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.