“As it fell out, the weather was fine while we went through the

Luxembourg; when we came out, some drops fell from a great cloud, whose

progress I had watched uneasily, and we took a cab. At the Museum I was

about to dismiss the vehicle, and Foedora (what agonies!) asked me not

to do so. But it was like a dream in broad daylight for me, to chat

with her, to wander in the Jardin des Plantes, to stray down the shady

alleys, to feel her hand upon my arm; the secret transports repressed

in me were reduced, no doubt, to a fixed and foolish smile upon my

lips; there was something unreal about it all. Yet in all her movements,

however alluring, whether we stood or whether we walked, there was

nothing either tender or lover-like. When I tried to share in a measure

the action of movement prompted by her life, I became aware of a check,

or of something strange in her that I cannot explain, or an inner

activity concealed in her nature. There is no suavity about the

movements of women who have no soul in them. Our wills were opposed,

and we did not keep step together. Words are wanting to describe this

outward dissonance between two beings; we are not accustomed to read

a thought in a movement. We instinctively feel this phenomenon of our

nature, but it cannot be expressed.

“I did not dissect my sensations during those violent seizures of

passion,” Raphael went on, after a moment of silence, as if he were

replying to an objection raised by himself. “I did not analyze my

pleasures nor count my heartbeats then, as a miser scrutinizes and

weighs his gold pieces. No; experience sheds its melancholy light over

the events of the past to-day, and memory brings these pictures back,

as the sea-waves in fair weather cast up fragment after fragment of the

debris of a wrecked vessel upon the strand.

“‘It is in your power to render me a rather important service,’ said the

countess, looking at me in an embarrassed way. ‘After confiding in you

my aversion to lovers, I feel myself more at liberty to entreat your

good offices in the name of friendship. Will there not be very much more

merit in obliging me to-day?’ she asked, laughing.

“I looked at her in anguish. Her manner was coaxing, but in no wise

affectionate; she felt nothing for me; she seemed to be playing a part,

and I thought her a consummate actress. Then all at once my hopes awoke

once more, at a single look and word. Yet if reviving love expressed

itself in my eyes, she bore its light without any change in the

clearness of her own; they seemed, like a tiger’s eyes, to have a sheet

of metal behind them. I used to hate her in such moments.

“‘The influence of the Duc de Navarreins would be very useful to me,

with an all-powerful person in Russia,’ she went on, persuasion in every

modulation of her voice, ‘whose intervention I need in order to have

justice done me in a matter that concerns both my fortune and my

position in the world, that is to say, the recognition of my marriage

by the Emperor. Is not the Duc de Navarreins a cousin of yours? A letter

from him would settle everything.’

“‘I am yours,’ I answered; ‘command me.’

“‘You are very nice,’ she said, pressing my hand. ‘Come and have dinner

with me, and I will tell you everything, as if you were my confessor.’

“So this discreet, suspicious woman, who had never been heard to speak a

word about her affairs to any one, was going to consult me.

“‘Oh, how dear to me is this silence that you have imposed on me!’ I

cried; ‘but I would rather have had some sharper ordeal still.’ And

she smiled upon the intoxication in my eyes; she did not reject my

admiration in any way; surely she loved me!

“Fortunately, my purse held just enough to satisfy her cab-man. The day

spent in her house, alone with her, was delicious; it was the first time

that I had seen her in this way. Hitherto we had always been kept apart

by the presence of others, and by her formal politeness and reserved

manners, even during her magnificent dinners; but now it was as if I

lived beneath her own roof--I had her all to myself, so to speak. My

wandering fancy broke down barriers, arranged the events of life to my

liking, and steeped me in happiness and love. I seemed to myself her

husband, I liked to watch her busied with little details; it was a

pleasure to me even to see her take off her bonnet and shawl. She left

me alone for a little, and came back, charming, with her hair newly

arranged; and this dainty change of toilette had been made for me!

“During the dinner she lavished attention upon me, and put charm without

end into those numberless trifles to all seeming, that make up half of

our existence nevertheless. As we sat together before a crackling

fire, on silken cushions surrounded by the most desirable creations

of Oriental luxury; as I saw this woman whose famous beauty made every

heart beat, so close to me; an unapproachable woman who was talking and

bringing all her powers of coquetry to bear upon me; then my blissful

pleasure rose almost to the point of suffering. To my vexation, I

recollected the important business to be concluded; I determined to go

to keep the appointment made for me for this evening.

“‘So soon?’ she said, seeing me take my hat.

“She loved me, then! or I thought so at least, from the bland tones in

which those two words were uttered. I would then have bartered a couple

of years of life for every hour she chose to grant to me, and so prolong

my ecstasy. My happiness was increased by the extent of the money I

sacrificed. It was midnight before she dismissed me. But on the morrow,

for all that, my heroism cost me a good many remorseful pangs; I was

afraid the affair of the Memoirs, now of such importance for me, might

have fallen through, and rushed off to Rastignac. We found the nominal

author of my future labors just getting up.

“Finot read over a brief agreement to me, in which nothing whatever was

said about my aunt, and when it had been signed he paid me down fifty

crowns, and the three of us breakfasted together. I had only thirty

francs left over, when I had paid for my new hat, for sixty tickets at

thirty sous each, and settled my debts; but for some days to come the

difficulties of living were removed. If I had but listened to Rastignac,

I might have had abundance by frankly adopting the ‘English system.’ He

really wanted to establish my credit by setting me to raise loans, on

the theory that borrowing is the basis of credit. To hear him talk, the

future was the largest and most secure kind of capital in the world.

My future luck was hypothecated for the benefit of my creditors, and he

gave my custom to his tailor, an artist, and a young man’s tailor, who

was to leave me in peace until I married.

“The monastic life of study that I had led for three years past ended

on this day. I frequented Foedora’s house very diligently, and tried to

outshine the heroes or the swaggerers to be found in her circle. When

I believed that I had left poverty for ever behind me, I regained my

freedom of mind, humiliated my rivals, and was looked upon as a very

attractive, dazzling, and irresistible sort of man. But acute folk used

to say with regard to me, ‘A fellow as clever as that will keep all his

enthusiasms in his brain,’ and charitably extolled my faculties at

the expense of my feelings. ‘Isn’t he lucky, not to be in love!’ they

exclaimed. ‘If he were, could he be so light-hearted and animated?’ Yet

in Foedora’s presence I was as dull as love could make me. When I was

alone with her, I had not a word to say, or if I did speak, I renounced

love; and I affected gaiety but ill, like a courtier who has a bitter

mortification to hide. I tried in every way to make myself indispensable

in her life, and necessary to her vanity and to her comfort; I was a

plaything at her pleasure, a slave always at her side. And when I had

frittered away the day in this way, I went back to my work at night,

securing merely two or three hours’ sleep in the early morning.

“But I had not, like Rastignac, the ‘English system’ at my finger-ends,

and I very soon saw myself without a penny. I fell at once into that

precarious way of life which industriously hides cold and miserable

depths beneath an elusive surface of luxury; I was a coxcomb without

conquests, a penniless fop, a nameless gallant. The old sufferings were

renewed, but less sharply; no doubt I was growing used to the painful

crisis. Very often my sole diet consisted of the scanty provision of

cakes and tea that is offered in drawing-rooms, or one of the countess’

great dinners must sustain me for two whole days. I used all my time,

and exerted every effort and all my powers of observation, to penetrate

the impenetrable character of Foedora. Alternate hope and despair had

swayed my opinions; for me she was sometimes the tenderest, sometimes

the most unfeeling of women. But these transitions from joy to sadness

became unendurable; I sought to end the horrible conflict within me by

extinguishing love. By the light of warning gleams my soul sometimes

recognized the gulfs that lay between us. The countess confirmed all my

fears; I had never yet detected any tear in her eyes; an affecting scene

in a play left her smiling and unmoved. All her instincts were selfish;

she could not divine another’s joy or sorrow. She had made a fool of me,

in fact!

“I had rejoiced over a sacrifice to make for her, and almost humiliated

myself in seeking out my kinsman, the Duc de Navarreins, a selfish man

who was ashamed of my poverty, and had injured me too deeply not to hate

me. He received me with the polite coldness that makes every word and

gesture seem an insult; he looked so ill at ease that I pitied him. I

blushed for this pettiness amid grandeur, and penuriousness surrounded

by luxury. He began to talk to me of his heavy losses in the three per

cents, and then I told him the object of my visit. The change in his

manners, hitherto glacial, which now gradually, became affectionate,

disgusted me.

“Well, he called upon the countess, and completely eclipsed me with her.

“On him Foedora exercised spells and witcheries unheard of; she drew him

into her power, and arranged her whole mysterious business with him; I

was left out, I heard not a word of it; she had made a tool of me! She

did not seem to be aware of my existence while my cousin was present;

she received me less cordially perhaps than when I was first presented

to her. One evening she chose to mortify me before the duke by a look, a

gesture, that it is useless to try to express in words. I went away with

tears in my eyes, planning terrible and outrageous schemes of vengeance

without end.

“I often used to go with her to the theatre. Love utterly absorbed me

as I sat beside her; as I looked at her I used to give myself up to the

pleasure of listening to the music, putting all my soul into the double

joy of love and of hearing every emotion of my heart translated into

musical cadences. It was my passion that filled the air and the stage,

that was triumphant everywhere but with my mistress. Then I would take

Foedora’s hand. I used to scan her features and her eyes, imploring of

them some indication that one blended feeling possessed us both, seeking

for the sudden harmony awakened by the power of music, which makes

our souls vibrate in unison; but her hand was passive, her eyes said

nothing.

“When the fire that burned in me glowed too fiercely from the face

I turned upon her, she met it with that studied smile of hers, the

conventional expression that sits on the lips of every portrait in every

exhibition. She was not listening to the music. The divine pages of

Rossini, Cimarosa, or Zingarelli called up no emotion, gave no voice to

any poetry in her life; her soul was a desert.

“Foedora presented herself as a drama before a drama. Her lorgnette

traveled restlessly over the boxes; she was restless too beneath the

apparent calm; fashion tyrannized over her; her box, her bonnet, her

carriage, her own personality absorbed her entirely. My merciless

knowledge thoroughly tore away all my illusions. If good breeding

consists in self-forgetfulness and consideration for others, in

constantly showing gentleness in voice and bearing, in pleasing others,

and in making them content in themselves, all traces of her plebeian

origin were not yet obliterated in Foedora, in spite of her cleverness.

Her self-forgetfulness was a sham, her manners were not innate but

painfully acquired, her politeness was rather subservient. And yet for

those she singled out, her honeyed words expressed natural kindness, her

pretentious exaggeration was exalted enthusiasm. I alone had scrutinized

her grimacings, and stripped away the thin rind that sufficed to conceal

her real nature from the world; her trickery no longer deceived me; I

had sounded the depths of that feline nature. I blushed for her when

some donkey or other flattered and complimented her. And yet I loved her

through it all! I hoped that her snows would melt with the warmth of a

poet’s love. If I could only have made her feel all the greatness that

lies in devotion, then I should have seen her perfected, she would have

been an angel. I loved her as a man, a lover, and an artist; if it had

been necessary not to love her so that I might win her, some cool-headed

coxcomb, some self-possessed calculator would perhaps have had an

advantage over me. She was so vain and sophisticated, that the language

of vanity would appeal to her; she would have allowed herself to be

taken in the toils of an intrigue; a hard, cold nature would have gained

a complete ascendency over her. Keen grief had pierced me to my very

soul, as she unconsciously revealed her absolute love of self. I seemed

to see her as she one day would be, alone in the world, with no one to

whom she could stretch her hand, with no friendly eyes for her own

to meet and rest upon. I was bold enough to set this before her one

evening; I painted in vivid colors her lonely, sad, deserted old age.

Her comment on this prospect of so terrible a revenge of thwarted nature

was horrible.

“‘I shall always have money,’ she said; ‘and with money we can always

inspire such sentiments as are necessary for our comfort in those about

us.’

“I went away confounded by the arguments of luxury, by the reasoning

of this woman of the world in which she lived; and blamed myself for

my infatuated idolatry. I myself had not loved Pauline because she

was poor; and had not the wealthy Foedora a right to repulse Raphael?

Conscience is our unerring judge until we finally stifle it. A specious

voice said within me, ‘Foedora is neither attracted to nor repulses any

one; she has her liberty, but once upon a time she sold herself to the

Russian count, her husband or her lover, for gold. But temptation is

certain to enter into her life. Wait till that moment comes!’ She lived

remote from humanity, in a sphere apart, in a hell or a heaven of

her own; she was neither frail nor virtuous. This feminine enigma in

embroideries and cashmeres had brought into play every emotion of the

human heart in me--pride, ambition, love, curiosity.

“There was a craze just then for praising a play at a little Boulevard

theatre, prompted perhaps by a wish to appear original that besets us

all, or due to some freak of fashion. The countess showed some signs of

a wish to see the floured face of the actor who had so delighted several

people of taste, and I obtained the honor of taking her to a first

presentation of some wretched farce or other. A box scarcely cost five

francs, but I had not a brass farthing. I was but half-way through

the volume of Memoirs; I dared not beg for assistance of Finot, and

Rastignac, my providence, was away. These constant perplexities were the

bane of my life.

“We had once come out of the theatre when it was raining heavily,

Foedora had called a cab for me before I could escape from her show

of concern; she would not admit any of my excuses--my liking for wet

weather, and my wish to go to the gaming-table. She did not read my

poverty in my embarrassed attitude, or in my forced jests. My eyes would

redden, but she did not understand a look. A young man’s life is at the

mercy of the strangest whims! At every revolution of the wheels during

the journey, thoughts that burned stirred in my heart. I tried to pull

up a plank from the bottom of the vehicle, hoping to slip through the

hole into the street; but finding insuperable obstacles, I burst into a

fit of laughter, and then sat stupefied in calm dejection, like a man in

a pillory. When I reached my lodging, Pauline broke in through my first

stammering words with:

“‘If you haven’t any money----?’

“Ah, the music of Rossini was as nothing compared with those words. But

to return to the performance at the Funambules.

“I thought of pawning the circlet of gold round my mother’s portrait

in order to escort the countess. Although the pawnbroker loomed in

my thoughts as one of the doors of a convict’s prison, I would rather

myself have carried my bed thither than have begged for alms. There is

something so painful in the expression of a man who asks money of you!

There are loans that mulct us of our self-respect, just as some rebuffs

from a friend’s lips sweep away our last illusion.

“Pauline was working; her mother had gone to bed. I flung a stealthy

glance over the bed; the curtains were drawn back a little; Madame

Gaudin was in a deep sleep, I thought, when I saw her quiet, sallow

profile outlined against the pillow.

“‘You are in trouble?’ Pauline said, dipping her brush into the

coloring.

“‘It is in your power to do me a great service, my dear child,’ I

answered.

“The gladness in her eyes frightened me.

“‘Is it possible that she loves me?’ I thought. ‘Pauline,’ I began.

I went and sat near to her, so as to study her. My tones had been so

searching that she read my thought; her eyes fell, and I scrutinized

her face. It was so pure and frank that I fancied I could see as clearly

into her heart as into my own.

“‘Do you love me?’ I asked.

“‘A little,--passionately--not a bit!’ she cried.

“Then she did not love me. Her jesting tones, and a little gleeful

movement that escaped her, expressed nothing beyond a girlish, blithe

goodwill. I told her about my distress and the predicament in which I

found myself, and asked her to help me.

“‘You do not wish to go to the pawnbroker’s yourself, M. Raphael,’ she

answered, ‘and yet you would send me!’

“I blushed in confusion at the child’s reasoning. She took my hand in

hers as if she wanted to compensate for this home-truth by her light

touch upon it.

“‘Oh, I would willingly go,’ she said, ‘but it is not necessary. I found

two five-franc pieces at the back of the piano, that had slipped without

your knowledge between the frame and the keyboard, and I laid them on

your table.’

“‘You will soon be coming into some money, M. Raphael,’ said the kind

mother, showing her face between the curtains, ‘and I can easily lend

you a few crowns meanwhile.’

“‘Oh, Pauline!’ I cried, as I pressed her hand, ‘how I wish that I were

rich!’

“‘Bah! why should you?’ she said petulantly. Her hand shook in mine with

the throbbing of her pulse; she snatched it away, and looked at both of

mine.

“‘You will marry a rich wife,’ she said, ‘but she will give you a great

deal of trouble. Ah, _Dieu_! she will be your death,--I am sure of it.’

“In her exclamation there was something like belief in her mother’s

absurd superstitions.

“‘You are very credulous, Pauline!’

“‘The woman whom you will love is going to kill you--there is no doubt

of it,’ she said, looking at me with alarm.

“She took up her brush again and dipped it in the color; her great

agitation was evident; she looked at me no longer. I was ready to give

credence just then to superstitious fancies; no man is utterly wretched

so long as he is superstitious; a belief of that kind is often in

reality a hope.

“I found that those two magnificent five-franc pieces were lying, in

fact, upon my table when I reached my room. During the first confused

thoughts of early slumber, I tried to audit my accounts so as to explain

this unhoped-for windfall; but I lost myself in useless calculations,

and slept. Just as I was leaving my room to engage a box the next

morning, Pauline came to see me.

“‘Perhaps your ten francs is not enough,’ said the amiable, kind-hearted

girl; ‘my mother told me to offer you this money. Take it, please, take

it!’

“She laid three crowns upon the table, and tried to escape, but I would

not let her go. Admiration dried the tears that sprang to my eyes.

“‘You are an angel, Pauline,’ I said. ‘It is not the loan that touches

me so much as the delicacy with which it is offered. I used to wish for

a rich wife, a fashionable woman of rank; and now, alas! I would

rather possess millions, and find some girl, as poor as you are, with

a generous nature like your own; and I would renounce a fatal passion

which will kill me. Perhaps what you told me will come true.’

“‘That is enough,’ she said, and fled away; the fresh trills of her

birdlike voice rang up the staircase.

“‘She is very happy in not yet knowing love,’ I said to myself, thinking

of the torments I had endured for many months past.

“Pauline’s fifteen francs were invaluable to me. Foedora, thinking of

the stifling odor of the crowded place where we were to spend several

hours, was sorry that she had not brought a bouquet; I went in search of

flowers for her, as I had laid already my life and my fate at her feet.

With a pleasure in which compunction mingled, I gave her a bouquet. I

learned from its price the extravagance of superficial gallantry in

the world. But very soon she complained of the heavy scent of a Mexican

jessamine. The interior of the theatre, the bare bench on which she

was to sit, filled her with intolerable disgust; she upbraided me for

bringing her there. Although she sat beside me, she wished to go, and

she went. I had spent sleepless nights, and squandered two months of

my life for her, and I could not please her. Never had that tormenting

spirit been more unfeeling or more fascinating.

“I sat beside her in the cramped back seat of the vehicle; all the way I

could feel her breath on me and the contact of her perfumed glove; I

saw distinctly all her exceeding beauty; I inhaled a vague scent of

orris-root; so wholly a woman she was, with no touch of womanhood. Just

then a sudden gleam of light lit up the depths of this mysterious life

for me. I thought all at once of a book just published by a poet,

a genuine conception of the artist, in the shape of the statue of

Polycletus.

“I seemed to see that monstrous creation, at one time an officer,

breaking in a spirited horse; at another, a girl, who gives herself up

to her toilette and breaks her lovers’ hearts; or again, a false lover

driving a timid and gentle maid to despair. Unable to analyze Foedora

by any other process, I told her this fanciful story; but no hint of

her resemblance to this poetry of the impossible crossed her--it simply

diverted her; she was like a child over a story from the _Arabian

Nights_.

“‘Foedora must be shielded by some talisman,’ I thought to myself as

I went back, ‘or she could not resist the love of a man of my age, the

infectious fever of that splendid malady of the soul. Is Foedora, like

Lady Delacour, a prey to a cancer? Her life is certainly an unnatural

one.’

“I shuddered at the thought. Then I decided on a plan, at once the

wildest and the most rational that lover ever dreamed of. I would study

this woman from a physical point of view, as I had already studied her

intellectually, and to this end I made up my mind to spend a night in

her room without her knowledge. This project preyed upon me as a thirst

for revenge gnaws at the heart of a Corsican monk. This is how I carried

it out. On the days when Foedora received, her rooms were far too

crowded for the hall-porter to keep the balance even between goers and

comers; I could remain in the house, I felt sure, without causing a

scandal in it, and I waited the countess’ coming soiree with impatience.

As I dressed I put a little English penknife into my waistcoat pocket,

instead of a poniard. That literary implement, if found upon me, could

awaken no suspicion, but I knew not whither my romantic resolution might

lead, and I wished to be prepared.

“As soon as the rooms began to fill, I entered the bedroom and examined

the arrangements. The inner and outer shutters were closed; this was

a good beginning; and as the waiting-maid might come to draw back the

curtains that hung over the windows, I pulled them together. I was

running great risks in venturing to manoeuvre beforehand in this way,

but I had accepted the situation, and had deliberately reckoned with its

dangers.

“About midnight I hid myself in the embrasure of the window. I tried to

scramble on to a ledge of the wainscoting, hanging on by the fastening

of the shutters with my back against the wall, in such a position that

my feet could not be visible. When I had carefully considered my points

of support, and the space between me and the curtains, I had become

sufficiently acquainted with all the difficulties of my position to

stay in it without fear of detection if undisturbed by cramp, coughs,

or sneezings. To avoid useless fatigue, I remained standing until the

critical moment, when I must hang suspended like a spider in its web.

The white-watered silk and muslin of the curtains spread before me in

great pleats like organ-pipes. With my penknife I cut loopholes in them,

through which I could see.

“I heard vague murmurs from the salons, the laughter and the louder

tones of the speakers. The smothered commotion and vague uproar lessened

by slow degrees. One man and another came for his hat from the countess’

chest of drawers, close to where I stood. I shivered, if the curtains

were disturbed, at the thought of the mischances consequent on the

confused and hasty investigations made by the men in a hurry to depart,

who were rummaging everywhere. When I experienced no misfortunes of this

kind, I augured well of my enterprise. An old wooer of Foedora’s came

for the last hat; he thought himself quite alone, looked at the bed,

and heaved a great sigh, accompanied by some inaudible exclamation, into

which he threw sufficient energy. In the boudoir close by, the countess,

finding only some five or six intimate acquaintances about her, proposed

tea. The scandals for which existing society has reserved the little

faculty of belief that it retains, mingled with epigrams and trenchant

witticisms, and the clatter of cups and spoons. Rastignac drew roars of

laughter by merciless sarcasms at the expense of my rivals.

“‘M. de Rastignac is a man with whom it is better not to quarrel,’ said

the countess, laughing.

“‘I am quite of that opinion,’ was his candid reply. ‘I have always

been right about my aversions--and my friendships as well,’ he added.

‘Perhaps my enemies are quite as useful to me as my friends. I have made

a particular study of modern phraseology, and of the natural craft

that is used in all attack or defence. Official eloquence is one of our

perfect social products.

“‘One of your friends is not clever, so you speak of his integrity and

his candor. Another’s work is heavy; you introduce it as a piece of

conscientious labor; and if the book is ill written, you extol the ideas

it contains. Such an one is treacherous and fickle, slips through

your fingers every moment; bah! he is attractive, bewitching, he is

delightful! Suppose they are enemies, you fling every one, dead or

alive, in their teeth. You reverse your phraseology for their benefit,

and you are as keen in detecting their faults as you were before adroit

in bringing out the virtues of your friends. This way of using the

mental lorgnette is the secret of conversation nowadays, and the whole

art of the complete courtier. If you neglect it, you might as well go

out as an unarmed knight-banneret to fight against men in armor. And I

make use of it, and even abuse it at times. So we are respected--I and

my friends; and, moreover, my sword is quite as sharp as my tongue.’

“One of Foedora’s most fervid worshipers, whose presumption was

notorious, and who even made it contribute to his success, took up the

glove thrown down so scornfully by Rastignac. He began an unmeasured

eulogy of me, my performances, and my character. Rastignac had

overlooked this method of detraction. His sarcastic encomiums misled

the countess, who sacrificed without mercy; she betrayed my secrets, and

derided my pretensions and my hopes, to divert her friends.

“‘There is a future before him,’ said Rastignac. ‘Some day he may be in

a position to take a cruel revenge; his talents are at least equal to

his courage; and I should consider those who attack him very rash, for

he has a good memory----’

“‘And writes Memoirs,’ put in the countess, who seemed to object to the

deep silence that prevailed.

“‘Memoirs of a sham countess, madame,’ replied Rastignac. ‘Another sort

of courage is needed to write that sort of thing.’

“‘I give him credit for plenty of courage,’ she answered; ‘he is

faithful to me.’

“I was greatly tempted to show myself suddenly among the railers, like

the shade of Banquo in Macbeth. I should have lost a mistress, but I

had a friend! But love inspired me all at once, with one of those

treacherous and fallacious subtleties that it can use to soothe all our

pangs.

“If Foedora loved me, I thought, she would be sure to disguise her

feelings by some mocking jest. How often the heart protests against a

lie on the lips!

“Well, very soon my audacious rival, left alone with the countess, rose

to go.

“‘What! already?’ asked she in a coaxing voice that set my heart

beating. ‘Will you not give me a few more minutes? Have you nothing more

to say to me? will you never sacrifice any of your pleasures for me?’

“He went away.

“‘Ah!’ she yawned; ‘how very tiresome they all are!’

“She pulled a cord energetically till the sound of a bell rang through

the place; then, humming a few notes of _Pria che spunti_, the countess

entered her room. No one had ever heard her sing; her muteness had

called forth the wildest explanations. She had promised her first lover,

so it was said, who had been held captive by her talent, and whose

jealousy over her stretched beyond his grave, that she would never allow

others to experience a happiness that he wished to be his and his alone.

“I exerted every power of my soul to catch the sounds. Higher and higher

rose the notes; Foedora’s life seemed to dilate within her; her throat

poured forth all its richest tones; something well-nigh divine entered

into the melody. There was a bright purity and clearness of tone in the

countess’ voice, a thrilling harmony which reached the heart and stirred

its pulses. Musicians are seldom unemotional; a woman who could sing

like that must know how to love indeed. Her beautiful voice made one

more puzzle in a woman mysterious enough before. I beheld her then, as

plainly as I see you at this moment. She seemed to listen to herself, to

experience a secret rapture of her own; she felt, as it were, an ecstasy

like that of love.

“She stood before the hearth during the execution of the principal theme

of the _rondo_; and when she ceased her face changed. She looked tired;

her features seemed to alter. She had laid the mask aside; her part as

an actress was over. Yet the faded look that came over her beautiful

face, a result either of this performance or of the evening’s fatigues,

had its charms, too.

“‘This is her real self,’ I thought.

“She set her foot on a bronze bar of the fender as if to warm it, took

off her gloves, and drew over her head the gold chain from which her

bejeweled scent-bottle hung. It gave me a quite indescribable pleasure

to watch the feline grace of every movement; the supple grace a cat

displays as it adjusts its toilette in the sun. She looked at herself

in the mirror and said aloud ill-humoredly--‘I did not look well this

evening, my complexion is going with alarming rapidity; perhaps I

ought to keep earlier hours, and give up this life of dissipation. Does

Justine mean to trifle with me?’ She rang again; her maid hurried in.

Where she had been I cannot tell; she came in by a secret staircase.

I was anxious to make a study of her. I had lodged accusations, in

my romantic imaginings, against this invisible waiting-woman, a tall,

well-made brunette.

“‘Did madame ring?’

“‘Yes, twice,’ answered Foedora; ‘are you really growing deaf nowadays?’

“‘I was preparing madame’s milk of almonds.’

“Justine knelt down before her, unlaced her sandals and drew them off,

while her mistress lay carelessly back on her cushioned armchair beside

the fire, yawned, and scratched her head. Every movement was perfectly

natural; there was nothing whatever to indicate the secret sufferings or

emotions with which I had credited her.

“‘George must be in love!’ she remarked. ‘I shall dismiss him. He has

drawn the curtains again to-night. What does he mean by it?’

“All the blood in my veins rushed to my heart at this observation, but

no more was said about curtains.

“‘Life is very empty,’ the countess went on. ‘Ah! be careful not to

scratch me as you did yesterday. Just look here, I still have the marks

of your nails about me,’ and she held out a silken knee. She thrust her

bare feet into velvet slippers bound with swan’s-down, and unfastened

her dress, while Justine prepared to comb her hair.

“‘You ought to marry, madame, and have children.’

“‘Children!’ she cried; ‘it wants no more than that to finish me at

once; and a husband! What man is there to whom I could----? Was my hair

well arranged to-night?’

“‘Not particularly.’

“‘You are a fool!’

“‘That way of crimping your hair too much is the least becoming way

possible for you. Large, smooth curls suit you a great deal better.’

“‘Really?’

“‘Yes, really, madame; that wavy style only looks nice in fair hair.’

“‘Marriage? never, never! Marriage is a commercial arrangement, for

which I was never made.’

“What a disheartening scene for a lover! Here was a lonely woman,

without friends or kin, without the religion of love, without faith in

any affection. Yet however slightly she might feel the need to pour

out her heart, a craving that every human being feels, it could only

be satisfied by gossiping with her maid, by trivial and indifferent

talk.... I grieved for her.

“Justine unlaced her. I watched her carefully when she was at last

unveiled. Her maidenly form, in its rose-tinged whiteness, was visible

through her shift in the taper light, as dazzling as some silver statue

behind its gauze covering. No, there was no defect that need shrink from

the stolen glances of love. Alas, a fair form will overcome the stoutest

resolutions!

“The maid lighted the taper in the alabaster sconce that hung before

the bed, while her mistress sat thoughtful and silent before the fire.

Justine went for a warming-pan, turned down the bed, and helped to lay

her mistress in it; then, after some further time spent in punctiliously

rendering various services that showed how seriously Foedora respected

herself, her maid left her. The countess turned to and fro several

times, and sighed; she was ill at ease; faint, just perceptible sounds,

like sighs of impatience, escaped from her lips. She reached out a hand

to the table, and took a flask from it, from which she shook four or

five drops of some brown liquid into some milk before taking it; again

there followed some painful sighs, and the exclamation, ‘_Mon Dieu_!’

“The cry, and the tone in which it was uttered, wrung my heart. By

degrees she lay motionless. This frightened me; but very soon I heard

a sleeper’s heavy, regular breathing. I drew the rustling silk curtains

apart, left my post, went to the foot of the bed, and gazed at her with

feelings that I cannot define. She was so enchanting as she lay like a

child, with her arm above her head; but the sweetness of the fair,

quiet visage, surrounded by the lace, only irritated me. I had not been

prepared for the torture to which I was compelled to submit.

“‘_Mon Dieu_!’ that scrap of a thought which I understood not, but must

even take as my sole light, had suddenly modified my opinion of Foedora.

Trite or profoundly significant, frivolous or of deep import, the words

might be construed as expressive of either pleasure or pain, of physical

or of mental suffering. Was it a prayer or a malediction, a forecast or

a memory, a fear or a regret? A whole life lay in that utterance, a life

of wealth or of penury; perhaps it contained a crime!

“The mystery that lurked beneath this fair semblance of womanhood grew

afresh; there were so many ways of explaining Foedora, that she became

inexplicable. A sort of language seemed to flow from between her lips.

I put thoughts and feelings into the accidents of her breathing, whether

weak or regular, gentle, or labored. I shared her dreams; I would

fain have divined her secrets by reading them through her slumber. I

hesitated among contradictory opinions and decisions without number.

I could not deny my heart to the woman I saw before me, with the calm,

pure beauty in her face. I resolved to make one more effort. If I told

her the story of my life, my love, my sacrifices, might I not awaken

pity in her or draw a tear from her who never wept?

“As I set all my hopes on this last experiment, the sounds in the

streets showed that day was at hand. For a moment’s space I pictured

Foedora waking to find herself in my arms. I could have stolen softly

to her side and slipped them about her in a close embrace. Resolved

to resist the cruel tyranny of this thought, I hurried into the salon,

heedless of any sounds I might make; but, luckily, I came upon a secret

door leading to a little staircase. As I expected, the key was in the

lock; I slammed the door, went boldly out into the court, and gained

the street in three bounds, without looking round to see whether I was

observed.

“A dramatist was to read a comedy at the countess’ house in two days’

time; I went thither, intending to outstay the others, so as to make a

rather singular request to her; I meant to ask her to keep the following

evening for me alone, and to deny herself to other comers; but when I

found myself alone with her, my courage failed. Every tick of the clock

alarmed me. It wanted only a quarter of an hour of midnight.

“‘If I do not speak,’ I thought to myself, ‘I must smash my head against

the corner of the mantelpiece.’

“I gave myself three minutes’ grace; the three minutes went by, and

I did not smash my head upon the marble; my heart grew heavy, like a

sponge with water.

“‘You are exceedingly amusing,’ said she.

“‘Ah, madame, if you could but understand me!’ I answered.

“‘What is the matter with you?’ she asked. ‘You are turning pale.’

“‘I am hesitating to ask a favor of you.’

“Her gesture revived my courage. I asked her to make the appointment

with me.

“‘Willingly,’ she answered’ ‘but why will you not speak to me now?’

“‘To be candid with you, I ought to explain the full scope of your

promise: I want to spend this evening by your side, as if we were

brother and sister. Have no fear; I am aware of your antipathies; you

must have divined me sufficiently to feel sure that I should wish you

to do nothing that could be displeasing to you; presumption, moreover,

would not thus approach you. You have been a friend to me, you have

shown me kindness and great indulgence; know, therefore, that to-morrow

I must bid you farewell.--Do not take back your word,’ I exclaimed,

seeing her about to speak, and I went away.

“At eight o’clock one evening towards the end of May, Foedora and I were

alone together in her gothic boudoir. I feared no longer; I was secure

of happiness. My mistress should be mine, or I would seek a refuge in

death. I had condemned my faint-hearted love, and a man who acknowledges

his weakness is strong indeed.

“The countess, in her blue cashmere gown, was reclining on a sofa, with

her feet on a cushion. She wore an Oriental turban such as painters

assign to early Hebrews; its strangeness added an indescribable

coquettish grace to her attractions. A transitory charm seemed to have

laid its spell on her face; it might have furnished the argument that

at every instant we become new and unparalleled beings, without any

resemblance to the _us_ of the future or of the past. I had never yet

seen her so radiant.

“‘Do you know that you have piqued my curiosity?’ she said, laughing.

“‘I will not disappoint it,’ I said quietly, as I seated myself near

to her and took the hand that she surrendered to me. ‘You have a very

beautiful voice!’

“‘You have never heard me sing!’ she exclaimed, starting involuntarily

with surprise.

“‘I will prove that it is quite otherwise, whenever it is necessary. Is

your delightful singing still to remain a mystery? Have no fear, I do

not wish to penetrate it.’

“We spent about an hour in familiar talk. While I adopted the attitude

and manner of a man to whom Foedora must refuse nothing, I showed her

all a lover’s deference. Acting in this way, I received a favor--I was

allowed to kiss her hand. She daintily drew off the glove, and my whole

soul was dissolved and poured forth in that kiss. I was steeped in the

bliss of an illusion in which I tried to believe.

“Foedora lent herself most unexpectedly to my caress and my flatteries.

Do not accuse me of faint-heartedness; if I had gone a step beyond these

fraternal compliments, the claws would have been out of the sheath and

into me. We remained perfectly silent for nearly ten minutes. I was

admiring her, investing her with the charms she had not. She was mine

just then, and mine only,--this enchanting being was mine, as was

permissible, in my imagination; my longing wrapped her round and

held her close; in my soul I wedded her. The countess was subdued and

fascinated by my magnetic influence. Ever since I have regretted that

this subjugation was not absolute; but just then I yearned for her soul,

her heart alone, and for nothing else. I longed for an ideal and perfect

happiness, a fair illusion that cannot last for very long. At last I

spoke, feeling that the last hours of my frenzy were at hand.

“‘Hear me, madame. I love you, and you know it; I have said so a hundred

times; you must have understood me. I would not take upon me the airs

of a coxcomb, nor would I flatter you, nor urge myself upon you like a

fool; I would not owe your love to such arts as these! so I have been

misunderstood. What sufferings have I not endured for your sake! For

these, however, you were not to blame; but in a few minutes you shall

decide for yourself. There are two kinds of poverty, madame. One kind

openly walks the street in rags, an unconscious imitator of Diogenes,

on a scanty diet, reducing life to its simplest terms; he is happier,

maybe, than the rich; he has fewer cares at any rate, and accepts such

portions of the world as stronger spirits refuse. Then there is poverty

in splendor, a Spanish pauper, concealing the life of a beggar by his

title, his bravery, and his pride; poverty that wears a white waistcoat

and yellow kid gloves, a beggar with a carriage, whose whole career will

be wrecked for lack of a halfpenny. Poverty of the first kind belongs to

the populace; the second kind is that of blacklegs, of kings, and of men

of talent. I am neither a man of the people, nor a king, nor a swindler;

possibly I have no talent either, I am an exception. With the name I

bear I must die sooner than beg. Set your mind at rest, madame,’ I

said; ‘to-day I have abundance, I possess sufficient of the clay for my

needs’; for the hard look passed over her face which we wear whenever a

well-dressed beggar takes us by surprise. ‘Do you remember the day

when you wished to go to the Gymnase without me, never believing that I

should be there?’ I went on.

“She nodded.

“‘I had laid out my last five-franc piece that I might see you

there.--Do you recollect our walk in the Jardin des Plantes? The hire of

your cab took everything I had.’

“I told her about my sacrifices, and described the life I led; heated

not with wine, as I am to-day, but by the generous enthusiasm of my

heart, my passion overflowed in burning words; I have forgotten how the

feelings within me blazed forth; neither memory nor skill of mine

could possibly reproduce it. It was no colorless chronicle of blighted

affections; my love was strengthened by fair hopes; and such words came

to me, by love’s inspiration, that each had power to set forth a whole

life--like echoes of the cries of a soul in torment. In such tones the

last prayers ascend from dying men on the battlefield. I stopped, for

she was weeping. _Grand Dieu_! I had reaped an actor’s reward, the

success of a counterfeit passion displayed at the cost of five francs

paid at the theatre door. I had drawn tears from her.

“‘If I had known----’ she said.

“‘Do not finish the sentence,’ I broke in. ‘Even now I love you well

enough to murder you----’

“She reached for the bell-pull. I burst into a roar of laughter.

“‘Do not call any one,’ I said. ‘I shall leave you to finish your life

in peace. It would be a blundering kind of hatred that would murder you!

You need not fear violence of any kind; I have spent a whole night at

the foot of your bed without----’

“‘Monsieur----’ she said, blushing; but after that first impulse of

modesty that even the most hardened women must surely own, she flung a

scornful glance at me, and said:

“‘You must have been very cold.’

“‘Do you think that I set such value on your beauty, madame,’ I

answered, guessing the thoughts that moved her. ‘Your beautiful face is

for me a promise of a soul yet more beautiful. Madame, those to whom

a woman is merely a woman can always purchase odalisques fit for the

seraglio, and achieve their happiness at a small cost. But I aspired

to something higher; I wanted the life of close communion of heart

and heart with you that have no heart. I know that now. If you were to

belong to another, I could kill him. And yet, no; for you would love

him, and his death might hurt you perhaps. What agony this is!’ I cried.

“‘If it is any comfort to you,’ she retorted cheerfully, ‘I can assure

you that I shall never belong to any one----’

“‘So you offer an affront to God Himself,’ I interrupted; ‘and you

will be punished for it. Some day you will lie upon your sofa suffering

unheard-of ills, unable to endure the light or the slightest sound,

condemned to live as it were in the tomb. Then, when you seek the causes

of those lingering and avenging torments, you will remember the woes

that you distributed so lavishly upon your way. You have sown curses,

and hatred will be your reward. We are the real judges, the executioners

of a justice that reigns here below, which overrules the justice of man

and the laws of God.’

“‘No doubt it is very culpable in me not to love you,’ she said,

laughing. ‘Am I to blame? No. I do not love you; you are a man, that is

sufficient. I am happy by myself; why should I give up my way of living,

a selfish way, if you will, for the caprices of a master? Marriage is a

sacrament by virtue of which each imparts nothing but vexations to the

other. Children, moreover, worry me. Did I not faithfully warn you about

my nature? Why are you not satisfied to have my friendship? I wish I

could make you amends for all the troubles I have caused you, through

not guessing the value of your poor five-franc pieces. I appreciate the

extent of your sacrifices; but your devotion and delicate tact can be

repaid by love alone, and I care so little for you, that this scene has

a disagreeable effect upon me.’

“‘I am fully aware of my absurdity,’ I said, unable to restrain my

tears. ‘Pardon me,’ I went on, ‘it was a delight to hear those cruel

words you have just uttered, so well I love you. O, if I could testify

my love with every drop of blood in me!’

“‘Men always repeat these classic formulas to us, more or less

effectively,’ she answered, still smiling. ‘But it appears very

difficult to die at our feet, for I see corpses of that kind about

everywhere. It is twelve o’clock. Allow me to go to bed.’

“‘And in two hours’ time you will cry to yourself, _Ah, mon Dieu_!’

“‘Like the day before yesterday! Yes,’ she said, ‘I was thinking of my

stockbroker; I had forgotten to tell him to convert my five per cent

stock into threes, and the three per cents had fallen during the day.’

“I looked at her, and my eyes glittered with anger. Sometimes a

crime may be a whole romance; I understood that just then. She was so

accustomed, no doubt, to the most impassioned declarations of this kind,

that my words and my tears were forgotten already.

“‘Would you marry a peer of France?’ I demanded abruptly.

“‘If he were a duke, I might.’

“I seized my hat and made her a bow.

“‘Permit me to accompany you to the door,’ she said, cutting irony in

her tones, in the poise of her head, and in her gesture.

“‘Madame----’

“‘Monsieur?’

“‘I shall never see you again.’

“‘I hope not,’ and she insolently inclined her head.

“‘You wish to be a duchess?’ I cried, excited by a sort of madness that

her insolence roused in me. ‘You are wild for honors and titles? Well,

only let me love you; bid my pen write and my voice speak for you alone;

be the inmost soul of my life, my guiding star! Then, only accept me

for your husband as a minister, a peer of France, a duke. I will make of

myself whatever you would have me be!’

“‘You made good use of the time you spent with the advocate,’ she said

smiling. ‘There is a fervency about your pleadings.’

“‘The present is yours,’ I cried, ‘but the future is mine! I only lose a

woman; you are losing a name and a family. Time is big with my revenge;

time will spoil your beauty, and yours will be a solitary death; and

glory waits for me!’

“‘Thanks for your peroration!’ she said, repressing a yawn; the wish

that she might never see me again was expressed in her whole bearing.

“That remark silenced me. I flung at her a glance full of hatred, and

hurried away.

“Foedora must be forgotten; I must cure myself of my infatuation, and

betake myself once more to my lonely studies, or die. So I set myself

tremendous tasks; I determined to complete my labors. For fifteen days I

never left my garret, spending whole nights in pallid thought. I worked

with difficulty, and by fits and starts, despite my courage and the

stimulation of despair. The music had fled. I could not exorcise the

brilliant mocking image of Foedora. Something morbid brooded over

every thought, a vague longing as dreadful as remorse. I imitated the

anchorites of the Thebaid. If I did not pray as they did, I lived a life

in the desert like theirs, hewing out my ideas as they were wont to hew

their rocks. I could at need have girdled my waist with spikes, that

physical suffering might quell mental anguish.

“One evening Pauline found her way into my room.

“‘You are killing yourself,’ she said imploringly; ‘you should go out

and see your friends----’

“‘Pauline, you were a true prophet; Foedora is killing me, I want to

die. My life is intolerable.’

“‘Is there only one woman in the world?’ she asked, smiling. ‘Why make

yourself so miserable in so short a life?’

“I looked at Pauline in bewilderment. She left me before I noticed her

departure; the sound of her words had reached me, but not their

sense. Very soon I had to take my Memoirs in manuscript to my

literary-contractor. I was so absorbed by my passion, that I could not

remember how I had managed to live without money; I only knew that the

four hundred and fifty francs due to me would pay my debts. So I went

to receive my salary, and met Rastignac, who thought me changed and

thinner.

“‘What hospital have you been discharged from?’ he asked.

“‘That woman is killing me,’ I answered; ‘I can neither despise her nor

forget her.’

“‘You had much better kill her, then perhaps you would think no more of

her,’ he said, laughing.

“‘I have often thought of it,’ I replied; ‘but though sometimes the

thought of a crime revives my spirits, of violence and murder, either or

both, I am really incapable of carrying out the design. The countess is

an admirable monster who would crave for pardon, and not every man is an

Othello.’

“‘She is like every woman who is beyond our reach,’ Rastignac

interrupted.

“‘I am mad,’ I cried; ‘I can feel the madness raging at times in my

brain. My ideas are like shadows; they flit before me, and I cannot

grasp them. Death would be preferable to this life, and I have carefully

considered the best way of putting an end to the struggle. I am not

thinking of the living Foedora in the Faubourg Saint Honore, but of my

Foedora here,’ and I tapped my forehead. ‘What to you say to opium?’

“‘Pshaw! horrid agonies,’ said Rastignac.

“‘Or charcoal fumes?’

“‘A low dodge.’

“‘Or the Seine?’

“‘The drag-nets, and the Morgue too, are filthy.’

“‘A pistol-shot?’

“‘And if you miscalculate, you disfigure yourself for life. Listen to

me,’ he went on, ‘like all young men, I have pondered over suicide.

Which of us hasn’t killed himself two or three times before he is

thirty? I find there is no better course than to use existence as a

means of pleasure. Go in for thorough dissipation, and your passion or

you will perish in it. Intemperance, my dear fellow, commands all forms

of death. Does she not wield the thunderbolt of apoplexy? Apoplexy is

a pistol-shot that does not miscalculate. Orgies are lavish in all

physical pleasures; is not that the small change for opium? And the riot

that makes us drink to excess bears a challenge to mortal combat with

wine. That butt of Malmsey of the Duke of Clarence’s must have had a

pleasanter flavor than Seine mud. When we sink gloriously under the

table, is not that a periodical death by drowning on a small scale? If

we are picked up by the police and stretched out on those chilly benches

of theirs at the police-station, do we not enjoy all the pleasures of

the Morgue? For though we are not blue and green, muddy and swollen

corpses, on the other hand we have the consciousness of the climax.

“‘Ah,’ he went on, ‘this protracted suicide has nothing in common with

the bankrupt grocer’s demise. Tradespeople have brought the river into

disrepute; they fling themselves in to soften their creditors’ hearts.

In your place I should endeavor to die gracefully; and if you wish

to invent a novel way of doing it, by struggling with life after this

manner, I will be your second. I am disappointed and sick of everything.

The Alsacienne, whom it was proposed that I should marry, had six toes

on her left foot; I cannot possibly live with a woman who has six toes!

It would get about to a certainty, and then I should be ridiculous.

Her income was only eighteen thousand francs; her fortune diminished

in quantity as her toes increased. The devil take it; if we begin an

outrageous sort of life, we may come on some bit of luck, perhaps!’

“Rastignac’s eloquence carried me away. The attractions of the plan

shone too temptingly, hopes were kindled, the poetical aspects of the

matter appealed to a poet.

“‘How about money?’ I said.

“‘Haven’t you four hundred and fifty francs?’

“‘Yes, but debts to my landlady and the tailor----’

“‘You would pay your tailor? You will never be anything whatever, not so

much as a minister.’

“‘But what can one do with twenty louis?’

“‘Go to the gaming-table.’

“I shuddered.

“‘You are going to launch out into what I call systematic dissipation,’

said he, noticing my scruples, ‘and yet you are afraid of a green

table-cloth.’

“‘Listen to me,’ I answered. ‘I promised my father never to set foot in

a gaming-house. Not only is that a sacred promise, but I still feel an

unconquerable disgust whenever I pass a gambling-hell; take the money

and go without me. While our fortune is at stake, I will set my own

affairs straight, and then I will go to your lodgings and wait for you.’

“That was the way I went to perdition. A young man has only to come

across a woman who will not love him, or a woman who loves him too well,

and his whole life becomes a chaos. Prosperity swallows up our energy

just as adversity obscures our virtues. Back once more in my Hotel de

Saint-Quentin, I gazed about me a long while in the garret where I had

led my scholar’s temperate life, a life which would perhaps have been

a long and honorable one, and that I ought not to have quitted for

the fevered existence which had urged me to the brink of a precipice.

Pauline surprised me in this dejected attitude.

“‘Why, what is the matter with you?’ she asked.

“I rose and quietly counted out the money owing to her mother, and added

to it sufficient to pay for six months’ rent in advance. She watched me

in some alarm.

“‘I am going to leave you, dear Pauline.’

“‘I knew it!’ she exclaimed.

“‘Listen, my child. I have not given up the idea of coming back. Keep

my room for me for six months. If I do not return by the fifteenth of

November, you will come into possession of my things. This sealed packet

of manuscript is the fair copy of my great work on “The Will,”’ I went

on, pointing to a package. ‘Will you deposit it in the King’s Library?

And you may do as you wish with everything that is left here.’

“Her look weighed heavily on my heart; Pauline was an embodiment of

conscience there before me.

“‘I shall have no more lessons,’ she said, pointing to the piano.

“I did not answer that.

“‘Will you write to me?’

“‘Good-bye, Pauline.’

“I gently drew her towards me, and set a kiss on that innocent fair brow

of hers, like snow that has not yet touched the earth--a father’s or a

brother’s kiss. She fled. I would not see Madame Gaudin, hung my key in

its wonted place, and departed. I was almost at the end of the Rue de

Cluny when I heard a woman’s light footstep behind me.

“‘I have embroidered this purse for you,’ Pauline said; ‘will you refuse

even that?’

“By the light of the street lamp I thought I saw tears in Pauline’s

eyes, and I groaned. Moved perhaps by a common impulse, we parted in

haste like people who fear the contagion of the plague.

“As I waited with dignified calmness for Rastignac’s return, his room

seemed a grotesque interpretation of the sort of life I was about to

enter upon. The clock on the chimney-piece was surmounted by a Venus

resting on her tortoise; a half-smoked cigar lay in her arms. Costly

furniture of various kinds--love tokens, very likely--was scattered

about. Old shoes lay on a luxurious sofa. The comfortable armchair into

which I had thrown myself bore as many scars as a veteran; the arms were

gnashed, the back was overlaid with a thick, stale deposit of pomade and

hair-oil from the heads of all his visitors. Splendor and squalor were

oddly mingled, on the walls, the bed, and everywhere. You might have

thought of a Neapolitan palace and the groups of lazzaroni about it. It

was the room of a gambler or a mauvais sujet, where the luxury exists

for one individual, who leads the life of the senses and does not

trouble himself over inconsistencies.

“There was a certain imaginative element about the picture it presented.

Life was suddenly revealed there in its rags and spangles as

the incomplete thing it really is, of course, but so vividly and

picturesquely; it was like a den where a brigand has heaped up all the

plunder in which he delights. Some pages were missing from a copy of

Byron’s poems: they had gone to light a fire of a few sticks for this

young person, who played for stakes of a thousand francs, and had not

a faggot; he kept a tilbury, and had not a whole shirt to his back. Any

day a countess or an actress or a run of luck at ecarte might set him up

with an outfit worthy of a king. A candle had been stuck into the green

bronze sheath of a vestaholder; a woman’s portrait lay yonder, torn out

of its carved gold setting. How was it possible that a young man, whose

nature craved excitement, could renounce a life so attractive by reason

of its contradictions; a life that afforded all the delights of war in

the midst of peace? I was growing drowsy when Rastignac kicked the door

open and shouted:

“‘Victory! Now we can take our time about dying.’

“He held out his hat filled with gold to me, and put it down on the

table; then we pranced round it like a pair of cannibals about to eat a

victim; we stamped, and danced, and yelled, and sang; we gave each other

blows fit to kill an elephant, at sight of all the pleasures of the

world contained in that hat.

“‘Twenty-seven thousand francs,’ said Rastignac, adding a few bank-notes

to the pile of gold. ‘That would be enough for other folk to live upon;

will it be sufficient for us to die on? Yes! we will breathe our last in

a bath of gold--hurrah!’ and we capered afresh.

“We divided the windfall. We began with double-napoleons, and came down

to the smaller coins, one by one. ‘This for you, this for me,’ we kept

saying, distilling our joy drop by drop.

“‘We won’t go to sleep,’ cried Rastignac. ‘Joseph! some punch!’

“He threw gold to his faithful attendant.

“‘There is your share,’ he said; ‘go and bury yourself if you can.’

“Next day I went to Lesage and chose my furniture, took the rooms that

you know in the Rue Taitbout, and left the decoration to one of the best

upholsterers. I bought horses. I plunged into a vortex of pleasures, at

once hollow and real. I went in for play, gaining and losing

enormous sums, but only at friends’ houses and in ballrooms; never in

gaming-houses, for which I still retained the holy horror of my early

days. Without meaning it, I made some friends, either through quarrels

or owing to the easy confidence established among those who are going

to the bad together; nothing, possibly, makes us cling to one another so

tightly as our evil propensities.

“I made several ventures in literature, which were flatteringly

received. Great men who followed the profession of letters, having

nothing to fear from me, belauded me, not so much on account of my

merits as to cast a slur on those of their rivals.

“I became a ‘free-liver,’ to make use of the picturesque expression

appropriated by the language of excess. I made it a point of honor not

to be long about dying, and that my zeal and prowess should eclipse

those displayed by all others in the jolliest company. I was always

spruce and carefully dressed. I had some reputation for cleverness.

There was no sign about me of the fearful way of living which makes a

man into a mere disgusting apparatus, a funnel, a pampered beast.

“Very soon Debauch rose before me in all the majesty of its horror, and

I grasped all that it meant. Those prudent, steady-going characters who

are laying down wine in bottles for their heirs, can barely conceive,

it is true, of so wide a theory of life, nor appreciate its normal

condition; but when will you instill poetry into the provincial

intellect? Opium and tea, with all their delights, are merely drugs to

folk of that calibre.

“Is not the imperfect sybarite to be met with even in Paris itself, that

intellectual metropolis? Unfit to endure the fatigues of pleasure, this

sort of person, after a drinking bout, is very much like those worthy

bourgeois who fall foul of music after hearing a new opera by Rossini.

Does he not renounce these courses in the same frame of mind that leads

an abstemious man to forswear Ruffec pates, because the first one,

forsooth, gave him the indigestion?

“Debauch is as surely an art as poetry, and is not for craven spirits.

To penetrate its mysteries and appreciate its charms, conscientious

application is required; and as with every path of knowledge, the way is

thorny and forbidding at the outset. The great pleasures of humanity are

hedged about with formidable obstacles; not its single enjoyments, but

enjoyment as a system, a system which establishes seldom experienced

sensations and makes them habitual, which concentrates and multiplies

them for us, creating a dramatic life within our life, and imperatively

demanding a prompt and enormous expenditure of vitality. War, Power,

Art, like Debauch, are all forms of demoralization, equally remote from

the faculties of humanity, equally profound, and all are alike difficult

of access. But when man has once stormed the heights of these grand

mysteries, does he not walk in another world? Are not generals,

ministers, and artists carried, more or less, towards destruction by

the need of violent distractions in an existence so remote from ordinary

life as theirs?

“War, after all, is the Excess of bloodshed, as the Excess of

self-interest produces Politics. Excesses of every sort are brothers.

These social enormities possess the attraction of the abyss; they draw

towards themselves as St. Helena beckoned Napoleon; we are fascinated,

our heads swim, we wish to sound their depths though we cannot

account for the wish. Perhaps the thought of Infinity dwells in these

precipices, perhaps they contain some colossal flattery for the soul of

man; for is he not, then, wholly absorbed in himself?

“The wearied artist needs a complete contrast to his paradise of

imaginings and of studious hours; he either craves, like God, the

seventh day of rest, or with Satan, the pleasures of hell; so that

his senses may have free play in opposition to the employment of his

faculties. Byron could never have taken for his relaxation to the

independent gentleman’s delights of boston and gossip, for he was a

poet, and so must needs pit Greece against Mahmoud.

“In war, is not man an angel of extirpation, a sort of executioner on

a gigantic scale? Must not the spell be strong indeed that makes us

undergo such horrid sufferings so hostile to our weak frames, sufferings

that encircle every strong passion with a hedge of thorns? The tobacco

smoker is seized with convulsions, and goes through a kind of agony

consequent upon his excesses; but has he not borne a part in delightful

festivals in realms unknown? Has Europe ever ceased from wars? She

has never given herself time to wipe the stains from her feet that are

steeped in blood to the ankle. Mankind at large is carried away by fits

of intoxication, as nature has its accessions of love.

“For men in private life, for a vegetating Mirabeau dreaming of storms

in a time of calm, Excess comprises all things; it perpetually embraces

the whole sum of life; it is something better still--it is a duel with

an antagonist of unknown power, a monster, terrible at first sight, that

must be seized by the horns, a labor that cannot be imagined.

“Suppose that nature has endowed you with a feeble stomach or one of

limited capacity; you acquire a mastery over it and improve it; you

learn to carry your liquor; you grow accustomed to being drunk; you pass

whole nights without sleep; at last you acquire the constitution of a

colonel of cuirassiers; and in this way you create yourself afresh, as

if to fly in the face of Providence.

“A man transformed after this sort is like a neophyte who has at last

become a veteran, has accustomed his mind to shot and shell and his legs

to lengthy marches. When the monster’s hold on him is still uncertain,

and it is not yet known which will have the better of it, they roll over

and over, alternately victor and vanquished, in a world where everything

is wonderful, where every ache of the soul is laid to sleep, where only

the shadows of ideas are revived.

“This furious struggle has already become a necessity for us. The

prodigal has struck a bargain for all the enjoyments with which life

teems abundantly, at the price of his own death, like the mythical

persons in legends who sold themselves to the devil for the power of

doing evil. For them, instead of flowing quietly on in its monotonous

course in the depths of some counting-house or study, life is poured out

in a boiling torrent.

“Excess is, in short, for the body what the mystic’s ecstasy is for

the soul. Intoxication steeps you in fantastic imaginings every whit as

strange as those of ecstatics. You know hours as full of rapture as a

young girl’s dreams; you travel without fatigue; you chat pleasantly

with your friends; words come to you with a whole life in each, and

fresh pleasures without regrets; poems are set forth for you in a few

brief phrases. The coarse animal satisfaction, in which science has

tried to find a soul, is followed by the enchanted drowsiness that men

sigh for under the burden of consciousness. Is it not because they all

feel the need of absolute repose? Because Excess is a sort of toll that

genius pays to pain?

“Look at all great men; nature made them pleasure-loving or base, every

one. Some mocking or jealous power corrupted them in either soul or

body, so as to make all their powers futile, and their efforts of no

avail.

“All men and all things appear before you in the guise you choose,

in those hours when wine has sway. You are lord of all creation; you

transform it at your pleasure. And throughout this unceasing delirium,

Play may pour, at your will, its molten lead into your veins.

“Some day you will fall into the monster’s power. Then you will have, as

I had, a frenzied awakening, with impotence sitting by your pillow. Are

you an old soldier? Phthisis attacks you. A diplomatist? An aneurism

hangs death in your heart by a thread. It will perhaps be consumption

that will cry out to me, ‘Let us be going!’ as to Raphael of Urbino, in

old time, killed by an excess of love.

“In this way I have existed. I was launched into the world too early or

too late. My energy would have been dangerous there, no doubt, if I had

not have squandered it in such ways as these. Was not the world rid of

an Alexander, by the cup of Hercules, at the close of a drinking bout?

“There are some, the sport of Destiny, who must either have heaven or

hell, the hospice of St. Bernard or riotous excess. Only just now

I lacked the heart to moralize about those two,” and he pointed to

Euphrasia and Aquilina. “They are types of my own personal history,

images of my life! I could scarcely reproach them; they stood before me

like judges.

“In the midst of this drama that I was enacting, and while my

distracting disorder was at its height, two crises supervened; each

brought me keen and abundant pangs. The first came a few days after I

had flung myself, like Sardanapalus, on my pyre. I met Foedora under the

peristyle of the Bouffons. We both were waiting for our carriages.

“‘Ah! so you are living yet?’

“That was the meaning of her smile, and probably of the spiteful words

she murmured in the ear of her cicisbeo, telling him my history no

doubt, rating mine as a common love affair. She was deceived, yet she

was applauding her perspicacity. Oh, that I should be dying for her,

must still adore her, always see her through my potations, see her still

when I was overcome with wine, or in the arms of courtesans; and know

that I was a target for her scornful jests! Oh, that I should be unable

to tear the love of her out of my breast and to fling it at her feet!

“Well, I quickly exhausted my funds, but owing to those three years

of discipline, I enjoyed the most robust health, and on the day that I

found myself without a penny I felt remarkably well. In order to carry

on the process of dying, I signed bills at short dates, and the day came

when they must be met. Painful excitements! but how they quicken the

pulses of youth! I was not prematurely aged; I was young yet, and full

of vigor and life.

“At my first debt all my virtues came to life; slowly and despairingly

they seemed to pace towards me; but I could compound with them--they

were like aged aunts that begin with a scolding and end by bestowing

tears and money upon you.

“Imagination was less yielding; I saw my name bandied about through

every city in Europe. ‘One’s name is oneself’ says Eusebe Salverte.

After these excursions I returned to the room I had never quitted, like

a doppelganger in a German tale, and came to myself with a start.

“I used to see with indifference a banker’s messenger going on his

errands through the streets of Paris, like a commercial Nemesis, wearing

his master’s livery--a gray coat and a silver badge; but now I hated the

species in advance. One of them came one morning to ask me to meet some

eleven bills that I had scrawled my name upon. My signature was worth

three thousand francs! Taking me altogether, I myself was not worth

that amount. Sheriff’s deputies rose up before me, turning their callous

faces upon my despair, as the hangman regards the criminal to whom he

says, ‘It has just struck half-past three.’ I was in the power of their

clerks; they could scribble my name, drag it through the mire, and jeer

at it. I was a defaulter. Has a debtor any right to himself? Could

not other men call me to account for my way of living? Why had I eaten

puddings _a la chipolata_? Why had I iced my wine? Why had I slept, or

walked, or thought, or amused myself when I had not paid them?

“At any moment, in the middle of a poem, during some train of thought,

or while I was gaily breakfasting in the pleasant company of my friends,

I might look to see a gentleman enter in a coat of chestnut-brown, with

a shabby hat in his hand. This gentleman’s appearance would signify my

debt, the bill I had drawn; the spectre would compel me to leave the

table to speak to him, blight my spirits, despoil me of my cheerfulness,

of my mistress, of all I possessed, down to my very bedstead.

“Remorse itself is more easily endured. Remorse does not drive us into

the street nor into the prison of Sainte-Pelagie; it does not force

us into the detestable sink of vice. Remorse only brings us to the

scaffold, where the executioner invests us with a certain dignity; as we

pay the extreme penalty, everybody believes in our innocence; but people

will not credit a penniless prodigal with a single virtue.

“My debts had other incarnations. There is the kind that goes about on

two feet, in a green cloth coat, and blue spectacles, carrying umbrellas

of various hues; you come face to face with him at the corner of

some street, in the midst of your mirth. These have the detestable

prerogative of saying, ‘M. de Valentin owes me something, and does

not pay. I have a hold on him. He had better not show me any offensive

airs!’ You must bow to your creditors, and moreover bow politely. ‘When

are you going to pay me?’ say they. And you must lie, and beg money of

another man, and cringe to a fool seated on his strong-box, and receive

sour looks in return from these horse-leeches; a blow would be less

hateful; you must put up with their crass ignorance and calculating

morality. A debt is a feat of the imaginative that they cannot

appreciate. A borrower is often carried away and over-mastered by

generous impulses; nothing great, nothing magnanimous can move or

dominate those who live for money, and recognize nothing but money. I

myself held money in abhorrence.

“Or a bill may undergo a final transformation into some meritorious

old man with a family dependent upon him. My creditor might be a living

picture for Greuze, a paralytic with his children round him, a soldier’s

widow, holding out beseeching hands to me. Terrible creditors are

these with whom we are forced to sympathize, and when their claims are

satisfied we owe them a further debt of assistance.

“The night before the bills fell due, I lay down with the false calm of

those who sleep before their approaching execution, or with a duel in

prospect, rocked as they are by delusive hopes. But when I woke, when

I was cool and collected, when I found myself imprisoned in a banker’s

portfolio, and floundering in statements covered with red ink--then my

debts sprang up everywhere, like grasshoppers, before my eyes. There

were my debts, my clock, my armchairs; my debts were inlaid in the very

furniture which I liked best to use. These gentle inanimate slaves were

to fall prey to the harpies of the Chatelet, were to be carried off by

the broker’s men, and brutally thrown on the market. Ah, my property was

a part of myself!

“The sound of the door-bell rang through my heart; while it seemed to

strike at me, where kings should be struck at--in the head. Mine was a

martyrdom, without heaven for its reward. For a magnanimous nature, debt

is a hell, and a hell, moreover, with sheriff’s officers and brokers in

it. An undischarged debt is something mean and sordid; it is a beginning

of knavery; it is something worse, it is a lie; it prepares the way for

crime, and brings together the planks for the scaffold. My bills

were protested. Three days afterwards I met them, and this is how it

happened.

“A speculator came, offering to buy the island in the Loire belonging

to me, where my mother lay buried. I closed with him. When I went to

his solicitor to sign the deeds, I felt a cavern-like chill in the dark

office that made me shudder; it was the same cold dampness that had laid

hold upon me at the brink of my father’s grave. I looked upon this as

an evil omen. I seemed to see the shade of my mother, and to hear her

voice. What power was it that made my own name ring vaguely in my ears,

in spite of the clamor of bells?

“The money paid down for my island, when all my debts were discharged,

left me in possession of two thousand francs. I could now have returned

to the scholar’s tranquil life, it is true; I could have gone back to

my garret after having gained an experience of life, with my head filled

with the results of extensive observation, and with a certain sort of

reputation attaching to me. But Foedora’s hold upon her victim was not

relaxed. We often met. I compelled her admirers to sound my name in her

ears, by dint of astonishing them with my cleverness and success, with

my horses and equipages. It all found her impassive and uninterested; so

did an ugly phrase of Rastignac’s, ‘He is killing himself for you.’

“I charged the world at large with my revenge, but I was not happy.

While I was fathoming the miry depths of life, I only recognized the

more keenly at all times the happiness of reciprocal affection; it was

a shadow that I followed through all that befell me in my extravagance,

and in my wildest moments. It was my misfortune to be deceived in my

fairest beliefs, to be punished by ingratitude for benefiting others,

and to receive uncounted pleasures as the reward of my errors--a

sinister doctrine, but a true one for the prodigal!

“The contagious leprosy of Foedora’s vanity had taken hold of me at

last. I probed my soul, and found it cankered and rotten. I bore the

marks of the devil’s claw upon my forehead. It was impossible to me

thenceforward to do without the incessant agitation of a life fraught

with danger at every moment, or to dispense with the execrable

refinements of luxury. If I had possessed millions, I should still have

gambled, reveled, and racketed about. I wished never to be alone with

myself, and I must have false friends and courtesans, wine and good

cheer to distract me. The ties that attach a man to family life had been

permanently broken for me. I had become a galley-slave of pleasure,

and must accomplish my destiny of suicide. During the last days of my

prosperity, I spent every night in the most incredible excesses; but

every morning death cast me back upon life again. I would have taken

a conflagration with as little concern as any man with a life annuity.

However, I at last found myself alone with a twenty-franc piece; I

bethought me then of Rastignac’s luck----

“Eh, eh!----” Raphael exclaimed, interrupting himself, as he remembered

the talisman and drew it from his pocket. Perhaps he was wearied by the

long day’s strain, and had no more strength left wherewith to pilot his

head through the seas of wine and punch; or perhaps, exasperated by this

symbol of his own existence, the torrent of his own eloquence gradually

overwhelmed him. Raphael became excited and elated and like one

completely deprived of reason.

“The devil take death!” he shouted, brandishing the skin; “I mean to

live! I am rich, I have every virtue; nothing will withstand me. Who

would not be generous, when everything is in his power? Aha! Aha! I

wished for two hundred thousand livres a year, and I shall have them.

Bow down before me, all of you, wallowing on the carpets like swine in

the mire! You all belong to me--a precious property truly! I am rich; I

could buy you all, even the deputy snoring over there. Scum of society,

give me your benediction! I am the Pope.”

Raphael’s vociferations had been hitherto drowned by a thorough-bass

of snores, but now they became suddenly audible. Most of the sleepers

started up with a cry, saw the cause of the disturbance on his feet,

tottering uncertainly, and cursed him in concert for a drunken brawler.

“Silence!” shouted Raphael. “Back to your kennels, you dogs! Emile, I

have riches, I will give you Havana cigars!”

“I am listening,” the poet replied. “Death or Foedora! On with you! That

silky Foedora deceived you. Women are all daughters of Eve. There is

nothing dramatic about that rigmarole of yours.”

“Ah, but you were sleeping, slyboots.”

“No--‘Death or Foedora!’--I have it!”

“Wake up!” Raphael shouted, beating Emile with the piece of shagreen as

if he meant to draw electric fluid out of it.

“_Tonnerre_!” said Emile, springing up and flinging his arms round

Raphael; “my friend, remember the sort of women you are with.”

“I am a millionaire!”

“If you are not a millionaire, you are most certainly drunk.”

“Drunk with power. I can kill you!--Silence! I am Nero! I am

Nebuchadnezzar!”

“But, Raphael, we are in queer company, and you ought to keep quiet for

the sake of your own dignity.”

“My life has been silent too long. I mean to have my revenge now on the

world at large. I will not amuse myself by squandering paltry five-franc

pieces; I will reproduce and sum up my epoch by absorbing human

lives, human minds, and human souls. There are the treasures of

pestilence--that is no paltry kind of wealth, is it? I will wrestle with

fevers--yellow, blue, or green--with whole armies, with gibbets. I can

possess Foedora--Yet no, I do not want Foedora; she is a disease; I am

dying of Foedora. I want to forget Foedora.”

“If you keep on calling out like this, I shall take you into the

dining-room.”

“Do you see this skin? It is Solomon’s will. Solomon belongs to me--a

little varlet of a king! Arabia is mine, Arabia Petraea to boot; and the

universe, and you too, if I choose. If I choose--Ah! be careful. I can

buy up all our journalist’s shop; you shall be my valet. You shall be

my valet, you shall manage my newspaper. Valet! _valet_, that is to say,

free from aches and pains, because he has no brains.”

At the word, Emile carried Raphael off into the dining-room.

“All right,” he remarked; “yes, my friend, I am your valet. But you

are about to be editor-in-chief of a newspaper; so be quiet, and behave

properly, for my sake. Have you no regard for me?”

“Regard for you! You shall have Havana cigars, with this bit of

shagreen: always with this skin, this supreme bit of shagreen. It is

a cure for corns, and efficacious remedy. Do you suffer? I will remove

them.”

“Never have I known you so senseless----”

“Senseless, my friend? Not at all. This skin contracts whenever I form a

wish--‘tis a paradox. There is a Brahmin underneath it! The Brahmin must

be a droll fellow, for our desires, look you, are bound to expand----”

“Yes, yes----”

“I tell you----”

“Yes, yes, very true, I am quite of your opinion--our desires

expand----”

“The skin, I tell you.”

“Yes.”

“You don’t believe me. I know you, my friend; you are as full of lies as

a new-made king.”

“How can you expect me to follow your drunken maunderings?”

“I will bet you I can prove it. Let us measure it----”

“Goodness! he will never get off to sleep,” exclaimed Emile, as he

watched Raphael rummaging busily in the dining-room.

Thanks to the peculiar clearness with which external objects are

sometimes projected on an inebriated brain, in sharp contrast to its own

obscure imaginings, Valentin found an inkstand and a table-napkin, with

the quickness of a monkey, repeating all the time:

“Let us measure it! Let us measure it!”

“All right,” said Emile; “let us measure it!”

The two friends spread out the table-napkin and laid the Magic Skin upon

it. As Emile’s hand appeared to be steadier than Raphael’s, he drew a

line with pen and ink round the talisman, while his friend said:

“I wished for an income of two hundred thousand livres, didn’t I? Well,

when that comes, you will observe a mighty diminution of my chagrin.”

“Yes--now go to sleep. Shall I make you comfortable on that sofa? Now

then, are you all right?”

“Yes, my nursling of the press. You shall amuse me; you shall drive

the flies away from me. The friend of adversity should be the friend of

prosperity. So I will give you some Hava--na--cig----”

“Come, now, sleep. Sleep off your gold, you millionaire!”

“You! sleep off your paragraphs! Good-night! Say good-night to

Nebuchadnezzar!--Love! Wine! France!--glory and tr--treas----”

Very soon the snorings of the two friends were added to the music with

which the rooms resounded--an ineffectual concert! The lights went out

one by one, their crystal sconces cracking in the final flare. Night

threw dark shadows over this prolonged revelry, in which Raphael’s

narrative had been a second orgy of speech, of words without ideas, of

ideas for which words had often been lacking.

Towards noon, next day, the fair Aquilina bestirred herself. She yawned

wearily. She had slept with her head upon a painted velvet footstool,

and her cheeks were mottled over by contact with the surface. Her

movement awoke Euphrasia, who suddenly sprang up with a hoarse cry; her

pretty face, that had been so fresh and fair in the evening, was sallow

now and pallid; she looked like a candidate for the hospital. The rest

awoke also by degrees, with portentous groanings, to feel themselves

over in every stiffened limb, and to experience the infinite varieties

of weariness that weighed upon them.

A servant came in to throw back the shutters and open the windows.

There they all stood, brought back to consciousness by the warm rays

of sunlight that shone upon the sleepers’ heads. Their movements during

slumber had disordered the elaborately arranged hair and toilettes of

the women. They presented a ghastly spectacle in the bright daylight.

Their hair fell ungracefully about them; their eyes, lately so

brilliant, were heavy and dim; the expression of their faces was

entirely changed. The sickly hues, which daylight brings out so

strongly, were frightful. An olive tint had crept over the lymphatic

faces, so fair and soft when in repose; the dainty red lips were

grown pale and dry, and bore tokens of the degradation of excess. Each

disowned his mistress of the night before; the women looked wan and

discolored, like flowers trampled under foot by a passing procession.

The men who scorned them looked even more horrible. Those human faces

would have made you shudder. The hollow eyes with the dark circles round

them seemed to see nothing; they were dull with wine and stupefied with

heavy slumbers that had been exhausting rather than refreshing. There

was an indescribable ferocious and stolid bestiality about these haggard

faces, where bare physical appetite appeared shorn of all the poetical

illusion with which the intellect invests it. Even these fearless

champions, accustomed to measure themselves with excess, were struck

with horror at this awakening of vice, stripped of its disguises, at

being confronted thus with sin, the skeleton in rags, lifeless and

hollow, bereft of the sophistries of the intellect and the enchantments

of luxury. Artists and courtesans scrutinized in silence and with

haggard glances the surrounding disorder, the rooms where everything had

been laid waste, at the havoc wrought by heated passions.

Demoniac laughter broke out when Taillefer, catching the smothered

murmurs of his guests, tried to greet them with a grin. His darkly

flushed, perspiring countenance loomed upon this pandemonium, like the

image of a crime that knows no remorse (see _L’Auberge rouge_). The

picture was complete. A picture of a foul life in the midst of luxury, a

hideous mixture of the pomp and squalor of humanity; an awakening after

the frenzy of Debauch has crushed and squeezed all the fruits of life in

her strong hands, till nothing but unsightly refuse is left to her, and

lies in which she believes no longer. You might have thought of Death

gloating over a family stricken with the plague.

The sweet scents and dazzling lights, the mirth and the excitement

were all no more; disgust with its nauseous sensations and searching

philosophy was there instead. The sun shone in like truth, the pure

outer air was like virtue; in contrast with the heated atmosphere, heavy

with the fumes of the previous night of revelry.

Accustomed as they were to their life, many of the girls thought of

other days and other wakings; pure and innocent days when they looked

out and saw the roses and honeysuckle about the casement, and the fresh

countryside without enraptured by the glad music of the skylark; while

earth lay in mists, lighted by the dawn, and in all the glittering

radiance of dew. Others imagined the family breakfast, the father and

children round the table, the innocent laughter, the unspeakable charm

that pervaded it all, the simple hearts and their meal as simple.

An artist mused upon his quiet studio, on his statue in its severe

beauty, and the graceful model who was waiting for him. A young man

recollected a lawsuit on which the fortunes of a family hung, and an

important transaction that needed his presence. The scholar regretted

his study and that noble work that called for him. Emile appeared just

then as smiling, blooming, and fresh as the smartest assistant in a

fashionable shop.

“You are all as ugly as bailiffs. You won’t be fit for anything to-day,

so this day is lost, and I vote for breakfast.”

At this Taillefer went out to give some orders. The women went languidly

up to the mirrors to set their toilettes in order. Each one shook

herself. The wilder sort lectured the steadier ones. The courtesans made

fun of those who looked unable to continue the boisterous festivity;

but these wan forms revived all at once, stood in groups, and talked

and smiled. Some servants quickly and adroitly set the furniture and

everything else in its place, and a magnificent breakfast was got ready.

The guests hurried into the dining-room. Everything there bore indelible

marks of yesterday’s excess, it is true, but there were at any rate some

traces of ordinary, rational existence, such traces as may be found in a

sick man’s dying struggles. And so the revelry was laid away and buried,

like carnival of a Shrove Tuesday, by masks wearied out with dancing,

drunk with drunkenness, and quite ready to be persuaded of the pleasures

of lassitude, lest they should be forced to admit their exhaustion.

As soon as these bold spirits surrounded the capitalist’s

breakfast-table, Cardot appeared. He had left the rest to make a night

of it after the dinner, and finished the evening after his own fashion

in the retirement of domestic life. Just now a sweet smile wandered over

his features. He seemed to have a presentiment that there would be some

inheritance to sample and divide, involving inventories and engrossing;

an inheritance rich in fees and deeds to draw up, and something as juicy

as the trembling fillet of beef in which their host had just plunged his

knife.

“Oh, ho! we are to have breakfast in the presence of a notary,” cried

Cursy.

“You have come here just at the right time,” said the banker, indicating

the breakfast; “you can jot down the numbers, and initial off all the

dishes.”

“There is no will to make here, but contracts of marriage there may be,

perhaps,” said the scholar, who had made a satisfactory arrangement for

the first time in twelve months.

“Oh! Oh!”

“Ah! Ah!”

“One moment,” cried Cardot, fairly deafened by a chorus of wretched

jokes. “I came here on serious business. I am bringing six millions for

one of you.” (Dead silence.) “Monsieur,” he went on, turning to Raphael,

who at the moment was unceremoniously wiping his eyes on a corner of the

table-napkin, “was not your mother a Mlle. O’Flaharty?”

“Yes,” said Raphael mechanically enough; “Barbara Marie.”

“Have you your certificate of birth about you,” Cardot went on, “and

Mme. de Valentin’s as well?”

“I believe so.”

“Very well then, monsieur; you are the sole heir of Major O’Flaharty,

who died in August 1828 at Calcutta.”

“An _incalcuttable_ fortune,” said the critic.

“The Major having bequeathed several amounts to public institutions in

his will, the French Government sent in a claim for the remainder to

the East India Company,” the notary continued. “The estate is clear and

ready to be transferred at this moment. I have been looking in vain for

the heirs and assigns of Mlle. Barbara Marie O’Flaharty for a fortnight

past, when yesterday at dinner----”

Just then Raphael suddenly staggered to his feet; he looked like a man

who has just received a blow. Acclamation took the form of silence, for

stifled envy had been the first feeling in every breast, and all eyes

devoured him like flames. Then a murmur rose, and grew like the voice of

a discontented audience, or the first mutterings of a riot, as everybody

made some comment on this news of great wealth brought by the notary.

This abrupt subservience of fate brought Raphael thoroughly to his

senses. He immediately spread out the table-napkin with which he had

lately taken the measure of the piece of shagreen. He heeded nothing as

he laid the talisman upon it, and shuddered involuntarily at the sight

of a slight difference between the present size of the skin and the

outline traced upon the linen.

“Why, what is the matter with him?” Taillefer cried. “He comes by his

fortune very cheaply.”

“_Soutiens-le Chatillon_!” said Bixiou to Emile. “The joy will kill

him.”

A ghastly white hue overspread every line of the wan features of the

heir-at-law. His face was drawn, every outline grew haggard; the hollows

in his livid countenance grew deeper, and his eyes were fixed and

staring. He was facing Death.

The opulent banker, surrounded by faded women, and faces with satiety

written on them, the enjoyment that had reached the pitch of agony, was

a living illustration of his own life.

Raphael looked thrice at the talisman, which lay passively within the

merciless outlines on the table-napkin; he tried not to believe it,

but his incredulity vanished utterly before the light of an inner

presentiment. The whole world was his; he could have all things, but the

will to possess them was utterly extinct. Like a traveler in the midst

of the desert, with but a little water left to quench his thirst, he

must measure his life by the draughts he took of it. He saw what every

desire of his must cost him in the days of his life. He believed in the

powers of the Magic Skin at last, he listened to every breath he drew;

he felt ill already; he asked himself:

“Am I not consumptive? Did not my mother die of a lung complaint?”

“Aha, Raphael! what fun you will have! What will you give me?” asked

Aquilina.

“Here’s to the death of his uncle, Major O’Flaharty! There is a man for

you.”

“He will be a peer of France.”

“Pooh! what is a peer of France since July?” said the amateur critic.

“Are you going to take a box at the Bouffons?”

“You are going to treat us all, I hope?” put in Bixiou.

“A man of his sort will be sure to do things in style,” said Emile.

The hurrah set up by the jovial assembly rang in Valentin’s ears, but he

could not grasp the sense of a single word. Vague thoughts crossed him

of the Breton peasant’s life of mechanical labor, without a wish of any

kind; he pictured him burdened with a family, tilling the soil, living

on buckwheat meal, drinking cider out of a pitcher, believing in the

Virgin and the King, taking the sacrament at Easter, dancing of a Sunday

on the green sward, and understanding never a word of the rector’s

sermon. The actual scene that lay before him, the gilded furniture, the

courtesans, the feast itself, and the surrounding splendors, seemed to

catch him by the throat and made him cough.

“Do you wish for some asparagus?” the banker cried.

“_I wish for nothing_!” thundered Raphael.

“Bravo!” Taillefer exclaimed; “you understand your position; a

fortune confers the privilege of being impertinent. You are one of us.

Gentlemen, let us drink to the might of gold! M. Valentin here, six

times a millionaire, has become a power. He is a king, like all the

rich; everything is at his disposal, everything lies under his feet.

From this time forth the axiom that ‘all Frenchmen are alike in the eyes

of the law,’ is for him a fib at the head of the Constitutional Charter.

He is not going to obey the law--the law is going to obey him. There are

neither scaffolds nor executioners for millionaires.”

“Yes, there are,” said Raphael; “they are their own executioners.”

“Here is another victim of prejudices!” cried the banker.

“Let us drink!” Raphael said, putting the talisman into his pocket.

“What are you doing?” said Emile, checking his movement. “Gentlemen,” he

added, addressing the company, who were rather taken aback by Raphael’s

behavior, “you must know that our friend Valentin here--what am I

saying?--I mean my Lord Marquis de Valentin--is in the possession of

a secret for obtaining wealth. His wishes are fulfilled as soon as he

knows them. He will make us all rich together, or he is a flunkey, and

devoid of all decent feeling.”

“Oh, Raphael dear, I should like a set of pearl ornaments!” Euphrasia

exclaimed.

“If he has any gratitude in him, he will give me a couple of carriages

with fast steppers,” said Aquilina.

“Wish for a hundred thousand a year for me!”

“Indian shawls!”

“Pay my debts!”

“Send an apoplexy to my uncle, the old stick!”

“Ten thousand a year in the funds, and I’ll cry quits with you,

Raphael!”

“Deeds of gift and no mistake,” was the notary’s comment.

“He ought, at least, to rid me of the gout!”

“Lower the funds!” shouted the banker.

These phrases flew about like the last discharge of rockets at the end

of a display of fireworks; and were uttered, perhaps, more in earnest

than in jest.

“My good friend,” Emile said solemnly, “I shall be quite satisfied with

an income of two hundred thousand livres. Please to set about it at

once.”

“Do you not know the cost, Emile?” asked Raphael.

“A nice excuse!” the poet cried; “ought we not to sacrifice ourselves

for our friends?”

“I have almost a mind to wish that you all were dead,” Valentin made

answer, with a dark, inscrutable look at his boon companions.

“Dying people are frightfully cruel,” said Emile, laughing. “You are

rich now,” he went on gravely; “very well, I will give you two months at

most before you grow vilely selfish. You are so dense already that

you cannot understand a joke. You have only to go a little further to

believe in your Magic Skin.”

Raphael kept silent, fearing the banter of the company; but he drank

immoderately, trying to drown in intoxication the recollection of his

fatal power.