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diff --git a/old/gwtgi10.txt b/old/gwtgi10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..69361cc --- /dev/null +++ b/old/gwtgi10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3186 @@ +Project Gutenberg Etext The Girl with the Golden Eyes, by Balzac +#55 in our series by Honore de Balzac + + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations* + +Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and +further information is included below. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + +Etext prepared by Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com +and John Bickers, jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz + + + + + +THE GIRL WITH THE GOLDEN EYES + +by HONORE DE BALZAC + + + + +Translated by Ellen Marriage + + + + +DEDICATION + +To Eugene Delacroix, Painter. + + + + +PREPARER'S NOTE + + The Girl with the Golden Eyes is the third part of a trilogy. Part + one is entitled Ferragus and part two is The Duchesse de Langeais. + The three stories are frequently combined under the title The + Thirteen. + + + + +THE GIRL WITH THE GOLDEN EYES + + + +One of those sights in which most horror is to be encountered is, +surely, the general aspect of the Parisian populace--a people fearful +to behold, gaunt, yellow, tawny. Is not Paris a vast field in +perpetual turmoil from a storm of interests beneath which are whirled +along a crop of human beings, who are, more often than not, reaped by +death, only to be born again as pinched as ever, men whose twisted and +contorted faces give out at every pore the instinct, the desire, the +poisons with which their brains are pregnant; not faces so much as +masks; masks of weakness, masks of strength, masks of misery, masks of +joy, masks of hypocrisy; all alike worn and stamped with the indelible +signs of a panting cupidity? What is it they want? Gold or pleasure? A +few observations upon the soul of Paris may explain the causes of its +cadaverous physiognomy, which has but two ages--youth and decay: +youth, wan and colorless; decay, painted to seem young. In looking at +this excavated people, foreigners, who are not prone to reflection, +experience at first a movement of disgust towards the capital, that +vast workshop of delights, from which, in a short time, they cannot +even extricate themselves, and where they stay willingly to be +corrupted. A few words will suffice to justify physiologically the +almost infernal hue of Parisian faces, for it is not in mere sport +that Paris has been called a hell. Take the phrase for truth. There +all is smoke and fire, everything gleams, crackles, flames, +evaporates, dies out, then lights up again, with shooting sparks, and +is consumed. In no other country has life ever been more ardent or +acute. The social nature, even in fusion, seems to say after each +completed work: "Pass on to another!" just as Nature says herself. +Like Nature herself, this social nature is busied with insects and +flowers of a day--ephemeral trifles; and so, too, it throws up fire +and flame from its eternal crater. Perhaps, before analyzing the +causes which lend a special physiognomy to each tribe of this +intelligent and mobile nation, the general cause should be pointed out +which bleaches and discolors, tints with blue or brown individuals in +more or less degree. + +By dint of taking interest in everything, the Parisian ends by being +interested in nothing. No emotion dominating his face, which friction +has rubbed away, it turns gray like the faces of those houses upon +which all kinds of dust and smoke have blown. In effect, the Parisian, +with his indifference on the day for what the morrow will bring forth, +lives like a child, whatever may be his age. He grumbles at +everything, consoles himself for everything, jests at everything, +forgets, desires, and tastes everything, seizes all with passion, +quits all with indifference--his kings, his conquests, his glory, his +idols of bronze or glass--as he throws away his stockings, his hats, +and his fortune. In Paris no sentiment can withstand the drift of +things, and their current compels a struggle in which the passions are +relaxed: there love is a desire, and hatred a whim; there's no true +kinsman but the thousand-franc note, no better friend than the +pawnbroker. This universal toleration bears its fruits, and in the +salon, as in the street, there is no one /de trop/, there is no one +absolutely useful, or absolutely harmful--knaves or fools, men of wit +or integrity. There everything is tolerated: the government and the +guillotine, religion and the cholera. You are always acceptable to +this world, you will never be missed by it. What, then, is the +dominating impulse in this country without morals, without faith, +without any sentiment, wherein, however, every sentiment, belief, and +moral has its origin and end? It is gold and pleasure. Take those two +words for a lantern, and explore that great stucco cage, that hive +with its black gutters, and follow the windings of that thought which +agitates, sustains, and occupies it! Consider! And, in the first +place, examine the world which possesses nothing. + +The artisan, the man of the proletariat, who uses his hands, his +tongue, his back, his right arm, his five fingers, to live--well, this +very man, who should be the first to economize his vital principle, +outruns his strength, yokes his wife to some machine, wears out his +child, and ties him to the wheel. The manufacturer--or I know not what +secondary thread which sets in motion all these folk who with their +foul hands mould and gild porcelain, sew coats and dresses, beat out +iron, turn wood and steel, weave hemp, festoon crystal, imitate +flowers, work woolen things, break in horses, dress harness, carve in +copper, paint carriages, blow glass, corrode the diamond, polish +metals, turn marble into leaves, labor on pebbles, deck out thought, +tinge, bleach, or blacken everything--well, this middleman has come to +that world of sweat and good-will, of study and patience, with +promises of lavish wages, either in the name of the town's caprices or +with the voice of the monster dubbed speculation. Thus, these +/quadrumanes/ set themselves to watch, work, and suffer, to fast, +sweat, and bestir them. Then, careless of the future, greedy of +pleasure, counting on their right arm as the painter on his palette, +lords for one day, they throw their money on Mondays to the /cabarets/ +which gird the town like a belt of mud, haunts of the most shameless +of the daughters of Venus, in which the periodical money of this +people, as ferocious in their pleasures as they are calm at work, is +squandered as it had been at play. For five days, then, there is no +repose for this laborious portion of Paris! It is given up to actions +which make it warped and rough, lean and pale, gush forth with a +thousand fits of creative energy. And then its pleasure, its repose, +are an exhausting debauch, swarthy and black with blows, white with +intoxication, or yellow with indigestion. It lasts but two days, but +it steals to-morrow's bread, the week's soup, the wife's dress, the +child's wretched rags. Men, born doubtless to be beautiful--for all +creatures have a relative beauty--are enrolled from their childhood +beneath the yoke of force, beneath the rule of the hammer, the chisel, +the loom, and have been promptly vulcanized. Is not Vulcan, with his +hideousness and his strength, the emblem of this strong and hideous +nation--sublime in its mechanical intelligence, patient in its season, +and once in a century terrible, inflammable as gunpowder, and ripe +with brandy for the madness of revolution, with wits enough, in fine, +to take fire at a captious word, which signifies to it always: Gold +and Pleasure! If we comprise in it all those who hold out their hands +for an alms, for lawful wages, or the five francs that are granted to +every kind of Parisian prostitution, in short, for all the money well +or ill earned, this people numbers three hundred thousand individuals. +Were it not for the /cabarets/, would not the Government be overturned +every Tuesday? Happily, by Tuesday, this people is glutted, sleeps off +its pleasure, is penniless, and returns to its labor, to dry bread, +stimulated by a need of material procreation, which has become a habit +to it. None the less, this people has its phenomenal virtues, its +complete men, unknown Napoleons, who are the type of its strength +carried to its highest expression, and sum up its social capacity in +an existence wherein thought and movement combine less to bring joy +into it than to neutralize the action of sorrow. + +Chance has made an artisan economical, chance has favored him with +forethought, he has been able to look forward, has met with a wife and +found himself a father, and, after some years of hard privation, he +embarks in some little draper's business, hires a shop. If neither +sickness nor vice blocks his way--if he has prospered--there is the +sketch of this normal life. + +And, in the first place, hail to that king of Parisian activity, to +whom time and space give way. Yes, hail to that being, composed of +saltpetre and gas, who makes children for France during his laborious +nights, and in the day multiplies his personality for the service, +glory, and pleasure of his fellow-citizens. This man solves the +problem of sufficing at once to his amiable wife, to his hearth, to +the /Constitutionnel/, to his office, to the National Guard, to the +opera, and to God; but, only in order that the /Constitutionnel/, his +office, the National Guard, the opera, his wife, and God may be +changed into coin. In fine, hail to an irreproachable pluralist. Up +every day at five o'clock, he traverses like a bird the space which +separates his dwelling from the Rue Montmartre. Let it blow or +thunder, rain or snow, he is at the /Constitutionnel/, and waits there +for the load of newspapers which he has undertaken to distribute. He +receives this political bread with eagerness, takes it, bears it away. +At nine o'clock he is in the bosom of his family, flings a jest to his +wife, snatches a loud kiss from her, gulps down a cup of coffee, or +scolds his children. At a quarter to ten he puts in an appearance at +the /Mairie/. There, stuck upon a stool, like a parrot on its perch, +warmed by Paris town, he registers until four o'clock, with never a +tear or a smile, the deaths and births of an entire district. The +sorrow, the happiness, of the parish flow beneath his pen--as the +essence of the /Constitutionnel/ traveled before upon his shoulders. +Nothing weighs upon him! He goes always straight before him, takes his +patriotism ready made from the newspaper, contradicts no one, shouts +or applauds with the world, and lives like a bird. Two yards from his +parish, in the event of an important ceremony, he can yield his place +to an assistant, and betake himself to chant a requiem from a stall in +the church of which on Sundays he is the fairest ornament, where his +is the most imposing voice, where he distorts his huge mouth with +energy to thunder out a joyous /Amen/. So is he chorister. At four +o'clock, freed from his official servitude, he reappears to shed joy +and gaiety upon the most famous shop in the city. Happy is his wife, +he has no time to be jealous: he is a man of action rather than of +sentiment. His mere arrival spurs the young ladies at the counter; +their bright eyes storm the customers; he expands in the midst of all +the finery, the lace and muslin kerchiefs, that their cunning hands +have wrought. Or, again, more often still, before his dinner he waits +on a client, copies the page of a newspaper, or carries to the +doorkeeper some goods that have been delayed. Every other day, at six, +he is faithful to his post. A permanent bass for the chorus, he +betakes himself to the opera, prepared to become a soldier or an arab, +prisoner, savage, peasant, spirit, camel's leg or lion, a devil or a +genie, a slave or a eunuch, black or white; always ready to feign joy +or sorrow, pity or astonishment, to utter cries that never vary, to +hold his tongue, to hunt, or fight for Rome or Egypt, but always at +heart--a huckster still. + +At midnight he returns--a man, the good husband, the tender father; he +slips into the conjugal bed, his imagination still afire with the +illusive forms of the operatic nymphs, and so turns to the profit of +conjugal love the world's depravities, the voluptuous curves of +Taglioni's leg. And finally, if he sleeps, he sleeps apace, and +hurries through his slumber as he does his life. + +This man sums up all things--history, literature, politics, +government, religion, military science. Is he not a living +encyclopaedia, a grotesque Atlas; ceaselessly in motion, like Paris +itself, and knowing not repose? He is all legs. No physiognomy could +preserve its purity amid such toils. Perhaps the artisan who dies at +thirty, an old man, his stomach tanned by repeated doses of brandy, +will be held, according to certain leisured philosophers, to be +happier than the huckster is. The one perishes in a breath, and the +other by degrees. From his eight industries, from the labor of his +shoulders, his throat, his hands, from his wife and his business, the +one derives--as from so many farms--children, some thousands of +francs, and the most laborious happiness that has ever diverted the +heart of man. This fortune and these children, or the children who sum +up everything for him, become the prey of the world above, to which he +brings his ducats and his daughter or his son, reared at college, who, +with more education than his father, raises higher his ambitious gaze. +Often the son of a retail tradesman would fain be something in the +State. + +Ambition of that sort carries on our thought to the second Parisian +sphere. Go up one story, then, and descend to the /entresol/: or climb +down from the attic and remain on the fourth floor; in fine, penetrate +into the world which has possessions: the same result! Wholesale +merchants, and their men--people with small banking accounts and much +integrity--rogues and catspaws, clerks old and young, sheriffs' +clerks, barristers' clerks, solicitors' clerks; in fine, all the +working, thinking, and speculating members of that lower middle class +which honeycombs the interests of Paris and watches over its granary, +accumulates the coin, stores the products that the proletariat have +made, preserves the fruits of the South, the fishes, the wine from +every sun-favored hill; which stretches its hands over the Orient, and +takes from it the shawls that the Russ and the Turk despise; which +harvests even from the Indies; crouches down in expectation of a sale, +greedy of profit; which discounts bills, turns over and collects all +kinds of securities, holds all Paris in its hand, watches over the +fantasies of children, spies out the caprices and the vices of mature +age, sucks money out of disease. Even so, if they drink no brandy, +like the artisan, nor wallow in the mire of debauch, all equally abuse +their strength, immeasurably strain their bodies and their minds +alike, are burned away with desires, devastated with the swiftness of +the pace. In their case the physical distortion is accomplished +beneath the whip of interests, beneath the scourge of ambitions which +torture the educated portion of this monstrous city, just as in the +case of the proletariat it is brought about by the cruel see-saw of +the material elaborations perpetually required from the despotism of +the aristocratic "/I will/." Here, too, then, in order to obey that +universal master, pleasure or gold, they must devour time, hasten +time, find more than four-and-twenty hours in the day and night, waste +themselves, slay themselves, and purchase two years of unhealthy +repose with thirty years of old age. Only, the working-man dies in +hospital when the last term of his stunted growth expires; whereas the +man of the middle class is set upon living, and lives on, but in a +state of idiocy. You will meet him, with his worn, flat old face, with +no light in his eyes, with no strength in his limbs, dragging himself +with a dazed air along the boulevard--the belt of his Venus, of his +beloved city. What was his want? The sabre of the National Guard, a +permanent stock-pot, a decent plot in Pere Lachaise, and, for his old +age, a little gold honestly earned. /HIS/ Monday is on Sunday, his +rest a drive in a hired carriage--a country excursion during which his +wife and children glut themselves merrily with dust or bask in the +sun; his dissipation is at the restaurateur's, whose poisonous dinner +has won renown, or at some family ball, where he suffocates till +midnight. Some fools are surprised at the phantasmagoria of the monads +which they see with the aid of the microscope in a drop of water; but +what would Rabelais' Gargantua,--that misunderstood figure of an +audacity so sublime,--what would that giant say, fallen from the +celestial spheres, if he amused himself by contemplating the motions +of this secondary life of Paris, of which here is one of the formulae? +Have you seen one of those little constructions--cold in summer, and +with no other warmth than a small stove in winter--placed beneath the +vast copper dome which crowns the Halle-auble? Madame is there by +morning. She is engaged at the markets, and makes by this occupation +twelve thousand francs a year, people say. Monsieur, when Madame is +up, passes into a gloomy office, where he lends money till the week- +end to the tradesmen of his district. By nine o'clock he is at the +passport office, of which he is one of the minor officials. By evening +he is at the box-office of the Theatre Italien, or of any other +theatre you like. The children are put out to nurse, and only return +to be sent to college or to boarding-school. Monsieur and Madame live +on the third floor, have but one cook, give dances in a salon twelve +foot by eight, lit by argand lamps; but they give a hundred and fifty +thousand francs to their daughter, and retire at the age of fifty, an +age when they begin to show themselves on the balcony of the opera, in +a /fiacre/ at Longchamps; or, on sunny days, in faded clothes on the +boulevards--the fruit of all this sowing. Respected by their +neighbors, in good odor with the government, connected with the upper +middle classes, Monsieur obtains at sixty-five the Cross of the Legion +of Honor, and his daughter's father-in-law, a parochial mayor, invites +him to his evenings. These life-long labors, then, are for the good of +the children, whom these lower middle classes are inevitably driven to +exalt. Thus each sphere directs all its efforts towards the sphere +above it. The son of the rich grocer becomes a notary, the son of the +timber merchant becomes a magistrate. No link is wanting in the chain, +and everything stimulates the upward march of money. + +Thus we are brought to the third circle of this hell, which, perhaps, +will some day find its Dante. In this third social circle, a sort of +Parisian belly, in which the interests of the town are digested, and +where they are condensed into the form known as /business/, there +moves and agitates, as by some acrid and bitter intestinal process, +the crowd of lawyers, doctors, notaries, councillors, business men, +bankers, big merchants, speculators, and magistrates. Here are to be +found even more causes of moral and physical destruction than +elsewhere. These people--almost all of them--live in unhealthy +offices, in fetid ante-chambers, in little barred dens, and spend +their days bowed down beneath the weight of affairs; they rise at dawn +to be in time, not to be left behind, to gain all or not to lose, to +overreach a man or his money, to open or wind up some business, to +take advantage of some fleeting opportunity, to get a man hanged or +set him free. They infect their horses, they overdrive and age and +break them, like their own legs, before their time. Time is their +tyrant: it fails them, it escapes them; they can neither expand it nor +cut it short. What soul can remain great, pure, moral, and generous, +and, consequently, what face retain its beauty in this depraving +practice of a calling which compels one to bear the weight of the +public sorrows, to analyze them, to weigh them, estimate them, and +mark them out by rule? Where do these folk put aside their +hearts? . . . I do not know; but they leave them somewhere or other, +when they have any, before they descend each morning into the abyss of +the misery which puts families on the rack. For them there is no such +thing as mystery; they see the reverse side of society, whose +confessors they are, and despise it. Then, whatever they do, owing to +their contact with corruption, they either are horrified at it and +grow gloomy, or else, out of lassitude, or some secret compromise, +espouse it. In fine, they necessarily become callous to every +sentiment, since man, his laws and his institutions, make them steal, +like jackals, from corpses that are still warm. At all hours the +financier is trampling on the living, the attorney on the dead, the +pleader on the conscience. Forced to be speaking without a rest, they +all substitute words for ideas, phrases for feelings, and their soul +becomes a larynx. Neither the great merchant, nor the judge, nor the +pleader preserves his sense of right; they feel no more, they apply +set rules that leave cases out of count. Borne along by their headlong +course, they are neither husbands nor fathers nor lovers; they glide +on sledges over the facts of life, and live at all times at the high +pressure conduced by business and the vast city. When they return to +their homes they are required to go to a ball, to the opera, into +society, where they can make clients, acquaintances, protectors. They +all eat to excess, play and keep vigil, and their faces become +bloated, flushed, and emaciated. + +To this terrific expenditure of intellectual strength, to such +multifold moral contradictions, they oppose--not, indeed pleasure, it +would be too pale a contrast--but debauchery, a debauchery both secret +and alarming, for they have all means at their disposal, and fix the +morality of society. Their genuine stupidity lies hid beneath their +specialism. They know their business, but are ignorant of everything +which is outside it. So that to preserve their self-conceit they +question everything, are crudely and crookedly critical. They appear +to be sceptics and are in reality simpletons; they swamp their wits in +interminable arguments. Almost all conveniently adopt social, +literary, or political prejudices, to do away with the need of having +opinions, just as they adapt their conscience to the standard of the +Code or the Tribunal of Commerce. Having started early to become men +of note, they turn into mediocrities, and crawl over the high places +of the world. So, too, their faces present the harsh pallor, the +deceitful coloring, those dull, tarnished eyes, and garrulous, sensual +mouths, in which the observer recognizes the symptoms of the +degeneracy of the thought and its rotation in the circle of a special +idea which destroys the creative faculties of the brain and the gift +of seeing in large, of generalizing and deducing. No man who has +allowed himself to be caught in the revolutions of the gear of these +huge machines can ever become great. If he is a doctor, either he has +practised little or he is an exception--a Bichat who dies young. If a +great merchant, something remains--he is almost Jacques Coeur. Did +Robespierre practise? Danton was an idler who waited. But who, +moreover has ever felt envious of the figures of Danton and +Robespierre, however lofty they were? These men of affairs, /par +excellence/, attract money to them, and hoard it in order to ally +themselves with aristocratic families. If the ambition of the working- +man is that of the small tradesman, here, too, are the same passions. +The type of this class might be either an ambitious bourgeois, who, +after a life of privation and continual scheming, passes into the +Council of State as an ant passes through a chink; or some newspaper +editor, jaded with intrigue, whom the king makes a peer of France-- +perhaps to revenge himself on the nobility; or some notary become +mayor of his parish: all people crushed with business, who, if they +attain their end, are literally /killed/ in its attainment. In France +the usage is to glorify wigs. Napoleon, Louis XVI., the great rulers, +alone have always wished for young men to fulfil their projects. + +Above this sphere the artist world exists. But here, too, the faces +stamped with the seal of originality are worn, nobly indeed, but worn, +fatigued, nervous. Harassed by a need of production, outrun by their +costly fantasies, worn out by devouring genius, hungry for pleasure, +the artists of Paris would all regain by excessive labor what they +have lost by idleness, and vainly seek to reconcile the world and +glory, money and art. To begin with, the artist is ceaselessly panting +under his creditors; his necessities beget his debts, and his debts +require of him his nights. After his labor, his pleasure. The comedian +plays till midnight, studies in the morning, rehearses at noon; the +sculptor is bent before his statue; the journalist is a marching +thought, like the soldier when at war; the painter who is the fashion +is crushed with work, the painter with no occupation, if he feels +himself to be a man of genius, gnaws his entrails. Competition, +rivalry, calumny assail talent. Some, in desperation, plunge into the +abyss of vice, others die young and unknown because they have +discounted their future too soon. Few of these figures, originally +sublime, remain beautiful. On the other hand, the flagrant beauty of +their heads is not understood. An artist's face is always exorbitant, +it is always above or below the conventional lines of what fools call +the /beau-ideal/. What power is it that destroys them? Passion. Every +passion in Paris resolves into two terms: gold and pleasure. Now, do +you not breathe again? Do you not feel air and space purified? Here is +neither labor nor suffering. The soaring arch of gold has reached the +summit. From the lowest gutters, where its stream commences, from the +little shops where it is stopped by puny coffer-dams, from the heart +of the counting-houses and great workshops, where its volume is that +of ingots--gold, in the shape of dowries and inheritances, guided by +the hands of young girls or the bony fingers of age, courses towards +the aristocracy, where it will become a blazing, expansive stream. +But, before leaving the four territories upon which the utmost wealth +of Paris is based, it is fitting, having cited the moral causes, to +deduce those which are physical, and to call attention to a +pestilence, latent, as it were, which incessantly acts upon the faces +of the porter, the artisan, the small shopkeeper; to point out a +deleterious influence the corruption of which equals that of the +Parisian administrators who allow it so complacently to exist! + +If the air of the houses in which the greater proportion of the middle +classes live is noxious, if the atmosphere of the streets belches out +cruel miasmas into stuffy back-kitchens where there is little air, +realize that, apart from this pestilence, the forty thousand houses of +this great city have their foundations in filth, which the powers that +be have not yet seriously attempted to enclose with mortar walls solid +enough to prevent even the most fetid mud from filtering through the +soil, poisoning the wells, and maintaining subterraneously to Lutetia +the tradition of her celebrated name. Half of Paris sleeps amidst the +putrid exhalations of courts and streets and sewers. But let us turn +to the vast saloons, gilded and airy; the hotels in their gardens, the +rich, indolent, happy moneyed world. There the faces are lined and +scarred with vanity. There nothing is real. To seek for pleasure is it +not to find /ennui/? People in society have at an early age warped +their nature. Having no occupation other than to wallow in pleasure, +they have speedily misused their sense, as the artisan has misused +brandy. Pleasure is of the nature of certain medical substances: in +order to obtain constantly the same effects the doses must be doubled, +and death or degradation is contained in the last. All the lower +classes are on their knees before the wealthy, and watch their tastes +in order to turn them into vices and exploit them. Thus you see in +these folk at an early age tastes instead of passions, romantic +fantasies and lukewarm loves. There impotence reigns; there ideas have +ceased--they have evaporated together with energy amongst the +affectations of the boudoir and the cajolements of women. There are +fledglings of forty, old doctors of sixty years. The wealthy obtain in +Paris ready-made wit and science--formulated opinions which save them +the need of having wit, science, or opinion of their own. The +irrationality of this world is equaled by its weakness and its +licentiousness. It is greedy of time to the point of wasting it. Seek +in it for affection as little as for ideas. Its kisses conceal a +profound indifference, its urbanity a perpetual contempt. It has no +other fashion of love. Flashes of wit without profundity, a wealth of +indiscretion, scandal, and above all, commonplace. Such is the sum of +its speech; but these happy fortunates pretend that they do not meet +to make and repeat maxims in the manner of La Rochefoucauld as though +there did not exist a mean, invented by the eighteenth century, +between a superfluity and absolute blank. If a few men of character +indulge in witticism, at once subtle and refined, they are +misunderstood; soon, tired of giving without receiving, they remain at +home, and leave fools to reign over their territory. This hollow life, +this perpetual expectation of a pleasure which never comes, this +permanent /ennui/ and emptiness of soul, heart, and mind, the +lassitude of the upper Parisian world, is reproduced on its features, +and stamps its parchment faces, its premature wrinkles, that +physiognomy of the wealthy upon which impotence has set its grimace, +in which gold is mirrored, and whence intelligence has fled. + +Such a view of moral Paris proves that physical Paris could not be +other than it is. This coroneted town is like a queen, who, being +always with child, has desires of irresistible fury. Paris is the +crown of the world, a brain which perishes of genius and leads human +civilization; it is a great man, a perpetually creative artist, a +politician with second-sight who must of necessity have wrinkles on +his forehead, the vices of a great man, the fantasies of the artist, +and the politician's disillusions. Its physiognomy suggests the +evolution of good and evil, battle and victory; the moral combat of +'89, the clarion calls of which still re-echo in every corner of the +world; and also the downfall of 1814. Thus this city can no more be +moral, or cordial, or clean, than the engines which impel those proud +leviathans which you admire when they cleave the waves! Is not Paris a +sublime vessel laden with intelligence? Yes, her arms are one of those +oracles which fatality sometimes allows. The /City of Paris/ has her +great mast, all of bronze, carved with victories, and for watchman-- +Napoleon. The barque may roll and pitch, but she cleaves the world, +illuminates it through the hundred mouths of her tribunes, ploughs the +seas of science, rides with full sail, cries from the height of her +tops, with the voice of her scientists and artists: "Onward, advance! +Follow me!" She carries a huge crew, which delights in adorning her +with fresh streamers. Boys and urchins laughing in the rigging; +ballast of heavy /bourgeoisie/; working-men and sailor-men touched +with tar; in her cabins the lucky passengers; elegant midshipmen smoke +their cigars leaning over the bulwarks; then, on the deck, her +soldiers, innovators or ambitious, would accost every fresh shore, and +shooting out their bright lights upon it, ask for glory which is +pleasure, or for love which needs gold. + +Thus the exorbitant movement of the proletariat, the corrupting +influence of the interests which consume the two middle classes, the +cruelties of the artist's thought, and the excessive pleasure which is +sought for incessantly by the great, explain the normal ugliness of +the Parisian physiognomy. It is only in the Orient that the human race +presents a magnificent figure, but that is an effect of the constant +calm affected by those profound philosophers with their long pipes, +their short legs, their square contour, who despise and hold activity +in horror, whilst in Paris the little and the great and the mediocre +run and leap and drive, whipped on by an inexorable goddess, Necessity +--the necessity for money, glory, and amusement. Thus, any face which +is fresh and graceful and reposeful, any really young face, is in +Paris the most extraordinary of exceptions; it is met with rarely. +Should you see one there, be sure it belongs either to a young and +ardent ecclesiastic or to some good abbe of forty with three chins; to +a young girl of pure life such as is brought up in certain middle- +class families; to a mother of twenty, still full of illusions, as she +suckles her first-born; to a young man newly embarked from the +provinces, and intrusted to the care of some devout dowager who keeps +him without a sou; or, perhaps, to some shop assistant who goes to bed +at midnight wearied out with folding and unfolding calico, and rises +at seven o'clock to arrange the window; often again to some man of +science or poetry, who lives monastically in the embrace of a fine +idea, who remains sober, patient, and chaste; else to some self- +contented fool, feeding himself on folly, reeking of health, in a +perpetual state of absorption with his own smile; or to the soft and +happy race of loungers, the only folk really happy in Paris, which +unfolds for them hour by hour its moving poetry. + +Nevertheless, there is in Paris a proportion of privileged beings to +whom this excessive movement of industries, interests, affairs, arts, +and gold is profitable. These beings are women. Although they also +have a thousand secret causes which, here more than elsewhere, destroy +their physiognomy, there are to be found in the feminine world little +happy colonies, who live in Oriental fashion and can preserve their +beauty; but these women rarely show themselves on foot in the streets, +they lie hid like rare plants who only unfold their petals at certain +hours, and constitute veritable exotic exceptions. However, Paris is +essentially the country of contrasts. If true sentiments are rare +there, there also are to be found, as elsewhere, noble friendships and +unlimited devotion. On this battlefield of interests and passions, +just as in the midst of those marching societies where egoism +triumphs, where every one is obliged to defend himself, and which we +call /armies/, it seems as though sentiments liked to be complete when +they showed themselves, and are sublime by juxtaposition. So it is +with faces. In Paris one sometimes sees in the aristocracy, set like +stars, the ravishing faces of young people, the fruit of quite +exceptional manners and education. To the youthful beauty of the +English stock they unite the firmness of Southern traits. The fire of +their eyes, a delicious bloom on their lips, the lustrous black of +their soft locks, a white complexion, a distinguished caste of +features, render them the flowers of the human race, magnificent to +behold against the mass of other faces, worn, old, wrinkled, and +grimacing. So women, too, admire such young people with that eager +pleasure which men take in watching a pretty girl, elegant, gracious, +and embellished with all the virginal charms with which our +imagination pleases to adorn the perfect woman. If this hurried glance +at the population of Paris has enabled us to conceive the rarity of a +Raphaelesque face, and the passionate admiration which such an one +must inspire at the first sight, the prime interest of our history +will have been justified. /Quod erat demonstrandum/--if one may be +permitted to apply scholastic formulae to the science of manners. + +Upon one of those fine spring mornings, when the leaves, although +unfolded, are not yet green, when the sun begins to gild the roofs, +and the sky is blue, when the population of Paris issues from its +cells to swarm along the boulevards, glides like a serpent of a +thousand coils through the Rue de la Paix towards the Tuileries, +saluting the hymeneal magnificence which the country puts on; on one +of these joyous days, then, a young man as beautiful as the day +itself, dressed with taste, easy of manner--to let out the secret he +was a love-child, the natural son of Lord Dudley and the famous +Marquise de Vordac--was walking in the great avenue of the Tuileries. +This Adonis, by name Henri de Marsay, was born in France, when Lord +Dudley had just married the young lady, already Henri's mother, to an +old gentleman called M. de Marsay. This faded and almost extinguished +butterfly recognized the child as his own in consideration of the life +interest in a fund of a hundred thousand francs definitively assigned +to his putative son; a generosity which did not cost Lord Dudley too +dear. French funds were worth at that time seventeen francs, fifty +centimes. The old gentleman died without having ever known his wife. +Madame de Marsay subsequently married the Marquis de Vordac, but +before becoming a marquise she showed very little anxiety as to her +son and Lord Dudley. To begin with, the declaration of war between +France and England had separated the two lovers, and fidelity at all +costs was not, and never will be, the fashion of Paris. Then the +successes of the woman, elegant, pretty, universally adored, crushed +in the Parisienne the maternal sentiment. Lord Dudley was no more +troubled about his offspring than was the mother,--the speedy +infidelity of a young girl he had ardently loved gave him, perhaps, a +sort of aversion for all that issued from her. Moreover, fathers can, +perhaps, only love the children with whom they are fully acquainted, a +social belief of the utmost importance for the peace of families, +which should be held by all the celibate, proving as it does that +paternity is a sentiment nourished artificially by woman, custom, and +the law. + +Poor Henri de Marsay knew no other father than that one of the two who +was not compelled to be one. The paternity of M. de Marsay was +naturally most incomplete. In the natural order, it is but for a few +fleeting instants that children have a father, and M. de Marsay +imitated nature. The worthy man would not have sold his name had he +been free from vices. Thus he squandered without remorse in gambling +hells, and drank elsewhere, the few dividends which the National +Treasury paid to its bondholders. Then he handed over the child to an +aged sister, a Demoiselle de Marsay, who took much care of him, and +provided him, out of the meagre sum allowed by her brother, with a +tutor, an abbe without a farthing, who took the measure of the youth's +future, and determined to pay himself out of the hundred thousand +livres for the care given to his pupil, for whom he conceived an +affection. As chance had it, this tutor was a true priest, one of +those ecclesiastics cut out to become cardinals in France, or Borgias +beneath the tiara. He taught the child in three years what he might +have learned at college in ten. Then the great man, by name the Abbe +de Maronis, completed the education of his pupil by making him study +civilization under all its aspects: he nourished him on his +experience, led him little into churches, which at that time were +closed; introduced him sometimes behind the scenes of theatres, more +often into the houses of courtesans; he exhibited human emotions to +him one by one; taught him politics in the drawing-rooms, where they +simmered at the time, explained to him the machinery of government, +and endeavored out of attraction towards a fine nature, deserted, yet +rich in promise, virilely to replace a mother: is not the Church the +mother of orphans? The pupil was responsive to so much care. The +worthy priest died in 1812, a bishop, with the satisfaction of having +left in this world a child whose heart and mind were so well moulded +that he could outwit a man of forty. Who would have expected to have +found a heart of bronze, a brain of steel, beneath external traits as +seductive as ever the old painters, those naive artists, had given to +the serpent in the terrestrial paradise? Nor was that all. In +addition, the good-natured prelate had procured for the child of his +choice certain acquaintances in the best Parisian society, which might +equal in value, in the young man's hand, another hundred thousand +invested livres. In fine, this priest, vicious but politic, sceptical +yet learned, treacherous yet amiable, weak in appearance yet as +vigorous physically as intellectually, was so genuinely useful to his +pupil, so complacent to his vices, so fine a calculator of all kinds +of strength, so profound when it was needful to make some human +reckoning, so youthful at table, at Frascati, at--I know not where, +that the grateful Henri de Marsay was hardly moved at aught in 1814, +except when he looked at the portrait of his beloved bishop, the only +personal possession which the prelate had been able to bequeath him +(admirable type of the men whose genius will preserve the Catholic, +Apostolic, and Roman Church, compromised for the moment by the +feebleness of its recruits and the decrepit age of its pontiffs; but +if the church likes!). + +The continental war prevented young De Marsay from knowing his real +father. It is doubtful whether he was aware of his name. A deserted +child, he was equally ignorant of Madame de Marsay. Naturally, he had +little regret for his putative father. As for Mademoiselle de Marsay, +his only mother, he built for her a handsome little monument in Pere +Lachaise when she died. Monseigneur de Maronis had guaranteed to this +old lady one of the best places in the skies, so that when he saw her +die happy, Henri gave her some egotistical tears; he began to weep on +his own account. Observing this grief, the abbe dried his pupil's +tears, bidding him observe that the good woman took her snuff most +offensively, and was becoming so ugly and deaf and tedious that he +ought to return thanks for her death. The bishop had emancipated his +pupil in 1811. Then, when the mother of M. de Marsay remarried, the +priest chose, in a family council, one of those honest dullards, +picked out by him through the windows of his confessional, and charged +him with the administration of the fortune, the revenues of which he +was willing to apply to the needs of the community, but of which he +wished to preserve the capital. + +Towards the end of 1814, then, Henri de Marsay had no sentiment of +obligation in the world, and was as free as an unmated bird. Although +he had lived twenty-two years he appeared to be barely seventeen. As a +rule the most fastidious of his rivals considered him to be the +prettiest youth in Paris. From his father, Lord Dudley, he had derived +a pair of the most amorously deceiving blue eyes; from his mother the +bushiest of black hair, from both pure blood, the skin of a young +girl, a gentle and modest expression, a refined and aristocratic +figure, and beautiful hands. For a woman, to see him was to lose her +head for him; do you understand? to conceive one of those desires +which eat the heart, which are forgotten because of the impossibility +of satisfying them, because women in Paris are commonly without +tenacity. Few of them say to themselves, after the fashion of men, the +"/Je Maintiendrai/," of the House of Orange. + +Underneath this fresh young life, and in spite of the limpid springs +in his eyes, Henri had a lion's courage, a monkey's agility. He could +cut a ball in half at ten paces on the blade of a knife; he rode his +horse in a way that made you realize the fable of the Centaur; drove a +four-in-hand with grace; was as light as a cherub and quiet as a lamb, +but knew how to beat a townsman at the terrible game of /savate/ or +cudgels; moreover, he played the piano in a fashion which would have +enabled him to become an artist should he fall on calamity, and owned +a voice which would have been worth to Barbaja fifty thousand francs a +season. Alas, that all these fine qualities, these pretty faults, were +tarnished by one abominable vice: he believed neither in man nor +woman, God nor Devil. Capricious nature had commenced by endowing him, +a priest had completed the work. + +To render this adventure comprehensible, it is necessary to add here +that Lord Dudley naturally found many women disposed to reproduce +samples of such a delicious pattern. His second masterpiece of this +kind was a young girl named Euphemie, born of a Spanish lady, reared +in Havana, and brought to Madrid with a young Creole woman of the +Antilles, and with all the ruinous tastes of the Colonies, but +fortunately married to an old and extremely rich Spanish noble, Don +Hijos, Marquis de San-Real, who, since the occupation of Spain by +French troops, had taken up his abode in Paris, and lived in the Rue +St. Lazare. As much from indifference as from any respect for the +innocence of youth, Lord Dudley was not in the habit of keeping his +children informed of the relations he created for them in all parts. +That is a slightly inconvenient form of civilization; it has so many +advantages that we must overlook its drawbacks in consideration of its +benefits. Lord Dudley, to make no more words of it, came to Paris in +1816 to take refuge from the pursuit of English justice, which +protects nothing Oriental except commerce. The exiled lord, when he +saw Henri, asked who that handsome young man might be. Then, upon +hearing the name, "Ah, it is my son. . . . What a pity!" he said. + +Such was the story of the young man who, about the middle of the month +of April, 1815, was walking indolently up the broad avenue of the +Tuileries, after the fashion of all those animals who, knowing their +strength, pass along in majesty and peace. Middle-class matrons turned +back naively to look at him again; other women, without turning round, +waited for him to pass again, and engraved him in their minds that +they might remember in due season that fragrant face, which would not +have disadorned the body of the fairest among themselves. + +"What are you doing here on Sunday?" said the Marquis de Ronquerolles +to Henri, as he passed. + +"There's a fish in the net," answered the young man. + +This exchange of thoughts was accomplished by means of two significant +glances, without it appearing that either De Ronquerolles or De Marsay +had any knowledge of the other. The young man was taking note of the +passers-by with that promptitude of eye and ear which is peculiar to +the Parisian who seems, at first, to see and hear nothing, but who +sees and hears all. + +At that moment a young man came up to him and took him familiarly by +the arm, saying to him: "How are you, my dear De Marsay?" + +"Extremely well," De Marsay answered, with that air of apparent +affection which amongst the young men of Paris proves nothing, either +for the present or the future. + +In effect, the youth of Paris resemble the youth of no other town. +They may be divided into two classes: the young man who has something, +and the young man who has nothing; or the young man who thinks and he +who spends. But, be it well understood this applies only to those +natives of the soil who maintain in Paris the delicious course of the +elegant life. There exist, as well, plenty of other young men, but +they are children who are late in conceiving Parisian life, and who +remain its dupes. They do not speculate, they study; they /fag/, as +the others say. Finally there are to be found, besides, certain young +people, rich or poor, who embrace careers and follow them with a +single heart; they are somewhat like the Emile of Rousseau, of the +flesh of citizens, and they never appear in society. The diplomatic +impolitely dub them fools. Be they that or no, they augment the number +of those mediocrities beneath the yoke of which France is bowed down. +They are always there, always ready to bungle public or private +concerns with the dull trowel of their mediocrity, bragging of their +impotence, which they count for conduct and integrity. This sort of +social /prizemen/ infests the administration, the army, the +magistracy, the chambers, the courts. They diminish and level down the +country and constitute, in some manner, in the body politic, a lymph +which infects it and renders it flabby. These honest folk call men of +talent immoral or rogues. If such rogues require to be paid for their +services, at least their services are there; whereas the other sort do +harm and are respected by the mob; but, happily for France, elegant +youth stigmatizes them ceaselessly under the name of louts. + +At the first glance, then, it is natural to consider as very distinct +the two sorts of young men who lead the life of elegance, the amiable +corporation to which Henri de Marsay belonged. But the observer, who +goes beyond the superficial aspect of things, is soon convinced that +the difference is purely moral, and that nothing is so deceptive as +this pretty outside. Nevertheless, all alike take precedence over +everybody else; speak rightly or wrongly of things, of men, +literature, and the fine arts; have ever in their mouth the Pitt and +Coburg of each year; interrupt a conversation with a pun, turn into +ridicule science and the /savant/; despise all things which they do +not know or which they fear; set themselves above all by constituting +themselves the supreme judges of all. They would all hoax their +fathers, and be ready to shed crocodile tears upon their mothers' +breasts; but generally they believe in nothing, blaspheme women, or +play at modesty, and in reality are led by some old woman or an evil +courtesan. They are all equally eaten to the bone with calculation, +with depravity, with a brutal lust to succeed, and if you plumbed for +their hearts you would find in all a stone. In their normal state they +have the prettiest exterior, stake their friendship at every turn, are +captivating alike. The same badinage dominates their ever-changing +jargon; they seek for oddity in their toilette, glory in repeating the +stupidities of such and such actor who is in fashion, and commence +operations, it matters not with whom, with contempt and impertinence, +in order to have, as it were, the first move in the game; but, woe +betide him who does not know how to take a blow on one cheek for the +sake of rendering two. They resemble, in fine, that pretty white spray +which crests the stormy waves. They dress and dance, dine and take +their pleasure, on the day of Waterloo, in the time of cholera or +revolution. Finally, their expenses are all the same, but here the +contrast comes in. Of this fluctuating fortune, so agreeably flung +away, some possess the capital for which the others wait; they have +the same tailors, but the bills of the latter are still to pay. Next, +if the first, like sieves, take in ideas of all kinds without +retaining any, the latter compare them and assimilate all the good. If +the first believe they know something, know nothing and understand +everything, lend all to those who need nothing and offer nothing to +those who are in need; the latter study secretly others' thoughts and +place out their money, like their follies, at big interest. The one +class have no more faithful impressions, because their soul, like a +mirror, worn from use, no longer reflects any image; the others +economize their senses and life, even while they seem, like the first, +to be flinging them away broadcast. The first, on the faith of a hope, +devote themselves without conviction to a system which has wind and +tide against it, but they leap upon another political craft when the +first goes adrift; the second take the measure of the future, sound +it, and see in political fidelity what the English see in commercial +integrity, an element of success. Where the young man of possessions +makes a pun or an epigram upon the restoration of the throne, he who +has nothing makes a public calculation or a secret reservation, and +obtains everything by giving a handshake to his friends. The one deny +every faculty to others, look upon all their ideas as new, as though +the world had been made yesterday, they have unlimited confidence in +themselves, and no crueler enemy than those same selves. But the +others are armed with an incessant distrust of men, whom they estimate +at their value, and are sufficiently profound to have one thought +beyond their friends, whom they exploit; then of evenings, when they +lay their heads on their pillows, they weigh men as a miser weighs his +gold pieces. The one are vexed at an aimless impertinence, and allow +themselves to be ridiculed by the diplomatic, who make them dance for +them by pulling what is the main string of these puppets--their +vanity. Thus, a day comes when those who had nothing have something, +and those who had something have nothing. The latter look at their +comrades who have achieved positions as cunning fellows; their hearts +may be bad, but their heads are strong. "He is very strong!" is the +supreme praise accorded to those who have attained /quibuscumque +viis/, political rank, a woman, or a fortune. Amongst them are to be +found certain young men who play this /role/ by commencing with having +debts. Naturally, these are more dangerous than those who play it +without a farthing. + +The young man who called himself a friend of Henri de Marsay was a +rattle-head who had come from the provinces, and whom the young men +then in fashion were teaching the art of running through an +inheritance; but he had one last leg to stand on in his province, in +the shape of a secure establishment. He was simply an heir who had +passed without any transition from his pittance of a hundred francs a +month to the entire paternal fortune, and who, if he had not wit +enough to perceive that he was laughed at, was sufficiently cautious +to stop short at two-thirds of his capital. He had learned at Paris, +for a consideration of some thousands of francs, the exact value of +harness, the art of not being too respectful to his gloves, learned to +make skilful meditations upon the right wages to give people, and to +seek out what bargain was the best to close with them. He set store on +his capacity to speak in good terms of his horses, of his Pyrenean +hound; to tell by her dress, her walk, her shoes, to what class a +woman belonged; to study /ecarte/, remember a few fashionable +catchwords, and win by his sojourn in Parisian society the necessary +authority to import later into his province a taste for tea and silver +of an English fashion, and to obtain the right of despising everything +around him for the rest of his days. + +De Marsay had admitted him to his society in order to make use of him +in the world, just as a bold speculator employs a confidential clerk. +The friendship, real or feigned, of De Marsay was a social position +for Paul de Manerville, who, on his side, thought himself astute in +exploiting, after his fashion, his intimate friend. He lived in the +reflecting lustre of his friend, walked constantly under his umbrella, +wore his boots, gilded himself with his rays. When he posed in Henri's +company or walked at his side, he had the air of saying: "Don't insult +us, we are real dogs." He often permitted himself to remark fatuously: +"If I were to ask Henri for such and such a thing, he is a good enough +friend of mine to do it." But he was careful never to ask anything of +him. He feared him, and his fear, although imperceptible, reacted upon +the others, and was of use to De Marsay. + +"De Marsay is a man of a thousand," said Paul. "Ah, you will see, he +will be what he likes. I should not be surprised to find him one of +these days Minister of Foreign Affairs. Nothing can withstand him." + +He made of De Marsay what Corporal Trim made of his cap, a perpetual +instance. + +"Ask De Marsay and you will see!" + +Or again: + +"The other day we were hunting, De Marsay and I, He would not believe +me, but I jumped a hedge without moving on my horse!" + +Or again: + +"We were with some women, De Marsay and I, and upon my word of honor, +I was----" etc. + +Thus Paul de Manerville could not be classed amongst the great, +illustrious, and powerful family of fools who succeed. He would one +day be a deputy. For the time he was not even a young man. His friend, +De Marsay, defined him thus: "You ask me what is Paul? Paul? Why, Paul +de Manerville!" + +"I am surprised, my dear fellow," he said to De Marsay, "to see you +here on a Sunday." + +"I was going to ask you the same question." + +"Is it an intrigue?" + +"An intrigue." + +"Bah!" + +"I can mention it to you without compromising my passion. Besides, a +woman who comes to the Tuileries on Sundays is of no account, +aristocratically speaking." + +"Ah! ah!" + +"Hold your tongue then, or I shall tell you nothing. Your laugh is too +loud, you will make people think that we have lunched too well. Last +Thursday, here on the Terrasse des Feuillants, I was walking along, +thinking of nothing at all, but when I got to the gate of the Rue de +Castiglione, by which I intended to leave, I came face to face with a +woman, or rather a young girl; who, if she did not throw herself at my +head, stopped short, less I think, from human respect, than from one +of those movements of profound surprise which affect the limbs, creep +down the length of the spine, and cease only in the sole of the feet, +to nail you to the ground. I have often produced effects of this +nature, a sort of animal magnetism which becomes enormously powerful +when the relations are reciprocally precise. But, my dear fellow, this +was not stupefaction, nor was she a common girl. Morally speaking, her +face seemed to say: 'What, is it you, my ideal! The creation of my +thoughts, of my morning and evening dreams! What, are you there? Why +this morning? Why not yesterday? Take me, I am thine, /et cetera/!' +Good, I said to myself, another one! Then I scrutinize her. Ah, my +dear fellow, speaking physically, my incognita is the most adorable +feminine person whom I ever met. She belongs to that feminine variety +which the Romans call /fulva, flava/--the woman of fire. And in chief, +what struck me the most, what I am still taken with, are her two +yellow eyes, like a tiger's, a golden yellow that gleams, living gold, +gold which thinks, gold which loves, and is determined to take refuge +in your pocket." + +"My dear fellow, we are full of her!" cried Paul. "She comes here +sometimes--/the girl with the golden eyes/! That is the name we have +given her. She is a young creature--not more than twenty-two, and I +have seen her here in the time of the Bourbons, but with a woman who +was worth a hundred thousand of her." + +"Silence, Paul! It is impossible for any woman to surpass this girl; +she is like the cat who rubs herself against your legs; a white girl +with ash-colored hair, delicate in appearance, but who must have downy +threads on the third phalanx of her fingers, and all along her cheeks +a white down whose line, luminous on fine days, begins at her ears and +loses itself on her neck." + +"Ah, the other, my dear De Marsay! She has black eyes which have never +wept, but which burn; black eyebrows which meet and give her an air of +hardness contradicted by the compact curve of her lips, on which the +kisses do not stay, lips burning and fresh; a Moorish color that warms +a man like the sun. But--upon my word of honor, she is like you!" + +"You flatter her!" + +"A firm figure, the tapering figure of a corvette built for speed, +which rushes down upon the merchant vessel with French impetuosity, +which grapples with her and sinks her at the same time." + +"After all, my dear fellow," answered De Marsay, "what has that got to +do with me, since I have never seen her? Ever since I have studied +women, my incognita is the only one whose virginal bosom, whose ardent +and voluptuous forms, have realized for me the only woman of my dreams +--of my dreams! She is the original of that ravishing picture called +/La Femme Caressant sa Chimere/, the warmest, the most infernal +inspiration of the genius of antiquity; a holy poem prostituted by +those who have copied it for frescoes and mosiacs; for a heap of +bourgeois who see in this gem nothing more than a gew-gaw and hang it +on their watch-chains--whereas, it is the whole woman, an abyss of +pleasure into which one plunges and finds no end; whereas, it is the +ideal woman, to be seen sometimes in reality in Spain or Italy, almost +never in France. Well, I have again seen this girl of the gold eyes, +this woman caressing her chimera. I saw her on Friday. I had a +presentiment that on the following day she would be here at the same +hour; I was not mistaken. I have taken a pleasure in following her +without being observed, in studying her indolent walk, the walk of the +woman without occupation, but in the movements of which one devines +all the pleasure that lies asleep. Well, she turned back again, she +saw me, once more she adored me, once more trembled, shivered. It was +then I noticed the genuine Spanish duenna who looked after her, a +hyena upon whom some jealous man has put a dress, a she-devil well +paid, no doubt, to guard this delicious creature. . . . Ah, then the +duenna made me deeper in love. I grew curious. On Saturday, nobody. +And here I am to-day waiting for this girl whose chimera I am, asking +nothing better than to pose as the monster in the fresco." + +"There she is," said Paul. "Every one is turning round to look at +her." + +The unknown blushed, her eyes shone; she saw Henri, she shut them and +passed by. + +"You say that she notices you?" cried Paul, facetiously. + +The duenna looked fixedly and attentively at the two young men. When +the unknown and Henri passed each other again, the young girl touched +him, and with her hand pressed the hand of the young man. Then she +turned her head and smiled with passion, but the duenna led her away +very quickly to the gate of the Rue de Castiglione. + +The two friends followed the young girl, admiring the magnificent +grace of the neck which met her head in a harmony of vigorous lines, +and upon which a few coils of hair were tightly wound. The girl with +the golden eyes had that well-knitted, arched, slender foot which +presents so many attractions to the dainty imagination. Moreover, she +was shod with elegance, and wore a short skirt. During her course she +turned from time to time to look at Henri, and appeared to follow the +old woman regretfully, seeming to be at once her mistress and her +slave; she could break her with blows, but could not dismiss her. All +that was perceptible. The two friends reached the gate. Two men in +livery let down the step of a tasteful /coupe/ emblazoned with +armorial bearings. The girl with the golden eyes was the first to +enter it, took her seat at the side where she could be best seen when +the carriage turned, put her hand on the door, and waved her +handkerchief in the duennna's despite. In contempt of what might be +said by the curious, her handkerchief cried to Henri openly: "Follow +me!" + +"Have you ever seen a handkerchief better thrown?" said Henri to Paul +de Manerville. + +Then, observing a fiacre on the point of departure, having just set +down a fare, he made a sign to the driver to wait. + +"Follow that carriage, notice the house and the street where it stops +--you shall have ten francs. . . . Paul, adieu." + +The cab followed the /coupe/. The /coupe/ stopped in the Rue Saint +Lazare before one of the finest houses of the neighborhood. + +De Marsay was not impulsive. Any other young man would have obeyed his +impulse to obtain at once some information about a girl who realized +so fully the most luminous ideas ever expressed upon women in the +poetry of the East; but, too experienced to compromise his good +fortune, he had told his coachman to continue along the Rue Saint +Lazare and carry him back to his house. The next day, his confidential +valet, Laurent by name, as cunning a fellow as the Frontin of the old +comedy, waited in the vicinity of the house inhabited by the unknown +for the hour at which letters were distributed. In order to be able to +spy at his ease and hang about the house, he had followed the example +of those police officers who seek a good disguise, and bought up cast- +off clothes of an Auvergnat, the appearance of whom he sought to +imitate. When the postman, who went the round of the Rue Saint Lazare +that morning, passed by, Laurent feigned to be a porter unable to +remember the name of a person to whom he had to deliver a parcel, and +consulted the postman. Deceived at first by appearances, this +personage, so picturesque in the midst of Parisian civilization, +informed him that the house in which the girl with the golden eyes +dwelt belonged to Don Hijos, Marquis de San-Real, grandee of Spain. +Naturally, it was not with the Marquis that the Auvergnat was +concerned. + +"My parcel," he said, "is for the marquise." + +"She is away," replied the postman. "Her letters are forwarded to +London." + +"Then the marquise is not a young girl who . . . ?" + +"Ah!" said the postman, interrupting the /valet de chambre/ and +observing him attentively, "you are as much a porter as I'm . . ." + +Laurent chinked some pieces of gold before the functionary, who began +to smile. + +"Come, here's the name of your quarry," he said, taking from his +leather wallet a letter bearing a London stamp, upon which the +address, "To Mademoiselle Paquita Valdes, Rue Saint Lazare, Hotel San- +Real, Paris," was written in long, fine characters, which spoke of a +woman's hand. + +"Could you tap a bottle of Chablis, with a few dozen oysters, and a +/filet saute/ with mushrooms to follow it?" said Laurent, who wished +to win the postman's valuable friendship. + +"At half-past nine, when my round is finished---- Where?" + +"At the corner of the Rue de la Chaussee-d'Antin and the Rue Neuve- +des-Mathurins, at the /Puits sans Vin/," said Laurent. + +"Hark ye, my friend," said the postman, when he rejoined the valet an +hour after this encounter, "if your master is in love with the girl, +he is in for a famous task. I doubt you'll not succeed in seeing her. +In the ten years that I've been postman in Paris, I have seen plenty +of different kinds of doors! But I can tell you, and no fear of being +called a liar by any of my comrades, there never was a door so +mysterious as M. de San-Real's. No one can get into the house without +the Lord knows what counter-word; and, notice, it has been selected on +purpose between a courtyard and a garden to avoid any communication +with other houses. The porter is an old Spaniard, who never speaks a +word of French, but peers at people as Vidocq might, to see if they +are not thieves. If a lover, a thief, or you--I make no comparisons-- +could get the better of this first wicket, well, in the first hall, +which is shut by a glazed door, you would run across a butler +surrounded by lackeys, an old joker more savage and surly even than +the porter. If any one gets past the porter's lodge, my butler comes +out, waits for you at the entrance, and puts you through a cross- +examination like a criminal. That has happened to me, a mere postman. +He took me for an eavesdropper in disguise, he said, laughing at his +nonsense. As for the servants, don't hope to get aught out of them; I +think they are mutes, no one in the neighborhood knows the color of +their speech; I don't know what wages they can pay them to keep them +from talk and drink; the fact is, they are not to be got at, whether +because they are afraid of being shot, or that they have some enormous +sum to lose in the case of an indiscretion. If your master is fond +enough of Mademoiselle Paquita Valdes to surmount all these obstacles, +he certainly won't triumph over Dona Concha Marialva, the duenna who +accompanies her and would put her under her petticoats sooner than +leave her. The two women look as if they were sewn to one another." + +"All that you say, worthy postman," went on Laurent, after having +drunk off his wine, "confirms me in what I have learned before. Upon +my word, I thought they were making fun of me! The fruiterer opposite +told me that of nights they let loose dogs whose food is hung up on +stakes just out of their reach. These cursed animals think, therefore, +that any one likely to come in has designs on their victuals, and +would tear one to pieces. You will tell me one might throw them down +pieces, but it seems they have been trained to touch nothing except +from the hand of the porter." + +"The porter of the Baron de Nucingen, whose garden joins at the top +that of the Hotel San-Real, told me the same thing," replied the +postman. + +"Good! my master knows him," said Laurent, to himself. "Do you know," +he went on, leering at the postman, "I serve a master who is a rare +man, and if he took it into his head to kiss the sole of the foot of +an empress, she would have to give in to him. If he had need of you, +which is what I wish for you, for he is generous, could one count on +you?" + +"Lord, Monsieur Laurent, my name is Moinot. My name is written exactly +like /Moineau/, magpie: M-o-i-n-o-t, Moinot." + +"Exactly," said Laurent. + +"I live at No. 11, Rue des Trois Freres, on the fifth floor," went on +Moinot; "I have a wife and four children. If what you want of me +doesn't transgress the limits of my conscience and my official duties, +you understand! I am your man." + +"You are an honest fellow," said Laurent, shaking his hand. . . . + +"Paquita Valdes is, no doubt, the mistress of the Marquis de San-Real, +the friend of King Ferdinand. Only an old Spanish mummy of eighty +years is capable of taking such precautions," said Henri, when his +/valet de chambre/ had related the result of his researches. + +"Monsieur," said Laurent, "unless he takes a balloon no one can get +into that hotel." + +"You are a fool! Is it necessary to get into the hotel to have +Paquita, when Paquita can get out of it?" + +"But, sir, the duenna?" + +"We will shut her up for a day or two, your duenna." + +"So, we shall have Paquita!" said Laurent, rubbing his hands. + +"Rascal!" answered Henri, "I shall condemn you to the Concha, if you +carry your impudence so far as to speak so of a woman before she has +become mine. . . . Turn your thoughts to dressing me, I am going out." + +Henri remained for a moment plunged in joyous reflections. Let us say +it to the praise of women, he obtained all those whom he deigned to +desire. And what could one think of a woman, having no lover, who +should have known how to resist a young man armed with beauty which is +the intelligence of the body, with intelligence which is a grace of +the soul, armed with moral force and fortune, which are the only two +real powers? Yet, in triumphing with such ease, De Marsay was bound to +grow weary of his triumphs; thus, for about two years he had grown +very weary indeed. And diving deep into the sea of pleasures he +brought back more grit than pearls. Thus had he come, like potentates, +to implore of Chance some obstacle to surmount, some enterprise which +should ask the employment of his dormant moral and physical strength. +Although Paquita Valdes presented him with a marvelous concentration +of perfections which he had only yet enjoyed in detail, the attraction +of passion was almost /nil/ with him. Constant satiety had weakened in +his heart the sentiment of love. Like old men and people +disillusioned, he had no longer anything but extravagant caprices, +ruinous tastes, fantasies, which, once satisfied, left no pleasant +memory in his heart. Amongst young people love is the finest of the +emotions, it makes the life of the soul blossom, it nourishes by its +solar power the finest inspirations and their great thoughts; the +first fruits in all things have a delicious savor. Amongst men love +becomes a passion; strength leads to abuse. Amongst old men it turns +to vice; impotence tends to extremes. Henri was at once an old man, a +man, and a youth. To afford him the feelings of a real love, he needed +like Lovelace, a Clarissa Harlowe. Without the magic lustre of that +unattainable pearl he could only have either passions rendered acute +by some Parisian vanity, or set determinations with himself to bring +such and such a woman to such and such a point of corruption, or else +adventures which stimulated his curiosity. + +The report of Laurent, his /valet de chambre/ had just given an +enormous value to the girl with the golden eyes. It was a question of +doing battle with some secret enemy who seemed as dangerous as he was +cunning; and to carry off the victory, all the forces which Henri +could dispose of would be useful. He was about to play in that eternal +old comedy which will be always fresh, and the characters in which are +an old man, a young girl, and a lover: Don Hijos, Paquita, De Marsay. +If Laurent was the equal of Figaro, the duenna seemed incorruptible. +Thus, the living play was supplied by Chance with a stronger plot than +it had ever been by dramatic author! But then is not Chance too, a man +of genius? + +"It must be a cautious game," said Henri, to himself. + +"Well," said Paul de Manerville, as he entered the room. "How are we +getting on? I have come to breakfast with you." + +"So be it," said Henri. "You won't be shocked if I make my toilette +before you?" + +"How absurd!" + +"We take so many things from the English just now that we might well +become as great prudes and hypocrites as themselves," said Henri. + +Laurent had set before his master such a quantity of utensils, so many +different articles of such elegance, that Paul could not refrain from +saying: + +"But you will take a couple of hours over that?" + +"No!" said Henri, "two hours and a half." + +"Well, then, since we are by ourselves, and can say what we like, +explain to me why a man as superior as yourself--for you are superior +--should affect to exaggerate a foppery which cannot be natural. Why +spend two hours and a half in adorning yourself, when it is sufficient +to spend a quarter of an hour in your bath, to do your hair in two +minutes, and to dress! There, tell me your system." + +"I must be very fond of you, my good dunce, to confide such high +thoughts to you," said the young man, who was at that moment having +his feet rubbed with a soft brush lathered with English soap. + +"Have I not the most devoted attachment to you," replied Paul de +Manerville, "and do I not like you because I know your +superiority? . . ." + +"You must have noticed, if you are in the least capable of observing +any moral fact, that women love fops," went on De Marsay, without +replying in any way to Paul's declaration except by a look. "Do you +know why women love fops? My friend, fops are the only men who take +care of themselves. Now, to take excessive care of oneself, does it +not imply that one takes care in oneself of what belongs to another? +The man who does not belong to himself is precisely the man on whom +women are keen. Love is essentially a thief. I say nothing about that +excess of niceness to which they are so devoted. Do you know of any +woman who has had a passion for a sloven, even if he were a remarkable +man? If such a fact has occurred, we must put it to the account of +those morbid affections of the breeding woman, mad fancies which float +through the minds of everybody. On the other hand, I have seen most +remarkable people left in the lurch because of their carelessness. A +fop, who is concerned about his person, is concerned with folly, with +petty things. And what is a woman? A petty thing, a bundle of follies. +With two words said to the winds, can you not make her busy for four +hours? She is sure that the fop will be occupied with her, seeing that +he has no mind for great things. She will never be neglected for +glory, ambition, politics, art--those prostitutes who for her are +rivals. Then fops have the courage to cover themselves with ridicule +in order to please a woman, and her heart is full of gratitude towards +the man who is ridiculous for love. In fine, a fop can be no fop +unless he is right in being one. It is women who bestow that rank. The +fop is love's colonel; he has his victories, his regiment of women at +his command. My dear fellow, in Paris everything is known, and a man +cannot be a fop there /gratis/. You, who have only one woman, and who, +perhaps, are right to have but one, try to act the fop! . . . You will +not even become ridiculous, you will be dead. You will become a +foregone conclusion, one of those men condemned inevitably to do one +and the same thing. You will come to signify /folly/ as inseparably as +M. de La Fayette signifies /America/; M. de Talleyrand, /diplomacy/; +Desaugiers, /song/; M. de Segur, /romance/. If they once forsake their +own line people no longer attach any value to what they do. So, +foppery, my friend Paul, is the sign of an incontestable power over +the female folk. A man who is loved by many women passes for having +superior qualities, and then, poor fellow, it is a question who shall +have him! But do you think it is nothing to have the right of going +into a drawing-room, of looking down at people from over your cravat, +or through your eye-glass, and of despising the most superior of men +should he wear an old-fashioned waistcoat? . . . Laurent, you are +hurting me! After breakfast, Paul, we will go to the Tuileries and see +the adorable girl with the golden eyes." + +When, after making an excellent meal, the two young men had traversed +the Terrasse de Feuillants and the broad walk of the Tuileries, they +nowhere discovered the sublime Paquita Valdes, on whose account some +fifty of the most elegant young men in Paris where to be seen, all +scented, with their high scarfs, spurred and booted, riding, walking, +talking, laughing, and damning themselves mightily. + +"It's a white Mass," said Henri; "but I have the most excellent idea +in the world. This girl receives letters from London. The postman must +be bought or made drunk, a letter opened, read of course, and a love- +letter slipped in before it is sealed up again. The old tyrant, +/crudel tirano/, is certain to know the person who writes the letters +from London, and has ceased to be suspicious of them." + +The day after, De Marsay came again to walk on the Terrasse des +Feuillants, and saw Paquita Valdes; already passion had embellished +her for him. Seriously, he was wild for those eyes, whose rays seemed +akin to those which the sun emits, and whose ardor set the seal upon +that of her perfect body, in which all was delight. De Marsay was on +fire to brush the dress of this enchanting girl as they passed one +another in their walk; but his attempts were always vain. But at one +moment, when he had repassed Paquita and the duenna, in order to find +himself on the same side as the girl of the golden eyes, when he +returned, Paquita, no less impatient, came forward hurriedly, and De +Marsay felt his hand pressed by her in a fashion at once so swift and +so passionately significant that it was as though he had received the +emotions surged up in his heart. When the two lovers glanced at one +another, Paquita seemed ashamed, she dropped her eyes lest she should +meet the eyes of Henri, but her gaze sank lower to fasten on the feet +and form of him whom women, before the Revolution, called /their +conqueror/. + +"I am determined to make this girl my mistress," said Henri to +himself. + +As he followed her along the terrace, in the direction of the Place +Louis XV., he caught sight of the aged Marquis de San-Real, who was +walking on the arm of his valet, stepping with all the precautions due +to gout and decrepitude. Dona Concha, who distrusted Henri, made +Paquita pass between herself and the old man. + +"Oh, for you," said De Marsay to himself, casting a glance of disdain +upon the duenna, "if one cannot make you capitulate, with a little +opium one can make you sleep. We know mythology and the fable of +Argus." + +Before entering the carriage, the golden-eyed girl exchanged certain +glances with her lover, of which the meaning was unmistakable and +which enchanted Henri, but one of them was surprised by the duenna; +she said a few rapid words to Paquita, who threw herself into the +/coupe/ with an air of desperation. For some days Paquita did not +appear in the Tuileries. Laurent, who by his master's orders was on +watch by the hotel, learned from the neighbors that neither the two +women nor the aged marquis had been abroad since the day upon which +the duenna had surprised a glance between the young girl in her charge +and Henri. The bond, so flimsy withal, which united the two lovers was +already severed. + +Some days later, none knew by what means, De Marsay had attained his +end; he had a seal and wax, exactly resembling the seal and wax +affixed to the letters sent to Mademoiselle Valdes from London; paper +similar to that which her correspondent used; moreover, all the +implements and stamps necessary to affix the French and English +postmarks. + +He wrote the following letter, to which he gave all the appearances of +a letter sent from London:-- + + "MY DEAR PAQUITA,--I shall not try to paint to you in words the + passion with which you have inspired me. If, to my happiness, you + reciprocate it, understand that I have found a means of + corresponding with you. My name is Adolphe de Gouges, and I live + at No. 54 Rue de l'Universite. If you are too closely watched to + be able to write to me, if you have neither pen nor paper, I shall + understand it by your silence. If then, to-morrow, you have not, + between eight o'clock in the morning and ten o'clock in the + evening, thrown a letter over the wall of your garden into that of + the Baron de Nucingen, where it will be waited for during the + whole of the day, a man, who is entirely devoted to me, will let + down two flasks by a string over your wall at ten o'clock the next + morning. Be walking there at that hour. One of the two flasks will + contain opium to send your Argus to sleep; it will be sufficient + to employ six drops; the other will contain ink. The flask of ink + is of cut glass; the other is plain. Both are of such a size as + can easily be concealed within your bosom. All that I have already + done, in order to be able to correspond with you, should tell you + how greatly I love you. Should you have any doubt of it, I will + confess to you, that to obtain an interview of one hour with you I + would give my life." + +"At least they believe that, poor creatures!" said De Marsay; "but +they are right. What should we think of a woman who refused to be +beguiled by a love-letter accompanied by such convincing accessories?" + +This letter was delivered by Master Moinot, postman, on the following +day, about eight o'clock in the morning, to the porter of the Hotel +San-Real. + +In order to be nearer to the field of action, De Marsay went and +breakfasted with Paul, who lived in the Rue de la Pepiniere. At two +o'clock, just as the two friends were laughingly discussing the +discomfiture of a young man who had attempted to lead the life of +fashion without a settled income, and were devising an end for him, +Henri's coachman came to seek his master at Paul's house, and +presented to him a mysterious personage who insisted on speaking +himself with his master. + +This individual was a mulatto, who would assuredly have given Talma a +model for the part of Othello, if he had come across him. Never did +any African face better express the grand vengefulness, the ready +suspicion, the promptitude in the execution of a thought, the strength +of the Moor, and his childish lack of reflection. His black eyes had +the fixity of the eyes of a bird of prey, and they were framed, like a +vulture's, by a bluish membrane devoid of lashes. His forehead, low +and narrow, had something menacing. Evidently, this man was under the +yoke of some single and unique thought. His sinewy arm did not belong +to him. + +He was followed by a man whom the imaginations of all folk, from those +who shiver in Greenland to those who sweat in the tropics, would paint +in the single phrase: /He was an unfortunate man/. From this phrase, +everybody will conceive him according to the special ideas of each +country. But who can best imagine his face--white and wrinkled, red at +the extremities, and his long beard. Who will see his lean and yellow +scarf, his greasy shirt-collar, his battered hat, his green frock +coat, his deplorable trousers, his dilapidated waistcoat, his +imitation gold pin, and battered shoes, the strings of which were +plastered in mud? Who will see all that but the Parisian? The +unfortunate man of Paris is the unfortunate man /in toto/, for he has +still enough mirth to know the extent of his misfortune. The mulatto +was like an executioner of Louis XI. leading a man to the gallows. + +"Who has hunted us out these two extraordinary creatures?" said Henri. + +"Faith! there is one of them who makes me shudder," replied Paul. + +"Who are you--you fellow who look the most like a Christian of the +two?" said Henri, looking at the unfortunate man. + +The mulatto stood with his eyes fixed upon the two young men, like a +man who understood nothing, and who sought no less to divine something +from the gestures and movements of the lips. + +"I am a public scribe and interpreter; I live at the Palais de +Justice, and am named Poincet." + +"Good! . . . and this one?" said Henri to Poincet, looking towards the +mulatto. + +"I do not know; he only speaks a sort of Spanish /patois/, and he has +brought me here to make himself understood by you." + +The mulatto drew from his pocket the letter which Henri had written to +Paquita and handed it to him. Henri threw it in the fire. + +"Ah--so--the game is beginning," said Henri to himself. "Paul, leave +us alone for a moment." + +"I translated this letter for him," went on the interpreter, when they +were alone. "When it was translated, he was in some place which I +don't remember. Then he came back to look for me, and promised me two +/louis/ to fetch him here." + +"What have you to say to me, nigger?" asked Henri. + +"I did not translate /nigger/," said the interpreter, waiting for the +mulatto's reply. . . . + +"He said, sir," went on the interpreter, after having listened to the +unknown, "that you must be at half-past ten to-morrow night on the +boulevard Montmartre, near the cafe. You will see a carriage there, in +which you must take your place, saying to the man, who will wait to +open the door for you, the word /cortejo/--a Spanish word, which means +/lover/," added Poincet, casting a glance of congratulation upon +Henri. + +"Good." + +The mulatto was about to bestow the two /louis/, but De Marsay would +not permit it, and himself rewarded the interpreter. As he was paying +him, the mulatto began to speak. + +"What is he saying?" + +"He is warning me," replied the unfortunate, "that if I commit a +single indiscretion he will strangle me. He speaks fair and he looks +remarkably as if he were capable of carrying out his threat." + +"I am sure of it," answered Henri; "he would keep his word." + +"He says, as well," replied the interpreter, "that the person from +whom he is sent implores you, for your sake and for hers, to act with +the greatest prudence, because the daggers which are raised above your +head would strike your heart before any human power could save you +from them." + +"He said that? So much the better, it will be more amusing. You can +come in now, Paul," he cried to his friend. + +The mulatto, who had not ceased to gaze at the lover of Paquita Valdes +with magnetic attention, went away, followed by the interpreter. + +"Well, at last I have an adventure which is entirely romantic," said +Henri, when Paul returned. "After having shared in a certain number I +have finished by finding in Paris an intrigue accompanied by serious +accidents, by grave perils. The deuce! what courage danger gives a +woman! To torment a woman, to try and contradict her--doesn't it give +her the right and the courage to scale in one moment obstacles which +it would take her years to surmount of herself? Pretty creature, jump +then! To die? Poor child! Daggers? Oh, imagination of women! They +cannot help trying to find authority for their little jests. Besides, +can one think of it, Paquita? Can one think of it, my child? The devil +take me, now that I know this beautiful girl, this masterpiece of +nature, is mine, the adventure has lost its charm." + +For all his light words, the youth in Henri had reappeared. In order +to live until the morrow without too much pain, he had recourse to +exorbitant pleasure; he played, dined, supped with his friends; he +drank like a fish, ate like a German, and won ten or twelve thousand +francs. He left the Rocher de Cancale at two o'clock in the morning, +slept like a child, awoke the next morning fresh and rosy, and dressed +to go to the Tuileries, with the intention of taking a ride, after +having seen Paquita, in order to get himself an appetite and dine the +better, and so kill the time. + +At the hour mentioned Henri was on the boulevard, saw the carriage, +and gave the counter-word to a man who looked to him like the mulatto. +Hearing the word, the man opened the door and quickly let down the +step. Henri was so rapidly carried through Paris, and his thoughts +left him so little capacity to pay attention to the streets through +which he passed, that he did not know where the carriage stopped. The +mulatto let him into a house, the staircase of which was quite close +to the entrance. This staircase was dark, as was also the landing upon +which Henri was obliged to wait while the mulatto was opening the door +of a damp apartment, fetid and unlit, the chambers of which, barely +illuminated by the candle which his guide found in the ante-chamber, +seemed to him empty and ill furnished, like those of a house the +inhabitants of which are away. He recognized the sensation which he +had experienced from the perusal of one of those romances of Anne +Radcliffe, in which the hero traverses the cold, sombre, and +uninhabited saloons of some sad and desert spot. + +At last the mulatto opened the door of a /salon/. The condition of the +old furniture and the dilapidated curtains with which the room was +adorned gave it the air of the reception-room of a house of ill fame. +There was the same pretension to elegance, and the same collection of +things in bad taste, of dust and dirt. Upon a sofa covered with red +Utrecht velvet, by the side of a smoking hearth, the fire of which was +buried in ashes, sat an old, poorly dressed woman, her head capped by +one of those turbans which English women of a certain age have +invented and which would have a mighty success in China, where the +artist's ideal is the monstrous. + +The room, the old woman, the cold hearth, all would have chilled love +to death had not Paquita been there, upon an ottoman, in a loose +voluptuous wrapper, free to scatter her gaze of gold and flame, free +to show her arched foot, free of her luminous movements. This first +interview was what every /rendezvous/ must be between persons of +passionate disposition, who have stepped over a wide distance quickly, +who desire each other ardently, and who, nevertheless, do not know +each other. It is impossible that at first there should not occur +certain discordant notes in the situation, which is embarrassing until +the moment when two souls find themselves in unison. + +If desire gives a man boldness and disposes him to lay restraint +aside, the mistress, under pain of ceasing to be woman, however great +may be her love, is afraid of arriving at the end so promptly, and +face to face with the necessity of giving herself, which to many women +is equivalent to a fall into an abyss, at the bottom of which they +know not what they shall find. The involuntary coldness of the woman +contrasts with her confessed passion, and necessarily reacts upon the +most passionate lover. Thus ideas, which often float around souls like +vapors, determine in them a sort of temporary malady. In the sweet +journey which two beings undertake through the fair domains of love, +this moment is like a waste land to be traversed, a land without a +tree, alternatively damp and warm, full of scorching sand, traversed +by marshes, which leads to smiling groves clad with roses, where Love +and his retinue of pleasures disport themselves on carpets of soft +verdure. Often the witty man finds himself afflicted with a foolish +laugh which is his only answer to everything; his wit is, as it were, +suffocated beneath the icy pressure of his desires. It would not be +impossible for two beings of equal beauty, intelligence, and passion +to utter at first nothing but the most silly commonplaces, until +chance, a word, the tremor of a certain glance, the communication of a +spark, should have brought them to the happy transition which leads to +that flowery way in which one does not walk, but where one sways and +at the same time does not lapse. + +Such a state of mind is always in proportion with the violence of the +feeling. Two creatures who love one another weakly feel nothing +similar. The effect of this crisis can even be compared with that +which is produced by the glow of a clear sky. Nature, at the first +view, appears to be covered with a gauze veil, the azure of the +firmament seems black, the intensity of light is like darkness. With +Henri, as with the Spanish girl, there was an equal intensity of +feeling; and that law of statics, in virtue of which two identical +forces cancel each other, might have been true also in the moral +order. And the embarrassment of the moment was singularly increased by +the presence of the old hag. Love takes pleasure or fright at all, all +has meaning for it, everything is an omen of happiness or sorrow for +it. + +This decrepit woman was there like a suggestion of catastrophe, and +represented the horrid fish's tail with which the allegorical geniuses +of Greece have terminated their chimeras and sirens, whose figures, +like all passions, are so seductive, so deceptive. + +Although Henri was not a free-thinker--the phrase is always a mockery +--but a man of extraordinary power, a man as great as a man can be +without faith, the conjunction struck him. Moreover, the strongest men +are naturally the most impressionable, and consequently the most +superstitious, if, indeed, one may call superstition the prejudice of +the first thoughts, which, without doubt, is the appreciation of the +result in causes hidden to other eyes but perceptible to their own. + +The Spanish girl profited by this moment of stupefaction to let +herself fall into the ecstasy of that infinite adoration which seizes +the heart of a woman, when she truly loves and finds herself in the +presence of an idol for whom she has vainly longed. Her eyes were all +joy, all happiness, and sparks flew from them. She was under the +charm, and fearlessly intoxicated herself with a felicity of which she +had dreamed long. She seemed then so marvelously beautiful to Henri, +that all this phantasmagoria of rags and old age, of worn red drapery +and of the green mats in front of the armchairs, the ill-washed red +tiles, all this sick and dilapidated luxury, disappeared. + +The room seemed lit up; and it was only through a cloud that one could +see the fearful harpy fixed and dumb on her red sofa, her yellow eyes +betraying the servile sentiments, inspired by misfortune, or caused by +some vice beneath whose servitude one has fallen as beneath a tyrant +who brutalizes one with the flagellations of his despotism. Her eyes +had the cold glitter of a caged tiger, knowing his impotence and being +compelled to swallow his rage of destruction. + +"Who is that woman?" said Henri to Paquita. + +But Paquita did not answer. She made a sign that she understood no +French, and asked Henri if he spoke English. + +De Marsay repeated his question in English. + +"She is the only woman in whom I can confide, although she has sold me +already," said Paquita, tranquilly. "My dear Adolphe, she is my +mother, a slave bought in Georgia for her rare beauty, little enough +of which remains to-day. She only speaks her native tongue." + +The attitude of this woman and her eagerness to guess from the +gestures of her daughter and Henri what was passing between them, were +suddenly explained to the young man; and this explanation put him at +his ease. + +"Paquita," he said, "are we never to be free then?" + +"Never," she said, with an air of sadness. "Even now we have but a few +days before us." + +She lowered her eyes, looked at and counted with her right hand on the +fingers of her left, revealing so the most beautiful hands which Henri +had ever seen. + +"One, two, three----" + +She counted up to twelve. + +"Yes," she said, "we have twelve days." + +"And after?" + +"After," she said, showing the absorption of a weak woman before the +executioner's axe, and slain in advance, as it were, by a fear which +stripped her of that magnificent energy which Nature seemed to have +bestowed upon her only to aggrandize pleasure and convert the most +vulgar delights into endless poems. "After----" she repeated. Her eyes +took a fixed stare; she seemed to contemplate a threatening object far +away. + +"I do not know," she said. + +"This girl is mad," said Henri to himself, falling into strange +reflections. + +Paquita appeared to him occupied by something which was not himself, +like a woman constrained equally by remorse and passion. Perhaps she +had in her heart another love which she alternately remembered and +forgot. In a moment Henri was assailed by a thousand contradictory +thoughts. This girl became a mystery for him; but as he contemplated +her with the scientific attention of the /blase/ man, famished for new +pleasures, like that Eastern king who asked that a pleasure should be +created for him,--a horrible thirst with which great souls are seized, +--Henri recognized in Paquita the richest organization that Nature had +ever deigned to compose for love. The presumptive play of this +machinery, setting aside the soul, would have frightened any other man +than Henri; but he was fascinated by that rich harvest of promised +pleasures, by that constant variety in happiness, the dream of every +man, and the desire of every loving woman too. He was infuriated by +the infinite rendered palpable, and transported into the most +excessive raptures of which the creature is capable. All that he saw +in this girl more distinctly than he had yet seen it, for she let +herself be viewed complacently, happy to be admired. The admiration of +De Marsay became a secret fury, and he unveiled her completely, +throwing a glance at her which the Spaniard understood as though she +had been used to receive such. + +"If you are not to be mine, mine only, I will kill you!" he cried. + +Hearing this speech, Paquita covered her face in her hands, and cried +naively: + +"Holy Virgin! What have I brought upon myself?" + +She rose, flung herself down upon the red sofa, and buried her head in +the rags which covered the bosom of her mother, and wept there. The +old woman received her daughter without issuing from her state of +immobility, or displaying any emotion. The mother possessed in the +highest degree that gravity of savage races, the impassiveness of a +statue upon which all remarks are lost. Did she or did she not love +her daughter? Beneath that mask every human emotion might brood--good +and evil; and from this creature all might be expected. Her gaze +passed slowly from her daughter's beautiful hair, which covered her +like a mantle, to the face of Henri, which she considered with an +indescribable curiosity. + +She seemed to ask by what fatality he was there, from what caprice +Nature had made so seductive a man. + +"These women are making sport of me," said Henri to himself. + +At that moment Paquita raised her head, cast at him one of those looks +which reach the very soul and consume it. So beautiful seemed she that +he swore he would possess such a treasure of beauty. + +"My Paquita! Be mine!" + +"Wouldst thou kill me?" she said fearfully, palpitating and anxious, +but drawn towards him by an inexplicable force. + +"Kill thee--I!" he said, smiling. + +Paquita uttered a cry of alarm, said a word to the old woman, who +authoritatively seized Henri's hand and that of her daughter. She +gazed at them for a long time, and then released them, wagging her +head in a fashion horribly significant. + +"Be mine--this evening, this moment; follow me, do not leave me! It +must be, Paquita! Dost thou love me? Come!" + +In a moment he had poured out a thousand foolish words to her, with +the rapidity of a torrent coursing between the rocks, and repeating +the same sound in a thousand different forms. + +"It is the same voice!" said Paquita, in a melancholy voice, which De +Marsay could not overhear, "and the same ardor," she added. "So be +it--yes," she said, with an abandonment of passion which no words can +describe. "Yes; but not to-night. To-night Adolphe, I gave too little +opium to La Concha. She might wake up, and I should be lost. At this +moment the whole household believes me to be asleep in my room. In two +days be at the same spot, say the same word to the same man. That man +is my foster-father. Cristemio worships me, and would die in torments +for me before they could extract one word against me from him. +Farewell," she said seizing Henri by the waist and twining round him +like a serpent. + +She pressed him on every side at once, lifted her head to his, and +offered him her lips, then snatched a kiss which filled them both with +such a dizziness that it seemed to Henri as though the earth opened; +and Paquita cried: "Enough, depart!" in a voice which told how little +she was mistress of herself. But she clung to him still, still crying +"Depart!" and brought him slowly to the staircase. There the mulatto, +whose white eyes lit up at the sight of Paquita, took the torch from +the hands of his idol, and conducted Henri to the street. He left the +light under the arch, opened the door, put Henri into the carriage, +and set him down on the Boulevard des Italiens with marvelous +rapidity. It was as though the horses had hell-fire in their veins. + +The scene was like a dream to De Marsay, but one of those dreams +which, even when they fade away, leave a feeling of supernatural +voluptuousness, which a man runs after for the remainder of his life. +A single kiss had been enough. Never had /rendezvous/ been spent in a +manner more decorous or chaste, or, perhaps, more coldly, in a spot of +which the surroundings were more gruesome, in presence of a more +hideous divinity; for the mother had remained in Henri's imagination +like some infernal, cowering thing, cadaverous, monstrous, savagely +ferocious, which the imagination of poets and painters had not yet +conceived. In effect, no /rendezvous/ had ever irritated his senses +more, revealed more audacious pleasures, or better aroused love from +its centre to shed itself round him like an atmosphere. There was +something sombre, mysterious, sweet, tender, constrained, and +expansive, an intermingling of the awful and the celestial, of +paradise and hell, which made De Marsay like a drunken man. + +He was no longer himself, and he was, withal, great enough to be able +to resist the intoxication of pleasure. + +In order to render his conduct intelligible in the catastrophe of this +story, it is needful to explain how his soul had broadened at an age +when young men generally belittle themselves in their relations with +women, or in too much occupation with them. Its growth was due to a +concurrence of secret circumstances, which invested him with a vast +and unsuspected power. + +This young man held in his hand a sceptre more powerful than that of +modern kings, almost all of whom are curbed in their least wishes by +the laws. De Marsay exercised the autocratic power of an Oriental +despot. But this power, so stupidly put into execution in Asia by +brutish men, was increased tenfold by its conjunction with European +intelligence, with French wit--the most subtle, the keenest of all +intellectual instruments. Henri could do what he would in the interest +of his pleasures and vanities. This invisible action upon the social +world had invested him with a real, but secret, majesty, without +emphasis and deriving from himself. He had not the opinion which Louis +XIV. could have of himself, but that which the proudest of the +Caliphs, the Pharoahs, the Xerxes, who held themselves to be of divine +origin, had of themselves when they imitated God, and veiled +themselves from their subjects under the pretext that their looks +dealt forth death. Thus, without any remorse at being at once the +judge and the accuser, De Marsay coldly condemned to death the man or +the woman who had seriously offended him. Although often pronounced +almost lightly, the verdict was irrevocable. An error was a misfortune +similar to that which a thunderbolt causes when it falls upon a +smiling Parisienne in some hackney coach, instead of crushing the old +coachman who is driving her to a /rendezvous/. Thus the bitter and +profound sarcasm which distinguished the young man's conversation +usually tended to frighten people; no one was anxious to put him out. +Women are prodigiously fond of those persons who call themselves +pashas, and who are, as it were accompanied by lions and executioners, +and who walk in a panoply of terror. The result, in the case of such +men, is a security of action, a certitude of power, a pride of gaze, a +leonine consciousness, which makes women realize the type of strength +of which they all dream. Such was De Marsay. + +Happy, for the moment, with his future, he grew young and pliable, and +thought of nothing but love as he went to bed. He dreamed of the girl +with the golden eyes, as the young and passionate can dream. His +dreams were monstrous images, unattainable extravagances--full of +light, revealing invisible worlds, yet in a manner always incomplete, +for an intervening veil changes the conditions of vision. + +For the next and succeeding day Henri disappeared and no one knew what +had become of him. His power only belonged to him under certain +conditions, and, happily for him, during those two days he was a +private soldier in the service of the demon to whom he owed his +talismanic existence. But at the appointed time, in the evening, he +was waiting--and he had not long to wait--for the carriage. The +mulatto approached Henri, in order to repeat to him in French a phrase +which he seemed to have learned by heart. + +"If you wish to come, she told me, you must consent to have your eyes +bandaged." + +And Cristemio produced a white silk handkerchief. + +"No!" said Henri, whose omnipotence revolted suddenly. + +He tried to leap in. The mulatto made a sign, and the carriage drove +off. + +"Yes!" cried De Marsay, furious at the thought of losing a piece of +good fortune which had been promised him. + +He saw, moreover, the impossibility of making terms with a slave whose +obedience was as blind as the hangman's. Nor was it this passive +instrument upon whom his anger could fall. + +The mulatto whistled, the carriage returned. Henri got in hastily. +Already a few curious onlookers had assembled like sheep on the +boulevard. Henri was strong; he tried to play the mulatto. When the +carriage started at a gallop he seized his hands, in order to master +him, and retain, by subduing his attendant, the possession of his +faculties, so that he might know whither he was going. It was a vain +attempt. The eyes of the mulatto flashed from the darkness. The fellow +uttered a cry which his fury stifled in his throat, released himself, +threw back De Marsay with a hand like iron, and nailed him, so to +speak, to the bottom of the carriage; then with his free hand, he drew +a triangular dagger, and whistled. The coachman heard the whistle and +stopped. Henri was unarmed, he was forced to yield. He moved his head +towards the handkerchief. The gesture of submission calmed Cristemio, +and he bound his eyes with a respect and care which manifested a sort +of veneration for the person of the man whom his idol loved. But, +before taking this course, he had placed his dagger distrustfully in +his side pocket, and buttoned himself up to the chin. + +"That nigger would have killed me!" said De Marsay to himself. + +Once more the carriage moved on rapidly. There was one resource still +open to a young man who knew Paris as well as Henri. To know whither +he was going, he had but to collect himself and count, by the number +of gutters crossed, the streets leading from the boulevards by which +the carriage passed, so long as it continued straight along. He could +thus discover into which lateral street it would turn, either towards +the Seine or towards the heights of Montmartre, and guess the name or +position of the street in which his guide should bring him to a halt. +But the violent emotion which his struggle had caused him, the rage +into which his compromised dignity had thrown him, the ideas of +vengeance to which he abandoned himself, the suppositions suggested to +him by the circumstantial care which this girl had taken in order to +bring him to her, all hindered him from the attention, which the blind +have, necessary for the concentration of his intelligence and the +perfect lucidity of his recollection. The journey lasted half an hour. +When the carriage stopped, it was no longer on the street. The mulatto +and the coachman took Henri in their arms, lifted him out, and, +putting him into a sort of litter, conveyed him across a garden. He +could smell its flowers and the perfume peculiar to trees and grass. + +The silence which reigned there was so profound that he could +distinguish the noise made by the drops of water falling from the +moist leaves. The two men took him to a staircase, set him on his +feet, led him by his hands through several apartments, and left him in +a room whose atmosphere was perfumed, and the thick carpet of which he +could feel beneath his feet. + +A woman's hand pushed him on to a divan, and untied the handkerchief +for him. Henri saw Paquita before him, but Paquita in all her womanly +and voluptuous glory. The section of the boudoir in which Henri found +himself described a circular line, softly gracious, which was faced +opposite by the other perfectly square half, in the midst of which a +chimney-piece shone of gold and white marble. He had entered by a door +on one side, hidden by a rich tapestried screen, opposite which was a +window. The semicircular portion was adorned with a real Turkish +divan, that is to say, a mattress thrown on the ground, but a mattress +as broad as a bed, a divan fifty feet in circumference, made of white +cashmere, relieved by bows of black and scarlet silk, arranged in +panels. The top of this huge bed was raised several inches by numerous +cushions, which further enriched it by their tasteful comfort. The +boudoir was lined with some red stuff, over which an Indian muslin was +stretched, fluted after the fashion of Corinthian columns, in plaits +going in and out, and bound at the top and bottom by bands of poppy- +colored stuff, on which were designs in black arabesque. + +Below the muslin the poppy turned to rose, that amorous color, which +was matched by window-curtains, which were of Indian muslin lined with +rose-colored taffeta, and set off with a fringe of poppy-color and +black. Six silver-gilt arms, each supporting two candles, were +attached to the tapestry at an equal distance, to illuminate the +divan. The ceiling, from the middle of which a lustre of unpolished +silver hung, was of a brilliant whiteness, and the cornice was gilded. +The carpet was like an Oriental shawl; it had the designs and recalled +the poetry of Persia, where the hands of slaves had worked on it. The +furniture was covered in white cashmere, relieved by black and poppy- +colored ornaments. The clock, the candelabra, all were in white marble +and gold. The only table there had a cloth of cashmere. Elegant +flower-pots held roses of every kind, flowers white or red. In fine, +the least detail seemed to have been the object of loving thought. +Never had richness hidden itself more coquettishly to become elegance, +to express grace, to inspire pleasure. Everything there would have +warmed the coldest of beings. The caresses of the tapestry, of which +the color changed according to the direction of one's gaze, becoming +either all white or all rose, harmonized with the effects of the light +shed upon the diaphanous tissues of the muslin, which produced an +appearance of mistiness. The soul has I know not what attraction +towards white, love delights in red, and the passions are flattered by +gold, which has the power of realizing their caprices. Thus all that +man possesses within him of vague and mysterious, all his inexplicable +affinities, were caressed in their involuntary sympathies. There was +in this perfect harmony a concert of color to which the soul responded +with vague and voluptuous and fluctuating ideas. + +It was out of a misty atmosphere, laden with exquisite perfumes, that +Paquita, clad in a white wrapper, her feet bare, orange blossoms in +her black hair, appeared to Henri, knelt before him, adoring him as +the god of this temple, whither he had deigned to come. Although De +Marsay was accustomed to seeing the utmost efforts of Parisian luxury, +he was surprised at the aspect of this shell, like that from which +Venus rose out of the sea. Whether from an effect of contrast between +the darkness from which he issued and the light which bathed his soul, +whether from a comparison which he swiftly made between this scene and +that of their first interview, he experienced one of those delicate +sensations which true poetry gives. Perceiving in the midst of this +retreat, which had been opened to him as by a fairy's magic wand, the +masterpiece of creation, this girl, whose warmly colored tints, whose +soft skin--soft, but slightly gilded by the shadows, by I know not +what vaporous effusion of love--gleamed as though it reflected the +rays of color and light, his anger, his desire for vengeance, his +wounded vanity, all were lost. + +Like an eagle darting on his prey, he took her utterly to him, set her +on his knees, and felt with an indescribable intoxication the +voluptuous pressure of this girl, whose richly developed beauties +softly enveloped him. + +"Come to me, Paquita!" he said, in a low voice. + +"Speak, speak without fear!" she said. "This retreat was built for +love. No sound can escape from it, so greatly was it desired to guard +avariciously the accents and music of the beloved voice. However loud +should be the cries, they would not be heard without these walls. A +person might be murdered, and his moans would be as vain as if he were +in the midst of the great desert." + +"Who has understood jealousy and its needs so well?" + +"Never question me as to that," she answered, untying with a gesture +of wonderful sweetness the young man's scarf, doubtless in order the +better to behold his neck. + +"Yes, there is the neck I love so well!" she said. "Wouldst thou +please me?" + +This interrogation, rendered by the accent almost lascivious, drew De +Marsay from the reverie in which he had been plunged by Paquita's +authoritative refusal to allow him any research as to the unknown +being who hovered like a shadow about them. + +"And if I wished to know who reigns here?" + +Paquita looked at him trembling. + +"It is not I, then?" he said, rising and freeing himself from the +girl, whose head fell backwards. "Where I am, I would be alone." + +"Strike, strike! . . ." said the poor slave, a prey to terror. + +"For what do you take me, then? . . . Will you answer?" + +Paquita got up gently, her eyes full of tears, took a poniard from one +of the two ebony pieces of furniture, and presented it to Henri with a +gesture of submission which would have moved a tiger. + +"Give me a feast such as men give when they love," she said, "and +whilst I sleep, slay me, for I know not how to answer thee. Hearken! I +am bound like some poor beast to a stake; I am amazed that I have been +able to throw a bridge over the abyss which divides us. Intoxicate me, +then kill me! Ah, no, no!" she cried, joining her hands, "do not kill +me! I love life! Life is fair to me! If I am a slave, I am a queen +too. I could beguile you with words, tell you that I love you alone, +prove it to you, profit by my momentary empire to say to you: 'Take me +as one tastes the perfume of a flower when one passes it in a king's +garden.' Then, after having used the cunning eloquence of woman and +soared on the wings of pleasure, after having quenched my thirst, I +could have you cast into a pit, where none could find you, which has +been made to gratify vengeance without having to fear that of the law, +a pit full of lime which would kindle and consume you, until no +particle of you were left. You would stay in my heart, mine forever." + +Henri looked at the girl without trembling, and this fearless gaze +filled her with joy. + +"No, I shall not do it! You have fallen into no trap here, but upon +the heart of a woman who adores you, and it is I who will be cast into +the pit." + +"All this appears to me prodigiously strange," said De Marsay, +considering her. "But you seem to me a good girl, a strange nature; +you are, upon my word of honor, a living riddle, the answer to which +is very difficult to find." + +Paquita understood nothing of what the young man said; she looked at +him gently, opening wide eyes which could never be stupid, so much was +pleasure written in them. + +"Come, then, my love," she said, returning to her first idea, "wouldst +thou please me?" + +"I would do all that thou wouldst, and even that thou wouldst not," +answered De Marsay, with a laugh. He had recovered his foppish ease, +as he took the resolve to let himself go to the climax of his good +fortune, looking neither before nor after. Perhaps he counted, +moreover, on his power and his capacity of a man used to adventures, +to dominate this girl a few hours later and learn all her secrets. + +"Well," said she, "let me arrange you as I would like." + +Paquita went joyously and took from one of the two chests a robe of +red velvet, in which she dressed De Marsay, then adorned his head with +a woman's bonnet and wrapped a shawl round him. Abandoning herself to +these follies with a child's innocence, she laughed a convulsive +laugh, and resembled some bird flapping its wings; but he saw nothing +beyond. + +If it be impossible to paint the unheard-of delights which these two +creatures--made by heaven in a joyous moment--found, it is perhaps +necessary to translate metaphysically the extraordinary and almost +fantastic impressions of the young man. That which persons in the +social position of De Marsay, living as he lived, are best able to +recognize is a girl's innocence. But, strange phenomenon! The girl of +the golden eyes might be virgin, but innocent she was certainly not. +The fantastic union of the mysterious and the real, of darkness and +light, horror and beauty, pleasure and danger, paradise and hell, +which had already been met with in this adventure, was resumed in the +capricious and sublime being with which De Marsay dallied. All the +utmost science or the most refined pleasure, all that Henri could know +of that poetry of the senses which is called love, was excelled by the +treasures poured forth by this girl, whose radiant eyes gave the lie +to none of the promises which they made. + +She was an Oriental poem, in which shone the sun that Saadi, that +Hafiz, have set in their pulsing strophes. Only, neither the rhythm of +Saadi, nor that of Pindar, could have expressed the ecstasy--full of +confusion and stupefaction--which seized the delicious girl when the +error in which an iron hand had caused her to live was at an end. + +"Dead!" she said, "I am dead, Adolphe! Take me away to the world's +end, to an island where no one knows us. Let there be no traces of our +flight! We should be followed to the gates of hell. God! here is the +day! Escape! Shall I ever see you again? Yes, to-morrow I will see +you, if I have to deal death to all my warders to have that joy. Till +to-morrow." + +She pressed him in her arms with an embrace in which the terror of +death mingled. Then she touched a spring, which must have been in +connection with a bell, and implored De Marsay to permit his eyes to +be bandaged. + +"And if I would not--and if I wished to stay here?" + +"You would be the death of me more speedily," she said, "for now I +know I am certain to die on your account." + +Henri submitted. In the man who had just gorged himself with pleasure +there occurs a propensity to forgetfulness, I know not what +ingratitude, a desire for liberty, a whim to go elsewhere, a tinge of +contempt and, perhaps, of disgust for his idol; in fine, indescribable +sentiments which render him ignoble and ashamed. The certainty of this +confused, but real, feeling in souls who are not illuminated by that +celestial light, nor perfumed with that holy essence from which the +performance of sentiment springs, doubtless suggested to Rousseau the +adventures of Lord Edward, which conclude the letters of the /Nouvelle +Heloise/. If Rousseau is obviously inspired by the work of Richardson, +he departs from it in a thousand details, which leave his achievement +magnificently original; he has recommended it to posterity by great +ideas which it is difficult to liberate by analysis, when, in one's +youth, one reads this work with the object of finding in it the lurid +representation of the most physical of our feelings, whereas serious +and philosophical writers never employ its images except as the +consequence or the corollary of a vast thought; and the adventures of +Lord Edward are one of the most Europeanly delicate ideas of the whole +work. + +Henri, therefore, found himself beneath the domination of that +confused sentiment which is unknown to true love. There was needful, +in some sort, the persuasive grip of comparisons, and the irresistible +attraction of memories to lead him back to a woman. True love rules +above all through recollection. A woman who is not engraven upon the +soul by excess of pleasure or by strength of emotion, how can she ever +be loved? In Henri's case, Paquita had established herself by both of +these reasons. But at this moment, seized as he was by the satiety of +his happiness, that delicious melancholy of the body, he could hardly +analyze his heart, even by recalling to his lips the taste of the +liveliest gratifications that he had ever grasped. + +He found himself on the Boulevard Montmartre at the break of day, +gazed stupidly at the retreating carriage, produced two cigars from +his pocket, lit one from the lantern of a good woman who sold brandy +and coffee to workmen and street arabs and chestnut venders--to all +the Parisian populace which begins its work before daybreak; then he +went off, smoking his cigar, and putting his hands in his trousers' +pockets with a devil-may-care air which did him small honor. + +"What a good thing a cigar is! That's one thing a man will never tire +of," he said to himself. + +Of the girl with the golden eyes, over whom at that time all the +elegant youth of Paris was mad, he hardly thought. The idea of death, +expressed in the midst of their pleasure, and the fear of which had +more than once darkened the brow of that beautiful creature, who held +to the houris of Asia by her mother, to Europe by her education, to +the tropics by her birth, seemed to him merely one of those deceptions +by which women seek to make themselves interesting. + +"She is from Havana--the most Spanish region to be found in the New +World. So she preferred to feign terror rather than cast in my teeth +indisposition or difficulty, coquetry or duty, like a Parisian woman. +By her golden eyes, how glad I shall be to sleep." + +He saw a hackney coach standing at the corner of Frascati's waiting +for some gambler; he awoke the driver, was driven home, went to bed, +and slept the sleep of the dissipated, which for some queer reason--of +which no rhymer has yet taken advantage--is as profound as that of +innocence. Perhaps it is an instance of the proverbial axiom, +/extremes meet/. + +About noon De Marsay awoke and stretched himself; he felt the grip of +that sort of voracious hunger which old soldiers can remember having +experienced on the morrow of victory. He was delighted, therefore, to +see Paul de Manerville standing in front of him, for at such a time +nothing is more agreeable than to eat in company. + +"Well," his friend remarked, "we all imagined that you had been shut +up for the last ten days with the girl of the golden eyes." + +"The girl of the golden eyes! I have forgotten her. Faith! I have +other fish to fry!" + +"Ah! you are playing at discretion." + +"Why not?" asked De Marsay, with a laugh. "My dear fellow, discretion +is the best form of calculation. Listen--however, no! I will not say a +word. You never teach me anything; I am not disposed to make you a +gratuitous present of the treasures of my policy. Life is a river +which is of use for the promotion of commerce. In the name of all that +is most sacred in life--of cigars! I am no professor of social economy +for the instruction of fools. Let us breakfast! It costs less to give +you a tunny omelette than to lavish the resources of my brain on you." + +"Do you bargain with your friends?" + +"My dear fellow," said Henri, who rarely denied himself a sarcasm, +"since all the same, you may some day need, like anybody else, to use +discretion, and since I have much love for you--yes, I like you! Upon +my word, if you only wanted a thousand-franc note to keep you from +blowing your brains out, you would find it here, for we haven't yet +done any business of that sort, eh, Paul? If you had to fight +to-morrow, I would measure the ground and load the pistols, so that +you might be killed according to rule. In short, if anybody besides +myself took it into his head to say ill of you in your absence, he +would have to deal with the somewhat nasty gentleman who walks in my +shoes--there's what I call a friendship beyond question. Well, my good +fellow, if you should ever have need of discretion, understand that +there are two sorts of discretion--the active and the negative. +Negative discretion is that of fools who make use of silence, +negation, an air of refusal, the discretion of locked doors--mere +impotence! Active discretion proceeds by affirmation. Suppose at the +club this evening I were to say: 'Upon my word of honor the golden- +eyed was not worth all she cost me!' Everybody would exclaim when I +was gone: 'Did you hear that fop De Marsay, who tried to make us +believe that he has already had the girl of the golden eyes? It's his +way of trying to disembarrass himself of his rivals: he's no +simpleton.' But such a ruse is vulgar and dangerous. However gross a +folly one utters, there are always idiots to be found who will believe +it. The best form of discretion is that of women when they want to +take the change out of their husbands. It consists in compromising a +woman with whom we are not concerned, or whom we do not love, in order +to save the honor of the one whom we love well enough to respect. It +is what is called the /woman-screen/. . . . Ah! here is Laurent. What +have you got for us?" + +"Some Ostend oysters, Monsieur le Comte." + +"You will know some day, Paul, how amusing it is to make a fool of the +world by depriving it of the secret of one's affections. I derive an +immense pleasure in escaping from the stupid jurisdiction of the +crowd, which knows neither what it wants, nor what one wants of it, +which takes the means for the end, and by turns curses and adores, +elevates and destroys! What a delight to impose emotions on it and +receive none from it, to tame it, never to obey it. If one may ever be +proud of anything, is it not a self-acquired power, of which one is at +once the cause and effect, the principle and the result? Well, no man +knows what I love, nor what I wish. Perhaps what I have loved, or what +I may have wished will be known, as a drama which is accomplished is +known; but to let my game be seen--weakness, mistake! I know nothing +more despicable than strength outwitted by cunning. Can I initiate +myself with a laugh into the ambassador's part, if indeed diplomacy is +as difficult as life? I doubt it. Have you any ambition? Would you +like to become something?" + +"But, Henri, you are laughing at me--as though I were not sufficiently +mediocre to arrive at anything." + +"Good Paul! If you go on laughing at yourself, you will soon be able +to laugh at everybody else." + +At breakfast, by the time he had started his cigars, De Marsay began +to see the events of the night in a singular light. Like many men of +great intelligence, his perspicuity was not spontaneous, as it did not +at once penetrate to the heart of things. As with all natures endowed +with the faculty of living greatly in the present, of extracting, so +to speak, the essence of it and assimilating it, his second-sight had +need of a sort of slumber before it could identify itself with causes. +Cardinal de Richelieu was so constituted, and it did not debar in him +the gift of foresight necessary to the conception of great designs. + +De Marsay's conditions were alike, but at first he only used his +weapons for the benefit of his pleasures, and only became one of the +most profound politicians of his day when he had saturated himself +with those pleasures to which a young man's thoughts--when he has +money and power--are primarily directed. Man hardens himself thus: he +uses woman in order that she may not make use of him. + +At this moment, then, De Marsay perceived that he had been fooled by +the girl of the golden eyes, seeing, as he did, in perspective, all +that night of which the delights had been poured upon him by degrees +until they had ended by flooding him in torrents. He could read, at +last, that page in effect so brilliant, divine its hidden meaning. The +purely physical innocence of Paquita, the bewilderment of her joy, +certain words, obscure at first, but now clear, which had escaped her +in the midst of that joy, all proved to him that he had posed for +another person. As no social corruption was unknown to him, as he +professed a complete indifference towards all perversities, and +believed them to be justified on the simple ground that they were +capable of satisfaction, he was not startled at vice, he knew it as +one knows a friend, but he was wounded at having served as sustenance +for it. If his presumption was right, he had been outraged in the most +sensitive part of him. The mere suspicion filled him with fury, he +broke out with the roar of a tiger who has been the sport of a deer, +the cry of a tiger which united a brute's strength with the +intelligence of the demon. + +"I say, what is the matter with you?" asked Paul. + +"Nothing!" + +"I should be sorry, if you were to be asked whether you had anything +against me and were to reply with a /nothing/ like that! It would be a +sure case of fighting the next day." + +"I fight no more duels," said De Marsay. + +"That seems to me even more tragical. Do you assassinate, then?" + +"You travesty words. I execute." + +"My dear friend," said Paul, "your jokes are of a very sombre color +this morning." + +"What would you have? Pleasure ends in cruelty. Why? I don't know, and +am not sufficiently curious to try and find out. . . . These cigars +are excellent. Give your friend some tea. Do you know, Paul, I live a +brute's life? It should be time to choose oneself a destiny, to employ +one's powers on something which makes life worth living. Life is a +singular comedy. I am frightened, I laugh at the inconsequence of our +social order. The Government cuts off the heads of poor devils who may +have killed a man and licenses creatures who despatch, medically +speaking, a dozen young folks in a season. Morality is powerless +against a dozen vices which destroy society and which nothing can +punish.--Another cup!--Upon my word of honor! man is a jester dancing +upon a precipice. They talk to us about the immorality of the +/Liaisons Dangereuses/, and any other book you like with a vulgar +reputation; but there exists a book, horrible, filthy, fearful, +corrupting, which is always open and will never be shut, the great +book of the world; not to mention another book, a thousand times more +dangerous, which is composed of all that men whisper into each other's +ears, or women murmur behind their fans, of an evening in society." + +"Henri, there is certainly something extraordinary the matter with +you; that is obvious in spite of your active discretion." + +"Yes! . . . Come, I must kill the time until this evening. Let's to +the tables. . . . Perhaps I shall have the good luck to lose." + +De Marsay rose, took a handful of banknotes and folded them into his +cigar-case, dressed himself, and took advantage of Paul's carriage to +repair to the Salon des Etrangers, where until dinner he consumed the +time in those exciting alternations of loss and gain which are the +last resource of powerful organizations when they are compelled to +exercise themselves in the void. In the evening he repaired to the +trysting-place and submitted complacently to having his eyes bandaged. +Then, with that firm will which only really strong men have the +faculty of concentrating, he devoted his attention and applied his +intelligence to the task of divining through what streets the carriage +passed. He had a sort of certitude of being taken to the Rue Saint- +Lazare, and being brought to a halt at the little gate in the garden +of the Hotel San-Real. When he passed, as on the first occasion, +through this gate, and was put in a litter, carried, doubtless by the +mulatto and the coachman, he understood, as he heard the gravel grate +beneath their feet, why they took such minute precautions. He would +have been able, had he been free, or if he had walked, to pluck a twig +of laurel, to observe the nature of the soil which clung to his boots; +whereas, transported, so to speak, ethereally into an inaccessible +mansion, his good fortune must remain what it had been hitherto, a +dream. But it is man's despair that all his work, whether for good or +evil, is imperfect. All his labors, physical or intellectual, are +sealed with the mark of destruction. There had been a gentle rain, the +earth was moist. At night-time certain vegetable perfumes are far +stronger than during the day; Henri could smell, therefore, the scent +of the mignonette which lined the avenue along which he was conveyed. +This indication was enough to light him in the researches which he +promised himself to make in order to recognize the hotel which +contained Paquita's boudoir. He studied in the same way the turnings +which his bearers took within the house, and believed himself able to +recall them. + +As on the previous night, he found himself on the ottoman before +Paquita, who was undoing his bandage; but he saw her pale and altered. +She had wept. On her knees like an angel in prayer, but like an angel +profoundly sad and melancholy, the poor girl no longer resembled the +curious, impatient, and impetuous creature who had carried De Marsay +on her wings to transport him to the seventh heaven of love. There was +something so true in this despair veiled by pleasure, that the +terrible De Marsay felt within him an admiration for this new +masterpiece of nature, and forgot, for the moment, the chief interest +of his assignation. + +"What is the matter with thee, my Paquita?" + +"My friend," she said, "carry me away this very night. Bear me to some +place where no one can answer: 'There is a girl with a golden gaze +here, who has long hair.' Yonder I will give thee as many pleasures as +thou wouldst have of me. Then when you love me no longer, you shall +leave me, I shall not complain, I shall say nothing; and your +desertion need cause you no remorse, for one day passed with you, only +one day, in which I have had you before my eyes, will be worth all my +life to me. But if I stay here, I am lost." + +"I cannot leave Paris, little one!" replied Henri. "I do not belong to +myself, I am bound by a vow to the fortune of several persons who +stand to me, as I do to them. But I can place you in a refuge in +Paris, where no human power can reach you." + +"No," she said, "you forget the power of woman." + +Never did phrase uttered by human voice express terror more +absolutely. + +"What could reach you, then, if I put myself between you and the +world?" + +"Poison!" she said. "Dona Concha suspects you already . . . and," she +resumed, letting the tears fall and glisten on her cheeks, "it is easy +enough to see I am no longer the same. Well, if you abandon me to the +fury of the monster who will destroy me, your holy will be done! But +come, let there be all the pleasures of life in our love. Besides, I +will implore, I will weep and cry out and defend myself; perhaps I +shall be saved." + +"Whom will your implore?" he asked. + +"Silence!" said Paquita. "If I obtain mercy it will perhaps be on +account of my discretion." + +"Give me my robe," said Henri, insidiously. + +"No, no!" she answered quickly, "be what you are, one of those angels +whom I have been taught to hate, and in whom I only saw ogres, whilst +you are what is fairest under the skies," she said, caressing Henri's +hair. "You do not know how silly I am. I have learned nothing. Since I +was twelve years old I have been shut up without ever seeing any one. +I can neither read nor write, I can only speak English and Spanish." + +"How is it, then, that you receive letters from London?" + +"My letters? . . . See, here they are!" she said, proceeding to take +some papers out of a tall Japanese vase. + +She offered De Marsay some letters, in which the young man saw, with +surprise, strange figures, similar to those of a rebus, traced in +blood, and illustrating phrases full of passion. + +"But," he cried, marveling at these hieroglyphics created by the +alertness of jealousy, "you are in the power of an infernal genius?" + +"Infernal," she repeated. + +"But how, then, were you able to get out?" + +"Ah!" she said, "that was my ruin. I drove Dona Concha to choose +between the fear of immediate death and anger to be. I had the +curiosity of a demon, I wished to break the bronze circle which they +had described between creation and me, I wished to see what young +people were like, for I knew nothing of man except the Marquis and +Cristemio. Our coachman and the lackey who accompanies us are old +men. . . ." + +"But you were not always thus shut up? Your health . . . ?" + +"Ah," she answered, "we used to walk, but it was at night and in the +country, by the side of the Seine, away from people." + +"Are you not proud of being loved like that?" + +"No," she said, "no longer. However full it be, this hidden life is +but darkness in comparison with the light." + +"What do you call the light?" + +"Thee, my lovely Adolphe! Thee, for whom I would give my life. All the +passionate things that have been told me, and that I have inspired, I +feel for thee! For a certain time I understood nothing of existence, +but now I know what love is, and hitherto I have been the loved one +only; for myself, I did not love. I would give up everything for you, +take me away. If you like, take me as a toy, but let me be near you +until you break me." + +"You will have no regrets?" + +"Not one"! she said, letting him read her eyes, whose golden tint was +pure and clear. + +"Am I the favored one?" said Henri to himself. If he suspected the +truth, he was ready at that time to pardon the offence in view of a +love so single minded. "I shall soon see," he thought. + +If Paquita owed him no account of the past, yet the least recollection +of it became in his eyes a crime. He had therefore the sombre strength +to withhold a portion of his thought, to study her, even while +abandoning himself to the most enticing pleasures that ever peri +descended from the skies had devised for her beloved. + +Paquita seemed to have been created for love by a particular effort of +nature. In a night her feminine genius had made the most rapid +progress. Whatever might be the power of this young man, and his +indifference in the matter of pleasures, in spite of his satiety of +the previous night, he found in the girl with the golden eyes that +seraglio which a loving woman knows how to create and which a man +never refuses. Paquita responded to that passion which is felt by all +really great men for the infinite--that mysterious passion so +dramatically expressed in Faust, so poetically translated in Manfred, +and which urged Don Juan to search the heart of women, in his hope to +find there that limitless thought in pursuit of which so many hunters +after spectres have started, which wise men think to discover in +science, and which mystics find in God alone. The hope of possessing +at last the ideal being with whom the struggle could be constant and +tireless ravished De Marsay, who, for the first time for long, opened +his heart. His nerves expanded, his coldness was dissipated in the +atmosphere of that ardent soul, his hard and fast theories melted +away, and happiness colored his existence to the tint of the rose and +white boudoir. Experiencing the sting of a higher pleasure, he was +carried beyond the limits within which he had hitherto confined +passion. He would not be surpassed by this girl, whom a somewhat +artificial love had formed all ready for the needs of his soul, and +then he found in that vanity which urges a man to be in all things a +victor, strength enough to tame the girl; but, at the same time, urged +beyond that line where the soul is mistress over herself, he lost +himself in these delicious limboes, which the vulgar call so foolishly +"the imaginary regions." He was tender, kind, and confidential. He +affected Paquita almost to madness. + +"Why should we not go to Sorrento, to Nice, to Chiavari, and pass all +our life so? Will you?" he asked of Paquita, in a penetrating voice. + +"Was there need to say to me: 'Will you'?" she cried. "Have I a will? +I am nothing apart from you, except in so far as I am a pleasure for +you. If you would choose a retreat worthy of us, Asia is the only +country where love can unfold his wings. . . ." + +"You are right," answered Henri. "Let us go to the Indies, there where +spring is eternal, where the earth grows only flowers, where man can +display the magnificence of kings and none shall say him nay, as in +the foolish lands where they would realize the dull chimera of +equality. Let us go to the country where one lives in the midst of a +nation of slaves, where the sun shines ever on a palace which is +always white, where the air sheds perfumes, the birds sing of love and +where, when one can love no more, one dies. . . ." + +"And where one dies together!" said Paquita. "But do not let us start +to-morrow, let us start this moment . . . take Cristemio." + +"Faith! pleasure is the fairest climax of life. Let us go to Asia; but +to start, my child, one needs much gold, and to have gold one must set +one's affairs in order." + +She understood no part of these ideas. + +"Gold! There is a pile of it here--as high as that," she said holding +up her hand. + +"It is not mine." + +"What does that matter?" she went on; "if we have need of it let us +take it." + +"It does not belong to you." + +"Belong!" she repeated. "Have you not taken me? When we have taken it, +it will belong to us." + +He gave a laugh. + +"Poor innocent! You know nothing of the world." + +"Nay, but this is what I know," she cried, clasping Henri to her. + +At the very moment when De Marsay was forgetting all, and conceiving +the desire to appropriate this creature forever, he received in the +midst of his joy a dagger-thrust, which Paquita, who had lifted him +vigorously in the air, as though to contemplate him, exclaimed: "Oh, +Margarita!" + +"Margarita!" cried the young man, with a roar; "now I know all that I +still tried to disbelieve." + +He leaped upon the cabinet in which the long poniard was kept. Happily +for Paquita and for himself, the cupboard was shut. His fury waxed at +this impediment, but he recovered his tranquillity, went and found his +cravat, and advanced towards her with an air of such ferocious meaning +that, without knowing of what crime she had been guilty, Paquita +understood, none the less, that her life was in question. With one +bound she rushed to the other end of the room to escape the fatal knot +which De Marsay tried to pass round her neck. There was a struggle. On +either side there was an equality of strength, agility, and +suppleness. To end the combat Paquita threw between the legs of her +lover a cushion which made him fall, and profited by the respite which +this advantage gave to her, to push the button of the spring which +caused the bell to ring. Promptly the mulatto arrived. In a second +Cristemio leaped on De Marsay and held him down with one foot on his +chest, his heel turned towards the throat. De Marsay realized that, if +he struggled, at a single sign from Paquita he would be instantly +crushed. + +"Why did you want to kill me, my beloved?" she said. De Marsay made no +reply. + +"In what have I angered you?" she asked. "Speak, let us understand +each other." + +Henri maintained the phlegmatic attitude of a strong man who feels +himself vanquished; his countenance, cold, silent, entirely English, +revealed the consciousness of his dignity in a momentary resignation. +Moreover, he had already thought, in spite of the vehemence of his +anger, that it was scarcely prudent to compromise himself with the law +by killing this girl on the spur of the moment, before he had arranged +the murder in such a manner as should insure his impunity. + +"My beloved," went on Paquita, "speak to me; do not leave me without +one loving farewell! I would not keep in my heart the terror which you +have just inspired in it. . . . Will you speak?" she said, stamping +her foot with anger. + +De Marsay, for all reply, gave her a glance, which signified so +plainly, "/You must die!/" that Paquita threw herself upon him. + +"Ah, well, you want to kill me! . . . If my death can give you any +pleasure--kill me!" + +She made a sign to Cristemio, who withdrew his foot from the body of +the young man, and retired without letting his face show that he had +formed any opinion, good or bad, with regard to Paquita. + +"That is a man," said De Marsay, pointing to the mulatto, with a +sombre gesture. "There is no devotion like the devotion which obeys in +friendship, and does not stop to weigh motives. In that man you +possess a true friend." + +"I will give him you, if you like," she answered; "he will serve you +with the same devotion that he has for me, if I so instruct him." + +She waited for a word of recognition, and went on with an accent +replete with tenderness: + +"Adolphe, give me then one kind word! . . . It is nearly day." + +Henri did not answer. The young man had one sorry quality, for one +considers as something great everything which resembles strength, and +often men invent extravagances. Henri knew not how to pardon. That +/returning upon itself/ which is one of the soul's graces, was a non- +existent sense for him. The ferocity of the Northern man, with which +the English blood is deeply tainted, had been transmitted to him by +his father. He was inexorable both in his good and evil impulses. +Paquita's exclamation had been all the more horrible to him, in that +it had dethroned him from the sweetest triumph which had ever +flattered his man's vanity. Hope, love, and every emotion had been +exalted with him, all had lit up within his heart and his +intelligence, then these torches illuminating his life had been +extinguished by a cold wind. Paquita, in her stupefaction of grief, +had only strength enough to give the signal for departure. + +"What is the use of that!" she said, throwing away the bandage. "If he +does not love me, if he hates me, it is all over." + +She waited for one look, did not obtain it, and fell, half dead. The +mulatto cast a glance at Henri, so horribly significant, that, for the +first time in his life, the young man, to whom no one denied the gift +of rare courage, trembled. "/If you do not love her well, if you give +her the least pain, I will kill you/." such was the sense of that +brief gaze. De Marsay was escorted, with a care almost obsequious, +along the dimly lit corridor, at the end of which he issued by a +secret door into the garden of the Hotel San-Real. The mulatto made +him walk cautiously through an avenue of lime trees, which led to a +little gate opening upon a street which was at that hour deserted. De +Marsay took a keen notice of everything. The carriage awaited him. +This time the mulatto did not accompany him, and at the moment when +Henri put his head out of the window to look once more at the gardens +of the hotel, he encountered the white eyes of Cristemio, with whom he +exchanged a glance. On either side there was a provocation, a +challenge, the declaration of a savage war, of a duel in which +ordinary laws were invalid, where treason and treachery were admitted +means. Cristemio knew that Henri had sworn Paquita's death. Henri knew +that Cristemio would like to kill him before he killed Paquita. Both +understood each other to perfection. + +"The adventure is growing complicated in a most interesting way," said +Henri. + +"Where is the gentleman going to?" asked the coachman. + +De Marsay was driven to the house of Paul de Manerville. For more than +a week Henri was away from home, and no one could discover either what +he did during this period, nor where he stayed. This retreat saved him +from the fury of the mulatto and caused the ruin of the charming +creature who had placed all her hope in him whom she loved as never +human heart had loved on this earth before. On the last day of the +week, about eleven o'clock at night, Henri drove up in a carriage to +the little gate in the garden of the Hotel San-Real. Four men +accompanied him. The driver was evidently one of his friends, for he +stood up on his box, like a man who was to listen, an attentive +sentinel, for the least sound. One of the other three took his stand +outside the gate in the street; the second waited in the garden, +leaning against the wall; the last, who carried in his hand a bunch of +keys, accompanied De Marsay. + +"Henri," said his companion to him, "we are betrayed." + +"By whom, my good Ferragus?" + +"They are not all asleep," replied the chief of the Devourers; "it is +absolutely certain that some one in the house has neither eaten nor +drunk. . . . Look! see that light!" + +"We have a plan of the house; from where does it come?" + +"I need no plan to know," replied Ferragus; "it comes from the room of +the Marquise." + +"Ah," cried De Marsay, "no doubt she arrived from London to-day. The +woman has robbed me even of my revenge! But if she has anticipated me, +my good Gratien, we will give her up to the law." + +"Listen, listen! . . . The thing is settled," said Ferragus to Henri. + +The two friends listened intently, and heard some feeble cries which +might have aroused pity in the breast of a tiger. + +"Your marquise did not think the sound would escape by the chimney," +said the chief of the Devourers, with the laugh of a critic, enchanted +to detect a fault in a work of merit. + +"We alone, we know how to provide for every contingency," said Henri. +"Wait for me. I want to see what is going on upstairs--I want to know +how their domestic quarrels are managed. By God! I believe she is +roasting her at a slow fire." + +De Marsay lightly scaled the stairs, with which he was familiar, and +recognized the passage leading to the boudoir. When he opened the door +he experienced the involuntary shudder which the sight of bloodshed +gives to the most determined of men. The spectacle which was offered +to his view was, moreover, in more than one respect astonishing to +him. The Marquise was a woman; she had calculated her vengeance with +that perfection of perfidy which distinguishes the weaker animals. She +had dissimulated her anger in order to assure herself of the crime +before she punished it. + +"Too late, my beloved!" said Paquita, in her death agony, casting her +pale eyes upon De Marsay. + +The girl of the golden eyes expired in a bath of blood. The great +illumination of candles, a delicate perfume which was perceptible, a +certain disorder, in which the eye of a man accustomed to amorous +adventures could not but discern the madness which is common to all +the passions, revealed how cunningly the Marquise had interrogated the +guilty one. The white room, where the blood showed so well, betrayed a +long struggle. The prints of Paquita's hands were on the cushions. +Here she had clung to her life, here she had defended herself, here +she had been struck. Long strips of the tapestry had been torn down by +her bleeding hands, which, without a doubt, had struggled long. +Paquita must have tried to reach the window; her bare feet had left +their imprints on the edge of the divan, along which she must have +run. Her body, mutilated by the dagger-thrusts of her executioner, +told of the fury with which she had disputed a life which Henri had +made precious to her. She lay stretched on the floor, and in her +death-throes had bitten the ankles of Madame de San-Real, who still +held in her hand her dagger, dripping blood. The hair of the Marquise +had been torn out, she was covered with bites, many of which were +bleeding, and her torn dress revealed her in a state of semi-nudity, +with the scratches on her breasts. She was sublime so. Her head, eager +and maddened, exhaled the odor of blood. Her panting mouth was open, +and her nostrils were not sufficient for her breath. There are certain +animals who fall upon their enemy in their rage, do it to death, and +seem in the tranquillity of victory to have forgotten it. There are +others who prowl around their victim, who guard it in fear lest it +should be taken away from them, and who, like the Achilles of Homer, +drag their enemy by the feet nine times round the walls of Troy. The +Marquise was like that. She did not see Henri. In the first place, she +was too secure of her solitude to be afraid of witnesses; and, +secondly, she was too intoxicated with warm blood, too excited with +the fray, too exalted, to take notice of the whole of Paris, if Paris +had formed a circle round her. A thunderbolt would not have disturbed +her. She had not even heard Paquita's last sigh, and believed that the +dead girl could still hear her. + +"Die without confessing!" she said. "Go down to hell, monster of +ingratitude; belong to no one but the fiend. For the blood you gave +him you owe me all your own! Die, die, suffer a thousand deaths! I +have been too kind--I was only a moment killing you. I should have +made you experience all the tortures that you have bequeathed to me. I +--I shall live! I shall live in misery. I have no one left to love but +God!" + +She gazed at her. + +"She is dead!" she said to herself, after a pause, in a violent +reaction. "Dead! Oh, I shall die of grief!" + +The Marquise was throwing herself upon the divan, stricken with a +despair which deprived her of speech, when this movement brought her +in view of Henri de Marsay. + +"Who are you?" she asked, rushing at him with her dagger raised. + +Henri caught her arm, and thus they could contemplate each other face +to face. A horrible surprise froze the blood in their veins, and their +limbs quivered like those of frightened horses. In effect, the two +Menoechmi had not been more alike. With one accord they uttered the +same phrase: + +"Lord Dudley must have been your father!" + +The head of each was drooped in affirmation. + +"She was true to the blood," said Henri, pointing to Paquita. + +"She was as little guilty as it is possible to be," replied Margarita +Euphemia Porraberil, and she threw herself upon the body of Paquita, +giving vent to a cry of despair. "Poor child! Oh, if I could bring +thee to life again! I was wrong--forgive me, Paquita! Dead! and I +live! I--I am the most unhappy." + +At that moment the horrible face of the mother of Paquita appeared. + +"You are come to tell me that you never sold her to me to kill," cried +the Marquise. "I know why you have left your lair. I will pay you +twice over. Hold your peace." + +She took a bag of gold from the ebony cabinet, and threw it +contemptuously at the old woman's feet. The chink of the gold was +potent enough to excite a smile on the Georgian's impassive face. + +"I come at the right moment for you, my sister," said Henri. "The law +will ask of you----" + +"Nothing," replied the Marquise. "One person alone might ask for a +reckoning for the death of this girl. Cristemio is dead." + +"And the mother," said Henri, pointing to the old woman. "Will you not +always be in her power?" + +"She comes from a country where women are not beings, but things-- +chattels, with which one does as one wills, which one buys, sells, and +slays; in short, which one uses for one's caprices as you, here, use a +piece of furniture. Besides, she has one passion which dominates all +the others, and which would have stifled her maternal love, even if +she had loved her daughter, a passion----" + +"What?" Henri asked quickly, interrupting his sister. + +"Play! God keep you from it," answered the Marquise. + +"But whom have you," said Henri, looking at the girl of the golden +eyes, "who will help you to remove the traces of this fantasy which +the law would not overlook?" + +"I have her mother," replied the Marquise, designating the Georgian, +to whom she made a sign to remain. + +"We shall meet again," said Henri, who was thinking anxiously of his +friends and felt that it was time to leave. + +"No, brother," she said, "we shall not meet again. I am going back to +Spain to enter the Convent of /los Dolores/." + +"You are too young yet, too lovely," said Henri, taking her in his +arms and giving her a kiss. + +"Good-bye," she said; "there is no consolation when you have lost that +which has seemed to you the infinite." + +A week later Paul de Manerville met De Marsay in the Tuileries, on the +Terrasse de Feuillants. + +"Well, what has become of our beautiful girl of the golden eyes, you +rascal?" + +"She is dead." + +"What of?" + +"Consumption." + + + +PARIS, March 1834-April 1835. + + + + +ADDENDUM + + The Girl with the Golden Eyes is the third part of a trilogy. Part + one is entitled Ferragus and part two is The Duchesse de Langeais. + The three stories are frequently combined under the title The + Thirteen. + +The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy. + +Bourignard, Gratien-Henri-Victor-Jean-Joseph + Ferragus + +Dudley, Lord + The Lily of the Valley + A Man of Business + Another Study of Woman + A Daughter of Eve + +Manerville, Paul Francois-Joseph, Comte de + The Ball at Sceaux + Lost Illusions + A Distinguished Provincial at Paris + A Marriage Settlement + +Marsay, Henri de + Ferragus + The Duchesse of Langeais + The Unconscious Humorists + Another Study of Woman + The Lily of the Valley + Father Goriot + Jealousies of a Country Town + Ursule Mirouet + A Marriage Settlement + Lost Illusions + A Distinguished Provincial at Paris + Letters of Two Brides + The Ball at Sceaux + Modeste Mignon + The Secrets of a Princess + The Gondreville Mystery + A Daughter of Eve + +Ronquerolles, Marquis de + The Imaginary Mistress + The Peasantry + Ursule Mirouet + A Woman of Thirty + Another Study of Woman + Ferragus + The Duchesse of Langeais + The Member for Arcis + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg Etext The Girl with the Golden Eyes, by Balzac + |