In no other work is the special quality of Balzac's genius
displayed so completely as in "La Peau de Chagrin," which we
render as "The Magic Skin." Published in 1831, it is the
earliest in date of his veritable masterpieces, and the finest
in conception. There is no novel more soberly true to life
than this strange fairy tale. His hero, the Marquis de
Valentin, is a young aristocrat of the Byronic type. He
rejects the simple joys and stern realities of human
existence; he wants more than life can give. He gets what he
wants. He obtains a magic skin which enables him to fulfil his
every wish. But in so doing he uses up his vital powers. Such
is the idea which makes this fantastic story a profound
philosophical study.
_I.--The Seal of Solomon_
On a dull morning towards the end of October, 1830, a tall, pale, and
rather handsome young man came to the Pont Royal, and leaned over the
bridge, and gazed with wild and yet resolute eyes at the swirling waters
below. Just as he was preparing to leap down, a ragged old woman passed
by.
"Wretched weather for drowning oneself, isn't it?" she said, with a
grin. "How cold and dirty the Seine looks!"
The young man turned and smiled at her in the delirium of his courage.
Then, suddenly he shuddered. On a shed by the Tuileries he saw, written
in large letters: "Help for the drowned." He foresaw the whole thing. A
boat would put off to the rescue. If the rowers did not smash his skull
in with their oars as he came to the surface, he would be taken to the
shed and revived. If he were dead, a crowd would collect, newspaper men
would come; his body would be recognised; and the Press would publish
the news of the suicide of Raphael de Valentin. No! He would wait till
nightfall, and then in a decent, private manner bequeath an
unrecognizable corpse to a world that had disregarded his genius.
With the air of a wealthy man of leisure sauntering about the streets to
kill time, the young marquis strolled down the Quai Voltaire, and
followed the line of shops, looking listlessly at every window. But as
he thought of the fate awaiting him at nightfall, men and houses swam in
a mist before his eyes. To recover himself he entered a curiosity shop.
"If you care to go through our galleries," said the red-haired shop-boy,
"you will find something worth looking at."
Raphael climbed up a dark staircase lined with mummies, Indian idols,
stuffed crocodiles, and goggle-eyed monsters. They all seemed to grin at
him as he passed. Haunted by these strange shapes belonging to the
borderland between life and death, he walked in a kind of dream through
a series of long, dimly lighted galleries, in which was piled, in mad
confusion, the work of every age and every clime. Here was a lovely
statue by Michael Angelo, from which dangled the scalp of a Red Indian.
There, cold and impassive, was the lord of the ancient world, the
Emperor Augustus, with a modern air-pump sticking in his eye. The walls
were hung with priceless pictures, which were half-hidden by grimacing
skeletons, rude wooden idols with horrible features, tall suits of
gleaming armour, and figures of Egyptian deities, with the bodies of men
and heads of animals. The place was a kitchen of all the arts and
religions and interests of mankind.
This extraordinary confusion was rendered still more bizarre by the dim
cross-lights that played upon everything. Raphael's eyes grew weary with
gazing, and his mind was oppressed by the spectacle of the ruined
splendours of thousands of years of human life. A fever born of hunger
and exhaustion possessed him. The pictures appeared to light up, the
statues seemed to move. Everything danced and swayed around him. Then a
horrible Chinese monster advanced upon him with menacing eyes from the
other side of the room, and he swooned away in terror.
When he came to, his eyes were dazzled by a flood or radiance streaming
from a circle of crimson light. Before him, holding a bright red lamp,
was a frail, white-haired, extraordinary man, clad in a long robe of
black velvet. His body was wasted by extreme old age. His skin was like
wrinkled parchment, and his lips were so thin and colourless that it was
hardly possible to discern on his ivory-white face the line made by his
mouth. But his eyes were marvellous. They were calm, clear and
searching, and they glowed with the light and freshness of youth.
"So you have been looking over my collection," the old man said. "Do you
wish to buy anything?"
"Buy?" said Raphael, with a strange smile. "I am utterly penniless. I
have been examining your treasures just to while away the time till I
could drown myself quietly and secretly at night. You will not grudge
this last pleasure to a poet and man of learning, will you?"
"Penniless?" said the old man. "But you do not want to die because you
are penniless! A young, handsome, intellectual lad like you could pick
up a living somehow. What is it? Some woman, eh? Now let me help----"
"I want no help or advice or consolation," said Raphael furiously.
"And I will give you none," said the old man. "But as you are resolved
to die, will you do something for me. I want to get rid of this."
He held the lamp up the wall, and showed Raphael a piece of very old
shagreen, about the size of a fox's skin.
"Ah!" said Raphael. "A wild ass's skin engraved with Sanscrit
characters. Why, here's the mark that some of the Eastern races call the
Seal of Solomon!"
"You are truly a man of learning," said the strange old merchant, his
breath coming in quick pants through his nostrils. "No doubt you can
read the inscription."
"I should translate it thus," said Raphael, fixing his eyes upon the
skin.
POSSESSING ME THOU POSSESSEST EVERYTHING. YET I
POSSESS THEE. SO GOD HAS WILLED IT. WISH, AND
THY WISHES SHALL BE ACCOMPLISHED. BUT MEASURE
THE WISHES ACCORDING TO THY LIFE. HERE
IT IS. I SHALL SHRINK WITH EACH WISH, AND
SO SHALL THY LIFE, WILT THOU TAKE ME?
TAKE ME! GOD WILL HEAR THEE. AMEN.
"Is it a joke or a mystery?"
"I do not know," said the old man. "I have offered the magic skin to
many men. They laughed at it; but none would take it. I am like them. I
doubt its power, but will not put it to the test."
"What!" said Raphael. "You have never formed a wish all the time you had
it?"
"No!" said the old man. "I have discovered the great secret of human
life. Look! I am a hundred and two years old. Do you know why men die?
Because they use up the energy of life by wishing to do things and doing
them. I am content to know things. My days have been spent wandering
quietly over all the earth in the calm acquisition of knowledge. All
desire, all lust after power are dead within me. So this skin, which I
picked up in India, has never shrunk an inch since it came into my
possession."
"You have never lived!" cried Raphael, turning from the old man, and
seizing the skin. "Yes, I will take you. Now for a test. I am starving.
Set before me a splendid banquet. Let me have as guests all the wildest,
gayest, wittiest minds of young France. And women? Oh, the prettiest,
wickedest women of the town! Wine, wit and women!"
A roar of laughter came from the old man. It resounded in the ears of
Raphael like the laughter of a fiend from hell.
"Do you think my floors are going to open, and tables, waiters, and
guests pop up before your eyes?" he said. "No! Your first wish is mean
and vulgar; but it will be fulfilled in a natural manner. You wanted to
die, eh? Your suicide is only postponed."
Raphael put the skin in his pocket, and abruptly left, saying, "You have
never lived. I wish you knew what love was."
He heard the old man groan strangely, but without listening to his
reproaches he rushed out of the shop, and in the street ran full tilt up
against three young men.
"Brute! Ass! Idiot! Why, it's Raphael!" they cried. "You must come. Talk
about a Roman orgy I We've been all over Paris looking, for you. A
gorgeous feed. And all the girls from the Opera! The ancient Romans
aren't in it."
"One at a time," said Raphael. "Now, Emile, just tell me what are you
all shouting about?"
"Do you know Taillefer, the wealthy banker?" said Emile. "He is founding
a newspaper. All the talent of young France is to be enlisted. You're
invited to the inaugural festival to-night at the Rue Joubert. The
ballot girls of the Opera are coming. Oh, Taillefer's doing the thing in
style!"
Arm linked in arm, the four friends made their way to Taillefer's
mansion, and there, in a large room brilliantly set out, they were
welcomed by all the younger men of note in Paris. For some time Raphael
felt ill at ease. He was surprised by the natural manner in which his
wish had suddenly been accomplished. He took the magic skin out of his
pocket, and looked at it. Magic? What man could believe nowadays in
magic? But, nevertheless, he marvelled at the accidents of human life.
_II--A Fight Against Fate_
Although the banquet which he had desired was now set before him,
Raphael was still very moody. Deaf to the loud, wild merriment of his
companions, he thought sadly of the misfortune which had driven him that
morning to the brink of the grave. Many noblemen find it difficult to
exist in Paris on an income of several thousand pounds. The young
Marquis de Valentin had lived there very happily on £12 a year. In 1826,
his father, who had lost his wealth and lands in the Revolution, had
died, leaving him £40. Taking a garret in the Rue des Cordiers, he had
set about earning his living with his pen, and for three years he had
laboured at a great work on "The Theory of the Will." He never went into
society, but found a pleasant distraction from his studies in educating
the daughter of his landlady.
Pauline Gaudin was a charming and beautiful child; her father, a baron
of the empire, and an officer in the Grand Army, had been taken prisoner
by the Russians in 1812, and never heard of since. Raphael was moved by
the grace and innocence of the lovely human flower, that grew from a bud
into an opening blossom under his care. But as he was too poor to marry
her, he never made love to her.
Then, in January, 1830, he met the Countess Foedora, a brilliant,
wealthy woman of society, widowed at the age of thirty, and eager to
shine and astonish and captivate. For her sake, Raphael had put aside
his scholarly studies and engaged in money-making hack-work. But after
keeping him dangling about her for some months, she had cast him off,
and in his misery he had resolved to end his life. Now he had got the
magic skin. What if it were true what the strange old man had said?
Should he wish to win the heart of Foedora? No! She was a woman without
a heart. He would have nothing to do with women. Still, this skin!
"Measure it! Measure it!" he cried, flinging it down on the table.
"Measure what?" said Emile. "Has Taillefer's wine got into your head
already?"
Raphael told them of the curiosity shop.
"That can be easily tested," said Emile, taking the skin and drawing its
outline on a napkin. "Now wish, and see if it shrinks."
"I wish for six million pounds!" said Raphael.
"Hurrah!" said Emile. "And while you're about it make us all
millionaires."
Taillefer's notary, Cardot, who had been gazing at Raphael during the
dinner, walked across the room to him.
"My dear marquis," he said, "I've been looking for you all the evening.
Wasn't your mother a Miss O'Flaharty?"
"Yes, she was," said Raphael--"Barbara O'Flaharty."
"Well, you are the sole heir of Major O'Flaharty, who died last August
at Calcutta, leaving a fortune of six millions."
"An incalculable fortune," said Emile. Raphael spread out the skin upon
the napkin. He shuddered violently on seeing a slight margin between the
pencil-line on the napkin and the edge of the skin.
"What's the matter?" said the notary. "He has got a fortune very
cheaply."
"Hold him up," said some one. "The joy will kill him."
A ghostly whiteness spread over the face of the happy heir. He had seen
Death! He stared at the shrunken skin and the merciless outline on the
napkin, and a feeling of horror came over him. The whole world was his;
he could have all things. But at what a cost!
"Do you wish for some asparagus, sir?" said, a waiter.
"_I wish for nothing!_" shrieked Raphael. And he fled from the banquet.
"So," he said, when he was at last alone, "in this enlightened age, when
science has stripped the very stars of their secrets, here am I
frightened out of my senses by an old piece of wild ass's skin.
To-morrow I will have it examined by Planchette, and put an end to this
mad fancy."
Planchette, the celebrated professor of mechanics, treated the thing as
a joke.
"Come with me to Spieghalter," he said. "He has just built a new kind of
hydraulic press which I designed."
Arrived there, Planchette asked Spieghalter to stretch the magic skin.
"Our friend," he said, "doubts if we can do it."
"You see this crank?" said Spieghalter to Raphael, pointing to the new
press. "Seven turns to it, and a solid steel bar would break into
thousands of pieces."
"The very thing I want," said Raphael.
Planchette put the skin between the metal plates, and, proud of his new
invention, he energetically twisted the crank.
"Lie flat all of you!" shouted Spieghalter. "We're dead men."
There was an explosion, and a jet of water spurted out with terrific
force. Falling on a furnace it twisted up the mass of iron as if it had
been paper. The hydraulic chamber of the press had given way.
"The skin is untouched," said Planchette. "There was a flaw in the
press."
"No, no!" said Spieghalter. "My press was as sound as a bell. The
devil's in your skin, sir. Take it away!"
Spieghalter seized the talisman, and flung it on an anvil, and furiously
belaboured it with a heavy sledgehammer. He then pitched it in a
furnace, and ordered his workmen to blow the coal into a fierce white
heat. At the end of ten minutes he drew it out with a pair of tongs
uninjured. With a cry of horror the workmen fled from the foundry.
"I now believe in the devil," said Spieghalter.
"And I believe in God," said Planchette.
Raphael departed in a hard, bitter rage. He was resolved to fight like a
man against his strange fate. He would follow the example of the former
owner of the magic skin, and give himself up to study and meditation,
and live his life in the tranquil acquisition of knowledge, undisturbed
by passion and desire, and lust for power, and dominion and glory. On
receiving his vast inheritance, he bought a mansion in the Rue de
Varenne, and engaged a crowd of intelligent, quiet servants to wait upon
him.
But his first care had been to seek out his foster-father, Jonathan, the
old and devoted servitor of his family. To him he confided his dreadful
secret.
"You must stand between the world and me, Jonathan," he said. "Treat me
as a baby. Never ask me for orders. See that the servants feed me, and
tend me, and care for me in absolute silence. Above all things, never
let anyone pester me. Never let me form a wish of any kind."
For some months, the eccentric Marquis de Valentin was the talk of
Paris. He lived in monastic silence and seclusion, and Jonathan never
permitted any of his friends to enter the mansion. But one morning his
old tutor, Porriquet, called, and Jonathan thought he might cheer his
young master. He could not ask Raphael: "Do you wish to see M.
Porriquet?" But after some thought he found a way of putting the
question: "M. Porriquet is here, my lord. Do you think he ought to
enter?"
Raphael nodded. Porriquet was alarmed at the appearance of his pupil. He
looked like a plant bleached by darkness. The fact was, Raphael had
surrendered every right in life in order to live. He had despoiled his
soul of all the romance that lies in a wish. The better to struggle with
the cruel power that he had challenged, he had stifled his imagination.
He did not allow himself even the pleasures of fancy, lest they should
awaken some desire. He had become an automaton.
Porriquet, unfortunately, was now an irritating old proser. He had
failed in life and wanted to air all his grievances. At the end of five
minutes' talk Raphael was about to wish that he would depart, when he
caught sight of the magic skin hanging in a frame, with a red line drawn
around it. Suppressing, with a shudder, his secret desire, he patiently
bore with the old man's prolixity. Porriquet wanted very much to ask him
for money, but did not like to do so, and after complaining for quite an
hour or more about things in general, he rose to depart.
"Perhaps," he said, as he turned to leave the room, "I shall hear of a
headmastership of a good school."
"The very thing for you!" said Raphael. "I _wish_ you could get it."
Then, with a sudden cry, he looked at the frame. There was a thin white
edge between the skin and the red line.
"Go, you fool!" he shouted. "I have made you a headmaster. Why didn't
you ask me for an annuity of a thousand pounds instead of using up ten
years of my life on a silly wish? I could have won Foedora at the price!
Conquered a kingdom!"
His lips were covered with froth, and there was a savage light in his
eyes. Porriquet fled in terror. Then Raphael fell back in a chair, and
wept.
"Oh, my precious life!" he sobbed. "No more kindly thoughts! No more
friendship!"
_III.--The Agony of Death_
Raphael's condition had by now become so critical that a trip to Savoy
was advised, and a few weeks later he was at Aix. One day, moving among
the crowd of pleasure-seekers and invalids, a number of young men
deliberately picked a quarrel with him, with the result that from one of
them he received a challenge to fight a duel. Raphael did his utmost to
persuade the other to apologise, even going to the extent of informing
him of the terrible powers he possessed. Failing in his object, the
fatal morning came round, and the unfortunate individual was shot
through the heart. Not heeding the fallen man, Raphael hurriedly glanced
at the skin to see what another man's life had cost him. The talisman
had shrunk to the size of a small oak-leaf.
Seeing that his master was given over to a gloomy despair that verged
upon madness, Jonathan resolved to distract his mind at all costs, and
knowing that he was passionately fond of music, he engaged a box for him
at the Opera. But Raphael was afraid above all things, of falling in
love. Under the illimitable desire of passion the magic skin would
shrivel up in an hour. So he used a strange, distorting opera-glass
which made the loveliest face seem hideous.
With this he sat in his box, he surveyed the scene around him. Who was
that old man over there, sitting beside a dancing-girl that Raphael had
seen at Taillefer's? The owner of the curiosity shop! He had at last
fallen in love, as Raphael had jestingly desired. No doubt the magic
skin had shrunk under that wish before Raphael had measured it. A
beautiful woman entered the theatre with a peer of France at her side. A
murmur of admiration arose as she took her seat. She smiled at Raphael.
In spite of the distorted image on his opera-glass, Raphael knew her. It
was the Countess Foedora! In a single glance of intolerable scorn the
man she had played false avenged himself. He did not waste an ill-wish
on her. He merely took the glasses from his eyes, and answered her smile
with a look of cold contempt. Everybody observed the sudden pallor of
the countess; it was a public rejection.
"Raphael!"
The marquis turned at the sound of a beloved voice. Pauline was sitting
in the box next to his. How beautiful she had grown! How maidenly she
was still! Putting down his opera-glasses, Raphael talked to her of old
times.
"You must come and see me to-morrow," said Pauline. "I have your great
work on 'The Theory of the Will.' Don't you remember leaving it in the
garret?"
"I was mad and blind then," said Raphael. "But I am cured at last."
"I wish Pauline to love me!" he kept repeating to himself all the way
home. "I wish Pauline to love me!"
With a strange mixture of wild anguish and fierce joy, he looked at the
magic skin to see what this vehement wish had cost him. Nothing! Not a
sign of shrinkage could be discerned. The fact was that even the
greatest talisman could not realise a desire which had long since been
fulfilled. Pauline had loved Raphael from the time when they first met;
while he had been priding himself on living on twelve pounds a year, she
had been painting screens up to two or three o'clock every night, in
order to buy him food and firing.
"Oh, my simple-minded darling," she said to him the next day, sitting on
his lap and twining her arms about his neck, "you will never know what a
pleasure it was for me to pay my handsome tutor for all his kindness.
And wasn't I cunning? You never found me out."
"But I've found out now," said Raphael, "and I am going to punish you
severely. Instead of marrying you in three months' time, as you suggest,
I shall marry you at the end of this week."
Raphael was now the happiest man in Paris. Seeing that the magic skin
had not shrunk with his last wish, he thought that the spell over his
life was removed. And that morning he had thrown the talisman down a
disused well in the garden.
At the end of the week, Pauline was sitting at breakfast with Raphael in
the conservatory overlooking the garden. She was wearing a light
dressing-gown; her long hair was all dishevelled, and her little, white,
blue-veined feet peeped out of their velvet slippers. She gave a little
cry of dismay, when the gardener appeared.
"I've just found this strange thing at the bottom of one of the wells,"
he said.
He gave Raphael the magic skin. It was now scarcely as large as a rose
leaf.
"Leave me, Pauline! Leave me at once!" cried Raphael. "If you remain I
shall die before your eyes."
"Die?" she said. "Die? You cannot. I love you--I love you!"
"Yes, die!" he exclaimed, showing her the little bit of skin. "Look,
dearest. This is a talisman which represents the length of my life, and
accomplishes my wishes. You see how little is left."
Pauline thought he had suddenly grown mad. She bent over him, and took
up the magic skin. As Raphael saw her, beautiful with love and terror,
he lost all control over his desires. To possess her again, and die on
her breast!
"Come to me Pauline!" he said.
She felt the skin tickling her hand as it rapidly shrivelled up. She
rushed into the bedroom, and closed the door.
"Pauline! Pauline!" cried the dying man, stumbling after her. "I love
you! I want you! I wish to die for you!"
With extraordinary strength--the last outburst of life--he tore the door
off the hinges, and saw Pauline in agony on a sofa. She had stabbed
herself.
"If I die, he will live!" she was crying.
Raphael staggered across the room, and fell into the arms of beautiful
Pauline, dead.
* * * * *