannot

tell--this clearness of mind that enables me to comprise my whole

life in a single picture, where figures and hues, lights, shades, and

half-tones are faithfully rendered. I should not have been so surprised

at this poetical play of imagination if it were not accompanied with

a sort of scorn for my past joys and sorrows. Seen from afar, my life

appears to contract by some mental process. That long, slow agony of ten

years’ duration can be brought to memory to-day in some few phrases,

in which pain is resolved into a mere idea, and pleasure becomes

a philosophical reflection. Instead of feeling things, I weigh and

consider them----”

“You are as tiresome as the explanation of an amendment,” cried Emile.

“Very likely,” said Raphael submissively. “I spare you the first

seventeen years of my life for fear of abusing a listener’s patience.

Till that time, like you and thousands of others, I had lived my life

at school or the lycee, with its imaginary troubles and genuine

happinesses, which are so pleasant to look back upon. Our jaded palates

still crave for that Lenten fare, so long as we have not tried it

afresh. It was a pleasant life, with the tasks that we thought so

contemptible, but which taught us application for all that....”

“Let the drama begin,” said Emile, half-plaintively, half-comically.

“When I left school,” Raphael went on, with a gesture that claimed the

right of speaking, “my father submitted me to a strict discipline; he

installed me in a room near his own study, and I had to rise at five in

the morning and be in bed by nine at night. He meant me to take my law

studies seriously. I attended the Schools, and read with an advocate

as well, but my lectures and work were so narrowly circumscribed by the

laws of time and space, and my father required such a strict account of

my doings, at dinner, that...”

“What is this to me?” asked Emile.

“The devil take you!” said Raphael. “How are you to enter into my

feelings if I do not relate the facts that insensibly shaped my

character, made me timid, and prolonged the period of youthful

simplicity? In this manner I cowered under as strict a despotism as a

monarch’s till I came of age. To depict the tedium of my life, it will

be perhaps enough to portray my father to you. He was tall, thin, and

slight, with a hatchet face, and pale complexion; a man of few words,

fidgety as an old maid, exacting as a senior clerk. His paternal

solicitude hovered over my merriment and gleeful thoughts, and seemed to

cover them with a leaden pall. Any effusive demonstration on my part was

received by him as a childish absurdity. I was far more afraid of him

than I had been of any of our masters at school.

“I seem to see him before me at this moment. In his chestnut-brown

frock-coat he looked like a red herring wrapped up in the cover of a

pamphlet, and he held himself as erect as an Easter candle. But I was

fond of my father, and at heart he was right enough. Perhaps we never

hate severity when it has its source in greatness of character and pure

morals, and is skilfully tempered with kindness. My father, it is true,

never left me a moment to myself, and only when I was twenty years

old gave me so much as ten francs of my own, ten knavish prodigals

of francs, such a hoard as I had long vainly desired, which set me

a-dreaming of unutterable felicity; yet, for all that he sought to

procure relaxations for me. When he had promised me a treat beforehand,

he would take me to Les Boufoons, or to a concert or ball, where I hoped

to find a mistress.... A mistress! that meant independence. But bashful

and timid as I was, knowing nobody, and ignorant of the dialect of

drawing-rooms, I always came back as awkward as ever, and swelling with

unsatisfied desires, to be put in harness like a troop horse next day

by my father, and to return with morning to my advocate, the Palais de

Justice, and the law. To have swerved from the straight course which my

father had mapped out for me, would have drawn down his wrath upon me;

at my first delinquency, he threatened to ship me off as a cabin-boy

to the Antilles. A dreadful shiver ran through me if I had ventured to

spend a couple of hours in some pleasure party.

“Imagine the most wandering imagination and passionate temperament, the

tenderest soul and most artistic nature, dwelling continually in the

presence of the most flint-hearted, atrabilious, and frigid man on

earth; think of me as a young girl married to a skeleton, and you will

understand the life whose curious scenes can only be a hearsay tale to

you; the plans for running away that perished at the sight of my father,

the despair soothed by slumber, the dark broodings charmed away by

music. I breathed my sorrows forth in melodies. Beethoven or Mozart

would keep my confidences sacred. Nowadays, I smile at recollections of

the scruples which burdened my conscience at that epoch of innocence and

virtue.

“If I set foot in a restaurant, I gave myself up for lost; my fancy

led me to look on a cafe as a disreputable haunt, where men lost their

characters and embarrassed their fortunes; as for engaging in play, I

had not the money to risk. Oh, if I needed to send you to sleep, I would

tell you about one of the most frightful pleasures of my life, one of

those pleasures with fangs that bury themselves in the heart as the

branding-iron enters the convict’s shoulder. I was at a ball at the

house of the Duc de Navarreins, my father’s cousin. But to make

my position the more perfectly clear, you must know that I wore a

threadbare coat, ill-fitting shoes, a tie fit for a stableman, and a

soiled pair of gloves. I shrank into a corner to eat ices and watch

the pretty faces at my leisure. My father noticed me. Actuated by

some motive that I did not fathom, so dumfounded was I by this act of

confidence, he handed me his keys and purse to keep. Ten paces away some

men were gambling. I heard the rattling of gold; I was twenty years old;

I longed to be steeped for one whole day in the follies of my time of

life. It was a license of the imagination that would find a parallel

neither in the freaks of courtesans, nor in the dreams of young girls.

For a year past I had beheld myself well dressed, in a carriage, with

a pretty woman by my side, playing the great lord, dining at Very’s,

deciding not to go back home till the morrow; but was prepared for my

father with a plot more intricate than the Marriage of Figaro, which

he could not possibly have unraveled. All this bliss would cost, I

estimated, fifty crowns. Was it not the artless idea of playing truant

that still had charms for me?

“I went into a small adjoining room, and when alone counted my father’s

money with smarting eyes and trembling fingers--a hundred crowns! The

joys of my escapade rose before me at the thought of the amount; joys

that flitted about me like Macbeth’s witches round their caldron;

joys how alluring! how thrilling! how delicious! I became a deliberate

rascal. I heeded neither my tingling ears nor the violent beating of my

heart, but took out two twenty-franc pieces that I seem to see yet. The

dates had been erased, and Bonaparte’s head simpered upon them. After I

had put back the purse in my pocket, I returned to the gaming-table with

the two pieces of gold in the palms of my damp hands, prowling about

the players like a sparrow-hawk round a coop of chickens. Tormented by

inexpressible terror, I flung a sudden clairvoyant glance round me, and

feeling quite sure that I was seen by none of my acquaintance, betted on

a stout, jovial little man, heaping upon his head more prayers and

vows than are put up during two or three storms at sea. Then, with an

intuitive scoundrelism, or Machiavelism, surprising in one of my age, I

went and stood in the door, and looked about me in the rooms, though

I saw nothing; for both mind and eyes hovered about that fateful green

cloth.

“That evening fixes the date of a first observation of a physiological

kind; to it I owe a kind of insight into certain mysteries of our double

nature that I have since been enabled to penetrate. I had my back turned

on the table where my future felicity lay at stake, a felicity but so

much the more intense that it was criminal. Between me and the players

stood a wall of onlookers some five feet deep, who were chatting; the

murmur of voices drowned the clinking of gold, which mingled in

the sounds sent up by this orchestra; yet, despite all obstacles, I

distinctly heard the words of the two players by a gift accorded to the

passions, which enables them to annihilate time and space. I saw the

points they made; I knew which of the two turned up the king as well as

if I had actually seen the cards; at a distance of ten paces, in short,

the fortunes of play blanched my face.

“My father suddenly went by, and then I knew what the Scripture meant by

‘The Spirit of God passed before his face.’ I had won. I slipped through

the crowd of men who had gathered about the players with the quickness

of an eel escaping through a broken mesh in a net. My nerves thrilled

with joy instead of anguish. I felt like some criminal on the way to

torture released by a chance meeting with the king. It happened that a

man with a decoration found himself short by forty francs. Uneasy eyes

suspected me; I turned pale, and drops of perspiration stood on my

forehead, I was well punished, I thought, for having robbed my father.

Then the kind little stout man said, in a voice like an angel’s surely,

‘All these gentlemen have paid their stakes,’ and put down the forty

francs himself. I raised my head in triumph upon the players. After I

had returned the money I had taken from it to my father’s purse, I left

my winnings with that honest and worthy gentleman, who continued to win.

As soon as I found myself possessed of a hundred and sixty francs, I

wrapped them up in my handkerchief, so that they could neither move or

rattle on the way back; and I played no more.

“‘What were you doing at the card-table?’ said my father as we stepped

into the carriage.

“‘I was looking on,’ I answered, trembling.

“‘But it would have been nothing out of the common if you had been

prompted by self-love to put some money down on the table. In the eyes

of men of the world you are quite old enough to assume the right to

commit such follies. So I should have pardoned you, Raphael, if you had

made use of my purse.....’

“I did not answer. When we reached home, I returned the keys and money

to my father. As he entered his study, he emptied out his purse on the

mantelpiece, counted the money, and turned to me with a kindly look,

saying with more or less long and significant pauses between each

phrase:

“‘My boy, you are very nearly twenty now. I am satisfied with you. You

ought to have an allowance, if only to teach you how to lay it out, and

to gain some acquaintance with everyday business. Henceforward I shall

let you have a hundred francs each month. Here is your first quarter’s

income for this year,’ he added, fingering a pile of gold, as if to make

sure that the amount was correct. ‘Do what you please with it.’

“I confess that I was ready to fling myself at his feet, to tell him

that I was a thief, a scoundrel, and, worse than all, a liar! But a

feeling of shame held me back. I went up to him for an embrace, but he

gently pushed me away.

“‘You are a man now, _my child_,’ he said. ‘What I have just done was a

very proper and simple thing, for which there is no need to thank me. If

I have any claim to your gratitude, Raphael,’ he went on, in a kind but

dignified way, ‘it is because I have preserved your youth from the evils

that destroy young men in Paris. We will be two friends henceforth. In

a year’s time you will be a doctor of law. Not without some hardship and

privations you have acquired the sound knowledge and the love of, and

application to, work that is indispensable to public men. You must

learn to know me, Raphael. I do not want to make either an advocate or

a notary of you, but a statesman, who shall be the pride of our poor

house.... Good-night,’ he added.

“From that day my father took me fully into confidence. I was an only

son; and ten years before, I had lost my mother. In time past my father,

the head of a historic family remembered even now in Auvergne, had come

to Paris to fight against his evil star, dissatisfied at the prospect

of tilling the soil, with his useless sword by his side. He was endowed

with the shrewdness that gives the men of the south of France a certain

ascendency when energy goes with it. Almost unaided, he made a position

for himself near the fountain of power. The revolution brought a reverse

of fortune, but he had managed to marry an heiress of good family, and,

in the time of the Empire, appeared to be on the point of restoring to

our house its ancient splendor.

“The Restoration, while it brought back considerable property to my

mother, was my father’s ruin. He had formerly purchased several estates

abroad, conferred by the Emperor on his generals; and now for ten years

he struggled with liquidators, diplomatists, and Prussian and Bavarian

courts of law, over the disputed possession of these unfortunate

endowments. My father plunged me into the intricate labyrinths of law

proceedings on which our future depended. We might be compelled to

return the rents, as well as the proceeds arising from sales of timber

made during the years 1814 to 1817; in that case my mother’s property

would have barely saved our credit. So it fell out that the day on which

my father in a fashion emancipated me, brought me under a most galling

yoke. I entered on a conflict like a battlefield; I must work day and

night; seek interviews with statesmen, surprise their convictions, try

to interest them in our affairs, and gain them over, with their wives

and servants, and their very dogs; and all this abominable business had

to take the form of pretty speeches and polite attentions. Then I knew

the mortifications that had left their blighting traces on my father’s

face. For about a year I led outwardly the life of a man of the world,

but enormous labors lay beneath the surface of gadding about, and eager

efforts to attach myself to influential kinsmen, or to people likely

to be useful to us. My relaxations were lawsuits, and memorials still

furnished the staple of my conversation. Hitherto my life had been

blameless, from the sheer impossibility of indulging the desires of

youth; but now I became my own master, and in dread of involving us both

in ruin by some piece of negligence, I did not dare to allow myself any

pleasure or expenditure.

“While we are young, and before the world has rubbed off the delicate

bloom from our sentiments, the freshness of our impressions, the noble

purity of conscience which will never allow us to palter with evil,

the sense of duty is very strong within us, the voice of honor clamors

within us, and we are open and straightforward. At that time I was all

these things. I wished to justify my father’s confidence in me. But

lately I would have stolen a paltry sum from him, with secret delight;

but now that I shared the burden of his affairs, of his name and of his

house, I would secretly have given up my fortune and my hopes for

him, as I was sacrificing my pleasures, and even have been glad of the

sacrifice! So when M. de Villele exhumed, for our special benefit, an

imperial decree concerning forfeitures, and had ruined us, I authorized

the sale of my property, only retaining an island in the middle of

the Loire where my mother was buried. Perhaps arguments and evasions,

philosophical, philanthropic, and political considerations would not

fail me now, to hinder the perpetration of what my solicitor termed

a ‘folly’; but at one-and-twenty, I repeat, we are all aglow with

generosity and affection. The tears that stood in my father’s eyes were

to me the most splendid of fortunes, and the thought of those tears has

often soothed my sorrow. Ten months after he had paid his creditors, my

father died of grief; I was his idol, and he had ruined me! The thought

killed him. Towards the end of the autumn of 1826, at the age of

twenty-two, I was the sole mourner at his graveside--the grave of my

father and my earliest friend. Not many young men have found themselves

alone with their thoughts as they followed a hearse, or have seen

themselves lost in crowded Paris, and without money or prospects.

Orphans rescued by public charity have at any rate the future of the

battlefield before them, and find a shelter in some institution and a

father in the government or in the _procureur du roi_. I had nothing.

“Three months later, an agent made over to me eleven hundred and twelve

francs, the net proceeds of the winding up of my father’s affairs. Our

creditors had driven us to sell our furniture. From my childhood I had

been used to set a high value on the articles of luxury about us, and

I could not help showing my astonishment at the sight of this meagre

balance.

“‘Oh, rococo, all of it!’ said the auctioneer. A terrible word that fell

like a blight on the sacred memories of my childhood, and dispelled my

earliest illusions, the dearest of all. My entire fortune was comprised

in this ‘account rendered,’ my future lay in a linen bag with eleven

hundred and twelve francs in it, human society stood before me in the

person of an auctioneer’s clerk, who kept his hat on while he spoke.

Jonathan, an old servant who was much attached to me, and whom my mother

had formerly pensioned with an annuity of four hundred francs, spoke to

me as I was leaving the house that I had so often gaily left for a drive

in my childhood.

“‘Be very economical, Monsieur Raphael!’

“The good fellow was crying.

“Such were the events, dear Emile, that ruled my destinies, moulded my

character, and set me, while still young, in an utterly false social

position,” said Raphael after a pause. “Family ties, weak ones, it is

true, bound me to a few wealthy houses, but my own pride would have kept

me aloof from them if contempt and indifference had not shut their

doors on me in the first place. I was related to people who were very

influential, and who lavished their patronage on strangers; but I found

neither relations nor patrons in them. Continually circumscribed in my

affections, they recoiled upon me. Unreserved and simple by nature, I

must have appeared frigid and sophisticated. My father’s discipline had

destroyed all confidence in myself. I was shy and awkward; I could not

believe that my opinion carried any weight whatever; I took no pleasure

in myself; I thought myself ugly, and was ashamed to meet my own

eyes. In spite of the inward voice that must be the stay of a man with

anything in him, in all his struggles, the voice that cries, ‘Courage!

Go forward!’ in spite of sudden revelations of my own strength in my

solitude; in spite of the hopes that thrilled me as I compared new

works, that the public admired so much, with the schemes that hovered in

my brain,--in spite of all this, I had a childish mistrust of myself.

“An overweening ambition preyed upon me; I believed that I was meant for

great things, and yet I felt myself to be nothing. I had need of other

men, and I was friendless. I found I must make my way in the world,

where I was quite alone, and bashful, rather than afraid.

“All through the year in which, by my father’s wish, I threw myself into

the whirlpool of fashionable society, I came away with an inexperienced

heart, and fresh in mind. Like every grown child, I sighed in secret for

a love affair. I met, among young men of my own age, a set of swaggerers

who held their heads high, and talked about trifles as they seated

themselves without a tremor beside women who inspired awe in me. They

chattered nonsense, sucked the heads of their canes, gave themselves

affected airs, appropriated the fairest women, and laid, or pretended

that they had laid their heads on every pillow. Pleasure, seemingly, was

at their beck and call; they looked on the most virtuous and prudish as

an easy prey, ready to surrender at a word, at the slightest impudent

gesture or insolent look. I declare, on my soul and conscience, that the

attainment of power, or of a great name in literature, seemed to me an

easier victory than a success with some young, witty, and gracious lady

of high degree.

“So I found the tumult of my heart, my feelings, and my creeds all at

variance with the axioms of society. I had plenty of audacity in my

character, but none in my manner. Later, I found out that women did

not like to be implored. I have from afar adored many a one to whom I

devoted a soul proof against all tests, a heart to break, energy that

shrank from no sacrifice and from no torture; _they_ accepted fools

whom I would not have engaged as hall porters. How often, mute and

motionless, have I not admired the lady of my dreams, swaying in the

dance; given up my life in thought to one eternal caress, expressed all

my hopes in a look, and laid before her, in my rapture, a young man’s

love, which should outstrip all fables. At some moments I was ready to

barter my whole life for one single night. Well, as I could never find a

listener for my impassioned proposals, eyes to rest my own upon, a heart

made for my heart, I lived on in all the sufferings of impotent

force that consumes itself; lacking either opportunity or courage or

experience. I despaired, maybe, of making myself understood, or I feared

to be understood but too well; and yet the storm within me was ready to

burst at every chance courteous look. In spite of my readiness to take

the semblance of interest in look or word for a tenderer solicitude,

I dared neither to speak nor to be silent seasonably. My words grew

insignificant, and my silence stupid, by sheer stress of emotion. I was

too ingenuous, no doubt, for that artificial life, led by candle-light,

where every thought is expressed in conventional phrases, or by words

that fashion dictates; and not only so, I had not learned how to employ

speech that says nothing, and silence that says a great deal. In short,

I concealed the fires that consumed me, and with such a soul as women

wish to find, with all the elevation of soul that they long for, and

a mettle that fools plume themselves upon, all women have been cruelly

treacherous to me.

“So in my simplicity I admired the heroes of this set when they bragged

about their conquests, and never suspected them of lying. No doubt it

was a mistake to wish for a love that springs for a word’s sake; to

expect to find in the heart of a vain, frivolous woman, greedy for

luxury and intoxicated with vanity, the great sea of passion that surged

tempestuously in my own breast. Oh! to feel that you were born to love,

to make some woman’s happiness, and yet to find not one, not even a

noble and courageous Marceline, not so much as an old Marquise! Oh!

to carry a treasure in your wallet, and not find even some child, or

inquisitive young girl, to admire it! In my despair I often wished to

kill myself.”

“Finely tragical to-night!” cried Emile.

“Let me pass sentence on my life,” Raphael answered. “If your friendship

is not strong enough to bear with my elegy, if you cannot put up with

half an hour’s tedium for my sake, go to sleep! But, then, never ask

again for the reason of suicide that hangs over me, that comes nearer

and calls to me, that I bow myself before. If you are to judge a man,

you must know his secret thoughts, sorrows, and feelings; to know

merely the outward events of a man’s life would only serve to make a

chronological table--a fool’s notion of history.”

Emile was so much struck with the bitter tones in which these words were

spoken, that he began to pay close attention to Raphael, whom he watched

with a bewildered expression.

“Now,” continued the speaker, “all these things that befell me appear in

a new light. The sequence of events that I once thought so unfortunate

created the splendid powers of which, later, I became so proud. If I may

believe you, I possess the power of readily expressing my thoughts, and

I could take a forward place in the great field of knowledge; and is not

this the result of scientific curiosity, of excessive application, and

a love of reading which possessed me from the age of seven till my entry

on life? The very neglect in which I was left, and the consequent habits

of self-repression and self-concentration; did not these things teach me

how to consider and reflect? Nothing in me was squandered in obedience

to the exactions of the world, which humble the proudest soul and

reduce it to a mere husk; and was it not this very fact that refined the

emotional part of my nature till it became the perfected instrument of

a loftier purpose than passionate desires? I remember watching the women

who mistook me with all the insight of contemned love.

“I can see now that my natural sincerity must have been displeasing to

them; women, perhaps, even require a little hypocrisy. And I, who in

the same hour’s space am alternately a man and a child, frivolous and

thoughtful, free from bias and brimful of superstition, and oftentimes

myself as much a woman as any of them; how should they do otherwise than

take my simplicity for cynicism, my innocent candor for impudence? They

found my knowledge tiresome; my feminine languor, weakness. I was held

to be listless and incapable of love or of steady purpose; a too active

imagination, that curse of poets, was no doubt the cause. My silence was

idiotic; and as I daresay I alarmed them by my efforts to please, women

one and all have condemned me. With tears and mortification, I bowed

before the decision of the world; but my distress was not barren. I

determined to revenge myself on society; I would dominate the feminine

intellect, and so have the feminine soul at my mercy; all eyes should

be fixed upon me, when the servant at the door announced my name. I had

determined from my childhood that I would be a great man; I said with

Andre Chenier, as I struck my forehead, ‘There is something underneath

that!’ I felt, I believed, the thought within me that I must express,

the system I must establish, the knowledge I must interpret.

“Let me pour out my follies, dear Emile; to-day I am barely twenty-six

years old, certain of dying unrecognized, and I have never been the

lover of the woman I dreamed of possessing. Have we not all of us, more

or less, believed in the reality of a thing because we wished it? I

would never have a young man for my friend who did not place himself in

dreams upon a pedestal, weave crowns for his head, and have complaisant

mistresses. I myself would often be a general, nay, emperor; I have been

a Byron, and then a nobody. After this sport on these pinnacles of human

achievement, I became aware that all the difficulties and steeps of life

were yet to face. My exuberant self-esteem came to my aid; I had that

intense belief in my destiny, which perhaps amounts to genius in those

who will not permit themselves to be distracted by contact with the

world, as sheep that leave their wool on the briars of every thicket

they pass by. I meant to cover myself with glory, and to work in silence

for the mistress I hoped to have one day. Women for me were resumed into

a single type, and this woman I looked to meet in the first that met

my eyes; but in each and all I saw a queen, and as queens must make the

first advances to their lovers, they must draw near to me--to me, so

sickly, shy, and poor. For her, who should take pity on me, my heart

held in store such gratitude over and beyond love, that I had worshiped

her her whole life long. Later, my observations have taught me bitter

truths.

“In this way, dear Emile, I ran the risk of remaining companionless for

good. The incomprehensible bent of women’s minds appears to lead them to

see nothing but the weak points in a clever man, and the strong points

of a fool. They feel the liveliest sympathy with the fool’s good

qualities, which perpetually flatter their own defects; while they

find the man of talent hardly agreeable enough to compensate for his

shortcomings. All capacity is a sort of intermittent fever, and no woman

is anxious to share in its discomforts only; they look to find in their

lovers the wherewithal to gratify their own vanity. It is themselves

that they love in us! But the artist, poor and proud, along with his

endowment of creative power, is furnished with an aggressive egotism!

Everything about him is involved in I know not what whirlpool of his

ideas, and even his mistress must gyrate along with them. How is a

woman, spoilt with praise, to believe in the love of a man like that?

Will she go to seek him out? That sort of lover has not the leisure to

sit beside a sofa and give himself up to the sentimental simperings

that women are so fond of, and on which the false and unfeeling pride

themselves. He cannot spare the time from his work, and how can he

afford to humble himself and go a-masquerading! I was ready to give my

life once and for all, but I could not degrade it in detail. Besides,

there is something indescribably paltry in a stockbroker’s tactics, who

runs on errands for some insipid affected woman; all this disgusts an

artist. Love in the abstract is not enough for a great man in poverty;

he has need of its utmost devotion. The frivolous creatures who spend

their lives in trying on cashmeres, or make themselves into clothes-pegs

to hang the fashions from, exact the devotion which is not theirs to

give; for them, love means the pleasure of ruling and not of obeying.

She who is really a wife, one in heart, flesh, and bone, must follow

wherever he leads, in whom her life, her strength, her pride, and

happiness are centered. Ambitious men need those Oriental women

whose whole thought is given to the study of their requirements; for

unhappiness means for them the incompatibility of their means with their

desires. But I, who took myself for a man of genius, must needs feel

attracted by these very she-coxcombs. So, as I cherished ideas so

different from those generally received; as I wished to scale the

heavens without a ladder, was possessed of wealth that could not

circulate, and of knowledge so wide and so imperfectly arranged and

digested that it overtaxed my memory; as I had neither relations nor

friends in the midst of this lonely and ghastly desert, a desert of

paving stones, full of animation, life, and thought, wherein every one

is worse than inimical, indifferent to wit; I made a very natural if

foolish resolve, which required such unknown impossibilities, that my

spirits rose. It was as if I had laid a wager with myself, for I was at

once the player and the cards.

“This was my plan. The eleven hundred francs must keep life in me for

three years--the time I allowed myself in which to bring to light a

work which should draw attention to me, and make me either a name or a

fortune. I exulted at the thought of living on bread and milk, like

a hermit in the Thebaid, while I plunged into the world of books and

ideas, and so reached a lofty sphere beyond the tumult of Paris, a

sphere of silent labor where I would entomb myself like a chrysalis to

await a brilliant and splendid new birth. I imperiled my life in order

to live. By reducing my requirements to real needs and the barest

necessaries, I found that three hundred and sixty-five francs sufficed

for a year of penury; and, in fact, I managed to exist on that slender

sum, so long as I submitted to my own claustral discipline.”

“Impossible!” cried Emile.

“I lived for nearly three years in that way,” Raphael answered, with

a kind of pride. “Let us reckon it out. Three sous for bread, two for

milk, and three for cold meat, kept me from dying of hunger, and my

mind in a state of peculiar lucidity. I have observed, as you know, the

wonderful effects produced by diet upon the imagination. My lodgings

cost me three sous daily; I burnt three sous more in oil at night; I did

my own housework, and wore flannel shirts so as to reduce the laundress’

bill to two sous per day. The money I spent yearly in coal, if divided

up, never cost more than two sous for each day. I had three years’

supply of clothing, and I only dressed when going out to some library

or public lecture. These expenses, all told, only amounted to eighteen

sous, so two were left over for emergencies. I cannot recollect, during

that long period of toil, either crossing the Pont des Arts, or paying

for water; I went out to fetch it every morning from the fountain in

the Place Saint Michel, at the corner of the Rue de Gres. Oh, I wore my

poverty proudly. A man urged on towards a fair future walks through life

like an innocent person to his death; he feels no shame about it.

“I would not think of illness. Like Aquilina, I faced the hospital

without terror. I had not a moment’s doubt of my health, and besides,

the poor can only take to their beds to die. I cut my own hair till

the day when an angel of love and kindness... But I do not want to

anticipate the state of things that I shall reach later. You must simply

know that I lived with one grand thought for a mistress, a dream, an

illusion which deceives us all more or less at first. To-day I laugh at

myself, at that self, holy perhaps and heroic, which is now no more. I

have since had a closer view of society and the world, of our manners

and customs, and seen the dangers of my innocent credulity and the

superfluous nature of my fervent toil. Stores of that sort are quite

useless to aspirants for fame. Light should be the baggage of seekers

after fortune!

“Ambitious men spend their youth in rendering themselves worthy of

patronage; it is their great mistake. While the foolish creatures are

laying in stores of knowledge and energy, so that they shall not sink

under the weight of responsible posts that recede from them, schemers

come and go who are wealthy in words and destitute in ideas, astonish

the ignorant, and creep into the confidence of those who have a little

knowledge. While the first kind study, the second march ahead; the one

sort is modest, and the other impudent; the man of genius is silent

about his own merits, but these schemers make a flourish of theirs, and

they are bound to get on. It is so strongly to the interest of men in

office to believe in ready-made capacity, and in brazen-faced merit,

that it is downright childish of the learned to expect material rewards.

I do not seek to paraphrase the commonplace moral, the song of songs

that obscure genius is for ever singing; I want to come, in a logical

manner, by the reason of the frequent successes of mediocrity. Alas!

study shows us such a mother’s kindness that it would be a sin perhaps

to ask any other reward of her than the pure and delightful pleasures

with which she sustains her children.

“Often I remember soaking my bread in milk, as I sat by the window to

take the fresh air; while my eyes wandered over a view of roofs--brown,

gray, or red, slated or tiled, and covered with yellow or green mosses.

At first the prospect may have seemed monotonous, but I very soon found

peculiar beauties in it. Sometimes at night, streams of light through

half-closed shutters would light up and color the dark abysses of this

strange landscape. Sometimes the feeble lights of the street lamps sent

up yellow gleams through the fog, and in each street dimly outlined the

undulations of a crowd of roofs, like billows in a motionless sea.

Very occasionally, too, a face appeared in this gloomy waste; above

the flowers in some skyey garden I caught a glimpse of an old woman’s

crooked angular profile as she watered her nasturtiums; or, in a crazy

attic window, a young girl, fancying herself quite alone as she dressed

herself--a view of nothing more than a fair forehead and long tresses

held above her by a pretty white arm.

“I liked to see the short-lived plant-life in the gutters--poor weeds

that a storm soon washed away. I studied the mosses, with their colors

revived by showers, or transformed by the sun into a brown velvet

that fitfully caught the light. Such things as these formed my

recreations--the passing poetic moods of daylight, the melancholy mists,

sudden gleams of sunlight, the silence and the magic of night, the

mysteries of dawn, the smoke wreaths from each chimney; every chance

event, in fact, in my curious world became familiar to me. I came to

love this prison of my own choosing. This level Parisian prairie

of roofs, beneath which lay populous abysses, suited my humor, and

harmonized with my thoughts.

“Sudden descents into the world from the divine height of scientific

meditation are very exhausting; and, besides, I had apprehended

perfectly the bare life of the cloister. When I made up my mind to

carry out this new plan of life, I looked for quarters in the most

out-of-the-way parts of Paris. One evening, as I returned home to the

Rue des Cordiers from the Place de l’Estrapade, I saw a girl of fourteen

playing with a battledore at the corner of the Rue de Cluny, her winsome

ways and laughter amused the neighbors. September was not yet over; it

was warm and fine, so that women sat chatting before their doors as if

it were a fete-day in some country town. At first I watched the charming

expression of the girl’s face and her graceful attitudes, her pose fit

for a painter. It was a pretty sight. I looked about me, seeking to

understand this blithe simplicity in the midst of Paris, and saw that

the street was a blind alley and but little frequented. I remembered

that Jean Jacques had once lived here, and looked up the Hotel

Saint-Quentin. Its dilapidated condition awakened hopes of a cheap

lodging, and I determined to enter.

“I found myself in a room with a low ceiling; the candles, in

classic-looking copper candle-sticks, were set in a row under each key.

The predominating cleanliness of the room made a striking contrast to

the usual state of such places. This one was as neat as a bit of genre;

there was a charming trimness about the blue coverlet, the cooking pots

and furniture. The mistress of the house rose and came to me. She seemed

to be about forty years of age; sorrows had left their traces on her

features, and weeping had dimmed her eyes. I deferentially mentioned the

amount I could pay; it seemed to cause her no surprise; she sought out

a key from the row, went up to the attics with me, and showed me a room

that looked out on the neighboring roofs and courts; long poles with

linen drying on them hung out of the window.

“Nothing could be uglier than this garret, awaiting its scholar, with

its dingy yellow walls and odor of poverty. The roofing fell in a steep

slope, and the sky was visible through chinks in the tiles. There was

room for a bed, a table, and a few chairs, and beneath the highest point

of the roof my piano could stand. Not being rich enough to furnish this

cage (that might have been one of the _Piombi_ of Venice), the poor

woman had never been able to let it; and as I had saved from the recent

sale the furniture that was in a fashion peculiarly mine, I very soon

came to terms with my landlady, and moved in on the following day.

“For three years I lived in this airy sepulchre, and worked unflaggingly

day and night; and so great was the pleasure that study seemed to me the

fairest theme and the happiest solution of life. The tranquillity and

peace that a scholar needs is something as sweet and exhilarating as

love. Unspeakable joys are showered on us by the exertion of our

mental faculties; the quest of ideas, and the tranquil contemplation

of knowledge; delights indescribable, because purely intellectual and

impalpable to our senses. So we are obliged to use material terms to

express the mysteries of the soul. The pleasure of striking out in some

lonely lake of clear water, with forests, rocks, and flowers around, and

the soft stirring of the warm breeze,--all this would give, to those who

knew them not, a very faint idea of the exultation with which my soul

bathed itself in the beams of an unknown light, hearkened to the awful

and uncertain voice of inspiration, as vision upon vision poured from

some unknown source through my throbbing brain.

“No earthly pleasure can compare with the divine delight of watching

the dawn of an idea in the space of abstractions as it rises like the

morning sun; an idea that, better still, attains gradually like a child

to puberty and man’s estate. Study lends a kind of enchantment to all

our surroundings. The wretched desk covered with brown leather at which

I wrote, my piano, bed, and armchair, the odd wall-paper and furniture

seemed to have for me a kind of life in them, and to be humble friends

of mine and mute partakers of my destiny. How often have I confided my

soul to them in a glance! A warped bit of beading often met my eyes,

and suggested new developments,--a striking proof of my system, or a

felicitous word by which to render my all but inexpressible thought. By

sheer contemplation of the things about me I discerned an expression and

a character in each. If the setting sun happened to steal in through my

narrow window, they would take new colors, fade or shine, grow dull or

gay, and always amaze me with some new effect. These trifling incidents

of a solitary life, which escape those preoccupied with outward affairs,

make the solace of prisoners. And what was I but the captive of an

idea, imprisoned in my system, but sustained also by the prospect of a

brilliant future? At each obstacle that I overcame, I seemed to kiss the

soft hands of a woman with a fair face, a wealthy, well-dressed woman,

who should some day say softly, while she caressed my hair:

“‘Poor Angel, how thou hast suffered!’

“I had undertaken two great works--one a comedy that in a very short

time must bring me wealth and fame, and an entry into those circles

whither I wished to return, to exercise the royal privileges of a man

of genius. You all saw nothing in that masterpiece but the blunder of a

young man fresh from college, a babyish fiasco. Your jokes clipped the

wings of a throng of illusions, which have never stirred since within

me. You, dear Emile, alone brought soothing to the deep wounds that

others had made in my heart. You alone will admire my ‘Theory of the

Will.’ I devoted most of my time to that long work, for which I studied

Oriental languages, physiology and anatomy. If I do not deceive myself,

my labors will complete the task begun by Mesmer, Lavater, Gall, and

Bichat, and open up new paths in science.

“There ends that fair life of mine, the daily sacrifice, the

unrecognized silkworm’s toil, that is, perhaps, its own sole recompense.

Since attaining years of discretion, until the day when I finished my

‘Theory,’ I observed, learned, wrote, and read unintermittingly; my

life was one long imposition, as schoolboys say. Though by nature

effeminately attached to Oriental indolence, sensual in tastes, and a

wooer of dreams, I worked incessantly, and refused to taste any of the

enjoyments of Parisian life. Though a glutton, I became abstemious; and

loving exercise and sea voyages as I did, and haunted by the wish to

visit many countries, still child enough to play at ducks and drakes

with pebbles over a pond, I led a sedentary life with a pen in my

fingers. I liked talking, but I went to sit and mutely listen to

professors who gave public lectures at the _Bibliotheque_ or the Museum.

I slept upon my solitary pallet like a Benedictine brother, though woman

was my one chimera, a chimera that fled from me as I wooed it! In short,

my life has been a cruel contradiction, a perpetual cheat. After that,

judge a man!

“Sometimes my natural propensities broke out like a fire long smothered.

I was debarred from the women whose society I desired, stripped of

everything and lodged in an artist’s garret, and by a sort of mirage or

calenture I was surrounded by captivating mistresses. I drove through

the streets of Paris, lolling on the soft cushions of a fine equipage.

I plunged into dissipation, into corroding vice, I desired and possessed

everything, for fasting had made me light-headed like the tempted Saint

Anthony. Slumber, happily, would put an end at last to these devastating

trances; and on the morrow science would beckon me, smiling, and I was

faithful to her. I imagine that women reputed virtuous, must often fall

a prey to these insane tempests of desire and passion, which rise in us

in spite of ourselves. Such dreams have a charm of their own; they are

something akin to evening gossip round the winter fire, when one sets

out for some voyage in China. But what becomes of virtue during these

delicious excursions, when fancy overleaps all difficulties?

“During the first ten months of seclusion I led the life of poverty and

solitude that I have described to you; I used to steal out unobserved

every morning to buy my own provisions for the day; I tidied my room; I

was at once master and servant, and played the Diogenes with incredible

spirit. But afterwards, while my hostess and her daughter watched my

ways and behavior, scrutinized my appearance and divined my poverty,

there could not but be some bonds between us; perhaps because they were

themselves so very poor. Pauline, the charming child, whose latent

and unconscious grace had, in a manner, brought me there, did me many

services that I could not well refuse. All women fallen on evil days

are sisters; they speak a common language; they have the same

generosity--the generosity that possesses nothing, and so is lavish of

its affection, of its time, and of its very self.

“Imperceptibly Pauline took me under her protection, and would do

things for me. No kind of objection was made by her mother, whom I even

surprised mending my linen; she blushed for the charitable occupation.

In spite of myself, they took charge of me, and I accepted their

services.

“In order to understand the peculiar condition of my mind, my

preoccupation with work must be remembered, the tyranny of ideas, and

the instinctive repugnance that a man who leads an intellectual life

must ever feel for the material details of existence. Could I well

repulse the delicate attentions of Pauline, who would noiselessly bring

me my frugal repast, when she noticed that I had taken nothing for seven

or eight hours? She had the tact of a woman and the inventiveness of a

child; she would smile as she made sign to me that I must not see her.

Ariel glided under my roof in the form of a sylph who foresaw every want

of mine.

“One evening Pauline told me her story with touching simplicity. Her

father had been a major in the horse grenadiers of the Imperial Guard.

He had been taken prisoner by the Cossacks, at the passage of Beresina;

and when Napoleon later on proposed an exchange, the Russian authorities

made search for him in Siberia in vain; he had escaped with a view of

reaching India, and since then Mme. Gaudin, my landlady, could hear no

news of her husband. Then came the disasters of 1814 and 1815; and, left

alone and without resource, she had decided to let furnished lodgings in

order to keep herself and her daughter.

“She always hoped to see her husband again. Her greatest trouble was

about her daughter’s education; the Princess Borghese was her Pauline’s

godmother; and Pauline must not be unworthy of the fair future promised

by her imperial protectress. When Mme. Gaudin confided to me this heavy

trouble that preyed upon her, she said, with sharp pain in her voice,

‘I would give up the property and the scrap of paper that makes Gaudin

a baron of the empire, and all our rights to the endowment of Wistchnau,

if only Pauline could be brought up at Saint-Denis?’ Her words struck

me; now I could show my gratitude for the kindnesses expended on me

by the two women; all at once the idea of offering to finish Pauline’s

education occurred to me; and the offer was made and accepted in the

most perfect simplicity. In this way I came to have some hours of

recreation. Pauline had natural aptitude; she learned so quickly, that

she soon surpassed me at the piano. As she became accustomed to think

aloud in my presence, she unfolded all the sweet refinements of a heart

that was opening itself out to life, as some flower-cup opens slowly to

the sun. She listened to me, pleased and thoughtful, letting her dark

velvet eyes rest upon me with a half smile in them; she repeated her

lessons in soft and gentle tones, and showed childish glee when I was

satisfied with her. Her mother grew more and more anxious every day to

shield the young girl from every danger (for all the beauty promised in

early life was developing in the crescent moon), and was glad to see her

spend whole days indoors in study. My piano was the only one she could

use, and while I was out she practised on it. When I came home, Pauline

would be in my room, in her shabby dress, but her slightest movement

revealed her slender figure in its attractive grace, in spite of the

coarse materials that she wore. As with the heroine of the fable of

‘_Peau-d’Ane_,’ a dainty foot peeped out of the clumsy shoes. But all

her wealth of girlish beauty was as lost upon me. I had laid commands

upon myself to see a sister only in Pauline. I dreaded lest I should

betray her mother’s faith in me. I admired the lovely girl as if she had

been a picture, or as the portrait of a dead mistress; she was at once

my child and my statue. For me, another Pygmalion, the maiden with the

hues of life and the living voice was to become a form of inanimate

marble. I was very strict with her, but the more I made her feel my

pedagogue’s severity, the more gentle and submissive she grew.

“If a generous feeling strengthened me in my reserve and self-restraint,

prudent considerations were not lacking beside. Integrity of purpose

cannot, I think, fail to accompany integrity in money matters. To my

mind, to become insolvent or to betray a woman is the same sort of

thing. If you love a young girl, or allow yourself to be beloved by

her, a contract is implied, and its conditions should be thoroughly

understood. We are free to break with the woman who sells herself, but

not with the young girl who has given herself to us and does not know

the extent of her sacrifice. I must have married Pauline, and that would

have been madness. Would it not have given over that sweet girlish heart

to terrible misfortunes? My poverty made its selfish voice heard, and

set an iron barrier between that gentle nature and mine. Besides, I

am ashamed to say, that I cannot imagine love in the midst of poverty.

Perhaps this is a vitiation due to that malady of mankind called

civilization; but a woman in squalid poverty would exert no fascination

over me, were she attractive as Homer’s Galatea, the fair Helen.

“Ah, _vive l’amour_! But let it be in silk and cashmere, surrounded with

the luxury which so marvelously embellishes it; for is it not perhaps

itself a luxury? I enjoy making havoc with an elaborate erection of

scented hair; I like to crush flowers, to disarrange and crease a smart

toilette at will. A bizarre attraction lies for me in burning eyes that

blaze through a lace veil, like flame through cannon smoke. My way of

love would be to mount by a silken ladder, in the silence of a winter

night. And what bliss to reach, all powdered with snow, a perfumed

room, with hangings of painted silk, to find a woman there, who likewise

shakes away the snow from her; for what other name can be found for the

white muslin wrappings that vaguely define her, like some angel form

issuing from a cloud! And then I wish for furtive joys, for the security

of audacity. I want to see once more that woman of mystery, but let it

be in the throng, dazzling, unapproachable, adored on all sides, dressed

in laces and ablaze with diamonds, laying her commands upon every one;

so exalted above us, that she inspires awe, and none dares to pay his

homage to her.

“She gives me a stolen glance, amid her court, a look that exposes the

unreality of all this; that resigns for me the world and all men in

it! Truly I have scorned myself for a passion for a few yards of lace,

velvet, and fine lawn, and the hairdresser’s feats of skill; a love of

wax-lights, a carriage and a title, a heraldic coronet painted on window

panes, or engraved by a jeweler; in short, a liking for all that is

adventitious and least woman in woman. I have scorned and reasoned with

myself, but all in vain.

“A woman of rank with her subtle smile, her high-born air, and

self-esteem captivates me. The barriers she erects between herself and

the world awaken my vanity, a good half of love. There would be more

relish for me in bliss that all others envied. If my mistress does

nothing that other women do, and neither lives nor conducts herself like

them, wears a cloak that they cannot attain, breathes a perfume of her

own, then she seems to rise far above me. The further she rises from

earth, even in the earthlier aspects of love, the fairer she becomes for

me.

“Luckily for me we have had no queen in France these twenty years, for I

should have fallen in love with her. A woman must be wealthy to

acquire the manners of a princess. What place had Pauline among these

far-fetched imaginings? Could she bring me the love that is death, that

brings every faculty into play, the nights that are paid for by life? We

hardly die, I think, for an insignificant girl who gives herself to us;

and I could never extinguish these feelings and poet’s dreams within

me. I was born for an inaccessible love, and fortune has overtopped my

desire.

“How often have I set satin shoes on Pauline’s tiny feet, confined her

form, slender as a young poplar, in a robe of gauze, and thrown a loose

scarf about her as I saw her tread the carpets in her mansion and led

her out to her splendid carriage! In such guise I should have adored

her. I endowed her with all the pride she lacked, stripped her of her

virtues, her natural simple charm, and frank smile, in order to plunge

her heart in our Styx of depravity that makes invulnerable, load her

with our crimes, make of her the fantastical doll of our drawing-rooms,

the frail being who lies about in the morning and comes to life again

at night with the dawn of tapers. Pauline was fresh-hearted and

affectionate--I would have had her cold and formal.

“In the last days of my frantic folly, memory brought Pauline before me,

as it brings the scenes of our childhood, and made me pause to muse over

past delicious moments that softened my heart. I sometimes saw her,

the adorable girl who sat quietly sewing at my table, wrapped in her

meditations; the faint light from my window fell upon her and was

reflected back in silvery rays from her thick black hair; sometimes I

heard her young laughter, or the rich tones of her voice singing some

canzonet that she composed without effort. And often my Pauline seemed

to grow greater, as music flowed from her, and her face bore a striking

resemblance to the noble one that Carlo Dolci chose for the type of

Italy. My cruel memory brought her back athwart the dissipations of my

existence, like a remorse, or a symbol of purity. But let us leave the

poor child to her own fate. Whatever her troubles may have been, at any

rate I protected her from a menacing tempest--I did not drag her down

into my hell.

“Until last winter I led the uneventful studious life of which I have

given you some faint picture. In the earliest days of December 1829,

I came across Rastignac, who, in spite of the shabby condition of my

wardrobe, linked his arm in mine, and inquired into my affairs with a

quite brotherly interest. Caught by his engaging manner, I gave him a

brief account of my life and hopes; he began to laugh, and treated me as

a mixture of a man of genius and a fool. His Gascon accent and knowledge

of the world, the easy life his clever management procured for him, all

produced an irresistible effect upon me. I should die an unrecognized

failure in a hospital, Rastignac said, and be buried in a pauper’s

grave. He talked of charlatanism. Every man of genius was a charlatan,

he plainly showed me in that pleasant way of his that makes him so

fascinating. He insisted that I must be out of my senses, and would be

my own death, if I lived on alone in the Rue des Cordiers. According to

him, I ought to go into society, to accustom people to the sound of my

name, and to rid myself of the simple title of ‘monsieur’ which sits but

ill on a great man in his lifetime.

“‘Those who know no better,’ he cried, ‘call this sort of business

_scheming_, and moral people condemn it for a “dissipated life.” We need

not stop to look at what people think, but see the results. You work,

you say? Very good, but nothing will ever come of that. Now, I am ready

for anything and fit for nothing. As lazy as a lobster? Very likely, but

I succeed everywhere. I go out into society, I push myself forward, the

others make way before me; I brag and am believed; I incur debts which

somebody else pays! Dissipation, dear boy, is a methodical policy. The

life of a man who deliberately runs through his fortune often becomes

a business speculation; his friends, his pleasures, patrons, and

acquaintances are his capital. Suppose a merchant runs a risk of a

million, for twenty years he can neither sleep, eat, nor amuse himself,

he is brooding over his million, it makes him run about all over

Europe; he worries himself, goes to the devil in every way that man has

invented. Then comes a liquidation, such as I have seen myself, which

very often leaves him penniless and without a reputation or a friend.

The spendthrift, on the other hand, takes life as a serious game and

sees his horses run. He loses his capital, perhaps, but he stands

a chance of being nominated Receiver-General, of making a wealthy

marriage, or of an appointment of attache to a minister or ambassador;

and he has his friends left and his name, and he never wants money. He

knows the standing of everybody, and uses every one for his own benefit.

Is this logical, or am I a madman after all? Haven’t you there all the

moral of the comedy that goes on every day in this world?... Your work

is completed’ he went on after a pause; ‘you are immensely clever! Well,

you have only arrived at my starting-point. Now, you had better look

after its success yourself; it is the surest way. You will make allies

in every clique, and secure applause beforehand. I mean to go halves in

your glory myself; I shall be the jeweler who set the diamonds in

your crown. Come here to-morrow evening, by way of a beginning. I will

introduce you to a house where all Paris goes, all OUR Paris, that

is--the Paris of exquisites, millionaires, celebrities, all the folk

who talk gold like Chrysostom. When they have taken up a book, that book

becomes the fashion; and if it is something really good for once, they

will have declared it to be a work of genius without knowing it. If

you have any sense, my dear fellow, you will ensure the success of your

“Theory,” by a better understanding of the theory of success. To-morrow

evening you shall go to see that queen of the moment--the beautiful

Countess Foedora....’

“‘I have never heard of her....’

“‘You Hottentot!’ laughed Rastignac; ‘you do not know Foedora? A great

match with an income of nearly eighty thousand livres, who has taken

a fancy to nobody, or else no one has taken a fancy to her. A sort of

feminine enigma, a half Russian Parisienne, or a half Parisian Russian.

All the romantic productions that never get published are brought out at

her house; she is the handsomest woman in Paris, and the most gracious!

You are not even a Hottentot; you are something between the Hottentot

and the beast.... Good-bye till to-morrow.’

“He swung round on his heel and made off without waiting for my

answer. It never occurred to him that a reasoning being could refuse an

introduction to Foedora. How can the fascination of a name be explained?

FOEDORA haunted me like some evil thought, with which you seek to come

to terms. A voice said in me, ‘You are going to see Foedora!’ In vain

I reasoned with that voice, saying that it lied to me; all my arguments

were defeated by the name ‘Foedora.’ Was not the name, and even the

woman herself, the symbol of all my desires, and the object of my life?

“The name called up recollections of the conventional glitter of the

world, the upper world of Paris with its brilliant fetes and the tinsel

of its vanities. The woman brought before me all the problems of passion

on which my mind continually ran. Perhaps it was neither the woman nor

the name, but my own propensities, that sprang up within me and tempted

me afresh. Here was the Countess Foedora, rich and loveless, proof

against the temptations of Paris; was not this woman the very

incarnation of my hopes and visions? I fashioned her for myself, drew

her in fancy, and dreamed of her. I could not sleep that night; I became

her lover; I overbrimmed a few hours with a whole lifetime--a lover’s

lifetime; the experience of its prolific delights burned me.

“The next day I could not bear the tortures of delay; I borrowed a

novel, and spent the whole day over it, so that I could not possibly

think nor keep account of the time till night. Foedora’s name echoed

through me even as I read, but only as a distant sound; though it

could be heard, it was not troublesome. Fortunately, I owned a fairly

creditable black coat and a white waistcoat; of all my fortune there

now remained abut thirty francs, which I had distributed about among

my clothes and in my drawers, so as to erect between my whims and

the spending of a five-franc piece a thorny barrier of search, and an

adventurous peregrination round my room. While I as dressing, I dived

about for my money in an ocean of papers. This scarcity of specie will

give you some idea of the value of that squandered upon gloves and

cab-hire; a month’s bread disappeared at one fell swoop. Alas! money is

always forthcoming for our caprices; we only grudge the cost of

things that are useful or necessary. We recklessly fling gold to an

opera-dancer, and haggle with a tradesman whose hungry family must wait

for the settlement of our bill. How many men are there that wear a coat

that cost a hundred francs, and carry a diamond in the head of their

cane, and dine for twenty-five SOUS for all that! It seems as though we

could never pay enough for the pleasures of vanity.

“Rastignac, punctual to his appointment, smiled at the transformation,

and joked about it. On the way he gave me benevolent advice as to

my conduct with the countess; he described her as mean, vain, and

suspicious; but though mean, she was ostentatious, her vanity was

transparent, and her mistrust good-humored.

“‘You know I am pledged,’ he said, ‘and what I should lose, too, if I

tried a change in love. So my observation of Foedora has been quite cool

and disinterested, and my remarks must have some truth in them. I was

looking to your future when I thought of introducing you to her; so mind

very carefully what I am about to say. She has a terrible memory. She is

clever enough to drive a diplomatist wild; she would know it at once if

he spoke the truth. Between ourselves, I fancy that her marriage was

not recognized by the Emperor, for the Russian ambassador began to smile

when I spoke of her; he does not receive her either, and only bows very

coolly if he meets her in the Bois. For all that, she is in Madame de

Serizy’s set, and visits Mesdames de Nucingen and de Restaud. There

is no cloud over her here in France; the Duchesse de Carigliano, the

most-strait-laced marechale in the whole Bonapartist coterie, often goes

to spend the summer with her at her country house. Plenty of young fops,

sons of peers of France, have offered her a title in exchange for her

fortune, and she has politely declined them all. Her susceptibilities,

maybe, are not to be touched by anything less than a count. Aren’t you a

marquis? Go ahead if you fancy her. This is what you may call receiving

your instructions.’

“His raillery made me think that Rastignac wished to joke and excite my

curiosity, so that I was in a paroxysm of my extemporized passion by the

time that we stopped before a peristyle full of flowers. My heart beat

and my color rose as we went up the great carpeted staircase, and I

noticed about me all the studied refinements of English comfort; I

was infatuatedly bourgeois; I forgot my origin and all my personal and

family pride. Alas! I had but just left a garret, after three years

of poverty, and I could not just then set the treasures there acquired

above such trifles as these. Nor could I rightly estimate the worth of

the vast intellectual capital which turns to riches at the moment when

opportunity comes within our reach, opportunity that does not overwhelm,

because study has prepared us for the struggles of public life.

“I found a woman of about twenty-two years of age; she was of average

height, was dressed in white, and held a feather fire-screen in

her hand; a group of men stood around her. She rose at the sight

of Rastignac, and came towards us with a gracious smile and a

musically-uttered compliment, prepared no doubt beforehand, for me. Our

friend had spoken of me as a rising man, and his clever way of making

the most of me had procured me this flattering reception. I was confused

by the attention that every one paid to me; but Rastignac had luckily

mentioned my modesty. I was brought in contact with scholars, men

of letters, ex-ministers, and peers of France. The conversation,

interrupted a while by my coming, was resumed. I took courage, feeling

that I had a reputation to maintain, and without abusing my privilege,

I spoke when it fell to me to speak, trying to state the questions at

issue in words more or less profound, witty or trenchant, and I made a

certain sensation. Rastignac was a prophet for the thousandth time in

his life. As soon as the gathering was large enough to restore freedom

to individuals, he took my arm, and we went round the rooms.

“‘Don’t look as if you were too much struck by the princess,’ he said,

‘or she will guess your object in coming to visit her.’

“The rooms were furnished in excellent taste. Each apartment had a

character of its own, as in wealthy English houses; and the silken

hangings, the style of the furniture, and the ornaments, even the

most trifling, were all subordinated to the original idea. In a gothic

boudoir the doors were concealed by tapestried curtains, and the

paneling by hangings; the clock and the pattern of the carpet were made

to harmonize with the gothic surroundings. The ceiling, with its carved

cross-beams of brown wood, was full of charm and originality; the panels

were beautifully wrought; nothing disturbed the general harmony of

the scheme of decoration, not even the windows with their rich colored

glass. I was surprised by the extensive knowledge of decoration that

some artist had brought to bear on a little modern room, it was so

pleasant and fresh, and not heavy, but subdued with its dead gold hues.

It had all the vague sentiment of a German ballad; it was a retreat fit

for some romance of 1827, perfumed by the exotic flowers set in their

stands. Another apartment in the suite was a gilded reproduction of the

Louis Quatorze period, with modern paintings on the walls in odd but

pleasant contrast.

“‘You would not be so badly lodged,’ was Rastignac’s slightly sarcastic

comment. ‘It is captivating, isn’t it?’ he added, smiling as he sat

down. Then suddenly he rose, and led me by the hand into a bedroom,

where the softened light fell upon the bed under its canopy of muslin

and white watered silk--a couch for a young fairy betrothed to one of

the genii.

“‘Isn’t it wantonly bad taste, insolent and unbounded coquetry,’ he

said, lowering his voice, ‘that allows us to see this throne of love?

She gives herself to no one, and anybody may leave his card here. If I

were not committed, I should like to see her at my feet all tears and

submission.’

“‘Are you so certain of her virtue?’

“‘The boldest and even the cleverest adventurers among us, acknowledge

themselves defeated, and continue to be her lovers and devoted friends.

Isn’t that woman a puzzle?’

“His words seemed to intoxicate me; I had jealous fears already of the

past. I leapt for joy, and hurried back to the countess, whom I had seen

in the gothic boudoir. She stopped me by a smile, made me sit beside

her, and talked about my work, seeming to take the greatest interest in

it, and all the more when I set forth my theories amusingly, instead of

adopting the formal language of a professor for their explanation. It

seemed to divert her to be told that the human will was a material force

like steam; that in the moral world nothing could resist its power if

a man taught himself to concentrate it, to economize it, and to project

continually its fluid mass in given directions upon other souls. Such

a man, I said, could modify all things relatively to man, even the

peremptory laws of nature. The questions Foedora raised showed a certain

keenness of intellect. I took a pleasure in deciding some of them in her

favor, in order to flatter her; then I confuted her feminine reasoning

with a word, and roused her curiosity by drawing her attention to an

everyday matter--to sleep, a thing so apparently commonplace, that in

reality is an insoluble problem for science. The countess sat in silence

for a moment when I told her that our ideas were complete organic

beings, existing in an invisible world, and influencing our destinies;

and for witnesses I cited the opinions of Descartes, Diderot, and

Napoleon, who had directed, and still directed, all the currents of the

age.

“So I had the honor of amusing this woman; who asked me to come to see

her when she left me; giving me _les grande entrees_, in the language

of the court. Whether it was by dint of substituting polite formulas for

genuine expressions of feeling, a commendable habit of mine, or because

Foedora hailed in me a coming celebrity, an addition to her learned

menagerie; for some reason I thought that I had pleased her. I called

all my previous physiological studies and knowledge of woman to my aid,

and minutely scrutinized this singular person and her ways all evening.

I concealed myself in the embrasure of a window, and sought to discover

her thoughts from her bearing. I studied the tactics of the mistress of

the house, as she came and went, sat and chatted, beckoned to this one

or that, asked questions, listened to the answers, as she leaned against

the frame of the door; I detected a languid charm in her movements,

a grace in the flutterings of her dress, remarked the nature of the

feelings she so powerfully excited, and became very incredulous as to

her virtue. If Foedora would none of love to-day, she had had strong

passions at some time; past experience of pleasure showed itself in the

attitudes she chose in conversation, in her coquettish way of leaning

against the panel behind her; she seemed scarcely able to stand alone,

and yet ready for flight from too bold a glance. There was a kind of

eloquence about her lightly folded arms, which, even for benevolent

eyes, breathed sentiment. Her fresh red lips sharply contrasted with her

brilliantly pale complexion. Her brown hair brought out all the golden

color in her eyes, in which blue streaks mingled as in Florentine

marble; their expression seemed to increase the significance of her

words. A studied grace lay in the charms of her bodice. Perhaps a rival

might have found the lines of the thick eyebrows, which almost met, a

little hard; or found a fault in the almost invisible down that covered

her features. I saw the signs of passion everywhere, written on those

Italian eyelids, on the splendid shoulders worthy of the Venus of Milo,

on her features, in the darker shade of down above a somewhat thick

under-lip. She was not merely a woman, but a romance. The whole

blended harmony of lines, the feminine luxuriance of her frame, and its

passionate promise, were subdued by a constant inexplicable reserve

and modesty at variance with everything else about her. It needed an

observation as keen as my own to detect such signs as these in her

character. To explain myself more clearly; there were two women in

Foedora, divided perhaps by the line between head and body: the one,

the head alone, seemed to be susceptible, and the other phlegmatic.

She prepared her glance before she looked at you, something unspeakably

mysterious, some inward convulsion seemed revealed by her glittering

eyes.

“So, to be brief, either my imperfect moral science had left me a good

deal to learn in the moral world, or a lofty soul dwelt in the countess,

lent to her face those charms that fascinated and subdued us, and gave

her an ascendency only the more complete because it comprehended a

sympathy of desire.

“I went away completely enraptured with this woman, dazzled by the

luxury around her, gratified in every faculty of my soul--noble and

base, good and evil. When I felt myself so excited, eager, and elated,

I thought I understood the attraction that drew thither those artists,

diplomatists, men in office, those stock-jobbers encased in triple

brass. They came, no doubt, to find in her society the delirious emotion

that now thrilled through every fibre in me, throbbing through my brain,

setting the blood a-tingle in every vein, fretting even the tiniest

nerve. And she had given herself to none, so as to keep them all. A

woman is a coquette so long as she knows not love.

“‘Well,’ I said to Rastignac, ‘they married her, or sold her perhaps,

to some old man, and recollections of her first marriage have caused her

aversion for love.’

“I walked home from the Faubourg St. Honore, where Foedora lived.

Almost all the breadth of Paris lies between her mansion and the Rue des

Cordiers, but the distance seemed short, in spite of the cold. And I was

to lay siege to Foedora’s heart, in winter, and a bitter winter, with

only thirty francs in my possession, and such a distance as that lay

between us! Only a poor man knows what such a passion costs in cab-hire,

gloves, linen, tailor’s bills, and the like. If the Platonic stage lasts

a little too long, the affair grows ruinous. As a matter of fact, there

is many a Lauzun among students of law, who finds it impossible to

approach a ladylove living on a first floor. And I, sickly, thin, poorly

dressed, wan and pale as any artist convalescent after a work, how could

I compete with other young men, curled, handsome, smart, outcravatting

Croatia; wealthy men, equipped with tilburys, and armed with assurance?

“‘Bah, death or Foedora!’ I cried, as I went round by a bridge; ‘my

fortune lies in Foedora.’

“That gothic boudoir and Louis Quatorze salon came before my eyes. I saw

the countess again in her white dress with its large graceful sleeves,

and all the fascinations of her form and movements. These pictures of

Foedora and her luxurious surroundings haunted me even in my bare, cold

garret, when at last I reached it, as disheveled as any naturalist’s

wig. The contrast suggested evil counsel; in such a way crimes are

conceived. I cursed my honest, self-respecting poverty, my garret where

such teeming fancies had stirred within me. I trembled with fury, I

reproached God, the devil, social conditions, my own father, the whole

universe, indeed, with my fate and my misfortunes. I went hungry to bed,

muttering ludicrous imprecations, but fully determined to win Foedora.

Her heart was my last ticket in the lottery, my fortune depended upon

it.

“I spare you the history of my earlier visits, to reach the drama

the sooner. In my efforts to appeal to her, I essayed to engage her

intellect and her vanity on my side; in order to secure her love, I gave

her any quantity of reasons for increasing her self-esteem; I never left

her in a state of indifference; women like emotions at any cost, I gave

them to her in plenty; I would rather have had her angry with me than

indifferent.

“At first, urged by a strong will and a desire for her love, I assumed

a little authority, but my own feelings grew stronger and mastered me; I

relapsed into truth, I lost my head, and fell desperately in love.

“I am not very sure what we mean by the word love in our poetry and our

talk; but I know that I have never found in all the ready rhetorical

phrases of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in whose room perhaps I was lodging;

nor among the feeble inventions of two centuries of our literature, nor

in any picture that Italy has produced, a representation of the feelings

that expanded all at once in my double nature. The view of the lake of

Bienne, some music of Rossini’s, the Madonna of Murillo’s now in

the possession of General Soult, Lescombat’s letters, a few sayings

scattered through collections of anecdotes; but most of all the prayers

of religious ecstatics, and passages in our _fabliaux_,--these things

alone have power to carry me back to the divine heights of my first

love.

“Nothing expressed in human language, no thought reproducible in color,

marble, sound, or articulate speech, could ever render the force, the

truth, the completeness, the suddenness with which love awoke in me.

To speak of art, is to speak of illusion. Love passes through endless

transformations before it passes for ever into our existence and makes

it glow with its own color of flame. The process is imperceptible, and

baffles the artist’s analysis. Its moans and complaints are tedious to

an uninterested spectator. One would need to be very much in love

to share the furious transports of Lovelace, as one reads _Clarissa

Harlowe_. Love is like some fresh spring, that leaves its cresses,

its gravel bed and flowers to become first a stream and then a river,

changing its aspect and its nature as it flows to plunge itself in some

boundless ocean, where restricted natures only find monotony, but where

great souls are engulfed in endless contemplation.

“How can I dare to describe the hues of fleeting emotions, the nothings

beyond all price, the spoken accents that beggar language, the looks

that hold more than all the wealth of poetry? Not one of the mysterious

scenes that draw us insensibly nearer and nearer to a woman, but has

depths in it which can swallow up all the poetry that ever was written.

How can the inner life and mystery that stirs in our souls penetrate

through our glozes, when we have not even words to describe the visible

and outward mysteries of beauty? What enchantment steeped me for how

many hours in unspeakable rapture, filled with the sight of Her! What

made me happy? I know not. That face of hers overflowed with light at

such times; it seemed in some way to glow with it; the outlines of her

face, with the scarcely perceptible down on its delicate surface, shone

with a beauty belonging to the far distant horizon that melts into the

sunlight. The light of day seemed to caress her as she mingled in

it; rather it seemed that the light of her eyes was brighter than the

daylight itself; or some shadow passing over that fair face made a kind

of change there, altering its hues and its expression. Some thought

would often seem to glow on her white brows; her eyes appeared to

dilate, and her eyelids trembled; a smile rippled over her features;

the living coral of her lips grew full of meaning as they closed and

unclosed; an indistinguishable something in her hair made brown shadows

on her fair temples; in each new phase Foedora spoke. Every slight

variation in her beauty made a new pleasure for my eyes, disclosed

charms my heart had never known before; I tried to read a separate

emotion or a hope in every change that passed over her face. This mute

converse passed between soul and soul, like sound and answering echo;

and the short-lived delights then showered upon me have left indelible

impressions behind. Her voice would cause a frenzy in me that I could

hardly understand. I could have copied the example of some prince of

Lorraine, and held a live coal in the hollow of my hand, if her fingers

passed caressingly through my hair the while. I felt no longer mere

admiration and desire: I was under the spell; I had met my destiny. When

back again under my own roof, I still vaguely saw Foedora in her own

home, and had some indefinable share in her life; if she felt ill, I

suffered too. The next day I used to say to her:

“‘You were not well yesterday.’

“How often has she not stood before me, called by the power of ecstasy,

in the silence of the night! Sometimes she would break in upon me like

a ray of light, make me drop my pen, and put science and study to flight

in grief and alarm, as she compelled my admiration by the alluring pose

I had seen but a short time before. Sometimes I went to seek her in the

spirit world, and would bow down to her as to a hope, entreating her to

let me hear the silver sounds of her voice, and I would wake at length

in tears.

“Once, when she had promised to go to the theatre with me, she took it

suddenly into her head to refuse to go out, and begged me to leave her

alone. I was in such despair over the perversity which cost me a day’s

work, and (if I must confess it) my last shilling as well, that I went

alone where she was to have been, desiring to see the play she had

wished to see. I had scarcely seated myself when an electric shock went

through me. A voice told me, ‘She is here!’ I looked round, and saw the

countess hidden in the shadow at the back of her box in the first

tier. My look did not waver; my eyes saw her at once with incredible

clearness; my soul hovered about her life like an insect above its

flower. How had my senses received this warning? There is something

in these inward tremors that shallow people find astonishing, but the

phenomena of our inner consciousness are produced as simple as those of

external vision; so I was not surprised, but much vexed. My studies of

our mental faculties, so little understood, helped me at any rate to

find in my own excitement some living proofs of my theories. There

was something exceedingly odd in this combination of lover and man of

science, of downright idolatry of a woman with the love of knowledge.

The causes of the lover’s despair were highly interesting to the man of

science; and the exultant lover, on the other hand, put science far away

from him in his joy. Foedora saw me, and grew grave: I annoyed her.

I went to her box during the first interval, and finding her alone,

I stayed there. Although we had not spoken of love, I foresaw an

explanation. I had not told her my secret, still there was a kind of

understanding between us. She used to tell me her plans for amusement,

and on the previous evening had asked with friendly eagerness if I meant

to call the next day. After any witticism of hers, she would give me

an inquiring glance, as if she had sought to please me alone by it. She

would soothe me if I was vexed; and if she pouted, I had in some sort

a right to ask an explanation. Before she would pardon any blunder,

she would keep me a suppliant for long. All these things that we so

relished, were so many lovers’ quarrels. What arch grace she threw into

it all! and what happiness it was to me!

“But now we stood before each other as strangers, with the close

relation between us both suspended. The countess was glacial: a

presentiment of trouble filled me.

“‘Will you come home with me?’ she said, when the play was over.

“There had been a sudden change in the weather, and sleet was falling

in showers as we went out. Foedora’s carriage was unable to reach the

doorway of the theatre. At the sight of a well-dressed woman about to

cross the street, a commissionaire held an umbrella above us, and stood

waiting at the carriage-door for his tip. I would have given ten years

of life just then for a couple of halfpence, but I had not a penny. All

the man in me and all my vainest susceptibilities were wrung with an

infernal pain. The words, ‘I haven’t a penny about me, my good fellow!’

came from me in the hard voice of thwarted passion; and yet I was that

man’s brother in misfortune, as I knew too well; and once I had so

lightly paid away seven hundred thousand francs! The footman pushed the

man aside, and the horses sprang forward. As we returned, Foedora, in

real or feigned abstraction, answered all my questions curtly and by

monosyllables. I said no more; it was a hateful moment. When we reached

her house, we seated ourselves by the hearth, and when the servant had

stirred the fire and left us alone, the countess turned to me with an

inexplicable expression, and spoke. Her manner was almost solemn.

“‘Since my return to France, more than one young man, tempted by my

money, has made proposals to me which would have satisfied my pride. I

have come across men, too, whose attachment was so deep and sincere that

they might have married me even if they had found me the penniless girl

I used to be. Besides these, Monsieur de Valentin, you must know that

new titles and newly-acquired wealth have been also offered to me, and

that I have never received again any of those who were so ill-advised as

to mention love to me. If my regard for you was but slight, I would not

give you this warning, which is dictated by friendship rather than

by pride. A woman lays herself open to a rebuff of some kind, if she

imagines herself to be loved, and declines, before it is uttered, to

listen to language which in its nature implies a compliment. I am well

acquainted with the parts played by Arsinoe and Araminta, and with the

sort of answer I might look for under such circumstances; but I hope

to-day that I shall not find myself misconstrued by a man of no ordinary

character, because I have frankly spoken my mind.’

“She spoke with the cool self-possession of some attorney or solicitor

explaining the nature of a contract or the conduct of a lawsuit to a

client. There was not the least sign of feeling in the clear soft tones

of her voice. Her steady face and dignified bearing seemed to me now

full of diplomatic reserve and coldness. She had planned this scene, no

doubt, and carefully chosen her words beforehand. Oh, my friend, there

are women who take pleasure in piercing hearts, and deliberately plunge

the dagger back again into the wound; such women as these cannot but

be worshiped, for such women either love or would fain be loved. A day

comes when they make amends for all the pain they gave us; they repay

us for the pangs, the keenness of which they recognize, in joys a

hundred-fold, even as God, they tell us, recompenses our good works.

Does not their perversity spring from the strength of their feelings?

But to be so tortured by a woman, who slaughters you with indifference!

was not the suffering hideous?

“Foedora did not know it, but in that minute she trampled all my hopes

beneath her feet; she maimed my life and she blighted my future with the

cool indifference and unconscious barbarity of an inquisitive child who

plucks its wings from a butterfly.

“‘Later on,’ resumed Foedora, ‘you will learn, I hope, the stability of

the affection that I keep for my friends. You will always find that I

have devotion and kindness for them. I would give my life to serve my

friends; but you could only despise me, if I allowed them to make love

to me without return. That is enough. You are the only man to whom I

have spoken such words as these last.’

“At first I could not speak, or master the tempest that arose within me;

but I soon repressed my emotions in the depths of my soul, and began to

smile.

“‘If I own that I love you,’ I said, ‘you will banish me at once; if

I plead guilty to indifference, you will make me suffer for it. Women,

magistrates, and priests never quite lay the gown aside. Silence is

non-committal; be pleased then, madame, to approve my silence. You must

have feared, in some degree, to lose me, or I should not have received

this friendly admonition; and with that thought my pride ought to be

satisfied. Let us banish all personal considerations. You are perhaps

the only woman with whom I could discuss rationally a resolution so

contrary to the laws of nature. Considered with regard to your species,

you are a prodigy. Now let us investigate, in good faith, the causes of

this psychological anomaly. Does there exist in you, as in many women,

a certain pride in self, a love of your own loveliness, a refinement of

egoism which makes you shudder at the idea of belonging to another;

is it the thought of resigning your own will and submitting to a

superiority, though only of convention, which displeases you? You

would seem to me a thousand times fairer for it. Can love formerly have

brought you suffering? You probably set some value on your dainty

figure and graceful appearance, and may perhaps wish to avoid the

disfigurements of maternity. Is not this one of your strongest reasons

for refusing a too importunate love? Some natural defect perhaps makes

you insusceptible in spite of yourself? Do not be angry; my study, my

inquiry is absolutely dispassionate. Some are born blind, and nature may

easily have formed women who in like manner are blind, deaf, and dumb to

love. You are really an interesting subject for medical investigation.

You do not know your value. You feel perhaps a very legitimate distaste

for mankind; in that I quite concur--to me they all seem ugly and

detestable. And you are right,’ I added, feeling my heart swell within

me; ‘how can you do otherwise than despise us? There is not a man living

who is worthy of you.’

“I will not repeat all the biting words with which I ridiculed her. In

vain; my bitterest sarcasms and keenest irony never made her wince nor

elicited a sign of vexation. She heard me, with the customary smile

upon her lips and in her eyes, the smile that she wore as a part of her

clothing, and that never varied for friends, for mere acquaintances, or

for strangers.

“‘Isn’t it very nice of me to allow you to dissect me like this?’ she

said at last, as I came to a temporary standstill, and looked at her

in silence. ‘You see,’ she went on, laughing, ‘that I have no foolish

over-sensitiveness about my friendship. Many a woman would shut her door

on you by way of punishing you for your impertinence.’

“‘You could banish me without needing to give me the reasons for your

harshness.’ As I spoke I felt that I could kill her if she dismissed me.

“‘You are mad,’ she said, smiling still.

“‘Did you never think,’ I went on, ‘of the effects of passionate love? A

desperate man has often murdered his mistress.’

“‘It is better to die than to live in misery,’ she said coolly. ‘Such

a man as that would run through his wife’s money, desert her, and leave

her at last in utter wretchedness.’

“This calm calculation dumfounded me. The gulf between us was made

plain; we could never understand each other.

“‘Good-bye,’ I said proudly.

“‘Good-bye, till to-morrow,’ she answered, with a little friendly bow.

“For a moment’s space I hurled at her in a glance all the love I must

forego; she stood there with than banal smile of hers, the detestable

chill smile of a marble statue, with none of the warmth in it that it

seemed to express. Can you form any idea, my friend, of the pain that

overcame me on the way home through rain and snow, across a league of

icy-sheeted quays, without a hope left? Oh, to think that she not only

had not guessed my poverty, but believed me to be as wealthy as she was,

and likewise borne as softly over the rough ways of life! What failure

and deceit! It was no mere question of money now, but of the fate of all

that lay within me.

“I went at haphazard, going over the words of our strange conversation

with myself. I got so thoroughly lost in my reflections that I ended by

doubts as to the actual value of words and ideas. But I loved her

all the same; I loved this woman with the untouched heart that might

surrender at any moment--a woman who daily disappointed the expectations

of the previous evening, by appearing as a new mistress on the morrow.

“As I passed under the gateway of the Institute, a fevered thrill ran

through me. I remembered that I was fasting, and that I had not a penny.

To complete the measure of my misfortune, my hat was spoiled by the

rain. How was I to appear in the drawing-room of a woman of fashion with

an unpresentable hat? I had always cursed the inane and stupid custom

that compels us to exhibit the lining of our hats, and to keep them

always in our hands, but with anxious care I had so far kept mine in a

precarious state of efficiency. It had been neither strikingly new, nor

utterly shabby, neither napless nor over-glossy, and might have passed

for the hat of a frugally given owner, but its artificially prolonged

existence had now reached the final stage, it was crumpled, forlorn, and

completely ruined, a downright rag, a fitting emblem of its master. My

painfully preserved elegance must collapse for want of thirty sous.

“What unrecognized sacrifices I had made in the past three months for

Foedora! How often I had given the price of a week’s sustenance to see

her for a moment! To leave my work and go without food was the least of

it! I must traverse the streets of Paris without getting splashed, run

to escape showers, and reach her rooms at last, as neat and spruce as

any of the coxcombs about her. For a poet and a distracted wooer the

difficulties of this task were endless. My happiness, the course of my

love, might be affected by a speck of mud upon my only white waistcoat!

Oh, to miss the sight of her because I was wet through and bedraggled,

and had not so much as five sous to give to a shoeblack for removing the

least little spot of mud from my boot! The petty pangs of these nameless

torments, which an irritable man finds so great, only strengthened my

passion.

“The unfortunate must make sacrifices which they may not mention to

women who lead refined and luxurious lives. Such women see things

through a prism that gilds all men and their surroundings. Egoism leads

them to take cheerful views, and fashion makes them cruel; they do

not wish to reflect, lest they lose their happiness, and the absorbing

nature of their pleasures absolves their indifference to the misfortunes

of others. A penny never means millions to them; millions, on the

contrary, seem a mere trifle. Perhaps love must plead his cause by great

sacrifices, but a veil must be lightly drawn across them, they must go

down into silence. So when wealthy men pour out their devotion,

their fortunes, and their lives, they gain somewhat by these commonly

entertained opinions, an additional lustre hangs about their lovers’

follies; their silence is eloquent; there is a grace about the drawn

veil; but my terrible distress bound me over to suffer fearfully or ever

I might speak of my love or of dying for her sake.

“Was it a sacrifice after all? Was I not richly rewarded by the joy I

took in sacrificing everything to her? There was no commonest event of

my daily life to which the countess had not given importance, had not

overfilled with happiness. I had been hitherto careless of my clothes,

now I respected my coat as if it had been a second self. I should not

have hesitated between bodily harm and a tear in that garment. You must

enter wholly into my circumstances to understand the stormy thoughts,

the gathering frenzy, that shook me as I went, and which, perhaps, were

increased by my walk. I gloated in an infernal fashion which I cannot

describe over the absolute completeness of my wretchedness. I would

have drawn from it an augury of my future, but there is no limit to the

possibilities of misfortune. The door of my lodging-house stood ajar.

A light streamed from the heart-shaped opening cut in the shutters.

Pauline and her mother were sitting up for me and talking. I heard my

name spoken, and listened.

“‘Raphael is much nicer-looking than the student in number seven,’ said

Pauline; ‘his fair hair is such a pretty color. Don’t you think there is

something in his voice, too, I don’t know what it is, that gives you a

sort of a thrill? And, then, though he may be a little proud, he is very

kind, and he has such fine manners; I am sure that all the ladies must

be quite wild about him.’

“‘You might be fond of him yourself, to hear you talk,’ was Madame

Gaudin’s comment.

“‘He is just as dear to me as a brother,’ she laughed. ‘I should be

finely ungrateful if I felt no friendship for him. Didn’t he teach me

music and drawing and grammar, and everything I know in fact? You don’t

much notice how I get on, dear mother; but I shall know enough, in a

while, to give lessons myself, and then we can keep a servant.’

“I stole away softly, made some noise outside, and went into their room

to take the lamp, that Pauline tried to light for me. The dear child had

just poured soothing balm into my wounds. Her outspoken admiration had

given me fresh courage. I so needed to believe in myself and to come

by a just estimate of my advantages. This revival of hope in me perhaps

colored my surroundings. Perhaps also I had never before really looked

at the picture that so often met my eyes, of the two women in their

room; it was a scene such as Flemish painters have reproduced so

faithfully for us, that I admired in its delightful reality. The mother,

with the kind smile upon her lips, sat knitting stockings by the dying

fire; Pauline was painting hand-screens, her brushes and paints, strewn

over the tiny table, made bright spots of color for the eye to dwell

on. When she had left her seat and stood lighting my lamp, one must

have been under the yoke of a terrible passion indeed, not to admire her

faintly flushed transparent hands, the girlish charm of her attitude,

the ideal grace of her head, as the lamplight fell full on her pale

face. Night and silence added to the charms of this industrious vigil

and peaceful interior. The light-heartedness that sustained such

continuous toil could only spring from devout submission and the lofty

feelings that it brings.

“There was an indescribable harmony between them and their possessions.

The splendor of Foedora’s home did not satisfy; it called out all my

worst instincts; something in this lowly poverty and unfeigned goodness

revived me. It may have been that luxury abased me in my own eyes,

while here my self-respect was restored to me, as I sought to extend the

protection that a man is so eager to make felt, over these two women,

who in the bare simplicity of the existence in their brown room seemed

to live wholly in the feelings of their hearts. As I came up to Pauline,

she looked at me in an almost motherly way; her hands shook a little as

she held the lamp, so that the light fell on me and cried:

“‘_Dieu_! how pale you are! and you are wet through! My mother will try

to wipe you dry. Monsieur Raphael,’ she went on, after a little pause,

‘you are so very fond of milk, and to-night we happen to have some

cream. Here, will you not take some?’

“She pounced like a kitten, on a china bowl full of milk. She did it so

quickly, and put it before me so prettily, that I hesitated.

“‘You are going to refuse me?’ she said, and her tones changed.

“The pride in each felt for the other’s pride. It was Pauline’s poverty

that seemed to humiliate her, and to reproach me with my want of

consideration, and I melted at once and accepted the cream that might

have been meant for her morning’s breakfast. The poor child tried not to

show her joy, but her eyes sparkled.

“‘I needed it badly,’ I said as I sat down. (An anxious look passed over

her face.) ‘Do you remember that passage, Pauline, where Bossuet tells

how God gave more abundant reward for a cup of cold water than for a

victory?’

“‘Yes,’ she said, her heart beating like some wild bird’s in a child’s

hands.

“‘Well, as we shall part very soon, now,’ I went on in an unsteady

voice, ‘you must let me show my gratitude to you and to your mother for

all the care you have taken of me.’

“‘Oh, don’t let us cast accounts,’ she said laughing. But her laughter

covered an agitation that gave me pain. I went on without appearing to

hear her words:

“‘My piano is one of Erard’s best instruments; and you must take it.

Pray accept it without hesitation; I really could not take it with me on

the journey I am about to make.’

“Perhaps the melancholy tones in which I spoke enlightened the two

women, for they seemed to understand, and eyed me with curiosity and

alarm. Here was the affection that I had looked for in the glacial

regions of the great world, true affection, unostentatious but tender,

and possibly lasting.

“‘Don’t take it to heart so,’ the mother said; ‘stay on here. My husband

is on his way towards us even now,’ she went on. ‘I looked into the

Gospel of St. John this evening while Pauline hung our door-key in a

Bible from her fingers. The key turned; that means that Gaudin is in

health and doing well. Pauline began again for you and for the young man

in number seven--it turned for you, but not for him. We are all going to

be rich. Gaudin will come back a millionaire. I dreamed once that I saw

him in a ship full of serpents; luckily the water was rough, and that

means gold or precious stones from over-sea.’

“The silly, friendly words were like the crooning lullaby with which a

mother soothes her sick child; they in a manner calmed me. There was a

pleasant heartiness in the worthy woman’s looks and tones, which, if

it could not remove trouble, at any rate soothed and quieted it, and

deadened the pain. Pauline, keener-sighted than her mother, studied me

uneasily; her quick eyes seemed to read my life and my future. I thanked

the mother and daughter by an inclination of the head, and hurried away;

I was afraid I should break down.

“I found myself alone under my roof, and laid myself down in my misery.

My unhappy imagination suggested numberless baseless projects, and

prescribed impossible resolutions. When a man is struggling in the wreck

of his fortunes, he is not quite without resources, but I was engulfed.

Ah, my dear fellow, we are too ready to blame the wretched. Let us be

less harsh on the results of the most powerful of all social solvents.

Where poverty is absolute there exist no such things as shame or crime,

or virtue or intelligence. I knew not what to do; I was as defenceless

as a maiden on her knees before a beast of prey. A penniless man who

has no ties to bind him is master of himself at any rate, but a luckless

wretch who is in love no longer belongs to himself, and may not take his

own life. Love makes us almost sacred in our own eyes; it is the life

of another that we revere within us; then and so it begins for us the

cruelest trouble of all--the misery with a hope in it, a hope for which

we must even bear our torments. I thought I would go to Rastignac on the

morrow to confide Foedora’s strange resolution to him, and with that I

slept.

“‘Ah, ha!’ cried Rastignac, as he saw me enter his lodging at nine

o’clock in the morning. ‘I know what brings you here. Foedora has

dismissed you. Some kind souls, who were jealous of your ascendency over

the countess, gave out that you were going to be married. Heaven only

knows what follies your rivals have equipped you with, and what slanders

have been directed at you.’

“‘That explains everything!’ I exclaimed. I remembered all my

presumptuous speeches, and gave the countess credit for no little

magnanimity. It pleased me to think that I was a miscreant who had not

been punished nearly enough, and I saw nothing in her indulgence but the

long-suffering charity of love.

“‘Not quite so fast,’ urged the prudent Gascon; ‘Foedora has all the

sagacity natural to a profoundly selfish woman; perhaps she may have

taken your measure while you still coveted only her money and her

splendor; in spite of all your care, she could have read you through and

through. She can dissemble far too well to let any dissimulation pass

undetected. I fear,’ he went on, ‘that I have brought you into a

bad way. In spite of her cleverness and her tact, she seems to me a

domineering sort of person, like every woman who can only feel pleasure

through her brain. Happiness for her lies entirely in a comfortable life

and in social pleasures; her sentiment is only assumed; she will make

you miserable; you will be her head footman.’

“He spoke to the deaf. I broke in upon him, disclosing, with an

affectation of light-heartedness, the state of my finances.

“‘Yesterday evening,’ he rejoined, ‘luck ran against me, and that

carried off all my available cash. But for that trivial mishap, I would

gladly have shared my purse with you. But let us go and breakfast at the

restaurant; perhaps there is good counsel in oysters.’

“He dressed, and had his tilbury brought round. We went to the Cafe

de Paris like a couple of millionaires, armed with all the audacious

impertinence of the speculator whose capital is imaginary. That devil

of a Gascon quite disconcerted me by the coolness of his manners and his

absolute self-possession. While we were taking coffee after an excellent

and well-ordered repast, a young dandy entered, who did not escape

Rastignac. He had been nodding here and there among the crowd to this or

that young man, distinguished both by personal attractions and elegant

attire, and now he said to me:

“‘Here’s your man,’ as he beckoned to this gentleman with a wonderful

cravat, who seemed to be looking for a table that suited his ideas.

“‘That rogue has been decorated for bringing out books that he doesn’t

understand a word of,’ whispered Rastignac; ‘he is a chemist, a

historian, a novelist, and a political writer; he has gone halves,

thirds, or quarters in the authorship of I don’t know how many plays,

and he is as ignorant as Dom Miguel’s mule. He is not a man so much as

a name, a label that the public is familiar with. So he would do well to

avoid shops inscribed with the motto, “_Ici l’on peut ecrire soi-meme_.”

He is acute enough to deceive an entire congress of diplomatists. In

a couple of words, he is a moral half-caste, not quite a fraud, nor

entirely genuine. But, hush! he has succeeded already; nobody asks

anything further, and every one calls him an illustrious man.’

“‘Well, my esteemed and excellent friend, and how may Your Intelligence

be?’ So Rastignac addressed the stranger as he sat down at a neighboring

table.

“‘Neither well nor ill; I am overwhelmed with work. I have all the

necessary materials for some very curious historical memoirs in my

hands, and I cannot find any one to whom I can ascribe them. It worries

me, for I shall have to be quick about it. Memoirs are falling out of

fashion.’

“‘What are the memoirs--contemporaneous, ancient, or memoirs of the

court, or what?’

“‘They relate to the Necklace affair.’

“‘Now, isn’t that a coincidence?’ said Rastignac, turning to me and

laughing. He looked again to the literary speculation, and said,

indicating me:

“‘This is M. de Valentin, one of my friends, whom I must introduce to

you as one of our future literary celebrities. He had formerly an aunt,

a marquise, much in favor once at court, and for about two years he has

been writing a Royalist history of the Revolution.’

“Then, bending over this singular man of business, he went on:

“‘He is a man of talent, and a simpleton that will do your memoirs for

you, in his aunt’s name, for a hundred crowns a volume.’

“‘It’s a bargain,’ said the other, adjusting his cravat. ‘Waiter, my

oysters.’

“‘Yes, but you must give me twenty-five louis as commission, and you

will pay him in advance for each volume,’ said Rastignac.

“‘No, no. He shall only have fifty crowns on account, and then I shall

be sure of having my manuscript punctually.’

“Rastignac repeated this business conversation to me in low tones; and

then, without giving me any voice in the matter, he replied:

“‘We agree to your proposal. When can we call upon you to arrange the

affair?’

“‘Oh, well! Come and dine here to-morrow at seven o’clock.’

“We rose. Rastignac flung some money to the waiter, put the bill in his

pocket, and we went out. I was quite stupified by the flippancy and ease

with which he had sold my venerable aunt, la Marquise de Montbauron.

“‘I would sooner take ship for the Brazils, and give the Indians lessons

in algebra, though I don’t know a word of it, than tarnish my family

name.’

“Rastignac burst out laughing.

“‘How dense you are! Take the fifty crowns in the first instance, and

write the memoirs. When you have finished them, you will decline to

publish them in your aunt’s name, imbecile! Madame de Montbauron, with

her hooped petticoat, her rank and beauty, rouge and slippers, and her

death upon the scaffold, is worth a great deal more than six hundred

francs. And then, if the trade will not give your aunt her due, some old

adventurer, or some shady countess or other, will be found to put her

name to the memoirs.’

“‘Oh,’ I groaned; ‘why did I quit the blameless life in my garret? This

world has aspects that are very vilely dishonorable.’

“‘Yes,’ said Rastignac, ‘that is all very poetical, but this is a matter

of business. What a child you are! Now, listen to me. As to your work,

the public will decide upon it; and as for my literary middle-man,

hasn’t he devoted eight years of his life to obtaining a footing in the

book-trade, and paid heavily for his experience? You divide the money

and the labor of the book with him very unequally, but isn’t yours the

better part? Twenty-five louis means as much to you as a thousand francs

does to him. Come, you can write historical memoirs, a work of art

such as never was, since Diderot once wrote six sermons for a hundred

crowns!’

“‘After all,’ I said, in agitation, ‘I cannot choose but do it. So,

my dear friend, my thanks are due to you. I shall be quite rich with

twenty-five louis.’

“‘Richer than you think,’ he laughed. ‘If I have my commission from

Finot in this matter, it goes to you, can’t you see? Now let us go to

the Bois de Boulogne,’ he said; ‘we shall see your countess there, and

I will show you the pretty little widow that I am to marry--a charming

woman, an Alsacienne, rather plump. She reads Kant, Schiller, Jean Paul,

and a host of lachrymose books. She has a mania for continually asking

my opinion, and I have to look as if I entered into all this German

sensibility, and to know a pack of ballads--drugs, all of them, that

my doctor absolutely prohibits. As yet I have not been able to wean her

from her literary enthusiasms; she sheds torrents of tears as she reads

Goethe, and I have to weep a little myself to please her, for she has an

income of fifty thousand livres, my dear boy, and the prettiest little

hand and foot in the world. Oh, if she would only say _mon ange_

and _brouiller_ instead of _mon anche_ and _prouiller_, she would be

perfection!’

“We saw the countess, radiant amid the splendors of her equipage. The

coquette bowed very graciously to us both, and the smile she gave me

seemed to me to be divine and full of love. I was very happy; I fancied

myself beloved; I had money, a wealth of love in my heart, and my

troubles were over. I was light-hearted, blithe, and content. I found

my friend’s lady-love charming. Earth and air and heaven--all

nature--seemed to reflect Foedora’s smile for me.

“As we returned through the Champs-Elysees, we paid a visit

to Rastignac’s hatter and tailor. Thanks to the ‘Necklace,’ my

insignificant peace-footing was to end, and I made formidable

preparations for a campaign. Henceforward I need not shrink from a

contest with the spruce and fashionable young men who made Foedora’s

circle. I went home, locked myself in, and stood by my dormer window,

outwardly calm enough, but in reality I bade a last good-bye to the

roofs without. I began to live in the future, rehearsed my life drama,

and discounted love and its happiness. Ah, how stormy life can grow

to be within the four walls of a garret! The soul within us is like a

fairy; she turns straw into diamonds for us; and for us, at a touch of

her wand, enchanted palaces arise, as flowers in the meadows spring up

towards the sun.

“Towards noon, next day, Pauline knocked gently at my door, and brought

me--who could guess it?--a note from Foedora. The countess asked me to

take her to the Luxembourg, and to go thence to see with her the Museum

and Jardin des Plantes.

“‘The man is waiting for an answer,’ said Pauline, after quietly waiting

for a moment.

“I hastily scrawled my acknowledgements, and Pauline took the note. I

changed my dress. When my toilette was ended, and I looked at myself

with some complaisance, an icy shiver ran through me as I thought:

“‘Will Foedora walk or drive? Will it rain or shine?--No matter,

though,’ I said to myself; ‘whichever it is, can one ever reckon with

feminine caprice? She will have no money about her, and will want

to give a dozen francs to some little Savoyard because his rags are

picturesque.’

“I had not a brass farthing, and should have no money till the evening

came. How dearly a poet pays for the intellectual prowess that method

and toil have brought him, at such crises of our youth! Innumerable

painfully vivid thoughts pierced me like barbs. I looked out of my

window; the weather was very unsettled. If things fell out badly, I

might easily hire a cab for the day; but would not the fear lie on me

every moment that I might not meet Finot in the evening? I felt too weak

to endure such fears in the midst of my felicity. Though I felt sure

that I should find nothing, I began a grand search through my room;

I looked for imaginary coins in the recesses of my mattress; I hunted

about everywhere--I even shook out my old boots. A nervous fever seized

me; I looked with wild eyes at the furniture when I had ransacked it

all. Will you understand, I wonder, the excitement that possessed

me when, plunged deep in the listlessness of despair, I opened my

writing-table drawer, and found a fair and splendid ten-franc piece

that shone like a rising star, new and sparkling, and slily hiding in

a cranny between two boards? I did not try to account for its previous

reserve and the cruelty of which it had been guilty in thus lying

hidden; I kissed it for a friend faithful in adversity, and hailed it

with a cry that found an echo, and made me turn sharply, to find Pauline

with a face grown white.

“‘I thought,’ she faltered, ‘that you had hurt yourself! The man who

brought the letter----’ (she broke off as if something smothered her

voice). ‘But mother has paid him,’ she added, and flitted away like a

wayward, capricious child. Poor little one! I wanted her to share in

my happiness. I seemed to have all the happiness in the world within

me just then; and I would fain have returned to the unhappy, all that I

felt as if I had stolen from them.

“The intuitive perception of adversity is sound for the most part; the

countess had sent away her carriage. One of those freaks that pretty

women can scarcely explain to themselves had determined her to go on

foot, by way of the boulevards, to the Jardin des Plantes.

“‘It will rain,’ I told her, and it pleased her to contradict me.

“As it fell out, the weather was fine while we went through the

Luxembourg; when we came out, some drops fell from a great cloud, whose

progress I had watched uneasily, and we took a cab. At the Museum I was

about to dismiss the vehicle, and Foedora (what agonies!) asked me not

to do so. But it was like a dream in broad daylight for me, to chat

with her, to wander in the Jardin des Plantes, to stray down the shady

alleys, to feel her hand upon my arm; the secret transports repressed

in me were reduced, no doubt, to a fixed and foolish smile upon my

lips; there was something unreal about it all. Yet in all her movements,

however alluring, whether we stood or whether we walked, there was

nothing either tender or lover-like. When I tried to share in a measure

the action of movement prompted by her life, I became aware of a check,

or of something strange in her that I cannot explain, or an inner

activity concealed in her nature. There is no suavity about the

movements of women who have no soul in them. Our wills were opposed,

and we did not keep step together. Words are wanting to describe this

outward dissonance between two beings; we are not accustomed to read

a thought in a movement. We instinctively feel this phenomenon of our

nature, but it cannot be expressed.

“I did not dissect my sensations during those violent seizures of

passion,” Raphael went on, after a moment of silence, as if he were

replying to an objection raised by himself. “I did not analyze my

pleasures nor count my heartbeats then, as a miser scrutinizes and

weighs his gold pieces. No; experience sheds its melancholy light over

the events of the past to-day, and memory brings these pictures back,

as the sea-waves in fair weather cast up fragment after fragment of the

debris of a wrecked vessel upon the strand.

“‘It is in your power to render me a rather important service,’ said the

countess, looking at me in an embarrassed way. ‘After confiding in you

my aversion to lovers, I feel myself more at liberty to entreat your

good offices in the name of friendship. Will there not be very much more

merit in obliging me to-day?’ she asked, laughing.

“I looked at her in anguish. Her manner was coaxing, but in no wise

affectionate; she felt nothing for me; she seemed to be playing a part,

and I thought her a consummate actress. Then all at once my hopes awoke

once more, at a single look and word. Yet if reviving love expressed

itself in my eyes, she bore its light without any change in the

clearness of her own; they seemed, like a tiger’s eyes, to have a sheet

of metal behind them. I used to hate her in such moments.

“‘The influence of the Duc de Navarreins would be very useful to me,

with an all-powerful person in Russia,’ she went on, persuasion in every

modulation of her voice, ‘whose intervention I need in order to have

justice done me in a matter that concerns both my fortune and my

position in the world, that is to say, the recognition of my marriage

by the Emperor. Is not the Duc de Navarreins a cousin of yours? A letter

from him would settle everything.’

“‘I am yours,’ I answered; ‘command me.’

“‘You are very nice,’ she said, pressing my hand. ‘Come and have dinner

with me, and I will tell you everything, as if you were my confessor.’

“So this discreet, suspicious woman, who had never been heard to speak a

word about her affairs to any one, was going to consult me.

“‘Oh, how dear to me is this silence that you have imposed on me!’ I

cried; ‘but I would rather have had some sharper ordeal still.’ And

she smiled upon the intoxication in my eyes; she did not reject my

admiration in any way; surely she loved me!

“Fortunately, my purse held just enough to satisfy her cab-man. The day

spent in her house, alone with her, was delicious; it was the first time

that I had seen her in this way. Hitherto we had always been kept apart

by the presence of others, and by her formal politeness and reserved

manners, even during her magnificent dinners; but now it was as if I

lived beneath her own roof--I had her all to myself, so to speak. My

wandering fancy broke down barriers, arranged the events of life to my

liking, and steeped me in happiness and love. I seemed to myself her

husband, I liked to watch her busied with little details; it was a

pleasure to me even to see her take off her bonnet and shawl. She left

me alone for a little, and came back, charming, with her hair newly

arranged; and this dainty change of toilette had been made for me!

“During the dinner she lavished attention upon me, and put charm without

end into those numberless trifles to all seeming, that make up half of

our existence nevertheless. As we sat together before a crackling

fire, on silken cushions surrounded by the most desirable creations

of Oriental luxury; as I saw this woman whose famous beauty made every

heart beat, so close to me; an unapproachable woman who was talking and

bringing all her powers of coquetry to bear upon me; then my blissful

pleasure rose almost to the point of suffering. To my vexation, I

recollected the important business to be concluded; I determined to go

to keep the appointment made for me for this evening.

“‘So soon?’ she said, seeing me take my hat.

“She loved me, then! or I thought so at least, from the bland tones in

which those two words were uttered. I would then have bartered a couple

of years of life for every hour she chose to grant to me, and so prolong

my ecstasy. My happiness was increased by the extent of the money I

sacrificed. It was midnight before she dismissed me. But on the morrow,

for all that, my heroism cost me a good many remorseful pangs; I was

afraid the affair of the Memoirs, now of such importance for me, might

have fallen through, and rushed off to Rastignac. We found the nominal

author of my future labors just getting up.

“Finot read over a brief agreement to me, in which nothing whatever was

said about my aunt, and when it had been signed he paid me down fifty

crowns, and the three of us breakfasted together. I had only thirty

francs left over, when I had paid for my new hat, for sixty tickets at

thirty sous each, and settled my debts; but for some days to come the

difficulties of living were removed. If I had but listened to Rastignac,

I might have had abundance by frankly adopting the ‘English system.’ He

really wanted to establish my credit by setting me to raise loans, on

the theory that borrowing is the basis of credit. To hear him talk, the

future was the largest and most secure kind of capital in the world.

My future luck was hypothecated for the benefit of my creditors, and he

gave my custom to his tailor, an artist, and a young man’s tailor, who

was to leave me in peace until I married.

“The monastic life of study that I had led for three years past ended

on this day. I frequented Foedora’s house very diligently, and tried to

outshine the heroes or the swaggerers to be found in her circle. When

I believed that I had left poverty for ever behind me, I regained my

freedom of mind, humiliated my rivals, and was looked upon as a very

attractive, dazzling, and irresistible sort of man. But acute folk used

to say with regard to me, ‘A fellow as clever as that will keep all his

enthusiasms in his brain,’ and charitably extolled my faculties at

the expense of my feelings. ‘Isn’t he lucky, not to be in love!’ they

exclaimed. ‘If he were, could he be so light-hearted and animated?’ Yet

in Foedora’s presence I was as dull as love could make me. When I was

alone with her, I had not a word to say, or if I did speak, I renounced

love; and I affected gaiety but ill, like a courtier who has a bitter

mortification to hide. I tried in every way to make myself indispensable

in her life, and necessary to her vanity and to her comfort; I was a

plaything at her pleasure, a slave always at her side. And when I had

frittered away the day in this way, I went back to my work at night,

securing merely two or three hours’ sleep in the early morning.

“But I had not, like Rastignac, the ‘English system’ at my finger-ends,

and I very soon saw myself without a penny. I fell at once into that

precarious way of life which industriously hides cold and miserable

depths beneath an elusive surface of luxury; I was a coxcomb without

conquests, a penniless fop, a nameless gallant. The old sufferings were

renewed, but less sharply; no doubt I was growing used to the painful

crisis. Very often my sole diet consisted of the scanty provision of

cakes and tea that is offered in drawing-rooms, or one of the countess’

great dinners must sustain me for two whole days. I used all my time,

and exerted every effort and all my powers of observation, to penetrate

the impenetrable character of Foedora. Alternate hope and despair had

swayed my opinions; for me she was sometimes the tenderest, sometimes

the most unfeeling of women. But these transitions from joy to sadness

became unendurable; I sought to end the horrible conflict within me by

extinguishing love. By the light of warning gleams my soul sometimes

recognized the gulfs that lay between us. The countess confirmed all my

fears; I had never yet detected any tear in her eyes; an affecting scene

in a play left her smiling and unmoved. All her instincts were selfish;

she could not divine another’s joy or sorrow. She had made a fool of me,

in fact!

“I had rejoiced over a sacrifice to make for her, and almost humiliated

myself in seeking out my kinsman, the Duc de Navarreins, a selfish man

who was ashamed of my poverty, and had injured me too deeply not to hate

me. He received me with the polite coldness that makes every word and

gesture seem an insult; he looked so ill at ease that I pitied him. I

blushed for this pettiness amid grandeur, and penuriousness surrounded

by luxury. He began to talk to me of his heavy losses in the three per

cents, and then I told him the object of my visit. The change in his

manners, hitherto glacial, which now gradually, became affectionate,

disgusted me.

“Well, he called upon the countess, and completely eclipsed me with her.

“On him Foedora exercised spells and witcheries unheard of; she drew him

into her power, and arranged her whole mysterious business with him; I

was left out, I heard not a word of it; she had made a tool of me! She

did not seem to be aware of my existence while my cousin was present;

she received me less cordially perhaps than when I was first presented

to her. One evening she chose to mortify me before the duke by a look, a

gesture, that it is useless to try to express in words. I went away with

tears in my eyes, planning terrible and outrageous schemes of vengeance

without end.

“I often used to go with her to the theatre. Love utterly absorbed me

as I sat beside her; as I looked at her I used to give myself up to the

pleasure of listening to the music, putting all my soul into the double

joy of love and of hearing every emotion of my heart translated into

musical cadences. It was my passion that filled the air and the stage,

that was triumphant everywhere but with my mistress. Then I would take

Foedora’s hand. I used to scan her features and her eyes, imploring of

them some indication that one blended feeling possessed us both, seeking

for the sudden harmony awakened by the power of music, which makes

our souls vibrate in unison; but her hand was passive, her eyes said

nothing.

“When the fire that burned in me glowed too fiercely from the face

I turned upon her, she met it with that studied smile of hers, the

conventional expression that sits on the lips of every portrait in every

exhibition. She was not listening to the music. The divine pages of

Rossini, Cimarosa, or Zingarelli called up no emotion, gave no voice to

any poetry in her life; her soul was a desert.

“Foedora presented herself as a drama before a drama. Her lorgnette

traveled restlessly over the boxes; she was restless too beneath the

apparent calm; fashion tyrannized over her; her box, her bonnet, her

carriage, her own personality absorbed her entirely. My merciless

knowledge thoroughly tore away all my illusions. If good breeding

consists in self-forgetfulness and consideration for others, in

constantly showing gentleness in voice and bearing, in pleasing others,

and in making them content in themselves, all traces of her plebeian

origin were not yet obliterated in Foedora, in spite of her cleverness.

Her self-forgetfulness was a sham, her manners were not innate but

painfully acquired, her politeness was rather subservient. And yet for

those she singled out, her honeyed words expressed natural kindness, her

pretentious exaggeration was exalted enthusiasm. I alone had scrutinized

her grimacings, and stripped away the thin rind that sufficed to conceal

her real nature from the world; her trickery no longer deceived me; I

had sounded the depths of that feline nature. I blushed for her when

some donkey or other flattered and complimented her. And yet I loved her

through it all! I hoped that her snows would melt with the warmth of a

poet’s love. If I could only have made her feel all the greatness that

lies in devotion, then I should have seen her perfected, she would have

been an angel. I loved her as a man, a lover, and an artist; if it had

been necessary not to love her so that I might win her, some cool-headed

coxcomb, some self-possessed calculator would perhaps have had an

advantage over me. She was so vain and sophisticated, that the language

of vanity would appeal to her; she would have allowed herself to be

taken in the toils of an intrigue; a hard, cold nature would have gained

a complete ascendency over her. Keen grief had pierced me to my very

soul, as she unconsciously revealed her absolute love of self. I seemed

to see her as she one day would be, alone in the world, with no one to

whom she could stretch her hand, with no friendly eyes for her own

to meet and rest upon. I was bold enough to set this before her one

evening; I painted in vivid colors her lonely, sad, deserted old age.

Her comment on this prospect of so terrible a revenge of thwarted nature

was horrible.

“‘I shall always have money,’ she said; ‘and with money we can always

inspire such sentiments as are necessary for our comfort in those about

us.’

“I went away confounded by the arguments of luxury, by the reasoning

of this woman of the world in which she lived; and blamed myself for

my infatuated idolatry. I myself had not loved Pauline because she

was poor; and had not the wealthy Foedora a right to repulse Raphael?

Conscience is our unerring judge until we finally stifle it. A specious

voice said within me, ‘Foedora is neither attracted to nor repulses any

one; she has her liberty, but once upon a time she sold herself to the

Russian count, her husband or her lover, for gold. But temptation is

certain to enter into her life. Wait till that moment comes!’ She lived

remote from humanity, in a sphere apart, in a hell or a heaven of

her own; she was neither frail nor virtuous. This feminine enigma in

embroideries and cashmeres had brought into play every emotion of the

human heart in me--pride, ambition, love, curiosity.

“There was a craze just then for praising a play at a little Boulevard

theatre, prompted perhaps by a wish to appear original that besets us

all, or due to some freak of fashion. The countess showed some signs of

a wish to see the floured face of the actor who had so delighted several

people of taste, and I obtained the honor of taking her to a first

presentation of some wretched farce or other. A box scarcely cost five

francs, but I had not a brass farthing. I was but half-way through

the volume of Memoirs; I dared not beg for assistance of Finot, and

Rastignac, my providence, was away. These constant perplexities were the

bane of my life.

“We had once come out of the theatre when it was raining heavily,

Foedora had called a cab for me before I could escape from her show

of concern; she would not admit any of my excuses--my liking for wet

weather, and my wish to go to the gaming-table. She did not read my

poverty in my embarrassed attitude, or in my forced jests. My eyes would

redden, but she did not understand a look. A young man’s life is at the

mercy of the strangest whims! At every revolution of the wheels during

the journey, thoughts that burned stirred in my heart. I tried to pull

up a plank from the bottom of the vehicle, hoping to slip through the

hole into the street; but finding insuperable obstacles, I burst into a

fit of laughter, and then sat stupefied in calm dejection, like a man in

a pillory. When I reached my lodging, Pauline broke in through my first

stammering words with:

“‘If you haven’t any money----?’

“Ah, the music of Rossini was as nothing compared with those words. But

to return to the performance at the Funambules.

“I thought of pawning the circlet of gold round my mother’s portrait

in order to escort the countess. Although the pawnbroker loomed in

my thoughts as one of the doors of a convict’s prison, I would rather

myself have carried my bed thither than have begged for alms. There is

something so painful in the expression of a man who asks money of you!

There are loans that mulct us of our self-respect, just as some rebuffs

from a friend’s lips sweep away our last illusion.

“Pauline was working; her mother had gone to bed. I flung a stealthy

glance over the bed; the curtains were drawn back a little; Madame

Gaudin was in a deep sleep, I thought, when I saw her quiet, sallow

profile outlined against the pillow.

“‘You are in trouble?’ Pauline said, dipping her brush into the

coloring.

“‘It is in your power to do me a great service, my dear child,’ I

answered.

“The gladness in her eyes frightened me.

“‘Is it possible that she loves me?’ I thought. ‘Pauline,’ I began.

I went and sat near to her, so as to study her. My tones had been so

searching that she read my thought; her eyes fell, and I scrutinized

her face. It was so pure and frank that I fancied I could see as clearly

into her heart as into my own.

“‘Do you love me?’ I asked.

“‘A little,--passionately--not a bit!’ she cried.

“Then she did not love me. Her jesting tones, and a little gleeful

movement that escaped her, expressed nothing beyond a girlish, blithe

goodwill. I told her about my distress and the predicament in which I

found myself, and asked her to help me.

“‘You do not wish to go to the pawnbroker’s yourself, M. Raphael,’ she

answered, ‘and yet you would send me!’

“I blushed in confusion at the child’s reasoning. She took my hand in

hers as if she wanted to compensate for this home-truth by her light

touch upon it.

“‘Oh, I would willingly go,’ she said, ‘but it is not necessary. I found

two five-franc pieces at the back of the piano, that had slipped without

your knowledge between the frame and the keyboard, and I laid them on

your table.’

“‘You will soon be coming into some money, M. Raphael,’ said the kind

mother, showing her face between the curtains, ‘and I can easily lend

you a few crowns meanwhile.’

“‘Oh, Pauline!’ I cried, as I pressed her hand, ‘how I wish that I were

rich!’

“‘Bah! why should you?’ she said petulantly. Her hand shook in mine with

the throbbing of her pulse; she snatched it away, and looked at both of

mine.

“‘You will marry a rich wife,’ she said, ‘but she will give you a great

deal of trouble. Ah, _Dieu_! she will be your death,--I am sure of it.’

“In her exclamation there was something like belief in her mother’s

absurd superstitions.

“‘You are very credulous, Pauline!’

“‘The woman whom you will love is going to kill you--there is no doubt

of it,’ she said, looking at me with alarm.

“She took up her brush again and dipped it in the color; her great

agitation was evident; she looked at me no longer. I was ready to give

credence just then to superstitious fancies; no man is utterly wretched

so long as he is superstitious; a belief of that kind is often in

reality a hope.

“I found that those two magnificent five-franc pieces were lying, in

fact, upon my table when I reached my room. During the first confused

thoughts of early slumber, I tried to audit my accounts so as to explain

this unhoped-for windfall; but I lost myself in useless calculations,

and slept. Just as I was leaving my room to engage a box the next

morning, Pauline came to see me.

“‘Perhaps your ten francs is not enough,’ said the amiable, kind-hearted

girl; ‘my mother told me to offer you this money. Take it, please, take

it!’

“She laid three crowns upon the table, and tried to escape, but I would

not let her go. Admiration dried the tears that sprang to my eyes.

“‘You are an angel, Pauline,’ I said. ‘It is not the loan that touches

me so much as the delicacy with which it is offered. I used to wish for

a rich wife, a fashionable woman of rank; and now, alas! I would

rather possess millions, and find some girl, as poor as you are, with

a generous nature like your own; and I would renounce a fatal passion

which will kill me. Perhaps what you told me will come true.’

“‘That is enough,’ she said, and fled away; the fresh trills of her

birdlike voice rang up the staircase.

“‘She is very happy in not yet knowing love,’ I said to myself, thinking

of the torments I had endured for many months past.

“Pauline’s fifteen francs were invaluable to me. Foedora, thinking of

the stifling odor of the crowded place where we were to spend several

hours, was sorry that she had not brought a bouquet; I went in search of

flowers for her, as I had laid already my life and my fate at her feet.

With a pleasure in which compunction mingled, I gave her a bouquet. I

learned from its price the extravagance of superficial gallantry in

the world. But very soon she complained of the heavy scent of a Mexican

jessamine. The interior of the theatre, the bare bench on which she

was to sit, filled her with intolerable disgust; she upbraided me for

bringing her there. Although she sat beside me, she wished to go, and

she went. I had spent sleepless nights, and squandered two months of

my life for her, and I could not please her. Never had that tormenting

spirit been more unfeeling or more fascinating.

“I sat beside her in the cramped back seat of the vehicle; all the way I

could feel her breath on me and the contact of her perfumed glove; I

saw distinctly all her exceeding beauty; I inhaled a vague scent of

orris-root; so wholly a woman she was, with no touch of womanhood. Just

then a sudden gleam of light lit up the depths of this mysterious life

for me. I thought all at once of a book just published by a poet,

a genuine conception of the artist, in the shape of the statue of

Polycletus.

“I seemed to see that monstrous creation, at one time an officer,

breaking in a spirited horse; at another, a girl, who gives herself up

to her toilette and breaks her lovers’ hearts; or again, a false lover

driving a timid and gentle maid to despair. Unable to analyze Foedora

by any other process, I told her this fanciful story; but no hint of

her resemblance to this poetry of the impossible crossed her--it simply

diverted her; she was like a child over a story from the _Arabian

Nights_.

“‘Foedora must be shielded by some talisman,’ I thought to myself as

I went back, ‘or she could not resist the love of a man of my age, the

infectious fever of that splendid malady of the soul. Is Foedora, like

Lady Delacour, a prey to a cancer? Her life is certainly an unnatural

one.’

“I shuddered at the thought. Then I decided on a plan, at once the

wildest and the most rational that lover ever dreamed of. I would study

this woman from a physical point of view, as I had already studied her

intellectually, and to this end I made up my mind to spend a night in

her room without her knowledge. This project preyed upon me as a thirst

for revenge gnaws at the heart of a Corsican monk. This is how I carried

it out. On the days when Foedora received, her rooms were far too

crowded for the hall-porter to keep the balance even between goers and

comers; I could remain in the house, I felt sure, without causing a

scandal in it, and I waited the countess’ coming soiree with impatience.

As I dressed I put a little English penknife into my waistcoat pocket,

instead of a poniard. That literary implement, if found upon me, could

awaken no suspicion, but I knew not whither my romantic resolution might

lead, and I wished to be prepared.

“As soon as the rooms began to fill, I entered the bedroom and examined

the arrangements. The inner and outer shutters were closed; this was

a good beginning; and as the waiting-maid might come to draw back the

curtains that hung over the windows, I pulled them together. I was

running great risks in venturing to manoeuvre beforehand in this way,

but I had accepted the situation, and had deliberately reckoned with its

dangers.

“About midnight I hid myself in the embrasure of the window. I tried to

scramble on to a ledge of the wainscoting, hanging on by the fastening

of the shutters with my back against the wall, in such a position that

my feet could not be visible. When I had carefully considered my points

of support, and the space between me and the curtains, I had become

sufficiently acquainted with all the difficulties of my position to

stay in it without fear of detection if undisturbed by cramp, coughs,

or sneezings. To avoid useless fatigue, I remained standing until the

critical moment, when I must hang suspended like a spider in its web.

The white-watered silk and muslin of the curtains spread before me in

great pleats like organ-pipes. With my penknife I cut loopholes in them,

through which I could see.

“I heard vague murmurs from the salons, the laughter and the louder

tones of the speakers. The smothered commotion and vague uproar lessened

by slow degrees. One man and another came for his hat from the countess’

chest of drawers, close to where I stood. I shivered, if the curtains

were disturbed, at the thought of the mischances consequent on the

confused and hasty investigations made by the men in a hurry to depart,

who were rummaging everywhere. When I experienced no misfortunes of this

kind, I augured well of my enterprise. An old wooer of Foedora’s came

for the last hat; he thought himself quite alone, looked at the bed,

and heaved a great sigh, accompanied by some inaudible exclamation, into

which he threw sufficient energy. In the boudoir close by, the countess,

finding only some five or six intimate acquaintances about her, proposed

tea. The scandals for which existing society has reserved the little

faculty of belief that it retains, mingled with epigrams and trenchant

witticisms, and the clatter of cups and spoons. Rastignac drew roars of

laughter by merciless sarcasms at the expense of my rivals.

“‘M. de Rastignac is a man with whom it is better not to quarrel,’ said

the countess, laughing.

“‘I am quite of that opinion,’ was his candid reply. ‘I have always

been right about my aversions--and my friendships as well,’ he added.

‘Perhaps my enemies are quite as useful to me as my friends. I have made

a particular study of modern phraseology, and of the natural craft

that is used in all attack or defence. Official eloquence is one of our

perfect social products.

“‘One of your friends is not clever, so you speak of his integrity and

his candor. Another’s work is heavy; you introduce it as a piece of

conscientious labor; and if the book is ill written, you extol the ideas

it contains. Such an one is treacherous and fickle, slips through

your fingers every moment; bah! he is attractive, bewitching, he is

delightful! Suppose they are enemies, you fling every one, dead or

alive, in their teeth. You reverse your phraseology for their benefit,

and you are as keen in detecting their faults as you were before adroit

in bringing out the virtues of your friends. This way of using the

mental lorgnette is the secret of conversation nowadays, and the whole

art of the complete courtier. If you neglect it, you might as well go

out as an unarmed knight-banneret to fight against men in armor. And I

make use of it, and even abuse it at times. So we are respected--I and

my friends; and, moreover, my sword is quite as sharp as my tongue.’

“One of Foedora’s most fervid worshipers, whose presumption was

notorious, and who even made it contribute to his success, took up the

glove thrown down so scornfully by Rastignac. He began an unmeasured

eulogy of me, my performances, and my character. Rastignac had

overlooked this method of detraction. His sarcastic encomiums misled

the countess, who sacrificed without mercy; she betrayed my secrets, and

derided my pretensions and my hopes, to divert her friends.

“‘There is a future before him,’ said Rastignac. ‘Some day he may be in

a position to take a cruel revenge; his talents are at least equal to

his courage; and I should consider those who attack him very rash, for

he has a good memory----’

“‘And writes Memoirs,’ put in the countess, who seemed to object to the

deep silence that prevailed.

“‘Memoirs of a sham countess, madame,’ replied Rastignac. ‘Another sort

of courage is needed to write that sort of thing.’

“‘I give him credit for plenty of courage,’ she answered; ‘he is

faithful to me.’

“I was greatly tempted to show myself suddenly among the railers, like

the shade of Banquo in Macbeth. I should have lost a mistress, but I

had a friend! But love inspired me all at once, with one of those

treacherous and fallacious subtleties that it can use to soothe all our

pangs.

“If Foedora loved me, I thought, she would be sure to disguise her

feelings by some mocking jest. How often the heart protests against a

lie on the lips!

“Well, very soon my audacious rival, left alone with the countess, rose

to go.

“‘What! already?’ asked she in a coaxing voice that set my heart

beating. ‘Will you not give me a few more minutes? Have you nothing more

to say to me? will you never sacrifice any of your pleasures for me?’

“He went away.

“‘Ah!’ she yawned; ‘how very tiresome they all are!’

“She pulled a cord energetically till the sound of a bell rang through

the place; then, humming a few notes of _Pria che spunti_, the countess

entered her room. No one had ever heard her sing; her muteness had

called forth the wildest explanations. She had promised her first lover,

so it was said, who had been held captive by her talent, and whose

jealousy over her stretched beyond his grave, that she would never allow

others to experience a happiness that he wished to be his and his alone.

“I exerted every power of my soul to catch the sounds. Higher and higher

rose the notes; Foedora’s life seemed to dilate within her; her throat

poured forth all its richest tones; something well-nigh divine entered

into the melody. There was a bright purity and clearness of tone in the

countess’ voice, a thrilling harmony which reached the heart and stirred

its pulses. Musicians are seldom unemotional; a woman who could sing

like that must know how to love indeed. Her beautiful voice made one

more puzzle in a woman mysterious enough before. I beheld her then, as

plainly as I see you at this moment. She seemed to listen to herself, to

experience a secret rapture of her own; she felt, as it were, an ecstasy

like that of love.

“She stood before the hearth during the execution of the principal theme

of the _rondo_; and when she ceased her face changed. She looked tired;

her features seemed to alter. She had laid the mask aside; her part as

an actress was over. Yet the faded look that came over her beautiful

face, a result either of this performance or of the evening’s fatigues,

had its charms, too.

“‘This is her real self,’ I thought.

“She set her foot on a bronze bar of the fender as if to warm it, took

off her gloves, and drew over her head the gold chain from which her

bejeweled scent-bottle hung. It gave me a quite indescribable pleasure

to watch the feline grace of every movement; the supple grace a cat

displays as it adjusts its toilette in the sun. She looked at herself

in the mirror and said aloud ill-humoredly--‘I did not look well this

evening, my complexion is going with alarming rapidity; perhaps I

ought to keep earlier hours, and give up this life of dissipation. Does

Justine mean to trifle with me?’ She rang again; her maid hurried in.

Where she had been I cannot tell; she came in by a secret staircase.

I was anxious to make a study of her. I had lodged accusations, in

my romantic imaginings, against this invisible waiting-woman, a tall,

well-made brunette.

“‘Did madame ring?’

“‘Yes, twice,’ answered Foedora; ‘are you really growing deaf nowadays?’

“‘I was preparing madame’s milk of almonds.’

“Justine knelt down before her, unlaced her sandals and drew them off,

while her mistress lay carelessly back on her cushioned armchair beside

the fire, yawned, and scratched her head. Every movement was perfectly

natural; there was nothing whatever to indicate the secret sufferings or

emotions with which I had credited her.

“‘George must be in love!’ she remarked. ‘I shall dismiss him. He has

drawn the curtains again to-night. What does he mean by it?’

“All the blood in my veins rushed to my heart at this observation, but

no more was said about curtains.

“‘Life is very empty,’ the countess went on. ‘Ah! be careful not to

scratch me as you did yesterday. Just look here, I still have the marks

of your nails about me,’ and she held out a silken knee. She thrust her

bare feet into velvet slippers bound with swan’s-down, and unfastened

her dress, while Justine prepared to comb her hair.

“‘You ought to marry, madame, and have children.’

“‘Children!’ she cried; ‘it wants no more than that to finish me at

once; and a husband! What man is there to whom I could----? Was my hair

well arranged to-night?’

“‘Not particularly.’

“‘You are a fool!’

“‘That way of crimping your hair too much is the least becoming way

possible for you. Large, smooth curls suit you a great deal better.’

“‘Really?’

“‘Yes, really, madame; that wavy style only looks nice in fair hair.’

“‘Marriage? never, never! Marriage is a commercial arrangement, for

which I was never made.’

“What a disheartening scene for a lover! Here was a lonely woman,

without friends or kin, without the religion of love, without faith in

any affection. Yet however slightly she might feel the need to pour

out her heart, a craving that every human being feels, it could only

be satisfied by gossiping with her maid, by trivial and indifferent

talk.... I grieved for her.

“Justine unlaced her. I watched her carefully when she was at last

unveiled. Her maidenly form, in its rose-tinged whiteness, was visible

through her shift in the taper light, as dazzling as some silver statue

behind its gauze covering. No, there was no defect that need shrink from

the stolen glances of love. Alas, a fair form will overcome the stoutest

resolutions!

“The maid lighted the taper in the alabaster sconce that hung before

the bed, while her mistress sat thoughtful and silent before the fire.

Justine went for a warming-pan, turned down the bed, and helped to lay

her mistress in it; then, after some further time spent in punctiliously

rendering various services that showed how seriously Foedora respected

herself, her maid left her. The countess turned to and fro several

times, and sighed; she was ill at ease; faint, just perceptible sounds,

like sighs of impatience, escaped from her lips. She reached out a hand

to the table, and took a flask from it, from which she shook four or

five drops of some brown liquid into some milk before taking it; again

there followed some painful sighs, and the exclamation, ‘_Mon Dieu_!’

“The cry, and the tone in which it was uttered, wrung my heart. By

degrees she lay motionless. This frightened me; but very soon I heard

a sleeper’s heavy, regular breathing. I drew the rustling silk curtains

apart, left my post, went to the foot of the bed, and gazed at her with

feelings that I cannot define. She was so enchanting as she lay like a

child, with her arm above her head; but the sweetness of the fair,

quiet visage, surrounded by the lace, only irritated me. I had not been

prepared for the torture to which I was compelled to submit.

“‘_Mon Dieu_!’ that scrap of a thought which I understood not, but must

even take as my sole light, had suddenly modified my opinion of Foedora.

Trite or profoundly significant, frivolous or of deep import, the words

might be construed as expressive of either pleasure or pain, of physical

or of mental suffering. Was it a prayer or a malediction, a forecast or

a memory, a fear or a regret? A whole life lay in that utterance, a life

of wealth or of penury; perhaps it contained a crime!

“The mystery that lurked beneath this fair semblance of womanhood grew

afresh; there were so many ways of explaining Foedora, that she became

inexplicable. A sort of language seemed to flow from between her lips.

I put thoughts and feelings into the accidents of her breathing, whether

weak or regular, gentle, or labored. I shared her dreams; I would

fain have divined her secrets by reading them through her slumber. I

hesitated among contradictory opinions and decisions without number.

I could not deny my heart to the woman I saw before me, with the calm,

pure beauty in her face. I resolved to make one more effort. If I told

her the story of my life, my love, my sacrifices, might I not awaken

pity in her or draw a tear from her who never wept?

“As I set all my hopes on this last experiment, the sounds in the

streets showed that day was at hand. For a moment’s space I pictured

Foedora waking to find herself in my arms. I could have stolen softly

to her side and slipped them about her in a close embrace. Resolved

to resist the cruel tyranny of this thought, I hurried into the salon,

heedless of any sounds I might make; but, luckily, I came upon a secret

door leading to a little staircase. As I expected, the key was in the

lock; I slammed the door, went boldly out into the court, and gained

the street in three bounds, without looking round to see whether I was

observed.

“A dramatist was to read a comedy at the countess’ house in two days’

time; I went thither, intending to outstay the others, so as to make a

rather singular request to her; I meant to ask her to keep the following

evening for me alone, and to deny herself to other comers; but when I

found myself alone with her, my courage failed. Every tick of the clock

alarmed me. It wanted only a quarter of an hour of midnight.

“‘If I do not speak,’ I thought to myself, ‘I must smash my head against

the corner of the mantelpiece.’

“I gave myself three minutes’ grace; the three minutes went by, and

I did not smash my head upon the marble; my heart grew heavy, like a

sponge with water.

“‘You are exceedingly amusing,’ said she.

“‘Ah, madame, if you could but understand me!’ I answered.

“‘What is the matter with you?’ she asked. ‘You are turning pale.’

“‘I am hesitating to ask a favor of you.’

“Her gesture revived my courage. I asked her to make the appointment

with me.

“‘Willingly,’ she answered’ ‘but why will you not speak to me now?’

“‘To be candid with you, I ought to explain the full scope of your

promise: I want to spend this evening by your side, as if we were

brother and sister. Have no fear; I am aware of your antipathies; you

must have divined me sufficiently to feel sure that I should wish you

to do nothing that could be displeasing to you; presumption, moreover,

would not thus approach you. You have been a friend to me, you have

shown me kindness and great indulgence; know, therefore, that to-morrow

I must bid you farewell.--Do not take back your word,’ I exclaimed,

seeing her about to speak, and I went away.

“At eight o’clock one evening towards the end of May, Foedora and I were

alone together in her gothic boudoir. I feared no longer; I was secure

of happiness. My mistress should be mine, or I would seek a refuge in

death. I had condemned my faint-hearted love, and a man who acknowledges

his weakness is strong indeed.

“The countess, in her blue cashmere gown, was reclining on a sofa, with

her feet on a cushion. She wore an Oriental turban such as painters

assign to early Hebrews; its strangeness added an indescribable

coquettish grace to her attractions. A transitory charm seemed to have

laid its spell on her face; it might have furnished the argument that

at every instant we become new and unparalleled beings, without any

resemblance to the _us_ of the future or of the past. I had never yet

seen her so radiant.

“‘Do you know that you have piqued my curiosity?’ she said, laughing.

“‘I will not disappoint it,’ I said quietly, as I seated myself near

to her and took the hand that she surrendered to me. ‘You have a very

beautiful voice!’

“‘You have never heard me sing!’ she exclaimed, starting involuntarily

with surprise.

“‘I will prove that it is quite otherwise, whenever it is necessary. Is

your delightful singing still to remain a mystery? Have no fear, I do

not wish to penetrate it.’

“We spent about an hour in familiar talk. While I adopted the attitude

and manner of a man to whom Foedora must refuse nothing, I showed her

all a lover’s deference. Acting in this way, I received a favor--I was

allowed to kiss her hand. She daintily drew off the glove, and my whole

soul was dissolved and poured forth in that kiss. I was steeped in the

bliss of an illusion in which I tried to believe.

“Foedora lent herself most unexpectedly to my caress and my flatteries.

Do not accuse me of faint-heartedness; if I had gone a step beyond these

fraternal compliments, the claws would have been out of the sheath and

into me. We remained perfectly silent for nearly ten minutes. I was

admiring her, investing her with the charms she had not. She was mine

just then, and mine only,--this enchanting being was mine, as was

permissible, in my imagination; my longing wrapped her round and

held her close; in my soul I wedded her. The countess was subdued and

fascinated by my magnetic influence. Ever since I have regretted that

this subjugation was not absolute; but just then I yearned for her soul,

her heart alone, and for nothing else. I longed for an ideal and perfect

happiness, a fair illusion that cannot last for very long. At last I

spoke, feeling that the last hours of my frenzy were at hand.

“‘Hear me, madame. I love you, and you know it; I have said so a hundred

times; you must have understood me. I would not take upon me the airs

of a coxcomb, nor would I flatter you, nor urge myself upon you like a

fool; I would not owe your love to such arts as these! so I have been

misunderstood. What sufferings have I not endured for your sake! For

these, however, you were not to blame; but in a few minutes you shall

decide for yourself. There are two kinds of poverty, madame. One kind

openly walks the street in rags, an unconscious imitator of Diogenes,

on a scanty diet, reducing life to its simplest terms; he is happier,

maybe, than the rich; he has fewer cares at any rate, and accepts such

portions of the world as stronger spirits refuse. Then there is poverty

in splendor, a Spanish pauper, concealing the life of a beggar by his

title, his bravery, and his pride; poverty that wears a white waistcoat

and yellow kid gloves, a beggar with a carriage, whose whole career will

be wrecked for lack of a halfpenny. Poverty of the first kind belongs to

the populace; the second kind is that of blacklegs, of kings, and of men

of talent. I am neither a man of the people, nor a king, nor a swindler;

possibly I have no talent either, I am an exception. With the name I

bear I must die sooner than beg. Set your mind at rest, madame,’ I

said; ‘to-day I have abundance, I possess sufficient of the clay for my

needs’; for the hard look passed over her face which we wear whenever a

well-dressed beggar takes us by surprise. ‘Do you remember the day

when you wished to go to the Gymnase without me, never believing that I

should be there?’ I went on.

“She nodded.

“‘I had laid out my last five-franc piece that I might see you

there.--Do you recollect our walk in the Jardin des Plantes? The hire of

your cab took everything I had.’

“I told her about my sacrifices, and described the life I led; heated

not with wine, as I am to-day, but by the generous enthusiasm of my

heart, my passion overflowed in burning words; I have forgotten how the

feelings within me blazed forth; neither memory nor skill of mine

could possibly reproduce it. It was no colorless chronicle of blighted

affections; my love was strengthened by fair hopes; and such words came

to me, by love’s inspiration, that each had power to set forth a whole

life--like echoes of the cries of a soul in torment. In such tones the

last prayers ascend from dying men on the battlefield. I stopped, for

she was weeping. _Grand Dieu_! I had reaped an actor’s reward, the

success of a counterfeit passion displayed at the cost of five francs

paid at the theatre door. I had drawn tears from her.

“‘If I had known----’ she said.

“‘Do not finish the sentence,’ I broke in. ‘Even now I love you well

enough to murder you----’

“She reached for the bell-pull. I burst into a roar of laughter.

“‘Do not call any one,’ I said. ‘I shall leave you to finish your life

in peace. It would be a blundering kind of hatred that would murder you!

You need not fear violence of any kind; I have spent a whole night at

the foot of your bed without----’

“‘Monsieur----’ she said, blushing; but after that first impulse of

modesty that even the most hardened women must surely own, she flung a

scornful glance at me, and said:

“‘You must have been very cold.’

“‘Do you think that I set such value on your beauty, madame,’ I

answered, guessing the thoughts that moved her. ‘Your beautiful face is

for me a promise of a soul yet more beautiful. Madame, those to whom

a woman is merely a woman can always purchase odalisques fit for the

seraglio, and achieve their happiness at a small cost. But I aspired

to something higher; I wanted the life of close communion of heart

and heart with you that have no heart. I know that now. If you were to

belong to another, I could kill him. And yet, no; for you would love

him, and his death might hurt you perhaps. What agony this is!’ I cried.

“‘If it is any comfort to you,’ she retorted cheerfully, ‘I can assure

you that I shall never belong to any one----’

“‘So you offer an affront to God Himself,’ I interrupted; ‘and you

will be punished for it. Some day you will lie upon your sofa suffering

unheard-of ills, unable to endure the light or the slightest sound,

condemned to live as it were in the tomb. Then, when you seek the causes

of those lingering and avenging torments, you will remember the woes

that you distributed so lavishly upon your way. You have sown curses,

and hatred will be your reward. We are the real judges, the executioners

of a justice that reigns here below, which overrules the justice of man

and the laws of God.’

“‘No doubt it is very culpable in me not to love you,’ she said,

laughing. ‘Am I to blame? No. I do not love you; you are a man, that is

sufficient. I am happy by myself; why should I give up my way of living,

a selfish way, if you will, for the caprices of a master? Marriage is a

sacrament by virtue of which each imparts nothing but vexations to the

other. Children, moreover, worry me. Did I not faithfully warn you about

my nature? Why are you not satisfied to have my friendship? I wish I

could make you amends for all the troubles I have caused you, through

not guessing the value of your poor five-franc pieces. I appreciate the

extent of your sacrifices; but your devotion and delicate tact can be

repaid by love alone, and I care so little for you, that this scene has

a disagreeable effect upon me.’

“‘I am fully aware of my absurdity,’ I said, unable to restrain my

tears. ‘Pardon me,’ I went on, ‘it was a delight to hear those cruel

words you have just uttered, so well I love you. O, if I could testify

my love with every drop of blood in me!’

“‘Men always repeat these classic formulas to us, more or less

effectively,’ she answered, still smiling. ‘But it appears very

difficult to die at our feet, for I see corpses of that kind about

everywhere. It is twelve o’clock. Allow me to go to bed.’

“‘And in two hours’ time you will cry to yourself, _Ah, mon Dieu_!’

“‘Like the day before yesterday! Yes,’ she said, ‘I was thinking of my

stockbroker; I had forgotten to tell him to convert my five per cent

stock into threes, and the three per cents had fallen during the day.’

“I looked at her, and my eyes glittered with anger. Sometimes a

crime may be a whole romance; I understood that just then. She was so

accustomed, no doubt, to the most impassioned declarations of this kind,

that my words and my tears were forgotten already.

“‘Would you marry a peer of France?’ I demanded abruptly.

“‘If he were a duke, I might.’

“I seized my hat and made her a bow.

“‘Permit me to accompany you to the door,’ she said, cutting irony in

her tones, in the poise of her head, and in her gesture.

“‘Madame----’

“‘Monsieur?’

“‘I shall never see you again.’

“‘I hope not,’ and she insolently inclined her head.

“‘You wish to be a duchess?’ I cried, excited by a sort of madness that

her insolence roused in me. ‘You are wild for honors and titles? Well,

only let me love you; bid my pen write and my voice speak for you alone;

be the inmost soul of my life, my guiding star! Then, only accept me

for your husband as a minister, a peer of France, a duke. I will make of

myself whatever you would have me be!’

“‘You made good use of the time you spent with the advocate,’ she said

smiling. ‘There is a fervency about your pleadings.’

“‘The present is yours,’ I cried, ‘but the future is mine! I only lose a

woman; you are losing a name and a family. Time is big with my revenge;

time will spoil your beauty, and yours will be a solitary death; and

glory waits for me!’

“‘Thanks for your peroration!’ she said, repressing a yawn; the wish

that she might never see me again was expressed in her whole bearing.

“That remark silenced me. I flung at her a glance full of hatred, and

hurried away.

“Foedora must be forgotten; I must cure myself of my infatuation, and

betake myself once more to my lonely studies, or die. So I set myself

tremendous tasks; I determined to complete my labors. For fifteen days I

never left my garret, spending whole nights in pallid thought. I worked

with difficulty, and by fits and starts, despite my courage and the

stimulation of despair. The music had fled. I could not exorcise the

brilliant mocking image of Foedora. Something morbid brooded over

every thought, a vague longing as dreadful as remorse. I imitated the

anchorites of the Thebaid. If I did not pray as they did, I lived a life

in the desert like theirs, hewing out my ideas as they were wont to hew

their rocks. I could at need have girdled my waist with spikes, that

physical suffering might quell mental anguish.

“One evening Pauline found her way into my room.

“‘You are killing yourself,’ she said imploringly; ‘you should go out

and see your friends----’

“‘Pauline, you were a true prophet; Foedora is killing me, I want to

die. My life is intolerable.’

“‘Is there only one woman in the world?’ she asked, smiling. ‘Why make

yourself so miserable in so short a life?’

“I looked at Pauline in bewilderment. She left me before I noticed her

departure; the sound of her words had reached me, but not their

sense. Very soon I had to take my Memoirs in manuscript to my

literary-contractor. I was so absorbed by my passion, that I could not

remember how I had managed to live without money; I only knew that the

four hundred and fifty francs due to me would pay my debts. So I went

to receive my salary, and met Rastignac, who thought me changed and

thinner.

“‘What hospital have you been discharged from?’ he asked.

“‘That woman is killing me,’ I answered; ‘I can neither despise her nor

forget her.’

“‘You had much better kill her, then perhaps you would think no more of

her,’ he said, laughing.

“‘I have often thought of it,’ I replied; ‘but though sometimes the

thought of a crime revives my spirits, of violence and murder, either or

both, I am really incapable of carrying out the design. The countess is

an admirable monster who would crave for pardon, and not every man is an

Othello.’

“‘She is like every woman who is beyond our reach,’ Rastignac

interrupted.

“‘I am mad,’ I cried; ‘I can feel the madness raging at times in my

brain. My ideas are like shadows; they flit before me, and I cannot

grasp them. Death would be preferable to this life, and I have carefully

considered the best way of putting an end to the struggle. I am not

thinking of the living Foedora in the Faubourg Saint Honore, but of my

Foedora here,’ and I tapped my forehead. ‘What to you say to opium?’

“‘Pshaw! horrid agonies,’ said Rastignac.

“‘Or charcoal fumes?’

“‘A low dodge.’

“‘Or the Seine?’

“‘The drag-nets, and the Morgue too, are filthy.’

“‘A pistol-shot?’

“‘And if you miscalculate, you disfigure yourself for life. Listen to

me,’ he went on, ‘like all young men, I have pondered over suicide.

Which of us hasn’t killed himself two or three times before he is

thirty? I find there is no better course than to use existence as a

means of pleasure. Go in for thorough dissipation, and your passion or

you will perish in it. Intemperance, my dear fellow, commands all forms

of death. Does she not wield the thunderbolt of apoplexy? Apoplexy is

a pistol-shot that does not miscalculate. Orgies are lavish in all

physical pleasures; is not that the small change for opium? And the riot

that makes us drink to excess bears a challenge to mortal combat with

wine. That butt of Malmsey of the Duke of Clarence’s must have had a

pleasanter flavor than Seine mud. When we sink gloriously under the

table, is not that a periodical death by drowning on a small scale? If

we are picked up by the police and stretched out on those chilly benches

of theirs at the police-station, do we not enjoy all the pleasures of

the Morgue? For though we are not blue and green, muddy and swollen

corpses, on the other hand we have the consciousness of the climax.

“‘Ah,’ he went on, ‘this protracted suicide has nothing in common with

the bankrupt grocer’s demise. Tradespeople have brought the river into

disrepute; they fling themselves in to soften their creditors’ hearts.

In your place I should endeavor to die gracefully; and if you wish

to invent a novel way of doing it, by struggling with life after this

manner, I will be your second. I am disappointed and sick of everything.

The Alsacienne, whom it was proposed that I should marry, had six toes

on her left foot; I cannot possibly live with a woman who has six toes!

It would get about to a certainty, and then I should be ridiculous.

Her income was only eighteen thousand francs; her fortune diminished

in quantity as her toes increased. The devil take it; if we begin an

outrageous sort of life, we may come on some bit of luck, perhaps!’

“Rastignac’s eloquence carried me away. The attractions of the plan

shone too temptingly, hopes were kindled, the poetical aspects of the

matter appealed to a poet.

“‘How about money?’ I said.

“‘Haven’t you four hundred and fifty francs?’

“‘Yes, but debts to my landlady and the tailor----’

“‘You would pay your tailor? You will never be anything whatever, not so

much as a minister.’

“‘But what can one do with twenty louis?’

“‘Go to the gaming-table.’

“I shuddered.

“‘You are going to launch out into what I call systematic dissipation,’

said he, noticing my scruples, ‘and yet you are afraid of a green

table-cloth.’

“‘Listen to me,’ I answered. ‘I promised my father never to set foot in

a gaming-house. Not only is that a sacred promise, but I still feel an

unconquerable disgust whenever I pass a gambling-hell; take the money

and go without me. While our fortune is at stake, I will set my own

affairs straight, and then I will go to your lodgings and wait for you.’

“That was the way I went to perdition. A young man has only to come

across a woman who will not love him, or a woman who loves him too well,

and his whole life becomes a chaos. Prosperity swallows up our energy

just as adversity obscures our virtues. Back once more in my Hotel de

Saint-Quentin, I gazed about me a long while in the garret where I had

led my scholar’s temperate life, a life which would perhaps have been

a long and honorable one, and that I ought not to have quitted for

the fevered existence which had urged me to the brink of a precipice.

Pauline surprised me in this dejected attitude.

“‘Why, what is the matter with you?’ she asked.

“I rose and quietly counted out the money owing to her mother, and added

to it sufficient to pay for six months’ rent in advance. She watched me

in some alarm.

“‘I am going to leave you, dear Pauline.’

“‘I knew it!’ she exclaimed.

“‘Listen, my child. I have not given up the idea of coming back. Keep

my room for me for six months. If I do not return by the fifteenth of

November, you will come into possession of my things. This sealed packet

of manuscript is the fair copy of my great work on “The Will,”’ I went

on, pointing to a package. ‘Will you deposit it in the King’s Library?

And you may do as you wish with everything that is left here.’

“Her look weighed heavily on my heart; Pauline was an embodiment of

conscience there before me.

“‘I shall have no more lessons,’ she said, pointing to the piano.

“I did not answer that.

“‘Will you write to me?’

“‘Good-bye, Pauline.’

“I gently drew her towards me, and set a kiss on that innocent fair brow

of hers, like snow that has not yet touched the earth--a father’s or a

brother’s kiss. She fled. I would not see Madame Gaudin, hung my key in

its wonted place, and departed. I was almost at the end of the Rue de

Cluny when I heard a woman’s light footstep behind me.

“‘I have embroidered this purse for you,’ Pauline said; ‘will you refuse

even that?’

“By the light of the street lamp I thought I saw tears in Pauline’s

eyes, and I groaned. Moved perhaps by a common impulse, we parted in

haste like people who fear the contagion of the plague.

“As I waited with dignified calmness for Rastignac’s return, his room

seemed a grotesque interpretation of the sort of life I was about to

enter upon. The clock on the chimney-piece was surmounted by a Venus

resting on her tortoise; a half-smoked cigar lay in her arms. Costly

furniture of various kinds--love tokens, very likely--was scattered

about. Old shoes lay on a luxurious sofa. The comfortable armchair into

which I had thrown myself bore as many scars as a veteran; the arms were

gnashed, the back was overlaid with a thick, stale deposit of pomade and

hair-oil from the heads of all his visitors. Splendor and squalor were

oddly mingled, on the walls, the bed, and everywhere. You might have

thought of a Neapolitan palace and the groups of lazzaroni about it. It

was the room of a gambler or a mauvais sujet, where the luxury exists

for one individual, who leads the life of the senses and does not

trouble himself over inconsistencies.

“There was a certain imaginative element about the picture it presented.

Life was suddenly revealed there in its rags and spangles as

the incomplete thing it really is, of course, but so vividly and

picturesquely; it was like a den where a brigand has heaped up all the

plunder in which he delights. Some pages were missing from a copy of

Byron’s poems: they had gone to light a fire of a few sticks for this

young person, who played for stakes of a thousand francs, and had not

a faggot; he kept a tilbury, and had not a whole shirt to his back. Any

day a countess or an actress or a run of luck at ecarte might set him up

with an outfit worthy of a king. A candle had been stuck into the green

bronze sheath of a vestaholder; a woman’s portrait lay yonder, torn out

of its carved gold setting. How was it possible that a young man, whose

nature craved excitement, could renounce a life so attractive by reason

of its contradictions; a life that afforded all the delights of war in

the midst of peace? I was growing drowsy when Rastignac kicked the door

open and shouted:

“‘Victory! Now we can take our time about dying.’

“He held out his hat filled with gold to me, and put it down on the

table; then we pranced round it like a pair of cannibals about to eat a

victim; we stamped, and danced, and yelled, and sang; we gave each other

blows fit to kill an elephant, at sight of all the pleasures of the

world contained in that hat.

“‘Twenty-seven thousand francs,’ said Rastignac, adding a few bank-notes

to the pile of gold. ‘That would be enough for other folk to live upon;

will it be sufficient for us to die on? Yes! we will breathe our last in

a bath of gold--hurrah!’ and we capered afresh.

“We divided the windfall. We began with double-napoleons, and came down

to the smaller coins, one by one. ‘This for you, this for me,’ we kept

saying, distilling our joy drop by drop.

“‘We won’t go to sleep,’ cried Rastignac. ‘Joseph! some punch!’

“He threw gold to his faithful attendant.

“‘There is your share,’ he said; ‘go and bury yourself if you can.’

“Next day I went to Lesage and chose my furniture, took the rooms that

you know in the Rue Taitbout, and left the decoration to one of the best

upholsterers. I bought horses. I plunged into a vortex of pleasures, at

once hollow and real. I went in for play, gaining and losing

enormous sums, but only at friends’ houses and in ballrooms; never in

gaming-houses, for which I still retained the holy horror of my early

days. Without meaning it, I made some friends, either through quarrels

or owing to the easy confidence established among those who are going

to the bad together; nothing, possibly, makes us cling to one another so

tightly as our evil propensities.

“I made several ventures in literature, which were flatteringly

received. Great men who followed the profession of letters, having

nothing to fear from me, belauded me, not so much on account of my

merits as to cast a slur on those of their rivals.

“I became a ‘free-liver,’ to make use of the picturesque expression

appropriated by the language of excess. I made it a point of honor not

to be long about dying, and that my zeal and prowess should eclipse

those displayed by all others in the jolliest company. I was always

spruce and carefully dressed. I had some reputation for cleverness.

There was no sign about me of the fearful way of living which makes a

man into a mere disgusting apparatus, a funnel, a pampered beast.

“Very soon Debauch rose before me in all the majesty of its horror, and

I grasped all that it meant. Those prudent, steady-going characters who

are laying down wine in bottles for their heirs, can barely conceive,

it is true, of so wide a theory of life, nor appreciate its normal

condition; but when will you instill poetry into the provincial

intellect? Opium and tea, with all their delights, are merely drugs to

folk of that calibre.

“Is not the imperfect sybarite to be met with even in Paris itself, that

intellectual metropolis? Unfit to endure the fatigues of pleasure, this

sort of person, after a drinking bout, is very much like those worthy

bourgeois who fall foul of music after hearing a new opera by Rossini.

Does he not renounce these courses in the same frame of mind that leads

an abstemious man to forswear Ruffec pates, because the first one,

forsooth, gave him the indigestion?

“Debauch is as surely an art as poetry, and is not for craven spirits.

To penetrate its mysteries and appreciate its charms, conscientious

application is required; and as with every path of knowledge, the way is

thorny and forbidding at the outset. The great pleasures of humanity are

hedged about with formidable obstacles; not its single enjoyments, but

enjoyment as a system, a system which establishes seldom experienced

sensations and makes them habitual, which concentrates and multiplies

them for us, creating a dramatic life within our life, and imperatively

demanding a prompt and enormous expenditure of vitality. War, Power,

Art, like Debauch, are all forms of demoralization, equally remote from

the faculties of humanity, equally profound, and all are alike difficult

of access. But when man has once stormed the heights of these grand

mysteries, does he not walk in another world? Are not generals,

ministers, and artists carried, more or less, towards destruction by

the need of violent distractions in an existence so remote from ordinary

life as theirs?

“War, after all, is the Excess of bloodshed, as the Excess of

self-interest produces Politics. Excesses of every sort are brothers.

These social enormities possess the attraction of the abyss; they draw

towards themselves as St. Helena beckoned Napoleon; we are fascinated,

our heads swim, we wish to sound their depths though we cannot

account for the wish. Perhaps the thought of Infinity dwells in these

precipices, perhaps they contain some colossal flattery for the soul of

man; for is he not, then, wholly absorbed in himself?

“The wearied artist needs a complete contrast to his paradise of

imaginings and of studious hours; he either craves, like God, the

seventh day of rest, or with Satan, the pleasures of hell; so that

his senses may have free play in opposition to the employment of his

faculties. Byron could never have taken for his relaxation to the

independent gentleman’s delights of boston and gossip, for he was a

poet, and so must needs pit Greece against Mahmoud.

“In war, is not man an angel of extirpation, a sort of executioner on

a gigantic scale? Must not the spell be strong indeed that makes us

undergo such horrid sufferings so hostile to our weak frames, sufferings

that encircle every strong passion with a hedge of thorns? The tobacco

smoker is seized with convulsions, and goes through a kind of agony

consequent upon his excesses; but has he not borne a part in delightful

festivals in realms unknown? Has Europe ever ceased from wars? She

has never given herself time to wipe the stains from her feet that are

steeped in blood to the ankle. Mankind at large is carried away by fits

of intoxication, as nature has its accessions of love.

“For men in private life, for a vegetating Mirabeau dreaming of storms

in a time of calm, Excess comprises all things; it perpetually embraces

the whole sum of life; it is something better still--it is a duel with

an antagonist of unknown power, a monster, terrible at first sight, that

must be seized by the horns, a labor that cannot be imagined.

“Suppose that nature has endowed you with a feeble stomach or one of

limited capacity; you acquire a mastery over it and improve it; you

learn to carry your liquor; you grow accustomed to being drunk; you pass

whole nights without sleep; at last you acquire the constitution of a

colonel of cuirassiers; and in this way you create yourself afresh, as

if to fly in the face of Providence.

“A man transformed after this sort is like a neophyte who has at last

become a veteran, has accustomed his mind to shot and shell and his legs

to lengthy marches. When the monster’s hold on him is still uncertain,

and it is not yet known which will have the better of it, they roll over

and over, alternately victor and vanquished, in a world where everything

is wonderful, where every ache of the soul is laid to sleep, where only

the shadows of ideas are revived.

“This furious struggle has already become a necessity for us. The

prodigal has struck a bargain for all the enjoyments with which life

teems abundantly, at the price of his own death, like the mythical

persons in legends who sold themselves to the devil for the power of

doing evil. For them, instead of flowing quietly on in its monotonous

course in the depths of some counting-house or study, life is poured out

in a boiling torrent.

“Excess is, in short, for the body what the mystic’s ecstasy is for

the soul. Intoxication steeps you in fantastic imaginings every whit as

strange as those of ecstatics. You know hours as full of rapture as a

young girl’s dreams; you travel without fatigue; you chat pleasantly

with your friends; words come to you with a whole life in each, and

fresh pleasures without regrets; poems are set forth for you in a few

brief phrases. The coarse animal satisfaction, in which science has

tried to find a soul, is followed by the enchanted drowsiness that men

sigh for under the burden of consciousness. Is it not because they all

feel the need of absolute repose? Because Excess is a sort of toll that

genius pays to pain?

“Look at all great men; nature made them pleasure-loving or base, every

one. Some mocking or jealous power corrupted them in either soul or

body, so as to make all their powers futile, and their efforts of no

avail.

“All men and all things appear before you in the guise you choose,

in those hours when wine has sway. You are lord of all creation; you

transform it at your pleasure. And throughout this unceasing delirium,

Play may pour, at your will, its molten lead into your veins.

“Some day you will fall into the monster’s power. Then you will have, as

I had, a frenzied awakening, with impotence sitting by your pillow. Are

you an old soldier? Phthisis attacks you. A diplomatist? An aneurism

hangs death in your heart by a thread. It will perhaps be consumption

that will cry out to me, ‘Let us be going!’ as to Raphael of Urbino, in

old time, killed by an excess of love.

“In this way I have existed. I was launched into the world too early or

too late. My energy would have been dangerous there, no doubt, if I had

not have squandered it in such ways as these. Was not the world rid of

an Alexander, by the cup of Hercules, at the close of a drinking bout?

“There are some, the sport of Destiny, who must either have heaven or

hell, the hospice of St. Bernard or riotous excess. Only just now

I lacked the heart to moralize about those two,” and he pointed to

Euphrasia and Aquilina. “They are types of my own personal history,

images of my life! I could scarcely reproach them; they stood before me

like judges.

“In the midst of this drama that I was enacting, and while my

distracting disorder was at its height, two crises supervened; each

brought me keen and abundant pangs. The first came a few days after I

had flung myself, like Sardanapalus, on my pyre. I met Foedora under the

peristyle of the Bouffons. We both were waiting for our carriages.

“‘Ah! so you are living yet?’

“That was the meaning of her smile, and probably of the spiteful words

she murmured in the ear of her cicisbeo, telling him my history no

doubt, rating mine as a common love affair. She was deceived, yet she

was applauding her perspicacity. Oh, that I should be dying for her,

must still adore her, always see her through my potations, see her still

when I was overcome with wine, or in the arms of courtesans; and know

that I was a target for her scornful jests! Oh, that I should be unable

to tear the love of her out of my breast and to fling it at her feet!

“Well, I quickly exhausted my funds, but owing to those three years

of discipline, I enjoyed the most robust health, and on the day that I

found myself without a penny I felt remarkably well. In order to carry

on the process of dying, I signed bills at short dates, and the day came

when they must be met. Painful excitements! but how they quicken the

pulses of youth! I was not prematurely aged; I was young yet, and full

of vigor and life.

“At my first debt all my virtues came to life; slowly and despairingly

they seemed to pace towards me; but I could compound with them--they

were like aged aunts that begin with a scolding and end by bestowing

tears and money upon you.

“Imagination was less yielding; I saw my name bandied about through

every city in Europe. ‘One’s name is oneself’ says Eusebe Salverte.

After these excursions I returned to the room I had never quitted, like

a doppelganger in a German tale, and came to myself with a start.

“I used to see with indifference a banker’s messenger going on his

errands through the streets of Paris, like a commercial Nemesis, wearing

his master’s livery--a gray coat and a silver badge; but now I hated the

species in advance. One of them came one morning to ask me to meet some

eleven bills that I had scrawled my name upon. My signature was worth

three thousand francs! Taking me altogether, I myself was not worth

that amount. Sheriff’s deputies rose up before me, turning their callous

faces upon my despair, as the hangman regards the criminal to whom he

says, ‘It has just struck half-past three.’ I was in the power of their

clerks; they could scribble my name, drag it through the mire, and jeer

at it. I was a defaulter. Has a debtor any right to himself? Could

not other men call me to account for my way of living? Why had I eaten

puddings _a la chipolata_? Why had I iced my wine? Why had I slept, or

walked, or thought, or amused myself when I had not paid them?

“At any moment, in the middle of a poem, during some train of thought,

or while I was gaily breakfasting in the pleasant company of my friends,

I might look to see a gentleman enter in a coat of chestnut-brown, with

a shabby hat in his hand. This gentleman’s appearance would signify my

debt, the bill I had drawn; the spectre would compel me to leave the

table to speak to him, blight my spirits, despoil me of my cheerfulness,

of my mistress, of all I possessed, down to my very bedstead.

“Remorse itself is more easily endured. Remorse does not drive us into

the street nor into the prison of Sainte-Pelagie; it does not force

us into the detestable sink of vice. Remorse only brings us to the

scaffold, where the executioner invests us with a certain dignity; as we

pay the extreme penalty, everybody believes in our innocence; but people

will not credit a penniless prodigal with a single virtue.

“My debts had other incarnations. There is the kind that goes about on

two feet, in a green cloth coat, and blue spectacles, carrying umbrellas

of various hues; you come face to face with him at the corner of

some street, in the midst of your mirth. These have the detestable

prerogative of saying, ‘M. de Valentin owes me something, and does

not pay. I have a hold on him. He had better not show me any offensive

airs!’ You must bow to your creditors, and moreover bow politely. ‘When

are you going to pay me?’ say they. And you must lie, and beg money of

another man, and cringe to a fool seated on his strong-box, and receive

sour looks in return from these horse-leeches; a blow would be less

hateful; you must put up with their crass ignorance and calculating

morality. A debt is a feat of the imaginative that they cannot

appreciate. A borrower is often carried away and over-mastered by

generous impulses; nothing great, nothing magnanimous can move or

dominate those who live for money, and recognize nothing but money. I

myself held money in abhorrence.

“Or a bill may undergo a final transformation into some meritorious

old man with a family dependent upon him. My creditor might be a living

picture for Greuze, a paralytic with his children round him, a soldier’s

widow, holding out beseeching hands to me. Terrible creditors are

these with whom we are forced to sympathize, and when their claims are

satisfied we owe them a further debt of assistance.

“The night before the bills fell due, I lay down with the false calm of

those who sleep before their approaching execution, or with a duel in

prospect, rocked as they are by delusive hopes. But when I woke, when

I was cool and collected, when I found myself imprisoned in a banker’s

portfolio, and floundering in statements covered with red ink--then my

debts sprang up everywhere, like grasshoppers, before my eyes. There

were my debts, my clock, my armchairs; my debts were inlaid in the very

furniture which I liked best to use. These gentle inanimate slaves were

to fall prey to the harpies of the Chatelet, were to be carried off by

the broker’s men, and brutally thrown on the market. Ah, my property was

a part of myself!

“The sound of the door-bell rang through my heart; while it seemed to

strike at me, where kings should be struck at--in the head. Mine was a

martyrdom, without heaven for its reward. For a magnanimous nature, debt

is a hell, and a hell, moreover, with sheriff’s officers and brokers in

it. An undischarged debt is something mean and sordid; it is a beginning

of knavery; it is something worse, it is a lie; it prepares the way for

crime, and brings together the planks for the scaffold. My bills

were protested. Three days afterwards I met them, and this is how it

happened.

“A speculator came, offering to buy the island in the Loire belonging

to me, where my mother lay buried. I closed with him. When I went to

his solicitor to sign the deeds, I felt a cavern-like chill in the dark

office that made me shudder; it was the same cold dampness that had laid

hold upon me at the brink of my father’s grave. I looked upon this as

an evil omen. I seemed to see the shade of my mother, and to hear her

voice. What power was it that made my own name ring vaguely in my ears,

in spite of the clamor of bells?

“The money paid down for my island, when all my debts were discharged,

left me in possession of two thousand francs. I could now have returned

to the scholar’s tranquil life, it is true; I could have gone back to

my garret after having gained an experience of life, with my head filled

with the results of extensive observation, and with a certain sort of

reputation attaching to me. But Foedora’s hold upon her victim was not

relaxed. We often met. I compelled her admirers to sound my name in her

ears, by dint of astonishing them with my cleverness and success, with

my horses and equipages. It all found her impassive and uninterested; so

did an ugly phrase of Rastignac’s, ‘He is killing himself for you.’

“I charged the world at large with my revenge, but I was not happy.

While I was fathoming the miry depths of life, I only recognized the

more keenly at all times the happiness of reciprocal affection; it was

a shadow that I followed through all that befell me in my extravagance,

and in my wildest moments. It was my misfortune to be deceived in my

fairest beliefs, to be punished by ingratitude for benefiting others,

and to receive uncounted pleasures as the reward of my errors--a

sinister doctrine, but a true one for the prodigal!

“The contagious leprosy of Foedora’s vanity had taken hold of me at

last. I probed my soul, and found it cankered and rotten. I bore the

marks of the devil’s claw upon my forehead. It was impossible to me

thenceforward to do without the incessant agitation of a life fraught

with danger at every moment, or to dispense with the execrable

refinements of luxury. If I had possessed millions, I should still have

gambled, reveled, and racketed about. I wished never to be alone with

myself, and I must have false friends and courtesans, wine and good

cheer to distract me. The ties that attach a man to family life had been

permanently broken for me. I had become a galley-slave of pleasure,

and must accomplish my destiny of suicide. During the last days of my

prosperity, I spent every night in the most incredible excesses; but

every morning death cast me back upon life again. I would have taken

a conflagration with as little concern as any man with a life annuity.

However, I at last found myself alone with a twenty-franc piece; I

bethought me then of Rastignac’s luck----

“Eh, eh!----” Raphael exclaimed, interrupting himself, as he remembered

the talisman and drew it from his pocket. Perhaps he was wearied by the

long day’s strain, and had no more strength left wherewith to pilot his

head through the seas of wine and punch; or perhaps, exasperated by this

symbol of his own existence, the torrent of his own eloquence gradually

overwhelmed him. Raphael became excited and elated and like one

completely deprived of reason.

“The devil take death!” he shouted, brandishing the skin; “I mean to

live! I am rich, I have every virtue; nothing will withstand me. Who

would not be generous, when everything is in his power? Aha! Aha! I

wished for two hundred thousand livres a year, and I shall have them.

Bow down before me, all of you, wallowing on the carpets like swine in

the mire! You all belong to me--a precious property truly! I am rich; I

could buy you all, even the deputy snoring over there. Scum of society,

give me your benediction! I am the Pope.”

Raphael’s vociferations had been hitherto drowned by a thorough-bass

of snores, but now they became suddenly audible. Most of the sleepers

started up with a cry, saw the cause of the disturbance on his feet,

tottering uncertainly, and cursed him in concert for a drunken brawler.

“Silence!” shouted Raphael. “Back to your kennels, you dogs! Emile, I

have riches, I will give you Havana cigars!”

“I am listening,” the poet replied. “Death or Foedora! On with you! That

silky Foedora deceived you. Women are all daughters of Eve. There is

nothing dramatic about that rigmarole of yours.”

“Ah, but you were sleeping, slyboots.”

“No--‘Death or Foedora!’--I have it!”

“Wake up!” Raphael shouted, beating Emile with the piece of shagreen as

if he meant to draw electric fluid out of it.

“_Tonnerre_!” said Emile, springing up and flinging his arms round

Raphael; “my friend, remember the sort of women you are with.”

“I am a millionaire!”

“If you are not a millionaire, you are most certainly drunk.”

“Drunk with power. I can kill you!--Silence! I am Nero! I am

Nebuchadnezzar!”

“But, Raphael, we are in queer company, and you ought to keep quiet for

the sake of your own dignity.”

“My life has been silent too long. I mean to have my revenge now on the

world at large. I will not amuse myself by squandering paltry five-franc

pieces; I will reproduce and sum up my epoch by absorbing human

lives, human minds, and human souls. There are the treasures of

pestilence--that is no paltry kind of wealth, is it? I will wrestle with

fevers--yellow, blue, or green--with whole armies, with gibbets. I can

possess Foedora--Yet no, I do not want Foedora; she is a disease; I am

dying of Foedora. I want to forget Foedora.”

“If you keep on calling out like this, I shall take you into the

dining-room.”

“Do you see this skin? It is Solomon’s will. Solomon belongs to me--a

little varlet of a king! Arabia is mine, Arabia Petraea to boot; and the

universe, and you too, if I choose. If I choose--Ah! be careful. I can

buy up all our journalist’s shop; you shall be my valet. You shall be

my valet, you shall manage my newspaper. Valet! _valet_, that is to say,

free from aches and pains, because he has no brains.”

At the word, Emile carried Raphael off into the dining-room.

“All right,” he remarked; “yes, my friend, I am your valet. But you

are about to be editor-in-chief of a newspaper; so be quiet, and behave

properly, for my sake. Have you no regard for me?”

“Regard for you! You shall have Havana cigars, with this bit of

shagreen: always with this skin, this supreme bit of shagreen. It is

a cure for corns, and efficacious remedy. Do you suffer? I will remove

them.”

“Never have I known you so senseless----”

“Senseless, my friend? Not at all. This skin contracts whenever I form a

wish--‘tis a paradox. There is a Brahmin underneath it! The Brahmin must

be a droll fellow, for our desires, look you, are bound to expand----”

“Yes, yes----”

“I tell you----”

“Yes, yes, very true, I am quite of your opinion--our desires

expand----”

“The skin, I tell you.”

“Yes.”

“You don’t believe me. I know you, my friend; you are as full of lies as

a new-made king.”

“How can you expect me to follow your drunken maunderings?”

“I will bet you I can prove it. Let us measure it----”

“Goodness! he will never get off to sleep,” exclaimed Emile, as he

watched Raphael rummaging busily in the dining-room.

Thanks to the peculiar clearness with which external objects are

sometimes projected on an inebriated brain, in sharp contrast to its own

obscure imaginings, Valentin found an inkstand and a table-napkin, with

the quickness of a monkey, repeating all the time:

“Let us measure it! Let us measure it!”

“All right,” said Emile; “let us measure it!”

The two friends spread out the table-napkin and laid the Magic Skin upon

it. As Emile’s hand appeared to be steadier than Raphael’s, he drew a

line with pen and ink round the talisman, while his friend said:

“I wished for an income of two hundred thousand livres, didn’t I? Well,

when that comes, you will observe a mighty diminution of my chagrin.”

“Yes--now go to sleep. Shall I make you comfortable on that sofa? Now

then, are you all right?”

“Yes, my nursling of the press. You shall amuse me; you shall drive

the flies away from me. The friend of adversity should be the friend of

prosperity. So I will give you some Hava--na--cig----”

“Come, now, sleep. Sleep off your gold, you millionaire!”

“You! sleep off your paragraphs! Good-night! Say good-night to

Nebuchadnezzar!--Love! Wine! France!--glory and tr--treas----”

Very soon the snorings of the two friends were added to the music with

which the rooms resounded--an ineffectual concert! The lights went out

one by one, their crystal sconces cracking in the final flare. Night

threw dark shadows over this prolonged revelry, in which Raphael’s

narrative had been a second orgy of speech, of words without ideas, of

ideas for which words had often been lacking.

Towards noon, next day, the fair Aquilina bestirred herself. She yawned

wearily. She had slept with her head upon a painted velvet footstool,

and her cheeks were mottled over by contact with the surface. Her

movement awoke Euphrasia, who suddenly sprang up with a hoarse cry; her

pretty face, that had been so fresh and fair in the evening, was sallow

now and pallid; she looked like a candidate for the hospital. The rest

awoke also by degrees, with portentous groanings, to feel themselves

over in every stiffened limb, and to experience the infinite varieties

of weariness that weighed upon them.

A servant came in to throw back the shutters and open the windows.

There they all stood, brought back to consciousness by the warm rays

of sunlight that shone upon the sleepers’ heads. Their movements during

slumber had disordered the elaborately arranged hair and toilettes of

the women. They presented a ghastly spectacle in the bright daylight.

Their hair fell ungracefully about them; their eyes, lately so

brilliant, were heavy and dim; the expression of their faces was

entirely changed. The sickly hues, which daylight brings out so

strongly, were frightful. An olive tint had crept over the lymphatic

faces, so fair and soft when in repose; the dainty red lips were

grown pale and dry, and bore tokens of the degradation of excess. Each

disowned his mistress of the night before; the women looked wan and

discolored, like flowers trampled under foot by a passing procession.

The men who scorned them looked even more horrible. Those human faces

would have made you shudder. The hollow eyes with the dark circles round

them seemed to see nothing; they were dull with wine and stupefied with

heavy slumbers that had been exhausting rather than refreshing. There

was an indescribable ferocious and stolid bestiality about these haggard

faces, where bare physical appetite appeared shorn of all the poetical

illusion with which the intellect invests it. Even these fearless

champions, accustomed to measure themselves with excess, were struck

with horror at this awakening of vice, stripped of its disguises, at

being confronted thus with sin, the skeleton in rags, lifeless and

hollow, bereft of the sophistries of the intellect and the enchantments

of luxury. Artists and courtesans scrutinized in silence and with

haggard glances the surrounding disorder, the rooms where everything had

been laid waste, at the havoc wrought by heated passions.

Demoniac laughter broke out when Taillefer, catching the smothered

murmurs of his guests, tried to greet them with a grin. His darkly

flushed, perspiring countenance loomed upon this pandemonium, like the

image of a crime that knows no remorse (see _L’Auberge rouge_). The

picture was complete. A picture of a foul life in the midst of luxury, a

hideous mixture of the pomp and squalor of humanity; an awakening after

the frenzy of Debauch has crushed and squeezed all the fruits of life in

her strong hands, till nothing but unsightly refuse is left to her, and

lies in which she believes no longer. You might have thought of Death

gloating over a family stricken with the plague.

The sweet scents and dazzling lights, the mirth and the excitement

were all no more; disgust with its nauseous sensations and searching

philosophy was there instead. The sun shone in like truth, the pure

outer air was like virtue; in contrast with the heated atmosphere, heavy

with the fumes of the previous night of revelry.

Accustomed as they were to their life, many of the girls thought of

other days and other wakings; pure and innocent days when they looked

out and saw the roses and honeysuckle about the casement, and the fresh

countryside without enraptured by the glad music of the skylark; while

earth lay in mists, lighted by the dawn, and in all the glittering

radiance of dew. Others imagined the family breakfast, the father and

children round the table, the innocent laughter, the unspeakable charm

that pervaded it all, the simple hearts and their meal as simple.

An artist mused upon his quiet studio, on his statue in its severe

beauty, and the graceful model who was waiting for him. A young man

recollected a lawsuit on which the fortunes of a family hung, and an

important transaction that needed his presence. The scholar regretted

his study and that noble work that called for him. Emile appeared just

then as smiling, blooming, and fresh as the smartest assistant in a

fashionable shop.

“You are all as ugly as bailiffs. You won’t be fit for anything to-day,

so this day is lost, and I vote for breakfast.”

At this Taillefer went out to give some orders. The women went languidly

up to the mirrors to set their toilettes in order. Each one shook

herself. The wilder sort lectured the steadier ones. The courtesans made

fun of those who looked unable to continue the boisterous festivity;

but these wan forms revived all at once, stood in groups, and talked

and smiled. Some servants quickly and adroitly set the furniture and

everything else in its place, and a magnificent breakfast was got ready.

The guests hurried into the dining-room. Everything there bore indelible

marks of yesterday’s excess, it is true, but there were at any rate some

traces of ordinary, rational existence, such traces as may be found in a

sick man’s dying struggles. And so the revelry was laid away and buried,

like carnival of a Shrove Tuesday, by masks wearied out with dancing,

drunk with drunkenness, and quite ready to be persuaded of the pleasures

of lassitude, lest they should be forced to admit their exhaustion.

As soon as these bold spirits surrounded the capitalist’s

breakfast-table, Cardot appeared. He had left the rest to make a night

of it after the dinner, and finished the evening after his own fashion

in the retirement of domestic life. Just now a sweet smile wandered over

his features. He seemed to have a presentiment that there would be some

inheritance to sample and divide, involving inventories and engrossing;

an inheritance rich in fees and deeds to draw up, and something as juicy

as the trembling fillet of beef in which their host had just plunged his

knife.

“Oh, ho! we are to have breakfast in the presence of a notary,” cried

Cursy.

“You have come here just at the right time,” said the banker, indicating

the breakfast; “you can jot down the numbers, and initial off all the

dishes.”

“There is no will to make here, but contracts of marriage there may be,

perhaps,” said the scholar, who had made a satisfactory arrangement for

the first time in twelve months.

“Oh! Oh!”

“Ah! Ah!”

“One moment,” cried Cardot, fairly deafened by a chorus of wretched

jokes. “I came here on serious business. I am bringing six millions for

one of you.” (Dead silence.) “Monsieur,” he went on, turning to Raphael,

who at the moment was unceremoniously wiping his eyes on a corner of the

table-napkin, “was not your mother a Mlle. O’Flaharty?”

“Yes,” said Raphael mechanically enough; “Barbara Marie.”

“Have you your certificate of birth about you,” Cardot went on, “and

Mme. de Valentin’s as well?”

“I believe so.”

“Very well then, monsieur; you are the sole heir of Major O’Flaharty,

who died in August 1828 at Calcutta.”

“An _incalcuttable_ fortune,” said the critic.

“The Major having bequeathed several amounts to public institutions in

his will, the French Government sent in a claim for the remainder to

the East India Company,” the notary continued. “The estate is clear and

ready to be transferred at this moment. I have been looking in vain for

the heirs and assigns of Mlle. Barbara Marie O’Flaharty for a fortnight

past, when yesterday at dinner----”

Just then Raphael suddenly staggered to his feet; he looked like a man

who has just received a blow. Acclamation took the form of silence, for

stifled envy had been the first feeling in every breast, and all eyes

devoured him like flames. Then a murmur rose, and grew like the voice of

a discontented audience, or the first mutterings of a riot, as everybody

made some comment on this news of great wealth brought by the notary.

This abrupt subservience of fate brought Raphael thoroughly to his

senses. He immediately spread out the table-napkin with which he had

lately taken the measure of the piece of shagreen. He heeded nothing as

he laid the talisman upon it, and shuddered involuntarily at the sight

of a slight difference between the present size of the skin and the

outline traced upon the linen.

“Why, what is the matter with him?” Taillefer cried. “He comes by his

fortune very cheaply.”

“_Soutiens-le Chatillon_!” said Bixiou to Emile. “The joy will kill

him.”

A ghastly white hue overspread every line of the wan features of the

heir-at-law. His face was drawn, every outline grew haggard; the hollows

in his livid countenance grew deeper, and his eyes were fixed and

staring. He was facing Death.

The opulent banker, surrounded by faded women, and faces with satiety

written on them, the enjoyment that had reached the pitch of agony, was

a living illustration of his own life.

Raphael looked thrice at the talisman, which lay passively within the

merciless outlines on the table-napkin; he tried not to believe it,

but his incredulity vanished utterly before the light of an inner

presentiment. The whole world was his; he could have all things, but the

will to possess them was utterly extinct. Like a traveler in the midst

of the desert, with but a little water left to quench his thirst, he

must measure his life by the draughts he took of it. He saw what every

desire of his must cost him in the days of his life. He believed in the

powers of the Magic Skin at last, he listened to every breath he drew;

he felt ill already; he asked himself:

“Am I not consumptive? Did not my mother die of a lung complaint?”

“Aha, Raphael! what fun you will have! What will you give me?” asked

Aquilina.

“Here’s to the death of his uncle, Major O’Flaharty! There is a man for

you.”

“He will be a peer of France.”

“Pooh! what is a peer of France since July?” said the amateur critic.

“Are you going to take a box at the Bouffons?”

“You are going to treat us all, I hope?” put in Bixiou.

“A man of his sort will be sure to do things in style,” said Emile.

The hurrah set up by the jovial assembly rang in Valentin’s ears, but he

could not grasp the sense of a single word. Vague thoughts crossed him

of the Breton peasant’s life of mechanical labor, without a wish of any

kind; he pictured him burdened with a family, tilling the soil, living

on buckwheat meal, drinking cider out of a pitcher, believing in the

Virgin and the King, taking the sacrament at Easter, dancing of a Sunday

on the green sward, and understanding never a word of the rector’s

sermon. The actual scene that lay before him, the gilded furniture, the

courtesans, the feast itself, and the surrounding splendors, seemed to

catch him by the throat and made him cough.

“Do you wish for some asparagus?” the banker cried.

“_I wish for nothing_!” thundered Raphael.

“Bravo!” Taillefer exclaimed; “you understand your position; a

fortune confers the privilege of being impertinent. You are one of us.

Gentlemen, let us drink to the might of gold! M. Valentin here, six

times a millionaire, has become a power. He is a king, like all the

rich; everything is at his disposal, everything lies under his feet.

From this time forth the axiom that ‘all Frenchmen are alike in the eyes

of the law,’ is for him a fib at the head of the Constitutional Charter.

He is not going to obey the law--the law is going to obey him. There are

neither scaffolds nor executioners for millionaires.”

“Yes, there are,” said Raphael; “they are their own executioners.”

“Here is another victim of prejudices!” cried the banker.

“Let us drink!” Raphael said, putting the talisman into his pocket.

“What are you doing?” said Emile, checking his movement. “Gentlemen,” he

added, addressing the company, who were rather taken aback by Raphael’s

behavior, “you must know that our friend Valentin here--what am I

saying?--I mean my Lord Marquis de Valentin--is in the possession of

a secret for obtaining wealth. His wishes are fulfilled as soon as he

knows them. He will make us all rich together, or he is a flunkey, and

devoid of all decent feeling.”

“Oh, Raphael dear, I should like a set of pearl ornaments!” Euphrasia

exclaimed.

“If he has any gratitude in him, he will give me a couple of carriages

with fast steppers,” said Aquilina.

“Wish for a hundred thousand a year for me!”

“Indian shawls!”

“Pay my debts!”

“Send an apoplexy to my uncle, the old stick!”

“Ten thousand a year in the funds, and I’ll cry quits with you,

Raphael!”

“Deeds of gift and no mistake,” was the notary’s comment.

“He ought, at least, to rid me of the gout!”

“Lower the funds!” shouted the banker.

These phrases flew about like the last discharge of rockets at the end

of a display of fireworks; and were uttered, perhaps, more in earnest

than in jest.

“My good friend,” Emile said solemnly, “I shall be quite satisfied with

an income of two hundred thousand livres. Please to set about it at

once.”

“Do you not know the cost, Emile?” asked Raphael.

“A nice excuse!” the poet cried; “ought we not to sacrifice ourselves

for our friends?”

“I have almost a mind to wish that you all were dead,” Valentin made

answer, with a dark, inscrutable look at his boon companions.

“Dying people are frightfully cruel,” said Emile, laughing. “You are

rich now,” he went on gravely; “very well, I will give you two months at

most before you grow vilely selfish. You are so dense already that

you cannot understand a joke. You have only to go a little further to

believe in your Magic Skin.”

Raphael kept silent, fearing the banter of the company; but he drank

immoderately, trying to drown in intoxication the recollection of his

fatal power.

III. THE AGONY

In the early days of December an old man of some seventy years of age

pursued his way along the Rue de Varenne, in spite of the falling rain.

He peered up at the door of each house, trying to discover the address

of the Marquis Raphael de Valentin, in a simple, childlike fashion,

and with the abstracted look peculiar to philosophers. His face plainly

showed traces of a struggle between a heavy mortification and an

authoritative nature; his long, gray hair hung in disorder about a face

like a piece of parchment shriveling in the fire. If a painter had come

upon this curious character, he would, no doubt, have transferred him

to his sketchbook on his return, a thin, bony figure, clad in black, and

have inscribed beneath it: “Classical poet in search of a rhyme.”

When he had identified the number that had been given to him, this

reincarnation of Rollin knocked meekly at the door of a splendid

mansion.

“Is Monsieur Raphael in?” the worthy man inquired of the Swiss in

livery.

“My Lord the Marquis sees nobody,” said the servant, swallowing a huge

morsel that he had just dipped in a large bowl of coffee.

“There is his carriage,” said the elderly stranger, pointing to a fine

equipage that stood under the wooden canopy that sheltered the steps

before the house, in place of a striped linen awning. “He is going out;

I will wait for him.”

“Then you might wait here till to-morrow morning, old boy,” said the

Swiss. “A carriage is always waiting for monsieur. Please to go away. If

I were to let any stranger come into the house without orders, I should

lose an income of six hundred francs.”

A tall old man, in a costume not unlike that of a subordinate in the

Civil Service, came out of the vestibule and hurried part of the

way down the steps, while he made a survey of the astonished elderly

applicant for admission.

“What is more, here is M. Jonathan,” the Swiss remarked; “speak to him.”

Fellow-feeling of some kind, or curiosity, brought the two old men

together in a central space in the great entrance-court. A few blades of

grass were growing in the crevices of the pavement; a terrible silence

reigned in that great house. The sight of Jonathan’s face would have

made you long to understand the mystery that brooded over it, and that

was announced by the smallest trifles about the melancholy place.

When Raphael inherited his uncle’s vast estate, his first care had been

to seek out the old and devoted servitor of whose affection he knew that

he was secure. Jonathan had wept tears of joy at the sight of his young

master, of whom he thought he had taken a final farewell; and when the

marquis exalted him to the high office of steward, his happiness could

not be surpassed. So old Jonathan became an intermediary power between

Raphael and the world at large. He was the absolute disposer of his

master’s fortune, the blind instrument of an unknown will, and a sixth

sense, as it were, by which the emotions of life were communicated to

Raphael.

“I should like to speak with M. Raphael, sir,” said the elderly person

to Jonathan, as he climbed up the steps some way, into a shelter from

the rain.

“To speak with my Lord the Marquis?” the steward cried. “He scarcely

speaks even to me, his foster-father!”

“But I am likewise his foster-father,” said the old man. “If your wife

was his foster-mother, I fed him myself with the milk of the Muses. He

is my nursling, my child, carus alumnus! I formed his mind, cultivated

his understanding, developed his genius, and, I venture to say it, to

my own honor and glory. Is he not one of the most remarkable men of our

epoch? He was one of my pupils in two lower forms, and in rhetoric. I am

his professor.”

“Ah, sir, then you are M. Porriquet?”

“Exactly, sir, but----”

“Hush! hush!” Jonathan called to two underlings, whose voices broke the

monastic silence that shrouded the house.

“But is the Marquis ill, sir?” the professor continued.

“My dear sir,” Jonathan replied, “Heaven only knows what is the matter

with my master. You see, there are not a couple of houses like ours

anywhere in Paris. Do you understand? Not two houses. Faith, that

there are not. My Lord the Marquis had this hotel purchased for him; it

formerly belonged to a duke and a peer of France; then he spent three

hundred thousand francs over furnishing it. That’s a good deal, you

know, three hundred thousand francs! But every room in the house is a

perfect wonder. ‘Good,’ said I to myself when I saw this magnificence;

‘it is just like it used to be in the time of my lord, his late

grandfather; and the young marquis is going to entertain all Paris

and the Court!’ Nothing of the kind! My lord refused to see any one

whatever. ‘Tis a funny life that he leads, M. Porriquet, you understand.

An _inconciliable_ life. He rises every day at the same time. I am the

only person, you see, that may enter his room. I open all the shutters

at seven o’clock, summer or winter. It is all arranged very oddly. As I

come in I say to him:

“‘You must get up and dress, my Lord Marquis.’

“Then he rises and dresses himself. I have to give him his

dressing-gown, and it is always after the same pattern, and of the same

material. I am obliged to replace it when it can be used no longer,

simply to save him the trouble of asking for a new one. A queer fancy!

As a matter of fact, he has a thousand francs to spend every day, and

he does as he pleases, the dear child. And besides, I am so fond of him

that if he gave me a box on the ear on one side, I should hold out the

other to him! The most difficult things he will tell me to do, and yet I

do them, you know! He gives me a lot of trifles to attend to, that I

am well set to work! He reads the newspapers, doesn’t he? Well, my

instructions are to put them always in the same place, on the same

table. I always go at the same hour and shave him myself; and don’t I

tremble! The cook would forfeit the annuity of a thousand crowns that

he is to come into after my lord’s death, if breakfast is not served

_inconciliably_ at ten o’clock precisely. The menus are drawn up for the

whole year round, day after day. My Lord the Marquis has not a thing

to wish for. He has strawberries whenever there are any, and he has the

earliest mackerel to be had in Paris. The programme is printed every

morning. He knows his dinner by rote. In the next place, he dresses

himself at the same hour, in the same clothes, the same linen, that

I always put on the same chair, you understand? I have to see that he

always has the same cloth; and if it should happen that his coat came

to grief (a mere supposition), I should have to replace it by another

without saying a word about it to him. If it is fine, I go in and say to

my master:

“‘You ought to go out, sir.’

“He says Yes, or No. If he has a notion that he will go out, he doesn’t

wait for his horses; they are always ready harnessed; the coachman stops

there _inconciliably_, whip in hand, just as you see him out there.

In the evening, after dinner, my master goes one day to the Opera, the

other to the Ital----no, he hasn’t yet gone to the Italiens, though,

for I could not find a box for him until yesterday. Then he comes in at

eleven o’clock precisely, to go to bed. At any time in the day when

he has nothing to do, he reads--he is always reading, you see--it is a

notion he has. My instructions are to read the _Journal de la Librairie_

before he sees it, and to buy new books, so that he finds them on his

chimney-piece on the very day that they are published. I have orders to

go into his room every hour or so, to look after the fire and everything

else, and to see that he wants nothing. He gave me a little book, sir,

to learn off by heart, with all my duties written in it--a regular

catechism! In summer I have to keep a cool and even temperature with

blocks of ice and at all seasons to put fresh flowers all about. He is

rich! He has a thousand francs to spend every day; he can indulge his

fancies! And he hadn’t even necessaries for so long, poor child! He

doesn’t annoy anybody; he is as good as gold; he never opens his mouth,

for instance; the house and garden are absolutely silent. In short, my

master has not a single wish left; everything comes in the twinkling

of an eye, if he raises his hand, and _instanter_. Quite right, too.

If servants are not looked after, everything falls into confusion. You

would never believe the lengths he goes about things. His rooms are

all--what do you call it?--er--er--_en suite_. Very well; just suppose,

now, that he opens his room door or the door of his study; presto! all

the other doors fly open of themselves by a patent contrivance; and then

he can go from one end of the house to the other and not find a single

door shut; which is all very nice and pleasant and convenient for us

great folk! But, on my word, it cost us a lot of money! And, after all,

M. Porriquet, he said to me at last:

“‘Jonathan, you will look after me as if I were a baby in long clothes,’

Yes, sir, ‘long clothes!’ those were his very words. ‘You will think of

all my requirements for me.’ I am the master, so to speak, and he is

the servant, you understand? The reason of it? Ah, my word, that is just

what nobody on earth knows but himself and God Almighty. It is quite

_inconciliable_!”

“He is writing a poem!” exclaimed the old professor.

“You think he is writing a poem, sir? It’s a very absorbing affair,

then! But, you know, I don’t think he is. He often tells me that he

wants to live like a _vergetation_; he wants to _vergetate_. Only

yesterday he was looking at a tulip while he was dressing, and he said

to me:

“‘There is my own life--I am _vergetating_, my poor Jonathan.’ Now, some

of them insist that that is monomania. It is _inconciliable_!”

“All this makes it very clear to me, Jonathan,” the professor answered,

with a magisterial solemnity that greatly impressed the old servant,

“that your master is absorbed in a great work. He is deep in

vast meditations, and has no wish to be distracted by the petty

preoccupations of ordinary life. A man of genius forgets everything

among his intellectual labors. One day the famous Newton----”

“Newton?--oh, ah! I don’t know the name,” said Jonathan.

“Newton, a great geometrician,” Porriquet went on, “once sat for

twenty-four hours leaning his elbow on the table; when he emerged from

his musings, he was a day out in his reckoning, just as if he had been

sleeping. I will go to see him, dear lad; I may perhaps be of some use

to him.”

“Not for a moment!” Jonathan cried. “Not though you were King of

France--I mean the real old one. You could not go in unless you forced

the doors open and walked over my body. But I will go and tell him you

are here, M. Porriquet, and I will put it to him like this, ‘Ought he

to come up?’ And he will say Yes or No. I never say, ‘Do you wish?’

or ‘Will you?’ or ‘Do you want?’ Those words are scratched out of the

dictionary. He let out at me once with a ‘Do you want to kill me?’ he

was so very angry.”

Jonathan left the old schoolmaster in the vestibule, signing to him to

come no further, and soon returned with a favorable answer. He led the

old gentleman through one magnificent room after another, where every

door stood open. At last Porriquet beheld his pupil at some distance

seated beside the fire.

Raphael was reading the paper. He sat in an armchair wrapped in a

dressing-gown with some large pattern on it. The intense melancholy that

preyed upon him could be discerned in his languid posture and feeble

frame; it was depicted on his brow and white face; he looked like some

plant bleached by darkness. There was a kind of effeminate grace about

him; the fancies peculiar to wealthy invalids were also noticeable. His

hands were soft and white, like a pretty woman’s; he wore his fair hair,

now grown scanty, curled about his temples with a refinement of vanity.

The Greek cap that he wore was pulled to one side by the weight of its

tassel; too heavy for the light material of which it was made. He

had let the paper-knife fall at his feet, a malachite blade with gold

mounting, which he had used to cut the leaves of the book. The amber

mouthpiece of a magnificent Indian hookah lay on his knee; the enameled

coils lay like a serpent in the room, but he had forgotten to draw out

its fresh perfume. And yet there was a complete contradiction between

the general feebleness of his young frame and the blue eyes, where all

his vitality seemed to dwell; an extraordinary intelligence seemed to

look out from them and to grasp everything at once.

That expression was painful to see. Some would have read despair in

it, and others some inner conflict terrible as remorse. It was the

inscrutable glance of helplessness that must perforce consign its

desires to the depths of its own heart; or of a miser enjoying in

imagination all the pleasures that his money could procure for him,

while he declines to lessen his hoard; the look of a bound Prometheus,

of the fallen Napoleon of 1815, when he learned at the Elysee the

strategical blunder that his enemies had made, and asked for twenty-four

hours of command in vain; or rather it was the same look that Raphael

had turned upon the Seine, or upon his last piece of gold at the

gaming-table only a few months ago.

He was submitting his intelligence and his will to the homely

common-sense of an old peasant whom fifty years of domestic service had

scarcely civilized. He had given up all the rights of life in order to

live; he had despoiled his soul of all the romance that lies in a wish;

and almost rejoiced at thus becoming a sort of automaton. The better to

struggle with the cruel power that he had challenged, he had followed

Origen’s example, and had maimed and chastened his imagination.

The day after he had seen the diminution of the Magic Skin, at his

sudden accession of wealth, he happened to be at his notary’s house. A

well-known physician had told them quite seriously, at dessert, how

a Swiss attacked by consumption had cured himself. The man had never

spoken a word for ten years, and had compelled himself to draw six

breaths only, every minute, in the close atmosphere of a cow-house,

adhering all the time to a regimen of exceedingly light diet. “I will be

like that man,” thought Raphael to himself. He wanted life at any price,

and so he led the life of a machine in the midst of all the luxury

around him.

The old professor confronted this youthful corpse and shuddered; there

seemed something unnatural about the meagre, enfeebled frame. In the

Marquis, with his eager eyes and careworn forehead, he could hardly

recognize the fresh-cheeked and rosy pupil with the active limbs,

whom he remembered. If the worthy classicist, sage critic, and general

preserver of the traditions of correct taste had read Byron, he would

have thought that he had come on a Manfred when he looked to find Childe

Harold.

“Good day, pere Porriquet,” said Raphael, pressing the old

schoolmaster’s frozen fingers in his own damp ones; “how are you?”

“I am very well,” replied the other, alarmed by the touch of that

feverish hand. “But how about you?”

“Oh, I am hoping to keep myself in health.”

“You are engaged in some great work, no doubt?”

“No,” Raphael answered. “Exegi monumemtum, pere Porriquet; I have

contributed an important page to science, and have now bidden her

farewell for ever. I scarcely know where my manuscript is.”

“The style is no doubt correct?” queried the schoolmaster. “You, I hope,

would never have adopted the barbarous language of the new school, which

fancies it has worked such wonders by discovering Ronsard!”

“My work treats of physiology pure and simple.”

“Oh, then, there is no more to be said,” the schoolmaster answered.

“Grammar must yield to the exigencies of discovery. Nevertheless, young

man, a lucid and harmonious style--the diction of Massillon, of M. de

Buffon, of the great Racine--a classical style, in short, can never

spoil anything----But, my friend,” the schoolmaster interrupted

himself, “I was forgetting the object of my visit, which concerns my own

interests.”

Too late Raphael recalled to mind the verbose eloquence and elegant

circumlocutions which in a long professorial career had grown habitual

to his old tutor, and almost regretted that he had admitted him; but

just as he was about to wish to see him safely outside, he promptly

suppressed his secret desire with a stealthy glance at the Magic Skin.

It hung there before him, fastened down upon some white material,

surrounded by a red line accurately traced about its prophetic outlines.

Since that fatal carouse, Raphael had stifled every least whim, and

had lived so as not to cause the slightest movement in the terrible

talisman. The Magic Skin was like a tiger with which he must live

without exciting its ferocity. He bore patiently, therefore, with the

old schoolmaster’s prolixity.

Porriquet spent an hour in telling him about the persecutions directed

against him ever since the Revolution of July. The worthy man, having

a liking for strong governments, had expressed the patriotic wish that

grocers should be left to their counters, statesmen to the management of

public business, advocates to the Palais de Justice, and peers of France

to the Luxembourg; but one of the popularity-seeking ministers of the

Citizen King had ousted him from his chair, on an accusation of Carlism,

and the old man now found himself without pension or post, and with no

bread to eat. As he played the part of guardian angel to a poor nephew,

for whose schooling at Saint Sulpice he was paying, he came less on his

own account than for his adopted child’s sake, to entreat his former

pupil’s interest with the new minister. He did not ask to be reinstated,

but only for a position at the head of some provincial school.

QRaphael had fallen a victim to unconquerable drowsiness by the time

that the worthy man’s monotonous voice ceased to sound in his ears.

Civility had compelled him to look at the pale and unmoving eyes of

the deliberate and tedious old narrator, till he himself had reached

stupefaction, magnetized in an inexplicable way by the power of inertia.

“Well, my dear pere Porriquet,” he said, not very certain what the

question was to which he was replying, “but I can do nothing for you,

nothing at all. _I wish very heartily_ that you may succeed----”

All at once, without seeing the change wrought on the old man’s sallow

and wrinkled brow by these conventional phrases, full of indifference

and selfishness, Raphael sprang to his feet like a startled roebuck.

He saw a thin white line between the black piece of hide and the red

tracing about it, and gave a cry so fearful that the poor professor was

frightened by it.

“Old fool! Go!” he cried. “You will be appointed as headmaster! Couldn’t

you have asked me for an annuity of a thousand crowns rather than a

murderous wish? Your visit would have cost me nothing. There are a

hundred thousand situations to be had in France, but I have only

one life. A man’s life is worth more than all the situations in the

world.--Jonathan!”

Jonathan appeared.

“This is your doing, double-distilled idiot! What made you suggest

that I should see M. Porriquet?” and he pointed to the old man, who was

petrified with fright. “Did I put myself in your hands for you to tear

me in pieces? You have just shortened my life by ten years! Another

blunder of this kind, and you will lay me where I have laid my father.

Would I not far rather have possessed the beautiful Foedora? And I have

obliged that old hulk instead--that rag of humanity! I had money enough

for him. And, moreover, if all the Porriquets in the world were dying of

hunger, what is that to me?”

Raphael’s face was white with anger; a slight froth marked his trembling

lips; there was a savage gleam in his eyes. The two elders shook with

terror in his presence like two children at the sight of a snake. The

young man fell back in his armchair, a kind of reaction took place in

him, the tears flowed fast from his angry eyes.

“Oh, my life!” he cried, “that fair life of mine. Never to know a kindly

thought again, to love no more; nothing is left to me!”

He turned to the professor and went on in a gentle voice--“The harm

is done, my old friend. Your services have been well repaid; and my

misfortune has at any rate contributed to the welfare of a good and

worthy man.”

His tones betrayed so much feeling that the almost unintelligible

words drew tears from the two old men, such tears as are shed over some

pathetic song in a foreign tongue.

“He is epileptic,” muttered Porriquet.

“I understand your kind intentions, my friend,” Raphael answered

gently. “You would make excuses for me. Ill-health cannot be helped, but

ingratitude is a grievous fault. Leave me now,” he added. “To-morrow or

the next day, or possibly to-night, you will receive your appointment;

Resistance has triumphed over Motion. Farewell.”

The old schoolmaster went away, full of keen apprehension as to

Valentin’s sanity. A thrill of horror ran through him; there had been

something supernatural, he thought, in the scene he had passed through.

He could hardly believe his own impressions, and questioned them like

one awakened from a painful dream.

“Now attend to me, Jonathan,” said the young man to his old servant.

“Try to understand the charge confided to you.”

“Yes, my Lord Marquis.”

“I am as a man outlawed from humanity.”

“Yes, my Lord Marquis.”

“All the pleasures of life disport themselves round my bed of death,

and dance about me like fair women; but if I beckon to them, I must die.

Death always confronts me. You must be the barrier between the world and

me.”

“Yes, my Lord Marquis,” said the old servant, wiping the drops of

perspiration from his wrinkled forehead. “But if you don’t wish to

see pretty women, how will you manage at the Italiens this evening? An

English family is returning to London, and I have taken their box for

the rest of the season, and it is in a splendid position--superb; in the

first row.”

Raphael, deep in his own deep musings, paid no attention to him.

“Do you see that splendid equipage, a brougham painted a dark brown

color, but with the arms of an ancient and noble family shining from

the panels? As it rolls past, all the shop-girls admire it, and look

longingly at the yellow satin lining, the rugs from la Savonnerie,

the daintiness and freshness of every detail, the silken cushions and

tightly-fitting glass windows. Two liveried footmen are mounted behind

this aristocratic carriage; and within, a head lies back among

the silken cushions, the feverish face and hollow eyes of Raphael,

melancholy and sad. Emblem of the doom of wealth! He flies across Paris

like a rocket, and reaches the peristyle of the Theatre Favart. The

passers-by make way for him; the two footmen help him to alight, an

envious crowd looking on the while.”

“What has that fellow done to be so rich?” asks a poor law-student, who

cannot listen to the magical music of Rossini for lack of a five-franc

piece.

Raphael walked slowly along the gangway; he expected no enjoyment from

these pleasures he had once coveted so eagerly. In the interval before

the second act of Semiramide he walked up and down in the lobby, and

along the corridors, leaving his box, which he had not yet entered, to

look after itself. The instinct of property was dead within him already.

Like all invalids, he thought of nothing but his own sufferings. He was

leaning against the chimney-piece in the greenroom. A group had gathered

about it of dandies, young and old, of ministers, of peers without

peerages, and peerages without peers, for so the Revolution of July had

ordered matters. Among a host of adventurers and journalists, in fact,

Raphael beheld a strange, unearthly figure a few paces away among

the crowd. He went towards this grotesque object to see it better,

half-closing his eyes with exceeding superciliousness.

“What a wonderful bit of painting!” he said to himself. The stranger’s

hair and eyebrows and a Mazarin tuft on the chin had been dyed black,

but the result was a spurious, glossy, purple tint that varied its hues

according to the light; the hair had been too white, no doubt, to

take the preparation. Anxiety and cunning were depicted in the narrow,

insignificant face, with its wrinkles incrusted by thick layers of red

and white paint. This red enamel, lacking on some portions of his face,

strongly brought out his natural feebleness and livid hues. It was

impossible not to smile at this visage with the protuberant forehead

and pointed chin, a face not unlike those grotesque wooden figures that

German herdsmen carve in their spare moments.

An attentive observer looking from Raphael to this elderly Adonis would

have remarked a young man’s eyes set in a mask of age, in the case of

the Marquis, and in the other case the dim eyes of age peering forth

from behind a mask of youth. Valentin tried to recollect when and

where he had seen this little old man before. He was thin, fastidiously

cravatted, booted and spurred like one-and-twenty; he crossed his arms

and clinked his spurs as if he possessed all the wanton energy of

youth. He seemed to move about without constraint or difficulty. He

had carefully buttoned up his fashionable coat, which disguised his

powerful, elderly frame, and gave him the appearance of an antiquated

coxcomb who still follows the fashions.

For Raphael this animated puppet possessed all the interest of an

apparition. He gazed at it as if it had been some smoke-begrimed

Rembrandt, recently restored and newly framed. This idea found him a

clue to the truth among his confused recollections; he recognized the

dealer in antiquities, the man to whom he owed his calamities!

A noiseless laugh broke just then from the fantastical personage,

straightening the line of his lips that stretched across a row of

artificial teeth. That laugh brought out, for Raphael’s heated fancy, a

strong resemblance between the man before him and the type of head

that painters have assigned to Goethe’s Mephistopheles. A crowd

of superstitious thoughts entered Raphael’s sceptical mind; he

was convinced of the powers of the devil and of all the sorcerer’s

enchantments embodied in mediaeval tradition, and since worked up by

poets. Shrinking in horror from the destiny of Faust, he prayed for the

protection of Heaven with all the ardent faith of a dying man in God and

the Virgin. A clear, bright radiance seemed to give him a glimpse of

the heaven of Michael Angelo or of Raphael of Urbino: a venerable

white-bearded man, a beautiful woman seated in an aureole above the

clouds and winged cherub heads. Now he had grasped and received the

meaning of those imaginative, almost human creations; they seemed to

explain what had happened to him, to leave him yet one hope.

But when the greenroom of the Italiens returned upon his sight he

beheld, not the Virgin, but a very handsome young person. The execrable

Euphrasia, in all the splendor of her toilette, with its orient pearls,

had come thither, impatient for her ardent, elderly admirer. She was

insolently exhibiting herself with her defiant face and glittering

eyes to an envious crowd of stockbrokers, a visible testimony to the

inexhaustible wealth that the old dealer permitted her to squander.

Raphael recollected the mocking wish with which he had accepted the old

man’s luckless gift, and tasted all the sweets of revenge when he beheld

the spectacle of sublime wisdom fallen to such a depth as this,

wisdom for which such humiliation had seemed a thing impossible. The

centenarian greeted Euphrasia with a ghastly smile, receiving her

honeyed words in reply. He offered her his emaciated arm, and went

twice or thrice round the greenroom with her; the envious glances and

compliments with which the crowd received his mistress delighted him; he

did not see the scornful smiles, nor hear the caustic comments to which

he gave rise.

“In what cemetery did this young ghoul unearth that corpse of hers?”

asked a dandy of the Romantic faction.

Euphrasia began to smile. The speaker was a slender, fair-haired youth,

with bright blue eyes, and a moustache. His short dress coat, hat tilted

over one ear, and sharp tongue, all denoted the species.

“How many old men,” said Raphael to himself, “bring an upright,

virtuous, and hard-working life to a close in folly! His feet are cold

already, and he is making love.”

“Well, sir,” exclaimed Valentin, stopping the merchant’s progress, while

he stared hard at Euphrasia, “have you quite forgotten the stringent

maxims of your philosophy?”

“Ah, I am as happy now as a young man,” said the other, in a cracked

voice. “I used to look at existence from a wrong standpoint. One hour of

love has a whole life in it.”

The playgoers heard the bell ring, and left the greenroom to take their

places again. Raphael and the old merchant separated. As he entered

his box, the Marquis saw Foedora sitting exactly opposite to him on the

other side of the theatre. The Countess had probably only just come, for

she was just flinging off her scarf to leave her throat uncovered, and

was occupied with going through all the indescribable manoeuvres of a

coquette arranging herself. All eyes were turned upon her. A young peer

of France had come with her; she asked him for the lorgnette she had

given him to carry. Raphael knew the despotism to which his successor

had resigned himself, in her gestures, and in the way she treated her

companion. He was also under the spell no doubt, another dupe beating

with all the might of a real affection against the woman’s cold

calculations, enduring all the tortures from which Valentin had luckily

freed himself.

Foedora’s face lighted up with indescribable joy. After directing her

lorgnette upon every box in turn, to make a rapid survey of all the

dresses, she was conscious that by her toilette and her beauty she had

eclipsed the loveliest and best-dressed women in Paris. She laughed

to show her white teeth; her head with its wreath of flowers was never

still, in her quest of admiration. Her glances went from one box to

another, as she diverted herself with the awkward way in which a Russian

princess wore her bonnet, or over the utter failure of a bonnet with

which a banker’s daughter had disfigured herself.

All at once she met Raphael’s steady gaze and turned pale, aghast at the

intolerable contempt in her rejected lover’s eyes. Not one of her exiled

suitors had failed to own her power over them; Valentin alone was proof

against her attractions. A power that can be defied with impunity is

drawing to its end. This axiom is as deeply engraved on the heart of

woman as in the minds of kings. In Raphael, therefore, Foedora saw the

deathblow of her influence and her ability to please. An epigram of his,

made at the Opera the day before, was already known in the salons of

Paris. The biting edge of that terrible speech had already given the

Countess an incurable wound. We know how to cauterize a wound, but we

know of no treatment as yet for the stab of a phrase. As every other

woman in the house looked by turns at her and at the Marquis, Foedora

would have consigned them all to the oubliettes of some Bastille; for in

spite of her capacity for dissimulation, her discomfiture was discerned

by her rivals. Her unfailing consolation had slipped from her at last.

The delicious thought, “I am the most beautiful,” the thought that at

all times had soothed every mortification, had turned into a lie.

At the opening of the second act a woman took up her position not very

far from Raphael, in a box that had been empty hitherto. A murmur of

admiration went up from the whole house. In that sea of human faces

there was a movement of every living wave; all eyes were turned upon the

stranger lady. The applause of young and old was so prolonged, that when

the orchestra began, the musicians turned to the audience to request

silence, and then they themselves joined in the plaudits and swelled the

confusion. Excited talk began in every box, every woman equipped herself

with an opera glass, elderly men grew young again, and polished the

glasses of their lorgnettes with their gloves. The enthusiasm subsided

by degrees, the stage echoed with the voices of the singers, and order

reigned as before. The aristocratic section, ashamed of having yielded

to a spontaneous feeling, again assumed their wonted politely frigid

manner. The well-to-do dislike to be astonished at anything; at the

first sight of a beautiful thing it becomes their duty to discover the

defect in it which absolves them from admiring it,--the feeling of all

ordinary minds. Yet a few still remained motionless and heedless of the

music, artlessly absorbed in the delight of watching Raphael’s neighbor.

Valentin noticed Taillefer’s mean, obnoxious countenance by Aquilina’s

side in a lower box, and received an approving smirk from him. Then he

saw Emile, who seemed to say from where he stood in the orchestra, “Just

look at that lovely creature there, close beside you!” Lastly, he saw

Rastignac, with Mme. de Nucingen and her daughter, twisting his gloves

like a man in despair, because he was tethered to his place, and could

not leave it to go any nearer to the unknown fair divinity.

Raphael’s life depended upon a covenant that he had made with himself,

and had hitherto kept sacred. He would give no special heed to any

woman whatever; and the better to guard against temptation, he used

a cunningly contrived opera-glass which destroyed the harmony of the

fairest features by hideous distortions. He had not recovered from the

terror that had seized on him in the morning when, at a mere expression

of civility, the Magic Skin had contracted so abruptly. So Raphael was

determined not to turn his face in the direction of his neighbor. He sat

imperturbable as a duchess with his back against the corner of the box,

thereby shutting out half of his neighbor’s view of the stage, appearing

to disregard her, and even to be unaware that a pretty woman sat there

just behind him.

His neighbor copied Valentin’s position exactly; she leaned her elbow

on the edge of her box and turned her face in three-quarter profile upon

the singers on the stage, as if she were sitting to a painter. These

two people looked like two estranged lovers still sulking, still turning

their backs upon each other, who will go into each other’s arms at the

first tender word.

Now and again his neighbor’s ostrich feathers or her hair came in

contact with Raphael’s head, giving him a pleasurable thrill, against

which he sternly fought. In a little while he felt the touch of the

soft frill of lace that went round her dress; he could hear the gracious

sounds of the folds of her dress itself, light rustling noises full of

enchantment; he could even feel her movements as she breathed; with the

gentle stir thus imparted to her form and to her draperies, it seemed

to Raphael that all her being was suddenly communicated to him in

an electric spark. The lace and tulle that caressed him imparted

the delicious warmth of her bare, white shoulders. By a freak in

the ordering of things, these two creatures, kept apart by social

conventions, with the abysses of death between them, breathed together

and perhaps thought of one another. Finally, the subtle perfume of aloes

completed the work of Raphael’s intoxication. Opposition heated his

imagination, and his fancy, become the wilder for the limits imposed

upon it, sketched a woman for him in outlines of fire. He turned

abruptly, the stranger made a similar movement, startled no doubt at

being brought in contact with a stranger; and they remained face to

face, each with the same thought.

“Pauline!”

“M. Raphael!”

Each surveyed the other, both of them petrified with astonishment.

Raphael noticed Pauline’s daintily simple costume. A woman’s experienced

eyes would have discerned and admired the outlines beneath the modest

gauze folds of her bodice and the lily whiteness of her throat. And

then her more than mortal clearness of soul, her maidenly modesty, her

graceful bearing, all were unchanged. Her sleeve was quivering with

agitation, for the beating of her heart was shaking her whole frame.

“Come to the Hotel de Saint-Quentin to-morrow for your papers,” she

said. “I will be there at noon. Be punctual.”

She rose hastily, and disappeared. Raphael thought of following Pauline,

feared to compromise her, and stayed. He looked at Foedora; she seemed

to him positively ugly. Unable to understand a single phrase of the

music, and feeling stifled in the theatre, he went out, and returned

home with a full heart.

“Jonathan,” he said to the old servant, as soon as he lay in bed,

“give me half a drop of laudanum on a piece of sugar, and don’t wake me

to-morrow till twenty minutes to twelve.”

“I want Pauline to love me!” he cried next morning, looking at the

talisman the while in unspeakable anguish.

The skin did not move in the least; it seemed to have lost its power to

shrink; doubtless it could not fulfil a wish fulfilled already.

“Ah!” exclaimed Raphael, feeling as if a mantle of lead had fallen away,

which he had worn ever since the day when the talisman had been given to

him; “so you are playing me false, you are not obeying me, the pact is

broken! I am free; I shall live. Then was it all a wretched joke?” But

he did not dare to believe in his own thought as he uttered it.

He dressed himself as simply as had formerly been his wont, and set out

on foot for his old lodging, trying to go back in fancy to the happy

days when he abandoned himself without peril to vehement desires, the

days when he had not yet condemned all human enjoyment. As he walked

he beheld Pauline--not the Pauline of the Hotel Saint-Quentin, but the

Pauline of last evening. Here was the accomplished mistress he had so

often dreamed of, the intelligent young girl with the loving nature and

artistic temperament, who understood poets, who understood poetry, and

lived in luxurious surroundings. Here, in short, was Foedora,

gifted with a great soul; or Pauline become a countess, and twice a

millionaire, as Foedora had been. When he reached the worn threshold,

and stood upon the broken step at the door, where in the old days he had

had so many desperate thoughts, an old woman came out of the room within

and spoke to him.

“You are M. Raphael de Valentin, are you not?”

“Yes, good mother,” he replied.

“You know your old room then,” she replied; “you are expected up there.”

“Does Mme. Gaudin still own the house?” Raphael asked.

“Oh no, sir. Mme. Gaudin is a baroness now. She lives in a fine house

of her own on the other side of the river. Her husband has come back.

My goodness, he brought back thousands and thousands. They say she could

buy up all the Quartier Saint-Jacques if she liked. She gave me her

basement room for nothing, and the remainder of her lease. Ah, she’s

a kind woman all the same; she is no more proud to-day than she was

yesterday.”

Raphael hurried up the staircase to his garret; as he reached the last

few steps he heard the sounds of a piano. Pauline was there, simply

dressed in a cotton gown, but the way that it was made, like the gloves,

hat, and shawl that she had thrown carelessly upon the bed, revealed a

change of fortune.

“Ah, there you are!” cried Pauline, turning her head, and rising with

unconcealed delight.

Raphael went to sit beside her, flushed, confused, and happy; he looked

at her in silence.

“Why did you leave us then?” she asked, dropping her eyes as the flush

deepened on his face. “What became of you?”

“Ah, I have been very miserable, Pauline; I am very miserable still.”

“Alas!” she said, filled with pitying tenderness. “I guessed your fate

yesterday when I saw you so well dressed, and apparently so wealthy; but

in reality? Eh, M. Raphael, is it as it always used to be with you?”

Valentin could not restrain the tears that sprang to his eyes.

“Pauline,” he exclaimed, “I----”

He went no further, love sparkled in his eyes, and his emotion

overflowed his face.

“Oh, he loves me! he loves me!” cried Pauline.

Raphael felt himself unable to say one word; he bent his head. The young

girl took his hand at this; she pressed it as she said, half sobbing and

half laughing:--

“Rich, rich, happy and rich! Your Pauline is rich. But I? Oh, I ought

to be very poor to-day. I have said, times without number, that I would

give all the wealth upon this earth for those words, ‘He loves me!’ O

my Raphael! I have millions. You like luxury, you will be glad; but you

must love me and my heart besides, for there is so much love for you

in my heart. You don’t know? My father has come back. I am a wealthy

heiress. Both he and my mother leave me completely free to decide my own

fate. I am free--do you understand?”

Seized with a kind of frenzy, Raphael grasped Pauline’s hands and kissed

them eagerly and vehemently, with an almost convulsive caress. Pauline

drew her hands away, laid them on Raphael’s shoulders, and drew him

towards her. They understood one another--in that close embrace, in

the unalloyed and sacred fervor of that one kiss without an

afterthought--the first kiss by which two souls take possession of each

other.

“Ah, I will not leave you any more,” said Pauline, falling back in her

chair. “I do not know how I come to be so bold!” she added, blushing.

“Bold, my Pauline? Do not fear it. It is love, love true and deep and

everlasting like my own, is it not?”

“Speak!” she cried. “Go on speaking, so long your lips have been dumb

for me.”

“Then you have loved me all along?”

“Loved you? _Mon Dieu_! How often I have wept here, setting your room

straight, and grieving for your poverty and my own. I would have sold

myself to the evil one to spare you one vexation! You are MY Raphael

to-day, really my own Raphael, with that handsome head of yours, and

your heart is mine too; yes, that above all, your heart--O wealth

inexhaustible! Well, where was I?” she went on after a pause. “Oh yes!

We have three, four, or five millions, I believe. If I were poor, I

should perhaps desire to bear your name, to be acknowledged as your

wife; but as it is, I would give up the whole world for you, I would

be your servant still, now and always. Why, Raphael, if I give you my

fortune, my heart, myself to-day, I do no more than I did that day when

I put a certain five-franc piece in the drawer there,” and she pointed

to the table. “Oh, how your exultation hurt me then!”

“Oh, why are you rich?” Raphael cried; “why is there no vanity in you? I

can do nothing for you.”

He wrung his hands in despair and happiness and love.

“When you are the Marquise de Valentin, I know that the title and the

fortune for thee, heavenly soul, will not be worth----”

“One hair of your head,” she cried.

“I have millions too. But what is wealth to either of us now? There is

my life--ah, that I can offer, take it.”

“Your love, Raphael, your love is all the world to me. Are your thoughts

of me? I am the happiest of the happy!”

“Can any one overhear us?” asked Raphael.

“Nobody,” she replied, and a mischievous gesture escaped her.

“Come, then!” cried Valentin, holding out his arms.

She sprang upon his knees and clasped her arms about his neck.

“Kiss me!” she cried, “after all the pain you have given me; to blot out

the memory of the grief that your joys have caused me; and for the sake

of the nights that I spent in painting hand-screens----”

“Those hand-screens of yours?”

“Now that we are rich, my darling, I can tell you all about it. Poor

boy! how easy it is to delude a clever man! Could you have had white

waistcoats and clean shirts twice a week for three francs every month to

the laundress? Why, you used to drink twice as much milk as your money

would have paid for. I deceived you all round--over firing, oil, and

even money. O Raphael mine, don’t have me for your wife, I am far too

cunning!” she said laughing.

“But how did you manage?”

“I used to work till two o’clock in the morning; I gave my mother half

the money made by my screens, and the other half went to you.”

They looked at one another for a moment, both bewildered by love and

gladness.

“Some day we shall have to pay for this happiness by some terrible

sorrow,” cried Raphael.

“Perhaps you are married?” said Pauline. “Oh, I will not give you up to

any other woman.”

“I am free, my beloved.”

“Free!” she repeated. “Free, and mine!”

She slipped down upon her knees, clasped her hands, and looked at

Raphael in an enthusiasm of devotion.

“I am afraid I shall go mad. How handsome you are!” she went on, passing

her fingers through her lover’s fair hair. “How stupid your Countess

Foedora is! How pleased I was yesterday with the homage they all paid to

me! SHE has never been applauded. Dear, when I felt your arm against my

back, I heard a vague voice within me that cried, ‘He is there!’ and I

turned round and saw you. I fled, for I longed so to throw my arms about

you before them all.”

“How happy you are--you can speak!” Raphael exclaimed. “My heart is

overwhelmed; I would weep, but I cannot. Do not draw your hand away.

I could stay here looking at you like this for the rest of my life, I

think; happy and content.”

“O my love, say that once more!”

“Ah, what are words?” answered Valentin, letting a hot tear fall on

Pauline’s hands. “Some time I will try to tell you of my love; just now

I can only feel it.”

“You,” she said, “with your lofty soul and your great genius, with that

heart of yours that I know so well; are you really mine, as I am yours?”

“For ever and ever, my sweet creature,” said Raphael in an uncertain

voice. “You shall be my wife, my protecting angel. My griefs have always

been dispelled by your presence, and my courage revived; that angelic

smile now on your lips has purified me, so to speak. A new life seems

about to begin for me. The cruel past and my wretched follies are hardly

more to me than evil dreams. At your side I breathe an atmosphere of

happiness, and I am pure. Be with me always,” he added, pressing her

solemnly to his beating heart.

“Death may come when it will,” said Pauline in ecstasy; “I have lived!”

Happy he who shall divine their joy, for he must have experienced it.

“I wish that no one might enter this dear garret again, my Raphael,”

said Pauline, after two hours of silence.

“We must have the door walled up, put bars across the window, and buy

the house,” the Marquis answered.

“Yes, we will,” she said. Then a moment later she added: “Our search for

your manuscripts has been a little lost sight of,” and they both laughed

like children.

“Pshaw! I don’t care a jot for the whole circle of the sciences,”

Raphael answered.

“Ah, sir, and how about glory?”

“I glory in you alone.”

“You used to be very miserable as you made these little scratches and

scrawls,” she said, turning the papers over.

“My Pauline----”

“Oh yes, I am your Pauline--and what then?”

“Where are you living now?”

“In the Rue Saint Lazare. And you?”

“In the Rue de Varenne.”

“What a long way apart we shall be until----” She stopped, and looked at

her lover with a mischievous and coquettish expression.

“But at the most we need only be separated for a fortnight,” Raphael

answered.

“Really! we are to be married in a fortnight?” and she jumped for joy

like a child.

“I am an unnatural daughter!” she went on. “I give no more thought to my

father or my mother, or to anything in the world. Poor love, you don’t

know that my father is very ill? He returned from the Indies in very

bad health. He nearly died at Havre, where we went to find him. Good

heavens!” she cried, looking at her watch; “it is three o’clock already!

I ought to be back again when he wakes at four. I am mistress of the

house at home; my mother does everything that I wish, and my father

worships me; but I will not abuse their kindness, that would be wrong.

My poor father! He would have me go to the Italiens yesterday. You will

come to see him to-morrow, will you not?”

“Will Madame la Marquise de Valentin honor me by taking my arm?”

“I am going to take the key of this room away with me,” she said. “Isn’t

our treasure-house a palace?”

“One more kiss, Pauline.”

“A thousand, _mon Dieu_!” she said, looking at Raphael. “Will it always

be like this? I feel as if I were dreaming.”

They went slowly down the stairs together, step for step, with arms

closely linked, trembling both of them beneath their load of joy. Each

pressing close to the other’s side, like a pair of doves, they reached

the Place de la Sorbonne, where Pauline’s carriage was waiting.

“I want to go home with you,” she said. “I want to see your own room and

your study, and to sit at the table where you work. It will be like old

times,” she said, blushing.

She spoke to the servant. “Joseph, before returning home I am going to

the Rue de Varenne. It is a quarter-past three now, and I must be back

by four o’clock. George must hurry the horses.” And so in a few moments

the lovers came to Valentin’s abode.

“How glad I am to have seen all this for myself!” Pauline cried,

creasing the silken bed-curtains in Raphael’s room between her fingers.

“As I go to sleep, I shall be here in thought. I shall imagine your dear

head on the pillow there. Raphael, tell me, did no one advise you about

the furniture of your hotel?”

“No one whatever.”

“Really? It was not a woman who----”

“Pauline!”

“Oh, I know I am fearfully jealous. You have good taste. I will have a

bed like yours to-morrow.”

Quite beside himself with happiness, Raphael caught Pauline in his arms.

“Oh, my father!” she said; “my father----”

“I will take you back to him,” cried Valentin, “for I want to be away

from you as little as possible.”

“How loving you are! I did not venture to suggest it----”

“Are you not my life?”

It would be tedious to set down accurately the charming prattle of the

lovers, for tones and looks and gestures that cannot be rendered alone

gave it significance. Valentin went back with Pauline to her own door,

and returned with as much happiness in his heart as mortal man can know.

When he was seated in his armchair beside the fire, thinking over the

sudden and complete way in which his wishes had been fulfilled, a cold

shiver went through him, as if the blade of a dagger had been plunged

into his breast--he thought of the Magic Skin, and saw that it had

shrunk a little. He uttered the most tremendous of French oaths, without

any of the Jesuitical reservations made by the Abbess of Andouillettes,

leant his head against the back of the chair, and sat motionless, fixing

his unseeing eyes upon the bracket of the curtain pole.

“Good God!” he cried; “every wish! Every desire of mine! Poor

Pauline!----”

He took a pair of compasses and measured the extent of existence that

the morning had cost him.

“I have scarcely enough for two months!” he said.

A cold sweat broke out over him; moved by an ungovernable spasm of rage,

he seized the Magic Skin, exclaiming:

“I am a perfect fool!”

He rushed out of the house and across the garden, and flung the talisman

down a well.

“_Vogue la galere_,” cried he. “The devil take all this nonsense.”

So Raphael gave himself up to the happiness of being beloved, and led

with Pauline the life of heart and heart. Difficulties which it would

be somewhat tedious to describe had delayed their marriage, which was to

take place early in March. Each was sure of the other; their affection

had been tried, and happiness had taught them how strong it was. Never

has love made two souls, two natures, so absolutely one. The more they

came to know of each other, the more they loved. On either side there

was the same hesitating delicacy, the same transports of joy such as

angels know; there were no clouds in their heaven; the will of either

was the other’s law.

Wealthy as they both were, they had not a caprice which they could not

gratify, and for that reason had no caprices. A refined taste, a feeling

for beauty and poetry, was instinct in the soul of the bride; her

lover’s smile was more to her than all the pearls of Ormuz. She

disdained feminine finery; a muslin dress and flowers formed her most

elaborate toilette.

Pauline and Raphael shunned every one else, for solitude was abundantly

beautiful to them. The idlers at the Opera, or at the Italiens, saw this

charming and unconventional pair evening after evening. Some gossip

went the round of the salons at first, but the harmless lovers were

soon forgotten in the course of events which took place in Paris; their

marriage was announced at length to excuse them in the eyes of the

prudish; and as it happened, their servants did not babble; so their

bliss did not draw down upon them any very severe punishment.

One morning towards the end of February, at the time when the

brightening days bring a belief in the nearness of the joys of spring,

Pauline and Raphael were breakfasting together in a small conservatory,

a kind of drawing-room filled with flowers, on a level with the garden.

The mild rays of the pale winter sunlight, breaking through the thicket

of exotic plants, warmed the air somewhat. The vivid contrast made by

the varieties of foliage, the colors of the masses of flowering shrubs,

the freaks of light and shadow, gladdened the eyes. While all the rest

of Paris still sought warmth from its melancholy hearth, these two were

laughing in a bower of camellias, lilacs, and blossoming heath. Their

happy faces rose above lilies of the valley, narcissus blooms, and

Bengal roses. A mat of plaited African grass, variegated like a carpet,

lay beneath their feet in this luxurious conservatory. The walls,

covered with a green linen material, bore no traces of damp. The

surfaces of the rustic wooden furniture shone with cleanliness. A

kitten, attracted by the odor of milk, had established itself upon the

table; it allowed Pauline to bedabble it in coffee; she was playing

merrily with it, taking away the cream that she had just allowed the

kitten to sniff at, so as to exercise its patience, and keep up the

contest. She burst out laughing at every antic, and by the comical

remarks she constantly made, she hindered Raphael from perusing the

paper; he had dropped it a dozen times already. This morning picture

seemed to overflow with inexpressible gladness, like everything that is

natural and genuine.

Raphael, still pretending to read his paper, furtively watched Pauline

with the cat--his Pauline, in the dressing-gown that hung carelessly

about her; his Pauline, with her hair loose on her shoulders, with a

tiny, white, blue-veined foot peeping out of a velvet slipper. It was

pleasant to see her in this negligent dress; she was delightful as some

fanciful picture by Westall; half-girl, half-woman, as she seemed to

be, or perhaps more of a girl than a woman, there was no alloy in

the happiness she enjoyed, and of love she knew as yet only its first

ecstasy. When Raphael, absorbed in happy musing, had forgotten the

existence of the newspaper, Pauline flew upon it, crumpled it up into

a ball, and threw it out into the garden; the kitten sprang after the

rotating object, which spun round and round, as politics are wont to do.

This childish scene recalled Raphael to himself. He would have gone on

reading, and felt for the sheet he no longer possessed. Joyous laughter

rang out like the song of a bird, one peal leading to another.

“I am quite jealous of the paper,” she said, as she wiped away the tears

that her childlike merriment had brought into her eyes. “Now, is it not

a heinous offence,” she went on, as she became a woman all at once, “to

read Russian proclamations in my presence, and to attend to the prosings

of the Emperor Nicholas rather than to looks and words of love!”

“I was not reading, my dear angel; I was looking at you.”

Just then the gravel walk outside the conservatory rang with the sound

of the gardener’s heavily nailed boots.

“I beg your pardon, my Lord Marquis--and yours, too, madame--if I am

intruding, but I have brought you a curiosity the like of which I never

set eyes on. Drawing a bucket of water just now, with due respect, I

got out this strange salt-water plant. Here it is. It must be thoroughly

used to water, anyhow, for it isn’t saturated or even damp at all. It is

as dry as a piece of wood, and has not swelled a bit. As my Lord Marquis

certainly knows a great deal more about things than I do, I thought I

ought to bring it, and that it would interest him.”

Therewith the gardener showed Raphael the inexorable piece of skin;

there were barely six square inches of it left.

“Thanks, Vaniere,” Raphael said. “The thing is very curious.”

“What is the matter with you, my angel; you are growing quite white!”

Pauline cried.

“You can go, Vaniere.”

“Your voice frightens me,” the girl went on; “it is so strangely

altered. What is it? How are you feeling? Where is the pain? You are in

pain!--Jonathan! here! call a doctor!” she cried.

“Hush, my Pauline,” Raphael answered, as he regained composure. “Let us

get up and go. Some flower here has a scent that is too much for me. It

is that verbena, perhaps.”

Pauline flew upon the innocent plant, seized it by the stalk, and flung

it out into the garden; then, with all the might of the love between

them, she clasped Raphael in a close embrace, and with languishing

coquetry raised her red lips to his for a kiss.

“Dear angel,” she cried, “when I saw you turn so white, I understood

that I could not live on without you; your life is my life too. Lay your

hand on my back, Raphael mine; I feel a chill like death. The feeling

of cold is there yet. Your lips are burning. How is your hand?--Cold as

ice,” she added.

“Mad girl!” exclaimed Raphael.

“Why that tear? Let me drink it.”

“O Pauline, Pauline, you love me far too much!”

“There is something very extraordinary going on in your mind, Raphael!

Do not dissimulate. I shall very soon find out your secret. Give that to

me,” she went on, taking the Magic Skin.

“You are my executioner!” the young man exclaimed, glancing in horror at

the talisman.

“How changed your voice is!” cried Pauline, as she dropped the fatal

symbol of destiny.

“Do you love me?” he asked.

“Do I love you? Is there any doubt?”

“Then, leave me, go away!”

The poor child went.

“So!” cried Raphael, when he was alone. “In an enlightened age, when we

have found out that diamonds are a crystallized form of charcoal, at

a time when everything is made clear, when the police would hale a new

Messiah before the magistrates, and submit his miracles to the Academie

des Sciences--in an epoch when we no longer believe in anything but a

notary’s signature--that I, forsooth, should believe in a sort of _Mene,

Tekel, Upharsin_! No, by Heaven, I will not believe that the Supreme

Being would take pleasure in torturing a harmless creature.--Let us see

the learned about it.”

Between the Halle des Vins, with its extensive assembly of barrels, and

the Salpetriere, that extensive seminary of drunkenness, lies a small

pond, which Raphael soon reached. All sorts of ducks of rare varieties

were there disporting themselves; their colored markings shone in the

sun like the glass in cathedral windows. Every kind of duck in the

world was represented, quacking, dabbling, and moving about--a kind

of parliament of ducks assembled against its will, but luckily without

either charter or political principles, living in complete immunity from

sportsmen, under the eyes of any naturalist that chanced to see them.

“That is M. Lavrille,” said one of the keepers to Raphael, who had asked

for that high priest of zoology.

The Marquis saw a short man buried in profound reflections, caused by

the appearance of a pair of ducks. The man of science was middle-aged;

he had a pleasant face, made pleasanter still by a kindly expression,

but an absorption in scientific ideas engrossed his whole person. His

peruke was strangely turned up, by being constantly raised to scratch

his head; so that a line of white hair was left plainly visible, a

witness to an enthusiasm for investigation, which, like every other

strong passion, so withdraws us from mundane considerations, that we

lose all consciousness of the “I” within us. Raphael, the student and

man of science, looked respectfully at the naturalist, who devoted his

nights to enlarging the limits of human knowledge, and whose very errors

reflected glory upon France; but a she-coxcomb would have laughed,

no doubt, at the break of continuity between the breeches and striped

waistcoat worn by the man of learning; the interval, moreover, was

modestly filled by a shirt which had been considerably creased, for

he stooped and raised himself by turns, as his zoological observations

required.

After the first interchange of civilities, Raphael thought it necessary

to pay M. Lavrille a banal compliment upon his ducks.

“Oh, we are well off for ducks,” the naturalist replied. “The genus,

moreover, as you doubtless know, is the most prolific in the order

of palmipeds. It begins with the swan and ends with the zin-zin duck,

comprising in all one hundred and thirty-seven very distinct varieties,

each having its own name, habits, country, and character, and every one

no more like another than a white man is like a negro. Really, sir,

when we dine off a duck, we have no notion for the most part of the vast

extent----”

He interrupted himself as he saw a small pretty duck come up to the

surface of the pond.

“There you see the cravatted swan, a poor native of Canada; he has come

a very long way to show us his brown and gray plumage and his little

black cravat! Look, he is preening himself. That one is the famous eider

duck that provides the down, the eider-down under which our fine ladies

sleep; isn’t it pretty? Who would not admire the little pinkish white

breast and the green beak? I have just been a witness, sir,” he went on,

“to a marriage that I had long despaired of bringing about; they have

paired rather auspiciously, and I shall await the results very eagerly.

This will be a hundred and thirty-eighth species, I flatter myself, to

which, perhaps, my name will be given. That is the newly matched pair,”

he said, pointing out two of the ducks; “one of them is a laughing goose

(_anas albifrons_), and the other the great whistling duck, Buffon’s

_anas ruffina_. I have hesitated a long while between the whistling

duck, the duck with white eyebrows, and the shoveler duck (_anas

clypeata_). Stay, that is the shoveler--that fat, brownish black rascal,

with the greenish neck and that coquettish iridescence on it. But the

whistling duck was a crested one, sir, and you will understand that I

deliberated no longer. We only lack the variegated black-capped duck

now. These gentlemen here, unanimously claim that that variety of

duck is only a repetition of the curve-beaked teal, but for my own

part,”--and the gesture he made was worth seeing. It expressed at once

the modesty and pride of a man of science; the pride full of obstinacy,

and the modesty well tempered with assurance.

“I don’t think it is,” he added. “You see, my dear sir, that we are not

amusing ourselves here. I am engaged at this moment upon a monograph on

the genus duck. But I am at your disposal.”

While they went towards a rather pleasant house in the Rue du Buffon,

Raphael submitted the skin to M. Lavrille’s inspection.

“I know the product,” said the man of science, when he had turned his

magnifying glass upon the talisman. “It used to be used for covering

boxes. The shagreen is very old. They prefer to use skate’s skin

nowadays for making sheaths. This, as you are doubtless aware, is the

hide of the _raja sephen_, a Red Sea fish.”

“But this, sir, since you are so exceedingly good----”

“This,” the man of science interrupted, as he resumed, “this is quite

another thing; between these two shagreens, sir, there is a difference

just as wide as between sea and land, or fish and flesh. The fish’s skin

is harder, however, than the skin of the land animal. This,” he said, as

he indicated the talisman, “is, as you doubtless know, one of the most

curious of zoological products.”

“But to proceed----” said Raphael.

“This,” replied the man of science, as he flung himself down into his

armchair, “is an ass’ skin, sir.”

“Yes, I know,” said the young man.

“A very rare variety of ass found in Persia,” the naturalist continued,

“the onager of the ancients, equus asinus, the _koulan_ of the Tartars;

Pallas went out there to observe it, and has made it known to science,

for as a matter of fact the animal for a long time was believed to be

mythical. It is mentioned, as you know, in Holy Scripture; Moses forbade

that it should be coupled with its own species, and the onager is yet

more famous for the prostitutions of which it was the object, and which

are often mentioned by the prophets of the Bible. Pallas, as you know

doubtless, states in his _Act. Petrop._ tome II., that these bizarre

excesses are still devoutly believed in among the Persians and the

Nogais as a sovereign remedy for lumbago and sciatic gout. We poor

Parisians scarcely believe that. The Museum has no example of the

onager.

“What a magnificent animal!” he continued. “It is full of mystery;

its eyes are provided with a sort of burnished covering, to which the

Orientals attribute the powers of fascination; it has a glossier and

finer coat than our handsomest horses possess, striped with more or less

tawny bands, very much like the zebra’s hide. There is something pliant

and silky about its hair, which is sleek to the touch. Its powers of

sight vie in precision and accuracy with those of man; it is rather

larger than our largest domestic donkeys, and is possessed of

extraordinary courage. If it is surprised by any chance, it defends

itself against the most dangerous wild beasts with remarkable success;

the rapidity of its movements can only be compared with the flight of

birds; an onager, sir, would run the best Arab or Persian horses to

death. According to the father of the conscientious Doctor Niebuhr,

whose recent loss we are deploring, as you doubtless know, the ordinary

average pace of one of these wonderful creatures would be seven thousand

geometric feet per hour. Our own degenerate race of donkeys can give no

idea of the ass in his pride and independence. He is active and spirited

in his demeanor; he is cunning and sagacious; there is grace about the

outlines of his head; every movement is full of attractive charm. In

the East he is the king of beasts. Turkish and Persian superstition even

credits him with a mysterious origin; and when stories of the prowess

attributed to him are told in Thibet or in Tartary, the speakers mingle

Solomon’s name with that of this noble animal. A tame onager, in short,

is worth an enormous amount; it is well-nigh impossible to catch them

among the mountains, where they leap like roebucks, and seem as if they

could fly like birds. Our myth of the winged horse, our Pegasus, had its

origin doubtless in these countries, where the shepherds could see the

onager springing from one rock to another. In Persia they breed asses

for the saddle, a cross between a tamed onager and a she-ass, and they

paint them red, following immemorial tradition. Perhaps it was this

custom that gave rise to our own proverb, ‘Surely as a red donkey.’ At

some period when natural history was much neglected in France, I think a

traveler must have brought over one of these strange beasts that endures

servitude with such impatience. Hence the adage. The skin that you

have laid before me is the skin of an onager. Opinions differ as to the

origin of the name. Some claim that _Chagri_ is a Turkish word; others

insist that _Chagri_ must be the name of the place where this animal

product underwent the chemical process of preparation so clearly

described by Pallas, to which the peculiar graining that we admire is

due; Martellens has written to me saying that _Chaagri_ is a river----”

“I thank you, sir, for the information that you have given me; it would

furnish an admirable footnote for some Dom Calmet or other, if such

erudite hermits yet exist; but I have had the honor of pointing out to

you that this scrap was in the first instance quite as large as that

map,” said Raphael, indicating an open atlas to Lavrille; “but it has

shrunk visibly in three months’ time----”

“Quite so,” said the man of science. “I understand. The remains of any

substance primarily organic are naturally subject to a process of

decay. It is quite easy to understand, and its progress depends upon

atmospherical conditions. Even metals contract and expand appreciably,

for engineers have remarked somewhat considerable interstices between

great blocks of stone originally clamped together with iron bars. The

field of science is boundless, but human life is very short, so that we

do not claim to be acquainted with all the phenomena of nature.”

“Pardon the question that I am about to ask you, sir,” Raphael began,

half embarrassed, “but are you quite sure that this piece of skin is

subject to the ordinary laws of zoology, and that it can be stretched?”

“Certainly----oh, bother!----” muttered M. Lavrille, trying to stretch

the talisman. “But if you, sir, will go to see Planchette,” he added,

“the celebrated professor of mechanics, he will certainly discover some

method of acting upon this skin, of softening and expanding it.”

“Ah, sir, you are the preserver of my life,” and Raphael took leave of

the learned naturalist and hurried off to Planchette, leaving the worthy

Lavrille in his study, all among the bottles and dried plants that

filled it up.

Quite unconsciously Raphael brought away with him from this visit,

all of science that man can grasp, a terminology to wit. Lavrille, the

worthy man, was very much like Sancho Panza giving to Don Quixote the

history of the goats; he was entertaining himself by making out a list

of animals and ticking them off. Even now that his life was nearing its

end, he was scarcely acquainted with a mere fraction of the countless

numbers of the great tribes that God has scattered, for some unknown

end, throughout the ocean of worlds.

Raphael was well pleased. “I shall keep my ass well in hand,” cried he.

Sterne had said before his day, “Let us take care of our ass, if we wish

to live to old age.” But it is such a fantastic brute!

Planchette was a tall, thin man, a poet of a surety, lost in one

continual thought, and always employed in gazing into the bottomless

abyss of Motion. Commonplace minds accuse these lofty intellects of

madness; they form a misinterpreted race apart that lives in a wonderful

carelessness of luxuries or other people’s notions. They will spend

whole days at a stretch, smoking a cigar that has gone out, and enter

a drawing-room with the buttons on their garments not in every case

formally wedded to the button-holes. Some day or other, after a long

time spent in measuring space, or in accumulating Xs under Aa-Gg, they

succeed in analyzing some natural law, and resolve it into its elemental

principles, and all on a sudden the crowd gapes at a new machine; or it

is a handcart perhaps that overwhelms us with astonishment by the apt

simplicity of its construction. The modest man of science smiles at

his admirers, and remarks, “What is that invention of mine? Nothing

whatever. Man cannot create a force; he can but direct it; and science

consists in learning from nature.”

The mechanician was standing bolt upright, planted on both feet, like

some victim dropped straight from the gibbet, when Raphael broke in upon

him. He was intently watching an agate ball that rolled over a sun-dial,

and awaited its final settlement. The worthy man had received neither

pension nor decoration; he had not known how to make the right use of

his ability for calculation. He was happy in his life spent on the watch

for a discovery; he had no thought either of reputation, of the outer

world, nor even of himself, and led the life of science for the sake of

science.

“It is inexplicable,” he exclaimed. “Ah, your servant, sir,” he went on,

becoming aware of Raphael’s existence. “How is your mother? You must go

and see my wife.”

“And I also could have lived thus,” thought Raphael, as he recalled the

learned man from his meditations by asking of him how to produce any

effect on the talisman, which he placed before him.

“Although my credulity must amuse you, sir,” so the Marquis ended, “I

will conceal nothing from you. That skin seems to me to be endowed with

an insuperable power of resistance.”

“People of fashion, sir, always treat science rather superciliously,”

said Planchette. “They all talk to us pretty much as the _incroyable_

did when he brought some ladies to see Lalande just after an eclipse,

and remarked, ‘Be so good as to begin it over again!’ What effect do you

want to produce? The object of the science of mechanics is either the

application or the neutralization of the laws of motion. As for motion

pure and simple, I tell you humbly, that we cannot possibly define it.

That disposed of, unvarying phenomena have been observed which accompany

the actions of solids and fluids. If we set up the conditions by

which these phenomena are brought to pass, we can transport bodies or

communicate locomotive power to them at a predetermined rate of speed.

We can project them, divide them up in a few or an infinite number of

pieces, accordingly as we break them or grind them to powder; we can

twist bodies or make them rotate, modify, compress, expand, or extend

them. The whole science, sir, rests upon a single fact.

“You see this ball,” he went on; “here it lies upon this slab. Now,

it is over there. What name shall we give to what has taken place,

so natural from a physical point of view, so amazing from a moral?

Movement, locomotion, changing of place? What prodigious vanity lurks

underneath the words. Does a name solve the difficulty? Yet it is the

whole of our science for all that. Our machines either make direct use

of this agency, this fact, or they convert it. This trifling phenomenon,

applied to large masses, would send Paris flying. We can increase speed

by an expenditure of force, and augment the force by an increase of

speed. But what are speed and force? Our science is as powerless to tell

us that as to create motion. Any movement whatever is an immense power,

and man does not create power of any kind. Everything is movement,

thought itself is a movement, upon movement nature is based. Death is a

movement whose limitations are little known. If God is eternal, be

sure that He moves perpetually; perhaps God is movement. That is

why movement, like God is inexplicable, unfathomable, unlimited,

incomprehensible, intangible. Who has ever touched, comprehended, or

measured movement? We feel its effects without seeing it; we can even

deny them as we can deny the existence of a God. Where is it? Where

is it not? Whence comes it? What is its source? What is its end? It

surrounds us, it intrudes upon us, and yet escapes us. It is evident as

a fact, obscure as an abstraction; it is at once effect and cause. It

requires space, even as we, and what is space? Movement alone recalls

it to us; without movement, space is but an empty meaningless word.

Like space, like creation, like the infinite, movement is an insoluble

problem which confounds human reason; man will never conceive it,

whatever else he may be permitted to conceive.

“Between each point in space occupied in succession by that ball,”

continued the man of science, “there is an abyss confronting human

reason, an abyss into which Pascal fell. In order to produce any

effect upon an unknown substance, we ought first of all to study that

substance; to know whether, in accordance with its nature, it will be

broken by the force of a blow, or whether it will withstand it; if it

breaks in pieces, and you have no wish to split it up, we shall not

achieve the end proposed. If you want to compress it, a uniform impulse

must be communicated to all the particles of the substance, so as to

diminish the interval that separates them in an equal degree. If you

wish to expand it, we should try to bring a uniform eccentric force to

bear on every molecule; for unless we conform accurately to this law,

we shall have breaches in continuity. The modes of motion, sir, are

infinite, and no limit exists to combinations of movement. Upon what

effect have you determined?”

“I want any kind of pressure that is strong enough to expand the skin

indefinitely,” began Raphael, quite of out patience.

“Substance is finite,” the mathematician put in, “and therefore will not

admit of indefinite expansion, but pressure will necessarily increase

the extent of surface at the expense of the thickness, which will be

diminished until the point is reached when the material gives out----”

“Bring about that result, sir,” Raphael cried, “and you will have earned

millions.”

“Then I should rob you of your money,” replied the other, phlegmatic as

a Dutchman. “I am going to show you, in a word or two, that a machine

can be made that is fit to crush Providence itself in pieces like a fly.

It would reduce a man to the conditions of a piece of waste paper; a

man--boots and spurs, hat and cravat, trinkets and gold, and all----”

“What a fearful machine!”

“Instead of flinging their brats into the water, the Chinese ought

to make them useful in this way,” the man of science went on, without

reflecting on the regard man has for his progeny.

Quite absorbed by his idea, Planchette took an empty flower-pot, with a

hole in the bottom, and put it on the surface of the dial, then he

went to look for a little clay in a corner of the garden. Raphael stood

spellbound, like a child to whom his nurse is telling some wonderful

story. Planchette put the clay down upon the slab, drew a pruning-knife

from his pocket, cut two branches from an elder tree, and began to

clean them of pith by blowing through them, as if Raphael had not been

present.

“There are the rudiments of the apparatus,” he said. Then he connected

one of the wooden pipes with the bottom of the flower-pot by way of

a clay joint, in such a way that the mouth of the elder stem was just

under the hole of the flower-pot; you might have compared it to a big

tobacco-pipe. He spread a bed of clay over the surface of the slab, in a

shovel-shaped mass, set down the flower-pot at the wider end of it, and

laid the pipe of the elder stem along the portion which represented the

handle of the shovel. Next he put a lump of clay at the end of the elder

stem and therein planted the other pipe, in an upright position, forming

a second elbow which connected it with the first horizontal pipe in such

a manner that the air, or any given fluid in circulation, could flow

through this improvised piece of mechanism from the mouth of the

vertical tube, along the intermediate passages, and so into the large

empty flower-pot.

“This apparatus, sir,” he said to Raphael, with all the gravity of an

academician pronouncing his initiatory discourse, “is one of the great

Pascal’s grandest claims upon our admiration.”

“I don’t understand.”

The man of science smiled. He went up to a fruit-tree and took down a

little phial in which the druggist had sent him some liquid for catching

ants; he broke off the bottom and made a funnel of the top, carefully

fitting it to the mouth of the vertical hollowed stem that he had set in

the clay, and at the opposite end to the great reservoir, represented

by the flower-pot. Next, by means of a watering-pot, he poured in

sufficient water to rise to the same level in the large vessel and in

the tiny circular funnel at the end of the elder stem.

Raphael was thinking of his piece of skin.

“Water is considered to-day, sir, to be an incompressible body,” said

the mechanician; “never lose sight of that fundamental principle; still

it can be compressed, though only so very slightly that we should regard

its faculty for contracting as a zero. You see the amount of surface

presented by the water at the brim of the flower-pot?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very good; now suppose that that surface is a thousand times larger

than the orifice of the elder stem through which I poured the liquid.

Here, I am taking the funnel away----”

“Granted.”

“Well, then, if by any method whatever I increase the volume of that

quantity of water by pouring in yet more through the mouth of the little

tube; the water thus compelled to flow downwards would rise in the

reservoir, represented by the flower-pot, until it reached the same

level at either end.”

“That is quite clear,” cried Raphael.

“But there is this difference,” the other went on. “Suppose that the

thin column of water poured into the little vertical tube there exerts

a force equal, say, to a pound weight, for instance, its action will

be punctually communicated to the great body of the liquid, and will be

transmitted to every part of the surface represented by the water in the

flower-pot so that at the surface there will be a thousand columns of

water, every one pressing upwards as if they were impelled by a force

equal to that which compels the liquid to descend in the vertical tube;

and of necessity they reproduce here,” said Planchette, indicating to

Raphael the top of the flower-pot, “the force introduced over there, a

thousand-fold,” and the man of science pointed out to the marquis the

upright wooden pipe set in the clay.

“That is quite simple,” said Raphael.

Planchette smiled again.

“In other words,” he went on, with the mathematician’s natural stubborn

propensity for logic, “in order to resist the force of the incoming

water, it would be necessary to exert, upon every part of the large

surface, a force equal to that brought into action in the vertical

column, but with this difference--if the column of liquid is a foot in

height, the thousand little columns of the wide surface will only have a

very slight elevating power.

“Now,” said Planchette, as he gave a fillip to his bits of stick,

“let us replace this funny little apparatus by steel tubes of suitable

strength and dimensions; and if you cover the liquid surface of the

reservoir with a strong sliding plate of metal, and if to this metal

plate you oppose another, solid enough and strong enough to resist any

test; if, furthermore, you give me the power of continually adding water

to the volume of liquid contents by means of the little vertical tube,

the object fixed between the two solid metal plates must of necessity

yield to the tremendous crushing force which indefinitely compresses it.

The method of continually pouring in water through a little tube, like

the manner of communicating force through the volume of the liquid to a

small metal plate, is an absurdly primitive mechanical device. A brace

of pistons and a few valves would do it all. Do you perceive, my dear

sir,” he said taking Valentin by the arm, “there is scarcely a substance

in existence that would not be compelled to dilate when fixed in between

these two indefinitely resisting surfaces?”

“What! the author of the _Lettres provinciales_ invented it?” Raphael

exclaimed.

“He and no other, sir. The science of mechanics knows no simpler nor

more beautiful contrivance. The opposite principle, the capacity of

expansion possessed by water, has brought the steam-engine into

being. But water will only expand up to a certain point, while its

incompressibility, being a force in a manner negative, is, of necessity,

infinite.”

“If this skin is expanded,” said Raphael, “I promise you to erect a

colossal statue to Blaise Pascal; to found a prize of a hundred thousand

francs to be offered every ten years for the solution of the grandest

problem of mechanical science effected during the interval; to find

dowries for all your cousins and second cousins, and finally to build an

asylum on purpose for impoverished or insane mathematicians.”

“That would be exceedingly useful,” Planchette replied. “We will go to

Spieghalter to-morrow, sir,” he continued, with the serenity of a man

living on a plane wholly intellectual. “That distinguished mechanic has

just completed, after my own designs, an improved mechanical arrangement

by which a child could get a thousand trusses of hay inside his cap.”

“Then good-bye till to-morrow.”

“Till to-morrow, sir.”

“Talk of mechanics!” cried Raphael; “isn’t it the greatest of the

sciences? The other fellow with his onagers, classifications, ducks, and

species, and his phials full of bottled monstrosities, is at best only

fit for a billiard-marker in a saloon.”

The next morning Raphael went off in great spirits to find Planchette,

and together they set out for the Rue de la Sante--auspicious

appellation! Arrived at Spieghalter’s, the young man found himself in a

vast foundry; his eyes lighted upon a multitude of glowing and roaring

furnaces. There was a storm of sparks, a deluge of nails, an ocean

of pistons, vices, levers, valves, girders, files, and nuts; a sea of

melted metal, baulks of timber and bar-steel. Iron filings filled your

throat. There was iron in the atmosphere; the men were covered with it;

everything reeked of iron. The iron seemed to be a living organism; it

became a fluid, moved, and seemed to shape itself intelligently after

every fashion, to obey the worker’s every caprice. Through the uproar

made by the bellows, the crescendo of the falling hammers, and the

shrill sounds of the lathes that drew groans from the steel, Raphael

passed into a large, clean, and airy place where he was able to inspect

at his leisure the great press that Planchette had told him about. He

admired the cast-iron beams, as one might call them, and the twin bars

of steel coupled together with indestructible bolts.

“If you were to give seven rapid turns to that crank,” said Spieghalter,

pointing out a beam of polished steel, “you would make a steel bar spurt

out in thousands of jets, that would get into your legs like needles.”

“The deuce!” exclaimed Raphael.

Planchette himself slipped the piece of skin between the metal plates

of the all-powerful press; and, brimful of the certainty of a scientific