Title: The Magic Skin
Author: Balzac, Honoré de
Language: English
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THE MAGIC SKIN


By Honore De Balzac


Translated by Ellen Marriage



       To Monsieur Savary, Member of Le Academie des Sciences.



      [omitted: a drawing representing the serpentine
      path made by the tip of a stick when flourished.]

                            STERNE--Tristram Shandy, ch. cccxxii.



THE MAGIC SKIN



I. THE TALISMAN


Towards the end of the month of October 1829 a young man entered the
Palais-Royal just as the gaming-houses opened, agreeably to the law
which protects a passion by its very nature easily excisable. He mounted
the staircase of one of the gambling hells distinguished by the number
36, without too much deliberation.

“Your hat, sir, if you please?” a thin, querulous voice called out. A
little old man, crouching in the darkness behind a railing, suddenly
rose and exhibited his features, carved after a mean design.

As you enter a gaming-house the law despoils you of your hat at the
outset. Is it by way of a parable, a divine revelation? Or by exacting
some pledge or other, is not an infernal compact implied? Is it done to
compel you to preserve a respectful demeanor towards those who are about
to gain money of you? Or must the detective, who squats in our social
sewers, know the name of your hatter, or your own, if you happen to have
written it on the lining inside? Or, after all, is the measurement of
your skull required for the compilation of statistics as to the cerebral
capacity of gamblers? The executive is absolutely silent on this point.
But be sure of this, that though you have scarcely taken a step towards
the tables, your hat no more belongs to you now than you belong to
yourself. Play possesses you, your fortune, your cap, your cane, your
cloak.

As you go out, it will be made clear to you, by a savage irony, that
Play has yet spared you something, since your property is returned. For
all that, if you bring a new hat with you, you will have to pay for the
knowledge that a special costume is needed for a gambler.

The evident astonishment with which the young man took a numbered tally
in exchange for his hat, which was fortunately somewhat rubbed at the
brim, showed clearly enough that his mind was yet untainted; and the
little old man, who had wallowed from his youth up in the furious
pleasures of a gambler’s life, cast a dull, indifferent glance over
him, in which a philosopher might have seen wretchedness lying in the
hospital, the vagrant lives of ruined folk, inquests on numberless
suicides, life-long penal servitude and transportations to Guazacoalco.

His pallid, lengthy visage appeared like a haggard embodiment of the
passion reduced to its simplest terms. There were traces of past anguish
in its wrinkles. He supported life on the glutinous soups at Darcet’s,
and gambled away his meagre earnings day by day. Like some old hackney
which takes no heed of the strokes of the whip, nothing could move him
now. The stifled groans of ruined players, as they passed out, their
mute imprecations, their stupefied faces, found him impassive. He was
the spirit of Play incarnate. If the young man had noticed this sorry
Cerberus, perhaps he would have said, “There is only a pack of cards in
that heart of his.”

The stranger did not heed this warning writ in flesh and blood, put
here, no doubt, by Providence, who has set loathing on the threshold of
all evil haunts. He walked boldly into the saloon, where the rattle of
coin brought his senses under the dazzling spell of an agony of greed.
Most likely he had been drawn thither by that most convincing of Jean
Jacques’ eloquent periods, which expresses, I think, this melancholy
thought, “Yes, I can imagine that a man may take to gambling when he
sees only his last shilling between him and death.”

There is an illusion about a gambling saloon at night as vulgar as that
of a bloodthirsty drama, and just as effective. The rooms are filled
with players and onlookers, with poverty-stricken age, which drags
itself thither in search of stimulation, with excited faces, and revels
that began in wine, to end shortly in the Seine. The passion is there
in full measure, but the great number of the actors prevents you from
seeing the gambling-demon face to face. The evening is a harmony or
chorus in which all take part, to which each instrument in the orchestra
contributes his share. You would see there plenty of respectable people
who have come in search of diversion, for which they pay as they pay for
the pleasures of the theatre, or of gluttony, or they come hither as
to some garret where they cheapen poignant regrets for three months to
come.

Do you understand all the force and frenzy in a soul which impatiently
waits for the opening of a gambling hell? Between the daylight gambler
and the player at night there is the same difference that lies between
a careless husband and the lover swooning under his lady’s window. Only
with morning comes the real throb of the passion and the craving in
its stark horror. Then you can admire the real gambler, who has neither
eaten, slept, thought, nor lived, he has so smarted under the scourge
of his martingale, so suffered on the rack of his desire for a coup of
_trente-et-quarante_. At that accursed hour you encounter eyes whose
calmness terrifies you, faces that fascinate, glances that seem as if
they had power to turn the cards over and consume them. The grandest
hours of a gambling saloon are not the opening ones. If Spain has
bull-fights, and Rome once had her gladiators, Paris waxes proud of her
Palais-Royal, where the inevitable _roulettes_ cause blood to flow in
streams, and the public can have the pleasure of watching without fear
of their feet slipping in it.

Take a quiet peep at the arena. How bare it looks! The paper on the
walls is greasy to the height of your head, there is nothing to bring
one reviving thought. There is not so much as a nail for the convenience
of suicides. The floor is worn and dirty. An oblong table stands in the
middle of the room, the tablecloth is worn by the friction of gold,
but the straw-bottomed chairs about it indicate an odd indifference to
luxury in the men who will lose their lives here in the quest of the
fortune that is to put luxury within their reach.

This contradiction in humanity is seen wherever the soul reacts
powerfully upon itself. The gallant would clothe his mistress in silks,
would deck her out in soft Eastern fabrics, though he and she must lie
on a truckle-bed. The ambitious dreamer sees himself at the summit of
power, while he slavishly prostrates himself in the mire. The tradesman
stagnates in his damp, unhealthy shop, while he builds a great mansion
for his son to inherit prematurely, only to be ejected from it by law
proceedings at his own brother’s instance.

After all, is there a less pleasing thing in the world than a house of
pleasure? Singular question! Man is always at strife with himself. His
present woes give the lie to his hopes; yet he looks to a future which
is not his, to indemnify him for these present sufferings; setting upon
all his actions the seal of inconsequence and of the weakness of his
nature. We have nothing here below in full measure but misfortune.

There were several gamblers in the room already when the young man
entered. Three bald-headed seniors were lounging round the green table.
Imperturbable as diplomatists, those plaster-cast faces of theirs
betokened blunted sensibilities, and hearts which had long forgotten
how to throb, even when a woman’s dowry was the stake. A young Italian,
olive-hued and dark-haired, sat at one end, with his elbows on the
table, seeming to listen to the presentiments of luck that dictate a
gambler’s “Yes” or “No.” The glow of fire and gold was on that southern
face. Some seven or eight onlookers stood by way of an audience,
awaiting a drama composed of the strokes of chance, the faces of the
actors, the circulation of coin, and the motion of the croupier’s rake,
much as a silent, motionless crowd watches the headsman in the Place de
Greve. A tall, thin man, in a threadbare coat, held a card in one hand,
and a pin in the other, to mark the numbers of Red or Black. He seemed
a modern Tantalus, with all the pleasures of his epoch at his lips, a
hoardless miser drawing in imaginary gains, a sane species of lunatic
who consoles himself in his misery by chimerical dreams, a man who
touches peril and vice as a young priest handles the unconsecrated wafer
in the white mass.

One or two experts at the game, shrewd speculators, had placed
themselves opposite the bank, like old convicts who have lost all fear
of the hulks; they meant to try two or three coups, and then to depart
at once with the expected gains, on which they lived. Two elderly
waiters dawdled about with their arms folded, looking from time to time
into the garden from the windows, as if to show their insignificant
faces as a sign to passers-by.

The croupier and banker threw a ghastly and withering glance at the
punters, and cried, in a sharp voice, “Make your game!” as the young man
came in. The silence seemed to grow deeper as all heads turned curiously
towards the new arrival. Who would have thought it? The jaded elders,
the fossilized waiters, the onlookers, the fanatical Italian himself,
felt an indefinable dread at sight of the stranger. Is he not wretched
indeed who can excite pity here? Must he not be very helpless to receive
sympathy, ghastly in appearance to raise a shudder in these places,
where pain utters no cry, where wretchedness looks gay, and despair is
decorous? Such thoughts as these produced a new emotion in these torpid
hearts as the young man entered. Were not executioners known to shed
tears over the fair-haired, girlish heads that had to fall at the
bidding of the Revolution?

The gamblers saw at a glance a dreadful mystery in the novice’s face.
His young features were stamped with a melancholy grace, his looks told
of unsuccess and many blighted hopes. The dull apathy of the suicide
had made his forehead so deadly pale, a bitter smile carved faint lines
about the corners of his mouth, and there was an abandonment about him
that was painful to see. Some sort of demon sparkled in the depths of
his eye, which drooped, wearied perhaps with pleasure. Could it have
been dissipation that had set its foul mark on the proud face, once pure
and bright, and now brought low? Any doctor seeing the yellow circles
about his eyelids, and the color in his cheeks, would have set them
down to some affection of the heart or lungs, while poets would have
attributed them to the havoc brought by the search for knowledge and to
night-vigils by the student’s lamp.

But a complaint more fatal than any disease, a disease more merciless
than genius or study, had drawn this young face, and had wrung a heart
which dissipation, study, and sickness had scarcely disturbed. When
a notorious criminal is taken to the convict’s prison, the prisoners
welcome him respectfully, and these evil spirits in human shape,
experienced in torments, bowed before an unheard-of anguish. By the
depth of the wound which met their eyes, they recognized a prince among
them, by the majesty of his unspoken irony, by the refined wretchedness
of his garb. The frock-coat that he wore was well cut, but his cravat
was on terms so intimate with his waistcoat that no one could suspect
him of underlinen. His hands, shapely as a woman’s were not perfectly
clean; for two days past indeed he had ceased to wear gloves. If the
very croupier and the waiters shuddered, it was because some traces
of the spell of innocence yet hung about his meagre, delicately-shaped
form, and his scanty fair hair in its natural curls.

He looked only about twenty-five years of age, and any trace of vice
in his face seemed to be there by accident. A young constitution still
resisted the inroads of lubricity. Darkness and light, annihilation and
existence, seemed to struggle in him, with effects of mingled beauty
and terror. There he stood like some erring angel that has lost his
radiance; and these emeritus-professors of vice and shame were ready to
bid the novice depart, even as some toothless crone might be seized with
pity for a beautiful girl who offers herself up to infamy.

The young man went straight up to the table, and, as he stood
there, flung down a piece of gold which he held in his hand, without
deliberation. It rolled on to the Black; then, as strong natures can,
he looked calmly, if anxiously, at the croupier, as if he held useless
subterfuges in scorn.

The interest this coup awakened was so great that the old gamesters laid
nothing upon it; only the Italian, inspired by a gambler’s enthusiasm,
smiled suddenly at some thought, and punted his heap of coin against the
stranger’s stake.

The banker forgot to pronounce the phrases that use and wont have
reduced to an inarticulate cry--“Make your game.... The game is made....
Bets are closed.” The croupier spread out the cards, and seemed to wish
luck to the newcomer, indifferent as he was to the losses or gains of
those who took part in these sombre pleasures. Every bystander thought
he saw a drama, the closing scene of a noble life, in the fortunes of
that bit of gold; and eagerly fixed his eyes on the prophetic cards; but
however closely they watched the young man, they could discover not the
least sign of feeling on his cool but restless face.

“Even! red wins,” said the croupier officially. A dumb sort of rattle
came from the Italian’s throat when he saw the folded notes that
the banker showered upon him, one after another. The young man only
understood his calamity when the croupiers’s rake was extended to sweep
away his last napoleon. The ivory touched the coin with a little click,
as it swept it with the speed of an arrow into the heap of gold before
the bank. The stranger turned pale at the lips, and softly shut his
eyes, but he unclosed them again at once, and the red color returned
as he affected the airs of an Englishman, to whom life can offer no
new sensation, and disappeared without the glance full of entreaty for
compassion that a desperate gamester will often give the bystanders. How
much can happen in a second’s space; how many things depend on a throw
of the die!

“That was his last cartridge, of course,” said the croupier, smiling
after a moment’s silence, during which he picked up the coin between his
finger and thumb and held it up.

“He is a cracked brain that will go and drown himself,” said a
frequenter of the place. He looked round about at the other players, who
all knew each other.

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

“If we had but followed _his_ example,” said an old gamester to the
others, as he pointed out the Italian.

Everybody looked at the lucky player, whose hands shook as he counted
his bank-notes.

“A voice seemed to whisper to me,” he said. “The luck is sure to go
against that young man’s despair.”

“He is a new hand,” said the banker, “or he would have divided his money
into three parts to give himself more chance.”

The young man went out without asking for his hat; but the old
watch-dog, who had noted its shabby condition, returned it to him
without a word. The gambler mechanically gave up the tally, and went
downstairs whistling _Di tanti Palpiti_ so feebly, that he himself
scarcely heard the delicious notes.

He found himself immediately under the arcades of the Palais-Royal,
reached the Rue Saint Honore, took the direction of the Tuileries, and
crossed the gardens with an undecided step. He walked as if he were in
some desert, elbowed by men whom he did not see, hearing through all the
voices of the crowd one voice alone--the voice of Death. He was lost in
the thoughts that benumbed him at last, like the criminals who used
to be taken in carts from the Palais de Justice to the Place de Greve,
where the scaffold awaited them reddened with all the blood spilt here
since 1793.

There is something great and terrible about suicide. Most people’s
downfalls are not dangerous; they are like children who have not far to
fall, and cannot injure themselves; but when a great nature is dashed
down, he is bound to fall from a height. He must have been raised almost
to the skies; he has caught glimpses of some heaven beyond his reach.
Vehement must the storms be which compel a soul to seek for peace from
the trigger of a pistol.

How much young power starves and pines away in a garret for want of a
friend, for lack of a woman’s consolation, in the midst of millions of
fellow-creatures, in the presence of a listless crowd that is burdened
by its wealth! When one remembers all this, suicide looms large. Between
a self-sought death and the abundant hopes whose voices call a young man
to Paris, God only knows what may intervene; what contending ideas have
striven within the soul; what poems have been set aside; what moans and
what despair have been repressed; what abortive masterpieces and vain
endeavors! Every suicide is an awful poem of sorrow. Where will you find
a work of genius floating above the seas of literature that can compare
with this paragraph:

  “Yesterday, at four o’clock, a young woman threw herself into the
  Seine from the Pont des Arts.”

Dramas and romances pale before this concise Parisian phrase; so must
even that old frontispiece, _The Lamentations of the glorious king of
Kaernavan, put in prison by his children_, the sole remaining fragment
of a lost work that drew tears from Sterne at the bare perusal--the same
Sterne who deserted his own wife and family.

The stranger was beset with such thoughts as these, which passed in
fragments through his mind, like tattered flags fluttering above the
combat. If he set aside for a moment the burdens of consciousness and of
memory, to watch the flower heads gently swayed by the breeze among the
green thickets, a revulsion came over him, life struggled against
the oppressive thought of suicide, and his eyes rose to the sky: gray
clouds, melancholy gusts of the wind, the stormy atmosphere, all decreed
that he should die.

He bent his way toward the Pont Royal, musing over the last fancies of
others who had gone before him. He smiled to himself as he remembered
that Lord Castlereagh had satisfied the humblest of our needs before
he cut his throat, and that the academician Auger had sought for his
snuff-box as he went to his death. He analyzed these extravagances,
and even examined himself; for as he stood aside against the parapet
to allow a porter to pass, his coat had been whitened somewhat by the
contact, and he carefully brushed the dust from his sleeve, to his own
surprise. He reached the middle of the arch, and looked forebodingly at
the water.

“Wretched weather for drowning yourself,” said a ragged old woman, who
grinned at him; “isn’t the Seine cold and dirty?”

His answer was a ready smile, which showed the frenzied nature of his
courage; then he shivered all at once as he saw at a distance, by the
door of the Tuileries, a shed with an inscription above it in letters
twelve inches high: THE ROYAL HUMANE SOCIETY’S APPARATUS.

A vision of M. Dacheux rose before him, equipped by his philanthropy,
calling out and setting in motion the too efficacious oars which break
the heads of drowning men, if unluckily they should rise to the surface;
he saw a curious crowd collecting, running for a doctor, preparing
fumigations, he read the maundering paragraph in the papers, put between
notes on a festivity and on the smiles of a ballet-dancer; he heard
the francs counted down by the prefect of police to the watermen. As a
corpse, he was worth fifteen francs; but now while he lived he was only
a man of talent without patrons, without friends, without a mattress
to lie on, or any one to speak a word for him--a perfect social cipher,
useless to a State which gave itself no trouble about him.

A death in broad daylight seemed degrading to him; he made up his mind
to die at night so as to bequeath an unrecognizable corpse to a world
which had disregarded the greatness of life. He began his wanderings
again, turning towards the Quai Voltaire, imitating the lagging gait of
an idler seeking to kill time. As he came down the steps at the end of
the bridge, his notice was attracted by the second-hand books displayed
on the parapet, and he was on the point of bargaining for some. He
smiled, thrust his hands philosophically into his pockets, and fell to
strolling on again with a proud disdain in his manner, when he heard to
his surprise some coin rattling fantastically in his pocket.

A smile of hope lit his face, and slid from his lips over his features,
over his brow, and brought a joyful light to his eyes and his dark
cheeks. It was a spark of happiness like one of the red dots that flit
over the remains of a burnt scrap of paper; but as it is with the black
ashes, so it was with his face, it became dull again when the stranger
quickly drew out his hand and perceived three pennies. “Ah, kind
gentleman! _carita_, _carita_; for the love of St. Catherine! only a
halfpenny to buy some bread!”

A little chimney sweeper, with puffed cheeks, all black with soot, and
clad in tatters, held out his hand to beg for the man’s last pence.

Two paces from the little Savoyard stood an old _pauvre honteux_, sickly
and feeble, in wretched garments of ragged druggeting, who asked in a
thick, muffled voice:

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

But the young man turned his eyes on him, and the old beggar stopped
without another word, discerning in that mournful face an abandonment of
wretchedness more bitter than his own.

“_La carita_! _la carita_!”

The stranger threw the coins to the old man and the child, left the
footway, and turned towards the houses; the harrowing sight of the Seine
fretted him beyond endurance.

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

As he reached the shop window of a print-seller, this man on the brink
of death met a young woman alighting from a showy carriage. He looked in
delight at her prettiness, at the pale face appropriately framed by the
satin of her fashionable bonnet. Her slender form and graceful movements
entranced him. Her skirt had been slightly raised as she stepped to the
pavement, disclosing a daintily fitting white stocking over the delicate
outlines beneath. The young lady went into the shop, purchased albums
and sets of lithographs; giving several gold coins for them, which
glittered and rang upon the counter. The young man, seemingly occupied
with the prints in the window, fixed upon the fair stranger a gaze as
eager as man can give, to receive in exchange an indifferent glance,
such as lights by accident on a passer-by. For him it was a leave-taking
of love and of woman; but his final and strenuous questioning glance was
neither understood nor felt by the slight-natured woman there; her color
did not rise, her eyes did not droop. What was it to her? one more piece
of adulation, yet another sigh only prompted the delightful thought at
night, “I looked rather well to-day.”

The young man quickly turned to another picture, and only left it when
she returned to her carriage. The horses started off, the final vision
of luxury and refinement went under an eclipse, just as that life of his
would soon do also. Slowly and sadly he followed the line of the shops,
listlessly examining the specimens on view. When the shops came to an
end, he reviewed the Louvre, the Institute, the towers of Notre Dame, of
the Palais, the Pont des Arts; all these public monuments seemed to have
taken their tone from the heavy gray sky.

Fitful gleams of light gave a foreboding look to Paris; like a pretty
woman, the city has mysterious fits of ugliness or beauty. So the outer
world seemed to be in a plot to steep this man about to die in a painful
trance. A prey to the maleficent power which acts relaxingly upon us
by the fluid circulating through our nerves, his whole frame seemed
gradually to experience a dissolving process. He felt the anguish of
these throes passing through him in waves, and the houses and the crowd
seemed to surge to and fro in a mist before his eyes. He tried to escape
the agitation wrought in his mind by the revulsions of his physical
nature, and went toward the shop of a dealer in antiquities, thinking to
give a treat to his senses, and to spend the interval till nightfall in
bargaining over curiosities.

He sought, one might say, to regain courage and to find a stimulant,
like a criminal who doubts his power to reach the scaffold. The
consciousness of approaching death gave him, for the time being, the
intrepidity of a duchess with a couple of lovers, so that he entered the
place with an abstracted look, while his lips displayed a set smile like
a drunkard’s. Had not life, or rather had not death, intoxicated him?
Dizziness soon overcame him again. Things appeared to him in strange
colors, or as making slight movements; his irregular pulse was no
doubt the cause; the blood that sometimes rushed like a burning torrent
through his veins, and sometimes lay torpid and stagnant as tepid water.
He merely asked leave to see if the shop contained any curiosities which
he required.

A plump-faced young shopman with red hair, in an otter-skin cap, left
an old peasant woman in charge of the shop--a sort of feminine Caliban,
employed in cleaning a stove made marvelous by Bernard Palissy’s work.
This youth remarked carelessly:

“Look round, _monsieur_! We have nothing very remarkable here
downstairs; but if I may trouble you to go up to the first floor, I will
show you some very fine mummies from Cairo, some inlaid pottery, and
some carved ebony--_genuine Renaissance_ work, just come in, and of
perfect beauty.”

In the stranger’s fearful position this cicerone’s prattle and shopman’s
empty talk seemed like the petty vexations by which narrow minds destroy
a man of genius. But as he must even go through with it, he appeared
to listen to his guide, answering him by gestures or monosyllables; but
imperceptibly he arrogated the privilege of saying nothing, and gave
himself up without hindrance to his closing meditations, which were
appalling. He had a poet’s temperament, his mind had entered by chance
on a vast field; and he must see perforce the dry bones of twenty future
worlds.

At a first glance the place presented a confused picture in which every
achievement, human and divine, was mingled. Crocodiles, monkeys, and
serpents stuffed with straw grinned at glass from church windows,
seemed to wish to bite sculptured heads, to chase lacquered work, or to
scramble up chandeliers. A Sevres vase, bearing Napoleon’s portrait
by Mme. Jacotot, stood beside a sphinx dedicated to Sesostris. The
beginnings of the world and the events of yesterday were mingled
with grotesque cheerfulness. A kitchen jack leaned against a pyx, a
republican sabre on a mediaeval hackbut. Mme. du Barry, with a star
above her head, naked, and surrounded by a cloud, seemed to look
longingly out of Latour’s pastel at an Indian chibook, while she tried
to guess the purpose of the spiral curves that wound towards her.
Instruments of death, poniards, curious pistols, and disguised weapons
had been flung down pell-mell among the paraphernalia of daily life;
porcelain tureens, Dresden plates, translucent cups from china, old
salt-cellars, comfit-boxes belonging to feudal times. A carved ivory
ship sped full sail on the back of a motionless tortoise.

The Emperor Augustus remained unmoved and imperial with an air-pump
thrust into one eye. Portraits of French sheriffs and Dutch
burgomasters, phlegmatic now as when in life, looked down pallid and
unconcerned on the chaos of past ages below them.

Every land of earth seemed to have contributed some stray fragment of
its learning, some example of its art. Nothing seemed lacking to this
philosophical kitchen-midden, from a redskin’s calumet, a green and
golden slipper from the seraglio, a Moorish yataghan, a Tartar idol, to
the soldier’s tobacco pouch, to the priest’s ciborium, and the plumes
that once adorned a throne. This extraordinary combination was rendered
yet more bizarre by the accidents of lighting, by a multitude of
confused reflections of various hues, by the sharp contrast of blacks
and whites. Broken cries seemed to reach the ear, unfinished dramas
seized upon the imagination, smothered lights caught the eye. A thin
coating of inevitable dust covered all the multitudinous corners and
convolutions of these objects of various shapes which gave highly
picturesque effects.

First of all, the stranger compared the three galleries which
civilization, cults, divinities, masterpieces, dominions, carousals,
sanity, and madness had filled to repletion, to a mirror with numerous
facets, each depicting a world. After this first hazy idea he would fain
have selected his pleasures; but by dint of using his eyes, thinking and
musing, a fever began to possess him, caused perhaps by the gnawing pain
of hunger. The spectacle of so much existence, individual or national,
to which these pledges bore witness, ended by numbing his senses--the
purpose with which he entered the shop was fulfilled. He had left the
real behind, and had climbed gradually up to an ideal world; he had
attained to the enchanted palace of ecstasy, whence the universe
appeared to him by fragments and in shapes of flame, as once the future
blazed out before the eyes of St. John in Patmos.

A crowd of sorrowing faces, beneficent and appalling, dark and luminous,
far and near, gathered in numbers, in myriads, in whole generations.
Egypt, rigid and mysterious, arose from her sands in the form of a mummy
swathed in black bandages; then the Pharaohs swallowed up nations, that
they might build themselves a tomb; and he beheld Moses and the Hebrews
and the desert, and a solemn antique world. Fresh and joyous, a marble
statue spoke to him from a twisted column of the pleasure-loving myths
of Greece and Ionia. Ah! who would not have smiled with him to see,
against the earthen red background, the brown-faced maiden dancing with
gleeful reverence before the god Priapus, wrought in the fine clay of an
Etruscan vase? The Latin queen caressed her chimera.

The whims of Imperial Rome were there in life, the bath was disclosed,
the toilette of a languid Julia, dreaming, waiting for her Tibullus.
Strong with the might of Arabic spells, the head of Cicero evoked
memories of a free Rome, and unrolled before him the scrolls of Titus
Livius. The young man beheld _Senatus Populusque Romanus_; consuls,
lictors, togas with purple fringes; the fighting in the Forum, the angry
people, passed in review before him like the cloudy faces of a dream.

Then Christian Rome predominated in his vision. A painter had laid
heaven open; he beheld the Virgin Mary wrapped in a golden cloud among
the angels, shining more brightly than the sun, receiving the prayers of
sufferers, on whom this second Eve Regenerate smiles pityingly. At the
touch of a mosaic, made of various lavas from Vesuvius and Etna, his
fancy fled to the hot tawny south of Italy. He was present at Borgia’s
orgies, he roved among the Abruzzi, sought for Italian love intrigues,
grew ardent over pale faces and dark, almond-shaped eyes. He shivered
over midnight adventures, cut short by the cool thrust of a jealous
blade, as he saw a mediaeval dagger with a hilt wrought like lace, and
spots of rust like splashes of blood upon it.

India and its religions took the shape of the idol with his peaked cap
of fantastic form, with little bells, clad in silk and gold. Close by,
a mat, as pretty as the bayadere who once lay upon it, still gave out
a faint scent of sandal wood. His fancy was stirred by a goggle-eyed
Chinese monster, with mouth awry and twisted limbs, the invention of
a people who, grown weary of the monotony of beauty, found an
indescribable pleasure in an infinite variety of ugliness. A salt-cellar
from Benvenuto Cellini’s workshop carried him back to the Renaissance
at its height, to the time when there was no restraint on art or morals,
when torture was the sport of sovereigns; and from their councils,
churchmen with courtesans’ arms about them issued decrees of chastity
for simple priests.

On a cameo he saw the conquests of Alexander, the massacres of Pizarro
in a matchbox, and religious wars disorderly, fanatical, and cruel, in
the shadows of a helmet. Joyous pictures of chivalry were called up by
a suit of Milanese armor, brightly polished and richly wrought; a
paladin’s eyes seemed to sparkle yet under the visor.

This sea of inventions, fashions, furniture, works of art and fiascos,
made for him a poem without end. Shapes and colors and projects
all lived again for him, but his mind received no clear and perfect
conception. It was the poet’s task to complete the sketches of the
great master, who had scornfully mingled on his palette the hues of the
numberless vicissitudes of human life. When the world at large at last
released him, when he had pondered over many lands, many epochs, and
various empires, the young man came back to the life of the individual.
He impersonated fresh characters, and turned his mind to details,
rejecting the life of nations as a burden too overwhelming for a single
soul.

Yonder was a sleeping child modeled in wax, a relic of Ruysch’s
collection, an enchanting creation which brought back the happiness of
his own childhood. The cotton garment of a Tahitian maid next fascinated
him; he beheld the primitive life of nature, the real modesty of naked
chastity, the joys of an idleness natural to mankind, a peaceful fate
by a slow river of sweet water under a plantain tree that bears its
pleasant manna without the toil of man. Then all at once he became a
corsair, investing himself with the terrible poetry that Lara has given
to the part: the thought came at the sight of the mother-of-pearl tints
of a myriad sea-shells, and grew as he saw madrepores redolent of the
sea-weeds and the storms of the Atlantic.

The sea was forgotten again at a distant view of exquisite miniatures;
he admired a precious missal in manuscript, adorned with arabesques in
gold and blue. Thoughts of peaceful life swayed him; he devoted himself
afresh to study and research, longing for the easy life of the monk,
devoid alike of cares and pleasures; and from the depths of his cell
he looked out upon the meadows, woods, and vineyards of his convent.
Pausing before some work of Teniers, he took for his own the helmet
of the soldier or the poverty of the artisan; he wished to wear a
smoke-begrimed cap with these Flemings, to drink their beer and join
their game at cards, and smiled upon the comely plumpness of a peasant
woman. He shivered at a snowstorm by Mieris; he seemed to take part in
Salvator Rosa’s battle-piece; he ran his fingers over a tomahawk
form Illinois, and felt his own hair rise as he touched a Cherokee
scalping-knife. He marveled over the rebec that he set in the hands of
some lady of the land, drank in the musical notes of her ballad, and in
the twilight by the gothic arch above the hearth he told his love in a
gloom so deep that he could not read his answer in her eyes.

He caught at all delights, at all sorrows; grasped at existence in every
form; and endowed the phantoms conjured up from that inert and plastic
material so liberally with his own life and feelings, that the sound of
his own footsteps reached him as if from another world, or as the hum of
Paris reaches the towers of Notre Dame.

He ascended the inner staircase which led to the first floor, with its
votive shields, panoplies, carved shrines, and figures on the wall at
every step. Haunted by the strangest shapes, by marvelous creations
belonging to the borderland betwixt life and death, he walked as if
under the spell of a dream. His own existence became a matter of doubt
to him; he was neither wholly alive nor dead, like the curious objects
about him. The light began to fade as he reached the show-rooms, but
the treasures of gold and silver heaped up there scarcely seemed to need
illumination from without. The most extravagant whims of prodigals, who
have run through millions to perish in garrets, had left their traces
here in this vast bazar of human follies. Here, beside a writing desk,
made at the cost of 100,000 francs, and sold for a hundred pence, lay a
lock with a secret worth a king’s ransom. The human race was revealed
in all the grandeur of its wretchedness; in all the splendor of its
infinite littleness. An ebony table that an artist might worship,
carved after Jean Goujon’s designs, in years of toil, had been purchased
perhaps at the price of firewood. Precious caskets, and things that
fairy hands might have fashioned, lay there in heaps like rubbish.

“You must have the worth of millions here!” cried the young man as he
entered the last of an immense suite of rooms, all decorated and gilt by
eighteenth century artists.

“Thousands of millions, you might say,” said the florid shopman; “but
you have seen nothing as yet. Go up to the third floor, and you shall
see!”

The stranger followed his guide to a fourth gallery, where one by one
there passed before his wearied eyes several pictures by Poussin, a
magnificent statue by Michael Angelo, enchanting landscapes by Claude
Lorraine, a Gerard Dow (like a stray page from Sterne), Rembrandts,
Murillos, and pictures by Velasquez, as dark and full of color as a poem
of Byron’s; then came classic bas-reliefs, finely-cut agates, wonderful
cameos! Works of art upon works of art, till the craftsman’s skill
palled on the mind, masterpiece after masterpiece till art itself became
hateful at last and enthusiasm died. He came upon a Madonna by Raphael,
but he was tired of Raphael; a figure by Correggio never received the
glance it demanded of him. A priceless vase of antique porphyry carved
round about with pictures of the most grotesquely wanton of Roman
divinities, the pride of some Corinna, scarcely drew a smile from him.

The ruins of fifteen hundred vanished years oppressed him; he sickened
under all this human thought; felt bored by all this luxury and art. He
struggled in vain against the constantly renewed fantastic shapes that
sprang up from under his feet, like children of some sportive demon.

Are not fearful poisons set up in the soul by a swift concentration of
all her energies, her enjoyments, or ideas; as modern chemistry, in its
caprice, repeats the action of creation by some gas or other? Do not
many men perish under the shock of the sudden expansion of some moral
acid within them?

“What is there in that box?” he inquired, as he reached a large
closet--final triumph of human skill, originality, wealth, and splendor,
in which there hung a large, square mahogany coffer, suspended from a
nail by a silver chain.

“Ah, _monsieur_ keeps the key of it,” said the stout assistant
mysteriously. “If you wish to see the portrait, I will gladly venture to
tell him.”

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

“I don’t know what he is,” the other answered. Equally astonished, each
looked for a moment at the other. Then construing the stranger’s silence
as an order, the apprentice left him alone in the closet.

Have you never launched into the immensity of time and space as you read
the geological writings of Cuvier? Carried by his fancy, have you hung
as if suspended by a magician’s wand over the illimitable abyss of the
past? When the fossil bones of animals belonging to civilizations before
the Flood are turned up in bed after bed and layer upon layer of the
quarries of Montmartre or among the schists of the Ural range, the
soul receives with dismay a glimpse of millions of peoples forgotten
by feeble human memory and unrecognized by permanent divine tradition,
peoples whose ashes cover our globe with two feet of earth that yields
bread to us and flowers.

Is not Cuvier the great poet of our era? Byron has given admirable
expression to certain moral conflicts, but our immortal naturalist has
reconstructed past worlds from a few bleached bones; has rebuilt cities,
like Cadmus, with monsters’ teeth; has animated forests with all the
secrets of zoology gleaned from a piece of coal; has discovered a giant
population from the footprints of a mammoth. These forms stand erect,
grow large, and fill regions commensurate with their giant size. He
treats figures like a poet; a naught set beside a seven by him produces
awe.

He can call up nothingness before you without the phrases of a
charlatan. He searches a lump of gypsum, finds an impression in it, says
to you, “Behold!” All at once marble takes an animal shape, the dead
come to life, the history of the world is laid open before you. After
countless dynasties of giant creatures, races of fish and clans of
mollusks, the race of man appears at last as the degenerate copy of a
splendid model, which the Creator has perchance destroyed. Emboldened
by his gaze into the past, this petty race, children of yesterday,
can overstep chaos, can raise a psalm without end, and outline for
themselves the story of the Universe in an Apocalypse that reveals the
past. After the tremendous resurrection that took place at the voice
of this man, the little drop in the nameless Infinite, common to all
spheres, that is ours to use, and that we call Time, seems to us a
pitiable moment of life. We ask ourselves the purpose of our triumphs,
our hatreds, our loves, overwhelmed as we are by the destruction of so
many past universes, and whether it is worth while to accept the pain of
life in order that hereafter we may become an intangible speck. Then we
remain as if dead, completely torn away from the present till the _valet
de chambre_ comes in and says, “_Madame la comtesse_ answers that she is
expecting _monsieur_.”

All the wonders which had brought the known world before the young man’s
mind wrought in his soul much the same feeling of dejection that besets
the philosopher investigating unknown creatures. He longed more than
ever for death as he flung himself back in a curule chair and let his
eyes wander across the illusions composing a panorama of the past.
The pictures seemed to light up, the Virgin’s heads smiled on him, the
statues seemed alive. Everything danced and swayed around him, with a
motion due to the gloom and the tormenting fever that racked his brain;
each monstrosity grimaced at him, while the portraits on the canvas
closed their eyes for a little relief. Every shape seemed to tremble
and start, and to leave its place gravely or flippantly, gracefully or
awkwardly, according to its fashion, character, and surroundings.

A mysterious Sabbath began, rivaling the fantastic scenes witnessed
by Faust upon the Brocken. But these optical illusions, produced by
weariness, overstrained eyesight, or the accidents of twilight, could
not alarm the stranger. The terrors of life had no power over a soul
grown familiar with the terrors of death. He even gave himself up, half
amused by its bizarre eccentricities, to the influence of this moral
galvanism; its phenomena, closely connected with his last thoughts,
assured him that he was still alive. The silence about him was so deep
that he embarked once more in dreams that grew gradually darker and
darker as if by magic, as the light slowly faded. A last struggling ray
from the sun lit up rosy answering lights. He raised his head and saw a
skeleton dimly visible, with its skull bent doubtfully to one side, as
if to say, “The dead will none of thee as yet.”

He passed his hand over his forehead to shake off the drowsiness, and
felt a cold breath of air as an unknown furry something swept past his
cheeks. He shivered. A muffled clatter of the windows followed; it was
a bat, he fancied, that had given him this chilly sepulchral caress. He
could yet dimly see for a moment the shapes that surrounded him, by the
vague light in the west; then all these inanimate objects were blotted
out in uniform darkness. Night and the hour of death had suddenly come.
Thenceforward, for a while, he lost consciousness of the things about
him; he was either buried in deep meditation or sleep overcame him,
brought on by weariness or by the stress of those many thoughts that
lacerated his heart.

Suddenly he thought that an awful voice called him by name; it was like
some feverish nightmare, when at a step the dreamer falls headlong over
into an abyss, and he trembled. He closed his eyes, dazzled by bright
rays from a red circle of light that shone out from the shadows. In the
midst of the circle stood a little old man who turned the light of the
lamp upon him, yet he had not heard him enter, nor move, nor speak.
There was something magical about the apparition. The boldest man,
awakened in such a sort, would have felt alarmed at the sight of this
figure, which might have issued from some sarcophagus hard by.

A curiously youthful look in the unmoving eyes of the spectre forbade
the idea of anything supernatural; but for all that, in the brief space
between his dreaming and waking life, the young man’s judgment remained
philosophically suspended, as Descartes advises. He was, in spite
of himself, under the influence of an unaccountable hallucination, a
mystery that our pride rejects, and that our imperfect science vainly
tries to resolve.

Imagine a short old man, thin and spare, in a long black velvet gown
girded round him by a thick silk cord. His long white hair escaped on
either side of his face from under a black velvet cap which closely
fitted his head and made a formal setting for his countenance. His
gown enveloped his body like a winding sheet, so that all that was left
visible was a narrow bleached human face. But for the wasted arm, thin
as a draper’s wand, which held aloft the lamp that cast all its light
upon him, the face would have seemed to hang in mid air. A gray pointed
beard concealed the chin of this fantastical appearance, and gave him
the look of one of those Jewish types which serve artists as models
for Moses. His lips were so thin and colorless that it needed a close
inspection to find the lines of his mouth at all in the pallid face. His
great wrinkled brow and hollow bloodless cheeks, the inexorably stern
expression of his small green eyes that no longer possessed eyebrows
or lashes, might have convinced the stranger that Gerard Dow’s “Money
Changer” had come down from his frame. The craftiness of an inquisitor,
revealed in those curving wrinkles and creases that wound about his
temples, indicated a profound knowledge of life. There was no deceiving
this man, who seemed to possess a power of detecting the secrets of the
wariest heart.

The wisdom and the moral codes of every people seemed gathered up in his
passive face, just as all the productions of the globe had been heaped
up in his dusty showrooms. He seemed to possess the tranquil luminous
vision of some god before whom all things are open, or the haughty power
of a man who knows all things.

With two strokes of the brush a painter could have so altered the
expression of this face, that what had been a serene representation
of the Eternal Father should change to the sneering mask of a
Mephistopheles; for though sovereign power was revealed by the forehead,
mocking folds lurked about the mouth. He must have sacrificed all the
joys of earth, as he had crushed all human sorrows beneath his potent
will. The man at the brink of death shivered at the thought of the life
led by this spirit, so solitary and remote from our world; joyless,
since he had no one illusion left; painless, because pleasure had ceased
to exist for him. There he stood, motionless and serene as a star in a
bright mist. His lamp lit up the obscure closet, just as his green eyes,
with their quiet malevolence, seemed to shed a light on the moral world.

This was the strange spectacle that startled the young man’s returning
sight, as he shook off the dreamy fancies and thoughts of death that
had lulled him. An instant of dismay, a momentary return to belief
in nursery tales, may be forgiven him, seeing that his senses were
obscured. Much thought had wearied his mind, and his nerves were
exhausted with the strain of the tremendous drama within him, and by the
scenes that had heaped on him all the horrid pleasures that a piece of
opium can produce.

But this apparition had appeared in Paris, on the Quai Voltaire, and in
the nineteenth century; the time and place made sorcery impossible.
The idol of French scepticism had died in the house just opposite,
the disciple of Gay-Lussac and Arago, who had held the charlatanism of
intellect in contempt. And yet the stranger submitted himself to the
influence of an imaginative spell, as all of us do at times, when we
wish to escape from an inevitable certainty, or to tempt the power of
Providence. So some mysterious apprehension of a strange force made him
tremble before the old man with the lamp. All of us have been stirred in
the same way by the sight of Napoleon, or of some other great man, made
illustrious by his genius or by fame.

“You wish to see Raphael’s portrait of Jesus Christ, monsieur?” the old
man asked politely. There was something metallic in the clear, sharp
ring of his voice.

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

At the sacred names of Christ and Raphael the young man showed some
curiosity. The merchant, who no doubt looked for this, pressed a spring,
and suddenly the mahogany panel slid noiselessly back in its groove, and
discovered the canvas to the stranger’s admiring gaze. At sight of this
deathless creation, he forgot his fancies in the show-rooms and the
freaks of his dreams, and became himself again. The old man became a
being of flesh and blood, very much alive, with nothing chimerical about
him, and took up his existence at once upon solid earth.

The sympathy and love, and the gentle serenity in the divine face,
exerted an instant sway over the younger spectator. Some influence
falling from heaven bade cease the burning torment that consumed the
marrow of his bones. The head of the Saviour of mankind seemed to issue
from among the shadows represented by a dark background; an aureole of
light shone out brightly from his hair; an impassioned belief seemed to
glow through him, and to thrill every feature. The word of life had just
been uttered by those red lips, the sacred sounds seemed to linger still
in the air; the spectator besought the silence for those captivating
parables, hearkened for them in the future, and had to turn to the
teachings of the past. The untroubled peace of the divine eyes, the
comfort of sorrowing souls, seemed an interpretation of the Evangel.
The sweet triumphant smile revealed the secret of the Catholic religion,
which sums up all things in the precept, “Love one another.” This
picture breathed the spirit of prayer, enjoined forgiveness, overcame
self, caused sleeping powers of good to waken. For this work of
Raphael’s had the imperious charm of music; you were brought under the
spell of memories of the past; his triumph was so absolute that the
artist was forgotten. The witchery of the lamplight heightened the
wonder; the head seemed at times to flicker in the distance, enveloped
in cloud.

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

“And now for death!” cried the young man, awakened from his musings. His
last thought had recalled his fate to him, as it led him imperceptibly
back from the forlorn hopes to which he had clung.

“Ah, ha! then my suspicions were well founded!” said the other, and his
hands held the young man’s wrists in a grip like that of a vice.

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

“You, sir, have nothing to fear; it is not your life, but my own that
is in question.... But why should I hide a harmless fraud?” he went on,
after a look at the anxious old man. “I came to see your treasures to
while away the time till night should come and I could drown myself
decently. Who would grudge this last pleasure to a poet and a man of
science?”

While he spoke, the jealous merchant watched the haggard face of his
pretended customer with keen eyes. Perhaps the mournful tones of his
voice reassured him, or he also read the dark signs of fate in the faded
features that had made the gamblers shudder; he released his hands, but,
with a touch of caution, due to the experience of some hundred years at
least, he stretched his arm out to a sideboard as if to steady himself,
took up a little dagger, and said:

“Have you been a supernumerary clerk of the Treasury for three years
without receiving any perquisites?”

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

“Perhaps your father has expressed his regret for your birth a little
too sharply? Or have you disgraced yourself?”

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

“You have been hissed perhaps at the Funambules? Or you have had to
compose couplets to pay for your mistress’ funeral? Do you want to be
cured of the gold fever? Or to be quit of the spleen? For what blunder
is your life forfeit?”

“You must not look among the common motives that impel suicides for the
reason of my death. To spare myself the task of disclosing my unheard-of
sufferings, for which language has no name, I will tell you this--that
I am in the deepest, most humiliating, and most cruel trouble, and,” he
went on in proud tones that harmonized ill with the words just uttered,
“I have no wish to beg for either help or sympathy.”

“Eh! eh!”

The two syllables which the old man pronounced resembled the sound of a
rattle. Then he went on thus:

“Without compelling you to entreat me, without making you blush for
it, and without giving you so much as a French centime, a para from the
Levant, a German heller, a Russian kopeck, a Scottish farthing, a single
obolus or sestertius from the ancient world, or one piastre from the
new, without offering you anything whatever in gold, silver, or copper,
notes or drafts, I will make you richer, more powerful, and of more
consequence than a constitutional king.”

The young man thought that the older was in his dotage, and waited in
bewilderment without venturing to reply.

“Turn round,” said the merchant, suddenly catching up the lamp in order
to light up the opposite wall; “look at that leathern skin,” he went on.

The young man rose abruptly, and showed some surprise at the sight of a
piece of shagreen which hung on the wall behind his chair. It was only
about the size of a fox’s skin, but it seemed to fill the deep shadows
of the place with such brilliant rays that it looked like a small comet,
an appearance at first sight inexplicable. The young sceptic went up
to this so-called talisman, which was to rescue him from all points of
view, and he soon found out the cause of its singular brilliancy. The
dark grain of the leather had been so carefully burnished and polished,
the striped markings of the graining were so sharp and clear, that every
particle of the surface of the bit of Oriental leather was in itself a
focus which concentrated the light, and reflected it vividly.

He accounted for this phenomenon categorically to the old man, who only
smiled meaningly by way of answer. His superior smile led the young
scientific man to fancy that he himself had been deceived by some
imposture. He had no wish to carry one more puzzle to his grave, and
hastily turned the skin over, like some child eager to find out the
mysteries of a new toy.

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

“So you know that, then?” asked the merchant. His peculiar method of
laughter, two or three quick breathings through the nostrils, said more
than any words however eloquent.

“Is there anybody in the world simple enough to believe in that idle
fancy?” said the young man, nettled by the spitefulness of the silent
chuckle. “Don’t you know,” he continued, “that the superstitions of the
East have perpetuated the mystical form and the counterfeit characters
of the symbol, which represents a mythical dominion? I have no more
laid myself open to a charge of credulity in this case, than if I had
mentioned sphinxes or griffins, whose existence mythology in a manner
admits.”

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

He held the lamp close to the talisman, which the young man held towards
him, and pointed out some characters inlaid in the surface of the
wonderful skin, as if they had grown on the animal to which it once
belonged.

“I must admit,” said the stranger, “that I have no idea how the letters
could be engraved so deeply on the skin of a wild ass.” And he turned
quickly to the tables strewn with curiosities and seemed to look for
something.

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

“Something that will cut the leather, so that I can see whether the
letters are printed or inlaid.”

The old man held out his stiletto. The stranger took it and tried to cut
the skin above the lettering; but when he had removed a thin shaving of
leather from them, the characters still appeared below, so clear and so
exactly like the surface impression, that for a moment he was not sure
that he had cut anything away after all.

“The craftsmen of the Levant have secrets known only to themselves,”
 he said, half in vexation, as he eyed the characters of this Oriental
sentence.

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

The mysterious words were thus arranged:

     [Drawing of apparently Sanskrit characters omitted]

Or, as it runs in English:

     POSSESSING ME THOU SHALT POSSESS ALL THINGS.
     BUT THY LIFE IS MINE, FOR GOD HAS SO WILLED IT.
     WISH, AND THY WISHES SHALL BE FULFILLED;
     BUT MEASURE THY DESIRES, ACCORDING
     TO THE LIFE THAT IS IN THEE.
     THIS IS THY LIFE,
     WITH EACH WISH I MUST SHRINK
     EVEN AS THY OWN DAYS.
     WILT THOU HAVE ME?  TAKE ME.
     GOD WILL HEARKEN UNTO THEE.
     SO BE IT!

“So you read Sanskrit fluently,” said the old man. “You have been in
Persia perhaps, or in Bengal?”

“No, sir,” said the stranger, as he felt the emblematical skin
curiously. It was almost as rigid as a sheet of metal.

The old merchant set the lamp back again upon the column, giving
the other a look as he did so. “He has given up the notion of dying
already,” the glance said with phlegmatic irony.

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

The other shook his head and said soberly:

“I don’t know how to answer you. I have offered this talisman with its
terrible powers to men with more energy in them than you seem to me to
have; but though they laughed at the questionable power it might exert
over their futures, not one of them was ready to venture to conclude the
fateful contract proposed by an unknown force. I am of their opinion, I
have doubted and refrained, and----”

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

“Tried it!” exclaimed the old man. “Suppose that you were on the column
in the Place Vendome, would you try flinging yourself into space? Is it
possible to stay the course of life? Has a man ever been known to die
by halves? Before you came here, you had made up your mind to kill
yourself, but all at once a mystery fills your mind, and you think no
more about death. You child! Does not any one day of your life afford
mysteries more absorbing? Listen to me. I saw the licentious days of
Regency. I was like you, then, in poverty; I have begged my bread; but
for all that, I am now a centenarian with a couple of years to spare,
and a millionaire to boot. Misery was the making of me, ignorance has
made me learned. I will tell you in a few words the great secret of
human life. By two instinctive processes man exhausts the springs of
life within him. Two verbs cover all the forms which these two causes of
death may take--To Will and To have your Will. Between these two limits
of human activity the wise have discovered an intermediate formula, to
which I owe my good fortune and long life. To Will consumes us, and To
have our Will destroys us, but To Know steeps our feeble organisms
in perpetual calm. In me Thought has destroyed Will, so that Power is
relegated to the ordinary functions of my economy. In a word, it is not
in the heart which can be broken, or in the senses that become deadened,
but it is in the brain that cannot waste away and survives everything
else, that I have set my life. Moderation has kept mind and body
unruffled. Yet, I have seen the whole world. I have learned all
languages, lived after every manner. I have lent a Chinaman money,
taking his father’s corpse as a pledge, slept in an Arab’s tent on the
security of his bare word, signed contracts in every capital of Europe,
and left my gold without hesitation in savage wigwams. I have attained
everything, because I have known how to despise all things.

“My one ambition has been to see. Is not Sight in a manner Insight?
And to have knowledge or insight, is not that to have instinctive
possession? To be able to discover the very substance of fact and to
unite its essence to our essence? Of material possession what abides
with you but an idea? Think, then, how glorious must be the life of a
man who can stamp all realities upon his thought, place the springs of
happiness within himself, and draw thence uncounted pleasures in idea,
unspoiled by earthly stains. Thought is a key to all treasures; the
miser’s gains are ours without his cares. Thus I have soared above this
world, where my enjoyments have been intellectual joys. I have reveled
in the contemplation of seas, peoples, forests, and mountains! I have
seen all things, calmly, and without weariness; I have set my desires
on nothing; I have waited in expectation of everything. I have walked
to and fro in the world as in a garden round about my own dwelling.
Troubles, loves, ambitions, losses, and sorrows, as men call them,
are for me ideas, which I transmute into waking dreams; I express and
transpose instead of feeling them; instead of permitting them to prey
upon my life, I dramatize and expand them; I divert myself with them as
if they were romances which I could read by the power of vision within
me. As I have never overtaxed my constitution, I still enjoy robust
health; and as my mind is endowed with all the force that I have not
wasted, this head of mine is even better furnished than my galleries.
The true millions lie here,” he said, striking his forehead. “I spend
delicious days in communings with the past; I summon before me whole
countries, places, extents of sea, the fair faces of history. In my
imaginary seraglio I have all the women that I have never possessed.
Your wars and revolutions come up before me for judgment. What is a
feverish fugitive admiration for some more or less brightly colored
piece of flesh and blood; some more or less rounded human form; what
are all the disasters that wait on your erratic whims, compared with
the magnificent power of conjuring up the whole world within your soul,
compared with the immeasurable joys of movement, unstrangled by the
cords of time, unclogged by the fetters of space; the joys of beholding
all things, of comprehending all things, of leaning over the parapet of
the world to question the other spheres, to hearken to the voice of God?
There,” he burst out, vehemently, “there are To Will and To have your
Will, both together,” he pointed to the bit of shagreen; “there are your
social ideas, your immoderate desires, your excesses, your pleasures
that end in death, your sorrows that quicken the pace of life, for pain
is perhaps but a violent pleasure. Who could determine the point where
pleasure becomes pain, where pain is still a pleasure? Is not the utmost
brightness of the ideal world soothing to us, while the lightest shadows
of the physical world annoy? Is not knowledge the secret of wisdom? And
what is folly but a riotous expenditure of Will or Power?”

“Very good then, a life of riotous excess for me!” said the stranger,
pouncing upon the piece of shagreen.

“Young man, beware!” cried the other with incredible vehemence.

“I had resolved my existence into thought and study,” the stranger
replied; “and yet they have not even supported me. I am not to be gulled
by a sermon worthy of Swedenborg, nor by your Oriental amulet, nor yet
by your charitable endeavors to keep me in a world wherein existence is
no longer possible for me.... Let me see now,” he added, clutching the
talisman convulsively, as he looked at the old man, “I wish for a
royal banquet, a carouse worthy of this century, which, it is said, has
brought everything to perfection! Let me have young boon companions,
witty, unwarped by prejudice, merry to the verge of madness! Let one
wine succeed another, each more biting and perfumed than the last, and
strong enough to bring about three days of delirium! Passionate women’s
forms should grace that night! I would be borne away to unknown regions
beyond the confines of this world, by the car and four-winged steed of
a frantic and uproarious orgy. Let us ascend to the skies, or plunge
ourselves in the mire. I do not know if one soars or sinks at such
moments, and I do not care! Next, I bid this enigmatical power
to concentrate all delights for me in one single joy. Yes, I must
comprehend every pleasure of earth and heaven in the final embrace that
is to kill me. Therefore, after the wine, I wish to hold high festival
to Priapus, with songs that might rouse the dead, and kisses without
end; the sound of them should pass like the crackling of flame through
Paris, should revive the heat of youth and passion in husband and wife,
even in hearts of seventy years.”

A laugh burst from the little old man. It rang in the young man’s ears
like an echo from hell; and tyrannously cut him short. He said no more.

“Do you imagine that my floors are going to open suddenly, so that
luxuriously-appointed tables may rise through them, and guests from
another world? No, no, young madcap. You have entered into the compact
now, and there is an end of it. Henceforward, your wishes will be
accurately fulfilled, but at the expense of your life. The compass of
your days, visible in that skin, will contract according to the strength
and number of your desires, from the least to the most extravagant. The
Brahmin from whom I had this skin once explained to me that it would
bring about a mysterious connection between the fortunes and wishes of
its possessor. Your first wish is a vulgar one, which I could fulfil,
but I leave that to the issues of your new existence. After all, you
were wishing to die; very well, your suicide is only put off for a
time.”

The stranger was surprised and irritated that this peculiar old man
persisted in not taking him seriously. A half philanthropic intention
peeped so clearly forth from his last jesting observation, that he
exclaimed:

“I shall soon see, sir, if any change comes over my fortunes in the time
it will take to cross the width of the quay. But I should like us to be
quits for such a momentous service; that is, if you are not laughing
at an unlucky wretch, so I wish that you may fall in love with an
opera-dancer. You would understand the pleasures of intemperance then,
and might perhaps grow lavish of the wealth that you have husbanded so
philosophically.”

He went out without heeding the old man’s heavy sigh, went back through
the galleries and down the staircase, followed by the stout assistant
who vainly tried to light his passage; he fled with the haste of a
robber caught in the act. Blinded by a kind of delirium, he did not even
notice the unexpected flexibility of the piece of shagreen, which coiled
itself up, pliant as a glove in his excited fingers, till it would go
into the pocket of his coat, where he mechanically thrust it. As he
rushed out of the door into the street, he ran up against three young
men who were passing arm-in-arm.

“Brute!”

“Idiot!”

Such were the gratifying expressions exchanged between them.

“Why, it is Raphael!”

“Good! we were looking for you.”

“What! it is you, then?”

These three friendly exclamations quickly followed the insults, as the
light of a street lamp, flickering in the wind, fell upon the astonished
faces of the group.

“My dear fellow, you must come with us!” said the young man that Raphael
had all but knocked down.

“What is all this about?”

“Come along, and I will tell you the history of it as we go.”

By fair means or foul, Raphael must go along with his friends towards
the Pont des Arts; they surrounded him, and linked him by the arm among
their merry band.

“We have been after you for about a week,” the speaker went on. “At your
respectable hotel _de Saint Quentin_, where, by the way, the sign with
the alternate black and red letters cannot be removed, and hangs out
just as it did in the time of Jean Jacques, that Leonarda of yours told
us that you were off into the country. For all that, we certainly did
not look like duns, creditors, sheriff’s officers, or the like. But no
matter! Rastignac had seen you the evening before at the Bouffons; we
took courage again, and made it a point of honor to find out whether
you were roosting in a tree in the Champs-Elysees, or in one of those
philanthropic abodes where the beggars sleep on a twopenny rope, or if,
more luckily, you were bivouacking in some boudoir or other. We could
not find you anywhere. Your name was not in the jailers’ registers
at the St. Pelagie nor at La Force! Government departments, cafes,
libraries, lists of prefects’ names, newspaper offices, restaurants,
greenrooms--to cut it short, every lurking place in Paris, good or bad,
has been explored in the most expert manner. We bewailed the loss of a
man endowed with such genius, that one might look to find him at Court
or in the common jails. We talked of canonizing you as a hero of July,
and, upon my word, we regretted you!”

As he spoke, the friends were crossing the Pont des Arts. Without
listening to them, Raphael looked at the Seine, at the clamoring waves
that reflected the lights of Paris. Above that river, in which but
now he had thought to fling himself, the old man’s prediction had been
fulfilled, the hour of his death had been already put back by fate.

“We really regretted you,” said his friend, still pursuing his theme.
“It was a question of a plan in which we included you as a superior
person, that is to say, somebody who can put himself above other people.
The constitutional thimble-rig is carried on to-day, dear boy, more
seriously than ever. The infamous monarchy, displaced by the heroism of
the people, was a sort of drab, you could laugh and revel with her; but
La Patrie is a shrewish and virtuous wife, and willy-nilly you must take
her prescribed endearments. Then besides, as you know, authority passed
over from the Tuileries to the journalists, at the time when the Budget
changed its quarters and went from the Faubourg Saint-Germain to the
Chaussee de Antin. But this you may not know perhaps. The Government,
that is, the aristocracy of lawyers and bankers who represent the
country to-day, just as the priests used to do in the time of the
monarchy, has felt the necessity of mystifying the worthy people of
France with a few new words and old ideas, like philosophers of
every school, and all strong intellects ever since time began. So now
Royalist-national ideas must be inculcated, by proving to us that it
is far better to pay twelve million francs, thirty-three centimes to
La Patrie, represented by Messieurs Such-and-Such, than to pay eleven
hundred million francs, nine centimes to a king who used to say _I_
instead of _we_. In a word, a journal, with two or three hundred
thousand francs, good, at the back of it, has just been started, with a
view to making an opposition paper to content the discontented, without
prejudice to the national government of the citizen-king. We scoff
at liberty as at despotism now, and at religion or incredulity quite
impartially. And since, for us, ‘our country’ means a capital where
ideas circulate and are sold at so much a line, a succulent dinner every
day, and the play at frequent intervals, where profligate women swarm,
where suppers last on into the next day, and light loves are hired by
the hour like cabs; and since Paris will always be the most adorable of
all countries, the country of joy, liberty, wit, pretty women, _mauvais
sujets_, and good wine; where the truncheon of authority never makes
itself disagreeably felt, because one is so close to those who wield
it,--we, therefore, sectaries of the god Mephistopheles, have engaged to
whitewash the public mind, to give fresh costumes to the actors, to put
a new plank or two in the government booth, to doctor doctrinaires,
and warm up old Republicans, to touch up the Bonapartists a bit, and
revictual the Centre; provided that we are allowed to laugh _in petto_
at both kings and peoples, to think one thing in the morning and another
at night, and to lead a merry life _a la_ Panurge, or to recline upon
soft cushions, _more orientali_.

“The sceptre of this burlesque and macaronic kingdom,” he went on, “we
have reserved for you; so we are taking you straightway to a dinner
given by the founder of the said newspaper, a retired banker, who, at a
loss to know what to do with his money, is going to buy some brains
with it. You will be welcomed as a brother, we shall hail you as king
of these free lances who will undertake anything; whose perspicacity
discovers the intentions of Austria, England, or Russia before either
Russia, Austria or England have formed any. Yes, we will invest you with
the sovereignty of those puissant intellects which give to the world its
Mirabeaus, Talleyrands, Pitts, and Metternichs--all the clever Crispins
who treat the destinies of a kingdom as gamblers’ stakes, just as
ordinary men play dominoes for _kirschenwasser_. We have given you out
to be the most undaunted champion who ever wrestled in a drinking-bout
at close quarters with the monster called Carousal, whom all bold
spirits wish to try a fall with; we have gone so far as to say that
you have never yet been worsted. I hope you will not make liars of us.
Taillefer, our amphitryon, has undertaken to surpass the circumscribed
saturnalias of the petty modern Lucullus. He is rich enough to infuse
pomp into trifles, and style and charm into dissipation... Are you
listening, Raphael?” asked the orator, interrupting himself.

“Yes,” answered the young man, less surprised by the accomplishment
of his wishes than by the natural manner in which the events had come
about.

He could not bring himself to believe in magic, but he marveled at the
accidents of human fate.

“Yes, you say, just as if you were thinking of your grandfather’s
demise,” remarked one of his neighbors.

“Ah!” cried Raphael, “I was thinking, my friends, that we are in a fair
way to become very great scoundrels,” and there was an ingenuousness in
his tones that set these writers, the hope of young France, in a roar.
“So far our blasphemies have been uttered over our cups; we have passed
our judgments on life while drunk, and taken men and affairs in an
after-dinner frame of mind. We were innocent of action; we were bold in
words. But now we are to be branded with the hot iron of politics;
we are going to enter the convict’s prison and to drop our illusions.
Although one has no belief left, except in the devil, one may regret
the paradise of one’s youth and the age of innocence, when we devoutly
offered the tip of our tongue to some good priest for the consecrated
wafer of the sacrament. Ah, my good friends, our first peccadilloes gave
us so much pleasure because the consequent remorse set them off and lent
a keen relish to them; but nowadays----”

“Oh! now,” said the first speaker, “there is still left----”

“What?” asked another.

“Crime----”

“There is a word as high as the gallows and deeper than the Seine,” said
Raphael.

“Oh, you don’t understand me; I mean political crime. Since this
morning, a conspirator’s life is the only one I covet. I don’t know that
the fancy will last over to-morrow, but to-night at least my gorge rises
at the anaemic life of our civilization and its railroad evenness. I am
seized with a passion for the miseries of retreat from Moscow, for the
excitements of the Red Corsair, or for a smuggler’s life. I should like
to go to Botany Bay, as we have no Chartreaux left us here in France;
it is a sort of infirmary reserved for little Lord Byrons who, having
crumpled up their lives like a serviette after dinner, have nothing left
to do but to set their country ablaze, blow their own brains out, plot
for a republic or clamor for a war----”

“Emile,” Raphael’s neighbor called eagerly to the speaker, “on my honor,
but for the revolution of July I would have taken orders, and gone off
down into the country somewhere to lead the life of an animal, and----”

“And you would have read your breviary through every day.”

“Yes.”

“You are a coxcomb!”

“Why, we read the newspapers as it is!”

“Not bad that, for a journalist! But hold your tongue, we are going
through a crowd of subscribers. Journalism, look you, is the religion of
modern society, and has even gone a little further.”

“What do you mean?”

“Its pontiffs are not obliged to believe in it any more than the people
are.”

Chatting thus, like good fellows who have known their _De Viris
illustribus_ for years past, they reached a mansion in the Rue Joubert.

Emile was a journalist who had acquired more reputation by dint of
doing nothing than others had derived from their achievements. A bold,
caustic, and powerful critic, he possessed all the qualities that his
defects permitted. An outspoken giber, he made numberless epigrams on
a friend to his face; but would defend him, if absent, with courage
and loyalty. He laughed at everything, even at his own career. Always
impecunious, he yet lived, like all men of his calibre, plunged in
unspeakable indolence. He would fling some word containing volumes
in the teeth of folk who could not put a syllable of sense into their
books. He lavished promises that he never fulfilled; he made a pillow of
his luck and reputation, on which he slept, and ran the risk of waking
up to old age in a workhouse. A steadfast friend to the gallows foot,
a cynical swaggerer with a child’s simplicity, a worker only from
necessity or caprice.

“In the language of Maitre Alcofribas, we are about to make a famous
_troncon de chiere lie_,” he remarked to Raphael as he pointed out the
flower-stands that made a perfumed forest of the staircase.

“I like a vestibule to be well warmed and richly carpeted,” Raphael
said. “Luxury in the peristyle is not common in France. I feel as if
life had begun anew here.”

“And up above we are going to drink and make merry once more, my dear
Raphael. Ah! yes,” he went on, “and I hope we are going to come off
conquerors, too, and walk over everybody else’s head.”

As he spoke, he jestingly pointed to the guests. They were entering
a large room which shone with gilding and lights, and there all the
younger men of note in Paris welcomed them. Here was one who had just
revealed fresh powers, his first picture vied with the glories of
Imperial art. There, another, who but yesterday had launched forth a
volume, an acrid book filled with a sort of literary arrogance, which
opened up new ways to the modern school. A sculptor, not far away, with
vigorous power visible in his rough features, was chatting with one of
those unenthusiastic scoffers who can either see excellence anywhere or
nowhere, as it happens. Here, the cleverest of our caricaturists,
with mischievous eyes and bitter tongue, lay in wait for epigrams to
translate into pencil strokes; there, stood the young and audacious
writer, who distilled the quintessence of political ideas better than
any other man, or compressed the work of some prolific writer as he held
him up to ridicule; he was talking with the poet whose works would
have eclipsed all the writings of the time if his ability had been as
strenuous as his hatreds. Both were trying not to say the truth while
they kept clear of lies, as they exchanged flattering speeches. A famous
musician administered soothing consolation in a rallying fashion, to
a young politician who had just fallen quite unhurt, from his rostrum.
Young writers who lacked style stood beside other young writers who
lacked ideas, and authors of poetical prose by prosaic poets.

At the sight of all these incomplete beings, a simple Saint Simonian,
ingenuous enough to believe in his own doctrine, charitably paired them
off, designing, no doubt, to convert them into monks of his order. A
few men of science mingled in the conversation, like nitrogen in the
atmosphere, and several _vaudevillistes_ shed rays like the sparking
diamonds that give neither light nor heat. A few paradox-mongers,
laughing up their sleeves at any folk who embraced their likes or
dislikes in men or affairs, had already begun a two-edged policy,
conspiring against all systems, without committing themselves to any
side. Then there was the self-appointed critic who admires nothing, and
will blow his nose in the middle of a _cavatina_ at the Bouffons, who
applauds before any one else begins, and contradicts every one who says
what he himself was about to say; he was there giving out the sayings
of wittier men for his own. Of all the assembled guests, a future lay
before some five; ten or so should acquire a fleeting renown; as for the
rest, like all mediocrities, they might apply to themselves the famous
falsehood of Louis XVIII., Union and oblivion.

The anxious jocularity of a man who is expending two thousand crowns sat
on their host. His eyes turned impatiently towards the door from time to
time, seeking one of his guests who kept him waiting. Very soon a stout
little person appeared, who was greeted by a complimentary murmur;
it was the notary who had invented the newspaper that very morning.
A valet-de-chambre in black opened the doors of a vast dining-room,
whither every one went without ceremony, and took his place at an
enormous table.

Raphael took a last look round the room before he left it. His wish had
been realized to the full. The rooms were adorned with silk and gold.
Countless wax tapers set in handsome candelabra lit up the slightest
details of gilded friezes, the delicate bronze sculpture, and the
splendid colors of the furniture. The sweet scent of rare flowers, set
in stands tastefully made of bamboo, filled the air. Everything, even
the curtains, was pervaded by elegance without pretension, and there was
a certain imaginative charm about it all which acted like a spell on the
mind of a needy man.

“An income of a hundred thousand livres a year is a very nice beginning
of the catechism, and a wonderful assistance to putting morality into
our actions,” he said, sighing. “Truly my sort of virtue can scarcely
go afoot, and vice means, to my thinking, a garret, a threadbare coat, a
gray hat in winter time, and sums owing to the porter.... I should like
to live in the lap of luxury a year, or six months, no matter! And then
afterwards, die. I should have known, exhausted, and consumed a thousand
lives, at any rate.”

“Why, you are taking the tone of a stockbroker in good luck,” said
Emile, who overheard him. “Pooh! your riches would be a burden to you as
soon as you found that they would spoil your chances of coming out above
the rest of us. Hasn’t the artist always kept the balance true between
the poverty of riches and the riches of poverty? And isn’t struggle a
necessity to some of us? Look out for your digestion, and only look,”
 he added, with a mock-heroic gesture, “at the majestic, thrice holy, and
edifying appearance of this amiable capitalist’s dining-room. That man
has in reality only made his money for our benefit. Isn’t he a kind of
sponge of the polyp order, overlooked by naturalists, which should be
carefully squeezed before he is left for his heirs to feed upon? There
is style, isn’t there, about those bas-reliefs that adorn the walls? And
the lustres, and the pictures, what luxury well carried out! If one may
believe those who envy him, or who know, or think they know, the origins
of his life, then this man got rid of a German and some others--his best
friend for one, and the mother of that friend, during the Revolution.
Could you house crimes under the venerable Taillefer’s silvering locks?
He looks to me a very worthy man. Only see how the silver sparkles, and
is every glittering ray like a stab of a dagger to him?... Let us go in,
one might as well believe in Mahomet. If common report speak truth, here
are thirty men of talent, and good fellows too, prepared to dine off the
flesh and blood of a whole family;... and here are we ourselves, a pair
of youngsters full of open-hearted enthusiasm, and we shall be partakers
in his guilt. I have a mind to ask our capitalist whether he is a
respectable character....”

“No, not now,” cried Raphael, “but when he is dead drunk, we shall have
had our dinner then.”

The two friends sat down laughing. First of all, by a glance more rapid
than a word, each paid his tribute of admiration to the splendid general
effect of the long table, white as a bank of freshly-fallen snow, with
its symmetrical line of covers, crowned with their pale golden rolls of
bread. Rainbow colors gleamed in the starry rays of light reflected by
the glass; the lights of the tapers crossed and recrossed each other
indefinitely; the dishes covered with their silver domes whetted both
appetite and curiosity.

Few words were spoken. Neighbors exchanged glances as the Maderia
circulated. Then the first course appeared in all its glory; it would
have done honor to the late Cambaceres, Brillat-Savarin would have
celebrated it. The wines of Bordeaux and Burgundy, white and red, were
royally lavished. This first part of the banquet might been compared in
every way to a rendering of some classical tragedy. The second act grew
a trifle noisier. Every guest had had a fair amount to drink, and had
tried various crus at this pleasure, so that as the remains of the
magnificent first course were removed, tumultuous discussions began;
a pale brow here and there began to flush, sundry noses took a purpler
hue, faces lit up, and eyes sparkled.

While intoxication was only dawning, the conversation did not overstep
the bounds of civility; but banter and bon mots slipped by degrees from
every tongue; and then slander began to rear its little snake’s heard,
and spoke in dulcet tones; a few shrewd ones here and there gave heed to
it, hoping to keep their heads. So the second course found their minds
somewhat heated. Every one ate as he spoke, spoke while he ate, and
drank without heeding the quantity of the liquor, the wine was so
biting, the bouquet so fragrant, the example around so infectious.
Taillefer made a point of stimulating his guests, and plied them with
the formidable wines of the Rhone, with fierce Tokay, and heady old
Roussillon.

The champagne, impatiently expected and lavishly poured out, was a
scourge of fiery sparks to these men; released like post-horses from
some mail-coach by a relay; they let their spirits gallop away into the
wilds of argument to which no one listened, began to tell stories which
had no auditors, and repeatedly asked questions to which no answer was
made. Only the loud voice of wassail could be heard, a voice made up
of a hundred confused clamors, which rose and grew like a crescendo of
Rossini’s. Insidious toasts, swagger, and challenges followed.

Each renounced any pride in his own intellectual capacity, in order to
vindicate that of hogsheads, casks, and vats; and each made noise enough
for two. A time came when the footmen smiled, while their masters all
talked at once. A philosopher would have been interested, doubtless, by
the singularity of the thoughts expressed, a politician would have been
amazed by the incongruity of the methods discussed in the melee of words
or doubtfully luminous paradoxes, where truths, grotesquely caparisoned,
met in conflict across the uproar of brawling judgments, of arbitrary
decisions and folly, much as bullets, shells, and grapeshot are hurled
across a battlefield.

It was at once a volume and a picture. Every philosophy, religion, and
moral code differing so greatly in every latitude, every government,
every great achievement of the human intellect, fell before a scythe as
long as Time’s own; and you might have found it hard to decide whether
it was wielded by Gravity intoxicated, or by Inebriation grown sober and
clear-sighted. Borne away by a kind of tempest, their minds, like the
sea raging against the cliffs, seemed ready to shake the laws which
confine the ebb and flow of civilization; unconsciously fulfilling the
will of God, who has suffered evil and good to abide in nature, and
reserved the secret of their continual strife to Himself. A frantic
travesty of debate ensued, a Walpurgis-revel of intellects. Between the
dreary jests of these children of the Revolution over the inauguration
of a newspaper, and the talk of the joyous gossips at Gargantua’s
birth, stretched the gulf that divides the nineteenth century from the
sixteenth. Laughingly they had begun the work of destruction, and our
journalists laughed amid the ruins.

“What is the name of that young man over there?” said the notary,
indicating Raphael. “I thought I heard some one call him Valentin.”

“What stuff is this?” said Emile, laughing; “plain Valentin, say you?
Raphael DE Valentin, if you please. We bear an eagle or, on a field
sable, with a silver crown, beak and claws gules, and a fine motto:
NON CECIDIT ANIMUS. We are no foundling child, but a descendant of the
Emperor Valens, of the stock of the Valentinois, founders of the cities
of Valence in France, and Valencia in Spain, rightful heirs to the
Empire of the East. If we suffer Mahmoud on the throne of Byzantium, it
is out of pure condescension, and for lack of funds and soldiers.”

With a fork flourished above Raphael’s head, Emile outlined a crown upon
it. The notary bethought himself a moment, but soon fell to drinking
again, with a gesture peculiar to himself; it was quite impossible,
it seemed to say to secure in his clientele the cities of Valence and
Byzantium, the Emperor Valens, Mahmoud, and the house of Valentinois.

“Should not the destruction of those ant-hills, Babylon, Tyre, Carthage,
and Venice, each crushed beneath the foot of a passing giant, serve as
a warning to man, vouchsafed by some mocking power?” said Claude Vignon,
who must play the Bossuet, as a sort of purchased slave, at the rate of
fivepence a line.

“Perhaps Moses, Sylla, Louis XI., Richelieu, Robespierre, and Napoleon
were but the same man who crosses our civilizations now and again, like
a comet across the sky,” said a disciple of Ballanche.

“Why try to fathom the designs of Providence?” said Canalis, maker of
ballads.

“Come, now,” said the man who set up for a critic, “there is nothing
more elastic in the world than your Providence.”

“Well, sir, Louis XIV. sacrificed more lives over digging the
foundations of the Maintenon’s aqueducts, than the Convention expended
in order to assess the taxes justly, to make one law for everybody, and
one nation of France, and to establish the rule of equal inheritance,”
 said Massol, whom the lack of a syllable before his name had made a
Republican.

“Are you going to leave our heads on our shoulders?” asked Moreau (of
the Oise), a substantial farmer. “You, sir, who took blood for wine just
now?”

“Where is the use? Aren’t the principles of social order worth some
sacrifices, sir?”

“Hi! Bixiou! What’s-his-name, the Republican, considers a landowner’s
head a sacrifice!” said a young man to his neighbor.

“Men and events count for nothing,” said the Republican, following out
his theory in spite of hiccoughs; “in politics, as in philosophy, there
are only principles and ideas.”

“What an abomination! Then you would ruthlessly put your friends to
death for a shibboleth?”

“Eh, sir! the man who feels compunction is your thorough scoundrel, for
he has some notion of virtue; while Peter the Great and the Duke of Alva
were embodied systems, and the pirate Monbard an organization.”

“But can’t society rid itself of your systems and organizations?” said
Canalis.

“Oh, granted!” cried the Republican.

“That stupid Republic of yours makes me feel queasy. We sha’n’t be able
to carve a capon in peace, because we shall find the agrarian law inside
it.”

“Ah, my little Brutus, stuffed with truffles, your principles are all
right enough. But you are like my valet, the rogue is so frightfully
possessed with a mania for property that if I left him to clean my
clothes after his fashion, he would soon clean me out.”

“Crass idiots!” replied the Republican, “you are for setting a nation
straight with toothpicks. To your way of thinking, justice is more
dangerous than thieves.”

“Oh, dear!” cried the attorney Deroches.

“Aren’t they a bore with their politics!” said the notary Cardot. “Shut
up. That’s enough of it. There is no knowledge nor virtue worth shedding
a drop of blood for. If Truth were brought into liquidation, we might
find her insolvent.”

“It would be much less trouble, no doubt, to amuse ourselves with evil,
rather than dispute about good. Moreover, I would give all the speeches
made for forty years past at the Tribune for a trout, for one of
Perrault’s tales or Charlet’s sketches.”

“Quite right!... Hand me the asparagus. Because, after all, liberty
begets anarchy, anarchy leads to despotism, and despotism back again
to liberty. Millions have died without securing a triumph for any one
system. Is not that the vicious circle in which the whole moral world
revolves? Man believes that he has reached perfection, when in fact he
has but rearranged matters.”

“Oh! oh!” cried Cursy, the _vaudevilliste_; “in that case, gentlemen,
here’s to Charles X., the father of liberty.”

“Why not?” asked Emile. “When law becomes despotic, morals are relaxed,
and vice versa.

“Let us drink to the imbecility of authority, which gives us such an
authority over imbeciles!” said the good banker.

“Napoleon left us glory, at any rate, my good friend!” exclaimed a naval
officer who had never left Brest.

“Glory is a poor bargain; you buy it dear, and it will not keep.
Does not the egotism of the great take the form of glory, just as for
nobodies it is their own well-being?”

“You are very fortunate, sir----”

“The first inventor of ditches must have been a weakling, for society
is only useful to the puny. The savage and the philosopher, at either
extreme of the moral scale, hold property in equal horror.”

“All very fine!” said Cardot; “but if there were no property, there
would be no documents to draw up.”

“These green peas are excessively delicious!”

“And the _cure_ was found dead in his bed in the morning....”

“Who is talking about death? Pray don’t trifle, I have an uncle.”

“Could you bear his loss with resignation?”

“No question.”

“Gentlemen, listen to me! _How to kill an uncle_. Silence! (Cries of
“Hush! hush!”) In the first place, take an uncle, large and stout,
seventy years old at least, they are the best uncles. (Sensation.) Get
him to eat a pate de foie gras, any pretext will do.”

“Ah, but my uncle is a thin, tall man, and very niggardly and
abstemious.”

“That sort of uncle is a monster; he misappropriates existence.”

“Then,” the speaker on uncles went on, “tell him, while he is digesting
it, that his banker has failed.”

“How if he bears up?”

“Let loose a pretty girl on him.”

“And if----?” asked the other, with a shake of the head.

“Then he wouldn’t be an uncle--an uncle is a gay dog by nature.”

“Malibran has lost two notes in her voice.”

“No, sir, she has not.”

“Yes, sir, she has.”

“Oh, ho! No and yes, is not that the sum-up of all religious, political,
or literary dissertations? Man is a clown dancing on the edge of an
abyss.”

“You would make out that I am a fool.”

“On the contrary, you cannot make me out.”

“Education, there’s a pretty piece of tomfoolery. M. Heineffettermach
estimates the number of printed volumes at more than a thousand
millions; and a man cannot read more than a hundred and fifty thousand
in his lifetime. So, just tell me what that word _education_ means. For
some it consists in knowing the name of Alexander’s horse, of the dog
Berecillo, of the Seigneur d’Accords, and in ignorance of the man to
whom we owe the discovery of rafting and the manufacture of porcelain.
For others it is the knowledge how to burn a will and live respected, be
looked up to and popular, instead of stealing a watch with half-a-dozen
aggravating circumstances, after a previous conviction, and so
perishing, hated and dishonored, in the Place de Greve.”

“Will Nathan’s work live?”

“He has very clever collaborators, sir.”

“Or Canalis?”

“He is a great man; let us say no more about him.”

“You are all drunk!”

“The consequence of a Constitution is the immediate stultification of
intellects. Art, science, public works, everything, is consumed by a
horribly egoistic feeling, the leprosy of the time. Three hundred of
your bourgeoisie, set down on benches, will only think of planting
poplars. Tyranny does great things lawlessly, while Liberty will
scarcely trouble herself to do petty ones lawfully.”

“Your reciprocal instruction will turn out counters in human flesh,”
 broke in an Absolutist. “All individuality will disappear in a people
brought to a dead level by education.”

“For all that, is not the aim of society to secure happiness to each
member of it?” asked the Saint-Simonian.

“If you had an income of fifty thousand livres, you would not think much
about the people. If you are smitten with a tender passion for the race,
go to Madagascar; there you will find a nice little nation all ready to
Saint-Simonize, classify, and cork up in your phials, but here every one
fits into his niche like a peg in a hole. A porter is a porter, and a
blockhead is a fool, without a college of fathers to promote them to
those positions.”

“You are a Carlist.”

“And why not? Despotism pleases me; it implies a certain contempt for
the human race. I have no animosity against kings, they are so amusing.
Is it nothing to sit enthroned in a room, at a distance of thirty
million leagues from the sun?”

“Let us once more take a broad view of civilization,” said the man of
learning who, for the benefit of the inattentive sculptor, had opened a
discussion on primitive society and autochthonous races. “The vigor of a
nation in its origin was in a way physical, unitary, and crude; then as
aggregations increased, government advanced by a decomposition of the
primitive rule, more or less skilfully managed. For example, in remote
ages national strength lay in theocracy, the priest held both sword and
censer; a little later there were two priests, the pontiff and the king.
To-day our society, the latest word of civilization, has distributed
power according to the number of combinations, and we come to the forces
called business, thought, money, and eloquence. Authority thus divided
is steadily approaching a social dissolution, with interest as its one
opposing barrier. We depend no longer on either religion or physical
force, but upon intellect. Can a book replace the sword? Can discussion
be a substitute for action? That is the question.”

“Intellect has made an end of everything,” cried the Carlist. “Come now!
Absolute freedom has brought about national suicides; their triumph left
them as listless as an English millionaire.”

“Won’t you tell us something new? You have made fun of authority of all
sorts to-day, which is every bit as vulgar as denying the existence of
God. So you have no belief left, and the century is like an old Sultan
worn out by debauchery! Your Byron, in short, sings of crime and its
emotions in a final despair of poetry.”

“Don’t you know,” replied Bianchon, quite drunk by this time, “that
a dose of phosphorus more or less makes the man of genius or the
scoundrel, a clever man or an idiot, a virtuous person or a criminal?”

“Can any one treat of virtue thus?” cried Cursy. “Virtue, the subject of
every drama at the theatre, the denoument of every play, the foundation
of every court of law....”

“Be quiet, you ass. You are an Achilles for virtue, without his heel,”
 said Bixiou.

“Some drink!”

“What will you bet that I will drink a bottle of champagne like a flash,
at one pull?”

“What a flash of wit!”

“Drunk as lords,” muttered a young man gravely, trying to give some wine
to his waistcoat.

“Yes, sir; real government is the art of ruling by public opinion.”

“Opinion? That is the most vicious jade of all. According to you
moralists and politicians, the laws you set up are always to go before
those of nature, and opinion before conscience. You are right and wrong
both. Suppose society bestows down pillows on us, that benefit is made
up for by the gout; and justice is likewise tempered by red-tape, and
colds accompany cashmere shawls.”

“Wretch!” Emile broke in upon the misanthrope, “how can you slander
civilization here at table, up to the eyes in wines and exquisite
dishes? Eat away at that roebuck with the gilded horns and feet, and do
not carp at your mother...”

“Is it any fault of mine if Catholicism puts a million deities in a sack
of flour, that Republics will end in a Napoleon, that monarchy dwells
between the assassination of Henry IV. and the trial of Louis XVI., and
Liberalism produces Lafayettes?”

“Didn’t you embrace him in July?”

“No.”

“Then hold your tongue, you sceptic.”

“Sceptics are the most conscientious of men.”

“They have no conscience.”

“What are you saying? They have two apiece at least!”

“So you want to discount heaven, a thoroughly commercial notion. Ancient
religions were but the unchecked development of physical pleasure, but
we have developed a soul and expectations; some advance has been made.”

“What can you expect, my friends, of a century filled with politics
to repletion?” asked Nathan. “What befell _The History of the King of
Bohemia and his Seven Castles_, a most entrancing conception?...”

“I say,” the would-be critic cried down the whole length of the table.
“The phrases might have been drawn at hap-hazard from a hat, ‘twas a
work written ‘down to Charenton.’”

“You are a fool!”

“And you are a rogue!”

“Oh! oh!”

“Ah! ah!”

“They are going to fight.”

“No, they aren’t.”

“You will find me to-morrow, sir.”

“This very moment,” Nathan answered.

“Come, come, you pair of fire-eaters!”

“You are another!” said the prime mover in the quarrel.

“Ah, I can’t stand upright, perhaps?” asked the pugnacious Nathan,
straightening himself up like a stag-beetle about to fly.

He stared stupidly round the table, then, completely exhausted by the
effort, sank back into his chair, and mutely hung his head.

“Would it not have been nice,” the critic said to his neighbor, “to
fight about a book I have neither read nor seen?”

“Emile, look out for your coat; your neighbor is growing pale,” said
Bixiou.

“Kant? Yet another ball flung out for fools to sport with, sir!
Materialism and spiritualism are a fine pair of battledores with which
charlatans in long gowns keep a shuttlecock a-going. Suppose that God
is everywhere, as Spinoza says, or that all things proceed from God, as
says St. Paul... the nincompoops, the door shuts or opens, but isn’t the
movement the same? Does the fowl come from the egg, or the egg from the
fowl?... Just hand me some duck... and there, you have all science.”

“Simpleton!” cried the man of science, “your problem is settled by
fact!”

“What fact?”

“Professors’ chairs were not made for philosophy, but philosophy for the
professors’ chairs. Put on a pair of spectacles and read the budget.”

“Thieves!”

“Nincompoops!”

“Knaves!”

“Gulls!”

“Where but in Paris will you find such a ready and rapid exchange of
thought?” cried Bixiou in a deep, bass voice.

“Bixiou! Act a classical farce for us! Come now.”

“Would you like me to depict the nineteenth century?”

“Silence.”

“Pay attention.”

“Clap a muffle on your trumpets.”

“Shut up, you Turk!”

“Give him some wine, and let that fellow keep quiet.”

“Now, then, Bixiou!”

The artist buttoned his black coat to the collar, put on yellow gloves,
and began to burlesque the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ by acting a squinting
old lady; but the uproar drowned his voice, and no one heard a word of
the satire. Still, if he did not catch the spirit of the century, he
represented the _Revue_ at any rate, for his own intentions were not
very clear to him.

Dessert was served as if by magic. A huge epergne of gilded bronze
from Thomire’s studio overshadowed the table. Tall statuettes, which a
celebrated artist had endued with ideal beauty according to conventional
European notions, sustained and carried pyramids of strawberries, pines,
fresh dates, golden grapes, clear-skinned peaches, oranges brought
from Setubal by steamer, pomegranates, Chinese fruit; in short, all
the surprises of luxury, miracles of confectionery, the most tempting
dainties, and choicest delicacies. The coloring of this epicurean work
of art was enhanced by the splendors of porcelain, by sparkling outlines
of gold, by the chasing of the vases. Poussin’s landscapes, copied
on Sevres ware, were crowned with graceful fringes of moss, green,
translucent, and fragile as ocean weeds.

The revenue of a German prince would not have defrayed the cost of this
arrogant display. Silver and mother-of-pearl, gold and crystal, were
lavished afresh in new forms; but scarcely a vague idea of this almost
Oriental fairyland penetrated eyes now heavy with wine, or crossed the
delirium of intoxication. The fire and fragrance of the wines acted like
potent philters and magical fumes, producing a kind of mirage in the
brain, binding feet, and weighing down hands. The clamor increased.
Words were no longer distinct, glasses flew in pieces, senseless peals
of laughter broke out. Cursy snatched up a horn and struck up a flourish
on it. It acted like a signal given by the devil. Yells, hisses, songs,
cries, and groans went up from the maddened crew. You might have smiled
to see men, light-hearted by nature, grow tragical as Crebillon’s
dramas, and pensive as a sailor in a coach. Hard-headed men blabbed
secrets to the inquisitive, who were long past heeding them. Saturnine
faces were wreathed in smiles worthy of a pirouetting dancer. Claude
Vignon shuffled about like a bear in a cage. Intimate friends began to
fight.

Animal likenesses, so curiously traced by physiologists in human faces,
came out in gestures and behavior. A book lay open for a Bichat if he
had repaired thither fasting and collected. The master of the house,
knowing his condition, did not dare stir, but encouraged his guests’
extravangances with a fixed grimacing smile, meant to be hospitable and
appropriate. His large face, turning from blue and red to a purple shade
terrible to see, partook of the general commotion by movements like the
heaving and pitching of a brig.

“Now, did you murder them?” Emile asked him.

“Capital punishment is going to be abolished, they say, in favor of
the Revolution of July,” answered Taillefer, raising his eyebrows with
drunken sagacity.

“Don’t they rise up before you in dreams at times?” Raphael persisted.

“There’s a statute of limitations,” said the murderer-Croesus.

“And on his tombstone,” Emile began, with a sardonic laugh, “the
stonemason will carve ‘Passer-by, accord a tear, in memory of one that’s
here!’ Oh,” he continued, “I would cheerfully pay a hundred sous to
any mathematician who would prove the existence of hell to me by an
algebraical equation.”

He flung up a coin and cried:

“Heads for the existence of God!”

“Don’t look!” Raphael cried, pouncing upon it. “Who knows? Suspense is
so pleasant.”

“Unluckily,” Emile said, with burlesque melancholy, “I can see no
halting-place between the unbeliever’s arithmetic and the papal _Pater
noster_. Pshaw! let us drink. _Trinq_ was, I believe, the oracular
answer of the _dive bouteille_ and the final conclusion of Pantagruel.”

“We owe our arts and monuments to the _Pater noster_, and our knowledge,
too, perhaps; and a still greater benefit--modern government--whereby a
vast and teeming society is wondrously represented by some five hundred
intellects. It neutralizes opposing forces and gives free play to
_Civilization_, that Titan queen who has succeeded the ancient terrible
figure of the _King_, that sham Providence, reared by man between
himself and heaven. In the face of such achievements, atheism seems like
a barren skeleton. What do you say?”

“I am thinking of the seas of blood shed by Catholicism.” Emile replied,
quite unimpressed. “It has drained our hearts and veins dry to make a
mimic deluge. No matter! Every man who thinks must range himself beneath
the banner of Christ, for He alone has consummated the triumph of spirit
over matter; He alone has revealed to us, like a poet, an intermediate
world that separates us from the Deity.”

“Believest thou?” asked Raphael with an unaccountable drunken smile.
“Very good; we must not commit ourselves; so we will drink the
celebrated toast, _Diis ignotis_!”

And they drained the chalice filled up with science, carbonic acid gas,
perfumes, poetry, and incredulity.

“If the gentlemen will go to the drawing-room, coffee is ready for
them,” said the major-domo.

There was scarcely one of those present whose mind was not floundering
by this time in the delights of chaos, where every spark of intelligence
is quenched, and the body, set free from its tyranny, gives itself up
to the frenetic joys of liberty. Some who had arrived at the apogee of
intoxication were dejected, as they painfully tried to arrest a single
thought which might assure them of their own existence; others, deep in
the heavy morasses of indigestion, denied the possibility of movement.
The noisy and the silent were oddly assorted.

For all that, when new joys were announced to them by the stentorian
tones of the servant, who spoke on his master’s behalf, they all rose,
leaning upon, dragging or carrying one another. But on the threshold
of the room the entire crew paused for a moment, motionless, as if
fascinated. The intemperate pleasures of the banquet seemed to fade away
at this titillating spectacle, prepared by their amphitryon to appeal to
the most sensual of their instincts.

Beneath the shining wax-lights in a golden chandelier, round about a
table inlaid with gilded metal, a group of women, whose eyes shone
like diamonds, suddenly met the stupefied stare of the revelers. Their
toilettes were splendid, but less magnificent than their beauty, which
eclipsed the other marvels of this palace. A light shone from their
eyes, bewitching as those of sirens, more brilliant and ardent than the
blaze that streamed down upon the snowy marble, the delicately carved
surfaces of bronze, and lit up the satin sheen of the tapestry. The
contrasts of their attitudes and the slight movements of their heads,
each differing in character and nature of attraction, set the heart
afire. It was like a thicket, where blossoms mingled with rubies,
sapphires, and coral; a combination of gossamer scarves that flickered
like beacon-lights; of black ribbons about snowy throats; of gorgeous
turbans and demurely enticing apparel. It was a seraglio that appealed
to every eye, and fulfilled every fancy. Each form posed to admiration
was scarcely concealed by the folds of cashmere, and half hidden, half
revealed by transparent gauze and diaphanous silk. The little slender
feet were eloquent, though the fresh red lips uttered no sound.

Demure and fragile-looking girls, pictures of maidenly innocence, with
a semblance of conventional unction about their heads, were there like
apparitions that a breath might dissipate. Aristocratic beauties with
haughty glances, languid, flexible, slender, and complaisant, bent their
heads as though there were royal protectors still in the market. An
English-woman seemed like a spirit of melancholy--some coy, pale,
shadowy form among Ossian’s mists, or a type of remorse flying from
crime. The Parisienne was not wanting in all her beauty that consists
in an indescribable charm; armed with her irresistible weakness, vain of
her costume and her wit, pliant and hard, a heartless, passionless siren
that yet can create factitious treasures of passion and counterfeit
emotion.

Italians shone in the throng, serene and self-possessed in their bliss;
handsome Normans, with splendid figures; women of the south, with black
hair and well-shaped eyes. Lebel might have summoned together all the
fair women of Versailles, who since morning had perfected all their
wiles, and now came like a troupe of Oriental women, bidden by the slave
merchant to be ready to set out at dawn. They stood disconcerted and
confused about the table, huddled together in a murmuring group
like bees in a hive. The combination of timid embarrassment with
coquettishness and a sort of expostulation was the result either of
calculated effect or a spontaneous modesty. Perhaps a sentiment of which
women are never utterly divested prescribed to them the cloak of modesty
to heighten and enhance the charms of wantonness. So the venerable
Taillefer’s designs seemed on the point of collapse, for these unbridled
natures were subdued from the very first by the majesty with which woman
is invested. There was a murmur of admiration, which vibrated like a
soft musical note. Wine had not taken love for traveling companion;
instead of a violent tumult of passions, the guests thus taken by
surprise, in a moment of weakness, gave themselves up to luxurious
raptures of delight.

Artists obeyed the voice of poetry which constrains them, and studied
with pleasure the different delicate tints of these chosen examples of
beauty. Sobered by a thought perhaps due to some emanation from a
bubble of carbonic acid in the champagne, a philosopher shuddered at the
misfortunes which had brought these women, once perhaps worthy of the
truest devotion, to this. Each one doubtless could have unfolded a cruel
tragedy. Infernal tortures followed in the train of most of them, and
they drew after them faithless men, broken vows, and pleasures atoned
for in wretchedness. Polite advances were made by the guests, and
conversations began, as varied in character as the speakers. They broke
up into groups. It might have been a fashionable drawing-room where
ladies and young girls offer after dinner the assistance that coffee,
liqueurs, and sugar afford to diners who are struggling in the toils
of a perverse digestion. But in a little while laughter broke out,
the murmur grew, and voices were raised. The saturnalia, subdued for a
moment, threatened at times to renew itself. The alternations of sound
and silence bore a distant resemblance to a symphony of Beethoven’s.

The two friends, seated on a silken divan, were first approached by
a tall, well-proportioned girl of stately bearing; her features were
irregular, but her face was striking and vehement in expression, and
impressed the mind by the vigor of its contrasts. Her dark hair fell
in luxuriant curls, with which some hand seemed to have played havoc
already, for the locks fell lightly over the splendid shoulders that
thus attracted attention. The long brown curls half hid her queenly
throat, though where the light fell upon it, the delicacy of its fine
outlines was revealed. Her warm and vivid coloring was set off by the
dead white of her complexion. Bold and ardent glances came from under
the long eyelashes; the damp, red, half-open lips challenged a kiss. Her
frame was strong but compliant; with a bust and arms strongly developed,
as in figures drawn by the Caracci, she yet seemed active and elastic,
with a panther’s strength and suppleness, and in the same way the
energetic grace of her figure suggested fierce pleasures.

But though she might romp perhaps and laugh, there was something
terrible in her eyes and her smile. Like a pythoness possessed by the
demon, she inspired awe rather than pleasure. All changes, one after
another, flashed like lightning over every mobile feature of her face.
She might captivate a jaded fancy, but a young man would have feared
her. She was like some colossal statue fallen from the height of a Greek
temple, so grand when seen afar, too roughly hewn to be seen anear.
And yet, in spite of all, her terrible beauty could have stimulated
exhaustion; her voice might charm the deaf; her glances might put life
into the bones of the dead; and therefore Emile was vaguely reminded of
one of Shakespeare’s tragedies--a wonderful maze, in which joy
groans, and there is something wild even about love, and the magic of
forgiveness and the warmth of happiness succeed to cruel storms of rage.
She was a siren that can both kiss and devour; laugh like a devil, or
weep as angels can. She could concentrate in one instant all a woman’s
powers of attraction in a single effort (the sighs of melancholy and
the charms of maiden’s shyness alone excepted), then in a moment rise
in fury like a nation in revolt, and tear herself, her passion, and her
lover, in pieces.

Dressed in red velvet, she trampled under her reckless feet the stray
flowers fallen from other heads, and held out a salver to the two
friends, with careless hands. The white arms stood out in bold relief
against the velvet. Proud of her beauty; proud (who knows?) of her
corruption, she stood like a queen of pleasure, like an incarnation of
enjoyment; the enjoyment that comes of squandering the accumulations of
three generations; that scoffs at its progenitors, and makes merry over
a corpse; that will dissolve pearls and wreck thrones, turn old men into
boys, and make young men prematurely old; enjoyment only possible to
giants weary of their power, tormented by reflection, or for whom strife
has become a plaything.

“What is your name?” asked Raphael.

“Aquilina.”

“Out of _Venice Preserved_!” exclaimed Emile.

“Yes,” she answered. “Just as a pope takes a new name when he is exalted
above all other men, I, too, took another name when I raised myself
above women’s level.”

“Then have you, like your patron saint, a terrible and noble lover, a
conspirator, who would die for you?” cried Emile eagerly--this gleam of
poetry had aroused his interest.

“Once I had,” she answered. “But I had a rival too in La Guillotine. I
have worn something red about me ever since, lest any happiness should
carry me away.”

“Oh, if you are going to get her on to the story of those four lads
of La Rochelle, she will never get to the end of it. That’s enough,
Aquilina. As if every woman could not bewail some lover or other, though
not every one has the luck to lose him on the scaffold, as you have
done. I would a great deal sooner see a lover of mine in a trench at the
back of Clamart than in a rival’s arms.”

All this in the gentlest and most melodious accents, and pronounced by
the prettiest, gentlest, and most innocent-looking little person that
a fairy wand ever drew from an enchanted eggshell. She had come
up noiselessly, and they became aware of a slender, dainty figure,
charmingly timid blue eyes, and white transparent brows. No ingenue
among the naiads, a truant from her river spring, could have been shyer,
whiter, more ingenuous than this young girl, seemingly about sixteen
years old, ignorant of evil and of the storms of life, and fresh from
some church in which she must have prayed the angels to call her to
heaven before the time. Only in Paris are such natures as this to be
found, concealing depths of depravity behind a fair mask, and the most
artificial vices beneath a brow as young and fair as an opening flower.

At first the angelic promise of those soft lineaments misled the
friends. Raphael and Emile took the coffee which she poured into the
cups brought by Aquilina, and began to talk with her. In the eyes of the
two poets she soon became transformed into some sombre allegory, of
I know not what aspect of human life. She opposed to the vigorous
and ardent expression of her commanding acquaintance a revelation
of heartless corruption and voluptuous cruelty. Heedless enough to
perpetrate a crime, hardy enough to feel no misgivings; a pitiless demon
that wrings larger and kinder natures with torments that it is incapable
of knowing, that simpers over a traffic in love, sheds tears over a
victim’s funeral, and beams with joy over the reading of the will.
A poet might have admired the magnificent Aquilina; but the winning
Euphrasia must be repulsive to every one--the first was the soul of sin;
the second, sin without a soul in it.

“I should dearly like to know,” Emile remarked to this pleasing being,
“if you ever reflect upon your future?”

“My future!” she answered with a laugh. “What do you mean by my future?
Why should I think about something that does not exist as yet? I never
look before or behind. Isn’t one day at a time more than I can concern
myself with as it is? And besides, the future, as we know, means the
hospital.”

“How can you forsee a future in the hospital, and make no effort to
avert it?”

“What is there so alarming about the hospital?” asked the terrific
Aquilina. “When we are neither wives nor mothers, when old age draws
black stockings over our limbs, sets wrinkles on our brows, withers up
the woman in us, and darkens the light in our lover’s eyes, what could
we need when that comes to pass? You would look on us then as mere
human clay; we with our habiliments shall be for you like so much
mud--worthless, lifeless, crumbling to pieces, going about with the
rustle of dead leaves. Rags or the daintiest finery will be as one to us
then; the ambergris of the boudoir will breathe an odor of death and dry
bones; and suppose there is a heart there in that mud, not one of you
but would make mock of it, not so much as a memory will you spare to
us. Is not our existence precisely the same whether we live in a fine
mansion with lap-dogs to tend, or sort rags in a workhouse? Does it make
much difference whether we shall hide our gray heads beneath lace or a
handkerchief striped with blue and red; whether we sweep a crossing with
a birch broom, or the steps of the Tuileries with satins; whether we sit
beside a gilded hearth, or cower over the ashes in a red earthen pot;
whether we go to the Opera or look on in the Place de Greve?”

“_Aquilina mia_, you have never shown more sense than in this depressing
fit of yours,” Euphrasia remarked. “Yes, cashmere, _point d’Alencon_,
perfumes, gold, silks, luxury, everything that sparkles, everything
pleasant, belongs to youth alone. Time alone may show us our folly, but
good fortune will acquit us. You are laughing at me,” she went on, with
a malicious glance at the friends; “but am I not right? I would sooner
die of pleasure than of illness. I am not afflicted with a mania for
perpetuity, nor have I a great veneration for human nature, such as God
has made it. Give me millions, and I would squander them; I should not
keep one centime for the year to come. Live to be charming and have
power, that is the decree of my every heartbeat. Society sanctions my
life; does it not pay for my extravagances? Why does Providence pay me
every morning my income, which I spend every evening? Why are hospitals
built for us? And Providence did not put good and evil on either hand
for us to select what tires and pains us. I should be very foolish if I
did not amuse myself.”

“And how about others?” asked Emile.

“Others? Oh, well, they must manage for themselves. I prefer laughing
at their woes to weeping over my own. I defy any man to give me the
slightest uneasiness.”

“What have you suffered to make you think like this?” asked Raphael.

“I myself have been forsaken for an inheritance,” she said, striking an
attitude that displayed all her charms; “and yet I had worked night and
day to keep my lover! I am not to be gulled by any smile or vow, and I
have set myself to make one long entertainment of my life.”

“But does not happiness come from the soul within?” cried Raphael.

“It may be so,” Aquilina answered; “but is it nothing to be conscious of
admiration and flattery; to triumph over other women, even over the most
virtuous, humiliating them before our beauty and our splendor? Not only
so; one day of our life is worth ten years of a bourgeoise existence,
and so it is all summed up.”

“Is not a woman hateful without virtue?” Emile said to Raphael.

Euphrasia’s glance was like a viper’s, as she said, with an irony in her
voice that cannot be rendered:

“Virtue! we leave that to deformity and to ugly women. What would the
poor things be without it?”

“Hush, be quiet,” Emile broke in. “Don’t talk about something you have
never known.”

“That I have never known!” Euphrasia answered. “You give yourself for
life to some person you abominate; you must bring up children who will
neglect you, who wound your very heart, and you must say, ‘Thank you!’
for it; and these are the virtues you prescribe to woman. And that is
not enough. By way of requiting her self-denial, you must come and
add to her sorrows by trying to lead her astray; and though you are
rebuffed, she is compromised. A nice life! How far better to keep one’s
freedom, to follow one’s inclinations in love, and die young!”

“Have you no fear of the price to be paid some day for all this?”

“Even then,” she said, “instead of mingling pleasures and troubles, my
life will consist of two separate parts--a youth of happiness is secure,
and there may come a hazy, uncertain old age, during which I can suffer
at my leisure.”

“She has never loved,” came in the deep tones of Aquilina’s voice. “She
never went a hundred leagues to drink in one look and a denial with
untold raptures. She has not hung her own life on a thread, nor tried
to stab more than one man to save her sovereign lord, her king, her
divinity.... Love, for her, meant a fascinating colonel.”

“Here she is with her La Rochelle,” Euphrasia made answer. “Love comes
like the wind, no one knows whence. And, for that matter, if one of
those brutes had once fallen in love with you, you would hold sensible
men in horror.”

“Brutes are put out of the question by the Code,” said the tall,
sarcastic Aquilina.

“I thought you had more kindness for the army,” laughed Euphrasia.

“How happy they are in their power of dethroning their reason in this
way,” Raphael exclaimed.

“Happy?” asked Aquilina, with dreadful look, and a smile full of pity
and terror. “Ah, you do not know what it is to be condemned to a life of
pleasure, with your dead hidden in your heart....”

A moment’s consideration of the rooms was like a foretaste of Milton’s
Pandemonium. The faces of those still capable of drinking wore a hideous
blue tint, from burning draughts of punch. Mad dances were kept up with
wild energy; excited laughter and outcries broke out like the explosion
of fireworks. The boudoir and a small adjoining room were strewn like
a battlefield with the insensible and incapable. Wine, pleasure,
and dispute had heated the atmosphere. Wine and love, delirium and
unconsciousness possessed them, and were written upon all faces, upon
the furniture; were expressed by the surrounding disorder, and brought
light films over the vision of those assembled, so that the air seemed
full of intoxicating vapor. A glittering dust arose, as in the luminous
paths made by a ray of sunlight, the most bizarre forms flitted through
it, grotesque struggles were seen athwart it. Groups of interlaced
figures blended with the white marbles, the noble masterpieces of
sculpture that adorned the rooms.

Though the two friends yet preserved a sort of fallacious clearness
in their ideas and voices, a feeble appearance and faint thrill of
animation, it was yet almost impossible to distinguish what was real
among the fantastic absurdities before them, or what foundation there
was for the impossible pictures that passed unceasingly before their
weary eyes. The strangest phenomena of dreams beset them, the lowering
heavens, the fervid sweetness caught by faces in our visions, and
unheard-of agility under a load of chains,--all these so vividly, that
they took the pranks of the orgy about them for the freaks of some
nightmare in which all movement is silent, and cries never reach
the ear. The valet de chambre succeeded just then, after some little
difficulty, in drawing his master into the ante-chamber to whisper to
him:

“The neighbors are all at their windows, complaining of the racket,
sir.”

“If noise alarms them, why don’t they lay down straw before their
doors?” was Taillefer’s rejoinder.

Raphael’s sudden burst of laughter was so unseasonable and abrupt, that
his friend demanded the reason of his unseemly hilarity.

“You will hardly understand me,” he replied. “In the first place, I must
admit that you stopped me on the Quai Voltaire just as I was about to
throw myself into the Seine, and you would like to know, no doubt, my
motives for dying. And when I proceed to tell you that by an almost
miraculous chance the most poetic memorials of the material world had
but just then been summed up for me as a symbolical interpretation of
human wisdom; whilst at this minute the remains of all the intellectual
treasures ravaged by us at table are comprised in these two women, the
living and authentic types of folly, would you be any the wiser? Our
profound apathy towards men and things supplied the half-tones in a
crudely contrasted picture of two theories of life so diametrically
opposed. If you were not drunk, you might perhaps catch a gleam of
philosophy in this.”

“And if you had not both feet on that fascinating Aquilina, whose
heavy breathing suggests an analogy with the sounds of a storm about
to burst,” replied Emile, absently engaged in the harmless amusement of
winding and unwinding Euphrasia’s hair, “you would be ashamed of your
inebriated garrulity. Both your systems can be packed in a phrase, and
reduced to a single idea. The mere routine of living brings a stupid
kind of wisdom with it, by blunting our intelligence with work; and on
the other hand, a life passed in the limbo of the abstract or in the
abysses of the moral world, produces a sort of wisdom run mad. The
conditions may be summed up in brief; we may extinguish emotion, and so
live to old age, or we may choose to die young as martyrs to contending
passions. And yet this decree is at variance with the temperaments with
which we were endowed by the bitter jester who modeled all creatures.”

“Idiot!” Raphael burst in. “Go on epitomizing yourself after that
fashion, and you will fill volumes. If I attempted to formulate those
two ideas clearly, I might as well say that man is corrupted by the
exercise of his wits, and purified by ignorance. You are calling the
whole fabric of society to account. But whether we live with the wise
or perish with the fool, isn’t the result the same sooner or later? And
have not the prime constituents of the quintessence of both systems been
before expressed in a couple of words--_Carymary_, _Carymara_.”

“You make me doubt the existence of a God, for your stupidity is greater
than His power,” said Emile. “Our beloved Rabelais summed it all up in
a shorter word than your ‘_Carymary_, _Carymara_’; from his _Peut-etre_
Montaigne derived his own _Que sais-je_? After all, this last word of
moral science is scarcely more than the cry of Pyrrhus set betwixt good
and evil, or Buridan’s ass between the two measures of oats. But let
this everlasting question alone, resolved to-day by a ‘Yes’ and a ‘No.’
What experience did you look to find by a jump into the Seine? Were you
jealous of the hydraulic machine on the Pont Notre Dame?”

“Ah, if you but knew my history!”

“Pooh,” said Emile; “I did not think you could be so commonplace; that
remark is hackneyed. Don’t you know that every one of us claims to have
suffered as no other ever did?”

“Ah!” Raphael sighed.

“What a mountebank art thou with thy ‘Ah’! Look here, now. Does some
disease of the mind or body, by contracting your muscles, bring back
of a morning the wild horses that tear you in pieces at night, as with
Damiens once upon a time? Were you driven to sup off your own dog in a
garret, uncooked and without salt? Have your children ever cried, ‘I am
hungry’? Have you sold your mistress’ hair to hazard the money at play?
Have you ever drawn a sham bill of exchange on a fictitious uncle at a
sham address, and feared lest you should not be in time to take it up?
Come now, I am attending! If you were going to drown yourself for some
woman, or by way of a protest, or out of sheer dulness, I disown you.
Make your confession, and no lies! I don’t at all want a historical
memoir. And, above all things, be as concise as your clouded intellect
permits; I am as critical as a professor, and as sleepy as a woman at
her vespers.”

“You silly fool!” said Raphael. “When has not suffering been keener for
a more susceptible nature? Some day when science has attained to a pitch
that enables us to study the natural history of hearts, when they
are named and classified in genera, sub-genera, and families; into
crustaceae, fossils, saurians, infusoria, or whatever it is,--then, my
dear fellow, it will be ascertained that there are natures as tender
and fragile as flowers, that are broken by the slight bruises that some
stony hearts do not even feel----”

“For pity’s sake, spare me thy exordium,” said Emile, as, half
plaintive, half amused, he took Raphael’s hand.



II. A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART


After a moment’s silence, Raphael said with a careless gesture:

“Perhaps it is an effect of the fumes of punch--I really cannot
tell--this clearness of mind that enables me to comprise my whole
life in a single picture, where figures and hues, lights, shades, and
half-tones are faithfully rendered. I should not have been so surprised
at this poetical play of imagination if it were not accompanied with
a sort of scorn for my past joys and sorrows. Seen from afar, my life
appears to contract by some mental process. That long, slow agony of ten
years’ duration can be brought to memory to-day in some few phrases,
in which pain is resolved into a mere idea, and pleasure becomes
a philosophical reflection. Instead of feeling things, I weigh and
consider them----”

“You are as tiresome as the explanation of an amendment,” cried Emile.

“Very likely,” said Raphael submissively. “I spare you the first
seventeen years of my life for fear of abusing a listener’s patience.
Till that time, like you and thousands of others, I had lived my life
at school or the lycee, with its imaginary troubles and genuine
happinesses, which are so pleasant to look back upon. Our jaded palates
still crave for that Lenten fare, so long as we have not tried it
afresh. It was a pleasant life, with the tasks that we thought so
contemptible, but which taught us application for all that....”

“Let the drama begin,” said Emile, half-plaintively, half-comically.

“When I left school,” Raphael went on, with a gesture that claimed the
right of speaking, “my father submitted me to a strict discipline; he
installed me in a room near his own study, and I had to rise at five in
the morning and be in bed by nine at night. He meant me to take my law
studies seriously. I attended the Schools, and read with an advocate
as well, but my lectures and work were so narrowly circumscribed by the
laws of time and space, and my father required such a strict account of
my doings, at dinner, that...”

“What is this to me?” asked Emile.

“The devil take you!” said Raphael. “How are you to enter into my
feelings if I do not relate the facts that insensibly shaped my
character, made me timid, and prolonged the period of youthful
simplicity? In this manner I cowered under as strict a despotism as a
monarch’s till I came of age. To depict the tedium of my life, it will
be perhaps enough to portray my father to you. He was tall, thin, and
slight, with a hatchet face, and pale complexion; a man of few words,
fidgety as an old maid, exacting as a senior clerk. His paternal
solicitude hovered over my merriment and gleeful thoughts, and seemed to
cover them with a leaden pall. Any effusive demonstration on my part was
received by him as a childish absurdity. I was far more afraid of him
than I had been of any of our masters at school.

“I seem to see him before me at this moment. In his chestnut-brown
frock-coat he looked like a red herring wrapped up in the cover of a
pamphlet, and he held himself as erect as an Easter candle. But I was
fond of my father, and at heart he was right enough. Perhaps we never
hate severity when it has its source in greatness of character and pure
morals, and is skilfully tempered with kindness. My father, it is true,
never left me a moment to myself, and only when I was twenty years
old gave me so much as ten francs of my own, ten knavish prodigals
of francs, such a hoard as I had long vainly desired, which set me
a-dreaming of unutterable felicity; yet, for all that he sought to
procure relaxations for me. When he had promised me a treat beforehand,
he would take me to Les Boufoons, or to a concert or ball, where I hoped
to find a mistress.... A mistress! that meant independence. But bashful
and timid as I was, knowing nobody, and ignorant of the dialect of
drawing-rooms, I always came back as awkward as ever, and swelling with
unsatisfied desires, to be put in harness like a troop horse next day
by my father, and to return with morning to my advocate, the Palais de
Justice, and the law. To have swerved from the straight course which my
father had mapped out for me, would have drawn down his wrath upon me;
at my first delinquency, he threatened to ship me off as a cabin-boy
to the Antilles. A dreadful shiver ran through me if I had ventured to
spend a couple of hours in some pleasure party.

“Imagine the most wandering imagination and passionate temperament, the
tenderest soul and most artistic nature, dwelling continually in the
presence of the most flint-hearted, atrabilious, and frigid man on
earth; think of me as a young girl married to a skeleton, and you will
understand the life whose curious scenes can only be a hearsay tale to
you; the plans for running away that perished at the sight of my father,
the despair soothed by slumber, the dark broodings charmed away by
music. I breathed my sorrows forth in melodies. Beethoven or Mozart
would keep my confidences sacred. Nowadays, I smile at recollections of
the scruples which burdened my conscience at that epoch of innocence and
virtue.

“If I set foot in a restaurant, I gave myself up for lost; my fancy
led me to look on a cafe as a disreputable haunt, where men lost their
characters and embarrassed their fortunes; as for engaging in play, I
had not the money to risk. Oh, if I needed to send you to sleep, I would
tell you about one of the most frightful pleasures of my life, one of
those pleasures with fangs that bury themselves in the heart as the
branding-iron enters the convict’s shoulder. I was at a ball at the
house of the Duc de Navarreins, my father’s cousin. But to make
my position the more perfectly clear, you must know that I wore a
threadbare coat, ill-fitting shoes, a tie fit for a stableman, and a
soiled pair of gloves. I shrank into a corner to eat ices and watch
the pretty faces at my leisure. My father noticed me. Actuated by
some motive that I did not fathom, so dumfounded was I by this act of
confidence, he handed me his keys and purse to keep. Ten paces away some
men were gambling. I heard the rattling of gold; I was twenty years old;
I longed to be steeped for one whole day in the follies of my time of
life. It was a license of the imagination that would find a parallel
neither in the freaks of courtesans, nor in the dreams of young girls.
For a year past I had beheld myself well dressed, in a carriage, with
a pretty woman by my side, playing the great lord, dining at Very’s,
deciding not to go back home till the morrow; but was prepared for my
father with a plot more intricate than the Marriage of Figaro, which
he could not possibly have unraveled. All this bliss would cost, I
estimated, fifty crowns. Was it not the artless idea of playing truant
that still had charms for me?

“I went into a small adjoining room, and when alone counted my father’s
money with smarting eyes and trembling fingers--a hundred crowns! The
joys of my escapade rose before me at the thought of the amount; joys
that flitted about me like Macbeth’s witches round their caldron;
joys how alluring! how thrilling! how delicious! I became a deliberate
rascal. I heeded neither my tingling ears nor the violent beating of my
heart, but took out two twenty-franc pieces that I seem to see yet. The
dates had been erased, and Bonaparte’s head simpered upon them. After I
had put back the purse in my pocket, I returned to the gaming-table with
the two pieces of gold in the palms of my damp hands, prowling about
the players like a sparrow-hawk round a coop of chickens. Tormented by
inexpressible terror, I flung a sudden clairvoyant glance round me, and
feeling quite sure that I was seen by none of my acquaintance, betted on
a stout, jovial little man, heaping upon his head more prayers and
vows than are put up during two or three storms at sea. Then, with an
intuitive scoundrelism, or Machiavelism, surprising in one of my age, I
went and stood in the door, and looked about me in the rooms, though
I saw nothing; for both mind and eyes hovered about that fateful green
cloth.

“That evening fixes the date of a first observation of a physiological
kind; to it I owe a kind of insight into certain mysteries of our double
nature that I have since been enabled to penetrate. I had my back turned
on the table where my future felicity lay at stake, a felicity but so
much the more intense that it was criminal. Between me and the players
stood a wall of onlookers some five feet deep, who were chatting; the
murmur of voices drowned the clinking of gold, which mingled in
the sounds sent up by this orchestra; yet, despite all obstacles, I
distinctly heard the words of the two players by a gift accorded to the
passions, which enables them to annihilate time and space. I saw the
points they made; I knew which of the two turned up the king as well as
if I had actually seen the cards; at a distance of ten paces, in short,
the fortunes of play blanched my face.

“My father suddenly went by, and then I knew what the Scripture meant by
‘The Spirit of God passed before his face.’ I had won. I slipped through
the crowd of men who had gathered about the players with the quickness
of an eel escaping through a broken mesh in a net. My nerves thrilled
with joy instead of anguish. I felt like some criminal on the way to
torture released by a chance meeting with the king. It happened that a
man with a decoration found himself short by forty francs. Uneasy eyes
suspected me; I turned pale, and drops of perspiration stood on my
forehead, I was well punished, I thought, for having robbed my father.
Then the kind little stout man said, in a voice like an angel’s surely,
‘All these gentlemen have paid their stakes,’ and put down the forty
francs himself. I raised my head in triumph upon the players. After I
had returned the money I had taken from it to my father’s purse, I left
my winnings with that honest and worthy gentleman, who continued to win.
As soon as I found myself possessed of a hundred and sixty francs, I
wrapped them up in my handkerchief, so that they could neither move or
rattle on the way back; and I played no more.

“‘What were you doing at the card-table?’ said my father as we stepped
into the carriage.

“‘I was looking on,’ I answered, trembling.

“‘But it would have been nothing out of the common if you had been
prompted by self-love to put some money down on the table. In the eyes
of men of the world you are quite old enough to assume the right to
commit such follies. So I should have pardoned you, Raphael, if you had
made use of my purse.....’

“I did not answer. When we reached home, I returned the keys and money
to my father. As he entered his study, he emptied out his purse on the
mantelpiece, counted the money, and turned to me with a kindly look,
saying with more or less long and significant pauses between each
phrase:

“‘My boy, you are very nearly twenty now. I am satisfied with you. You
ought to have an allowance, if only to teach you how to lay it out, and
to gain some acquaintance with everyday business. Henceforward I shall
let you have a hundred francs each month. Here is your first quarter’s
income for this year,’ he added, fingering a pile of gold, as if to make
sure that the amount was correct. ‘Do what you please with it.’

“I confess that I was ready to fling myself at his feet, to tell him
that I was a thief, a scoundrel, and, worse than all, a liar! But a
feeling of shame held me back. I went up to him for an embrace, but he
gently pushed me away.

“‘You are a man now, _my child_,’ he said. ‘What I have just done was a
very proper and simple thing, for which there is no need to thank me. If
I have any claim to your gratitude, Raphael,’ he went on, in a kind but
dignified way, ‘it is because I have preserved your youth from the evils
that destroy young men in Paris. We will be two friends henceforth. In
a year’s time you will be a doctor of law. Not without some hardship and
privations you have acquired the sound knowledge and the love of, and
application to, work that is indispensable to public men. You must
learn to know me, Raphael. I do not want to make either an advocate or
a notary of you, but a statesman, who shall be the pride of our poor
house.... Good-night,’ he added.

“From that day my father took me fully into confidence. I was an only
son; and ten years before, I had lost my mother. In time past my father,
the head of a historic family remembered even now in Auvergne, had come
to Paris to fight against his evil star, dissatisfied at the prospect
of tilling the soil, with his useless sword by his side. He was endowed
with the shrewdness that gives the men of the south of France a certain
ascendency when energy goes with it. Almost unaided, he made a position
for himself near the fountain of power. The revolution brought a reverse
of fortune, but he had managed to marry an heiress of good family, and,
in the time of the Empire, appeared to be on the point of restoring to
our house its ancient splendor.

“The Restoration, while it brought back considerable property to my
mother, was my father’s ruin. He had formerly purchased several estates
abroad, conferred by the Emperor on his generals; and now for ten years
he struggled with liquidators, diplomatists, and Prussian and Bavarian
courts of law, over the disputed possession of these unfortunate
endowments. My father plunged me into the intricate labyrinths of law
proceedings on which our future depended. We might be compelled to
return the rents, as well as the proceeds arising from sales of timber
made during the years 1814 to 1817; in that case my mother’s property
would have barely saved our credit. So it fell out that the day on which
my father in a fashion emancipated me, brought me under a most galling
yoke. I entered on a conflict like a battlefield; I must work day and
night; seek interviews with statesmen, surprise their convictions, try
to interest them in our affairs, and gain them over, with their wives
and servants, and their very dogs; and all this abominable business had
to take the form of pretty speeches and polite attentions. Then I knew
the mortifications that had left their blighting traces on my father’s
face. For about a year I led outwardly the life of a man of the world,
but enormous labors lay beneath the surface of gadding about, and eager
efforts to attach myself to influential kinsmen, or to people likely
to be useful to us. My relaxations were lawsuits, and memorials still
furnished the staple of my conversation. Hitherto my life had been
blameless, from the sheer impossibility of indulging the desires of
youth; but now I became my own master, and in dread of involving us both
in ruin by some piece of negligence, I did not dare to allow myself any
pleasure or expenditure.

“While we are young, and before the world has rubbed off the delicate
bloom from our sentiments, the freshness of our impressions, the noble
purity of conscience which will never allow us to palter with evil,
the sense of duty is very strong within us, the voice of honor clamors
within us, and we are open and straightforward. At that time I was all
these things. I wished to justify my father’s confidence in me. But
lately I would have stolen a paltry sum from him, with secret delight;
but now that I shared the burden of his affairs, of his name and of his
house, I would secretly have given up my fortune and my hopes for
him, as I was sacrificing my pleasures, and even have been glad of the
sacrifice! So when M. de Villele exhumed, for our special benefit, an
imperial decree concerning forfeitures, and had ruined us, I authorized
the sale of my property, only retaining an island in the middle of
the Loire where my mother was buried. Perhaps arguments and evasions,
philosophical, philanthropic, and political considerations would not
fail me now, to hinder the perpetration of what my solicitor termed
a ‘folly’; but at one-and-twenty, I repeat, we are all aglow with
generosity and affection. The tears that stood in my father’s eyes were
to me the most splendid of fortunes, and the thought of those tears has
often soothed my sorrow. Ten months after he had paid his creditors, my
father died of grief; I was his idol, and he had ruined me! The thought
killed him. Towards the end of the autumn of 1826, at the age of
twenty-two, I was the sole mourner at his graveside--the grave of my
father and my earliest friend. Not many young men have found themselves
alone with their thoughts as they followed a hearse, or have seen
themselves lost in crowded Paris, and without money or prospects.
Orphans rescued by public charity have at any rate the future of the
battlefield before them, and find a shelter in some institution and a
father in the government or in the _procureur du roi_. I had nothing.

“Three months later, an agent made over to me eleven hundred and twelve
francs, the net proceeds of the winding up of my father’s affairs. Our
creditors had driven us to sell our furniture. From my childhood I had
been used to set a high value on the articles of luxury about us, and
I could not help showing my astonishment at the sight of this meagre
balance.

“‘Oh, rococo, all of it!’ said the auctioneer. A terrible word that fell
like a blight on the sacred memories of my childhood, and dispelled my
earliest illusions, the dearest of all. My entire fortune was comprised
in this ‘account rendered,’ my future lay in a linen bag with eleven
hundred and twelve francs in it, human society stood before me in the
person of an auctioneer’s clerk, who kept his hat on while he spoke.
Jonathan, an old servant who was much attached to me, and whom my mother
had formerly pensioned with an annuity of four hundred francs, spoke to
me as I was leaving the house that I had so often gaily left for a drive
in my childhood.

“‘Be very economical, Monsieur Raphael!’

“The good fellow was crying.

“Such were the events, dear Emile, that ruled my destinies, moulded my
character, and set me, while still young, in an utterly false social
position,” said Raphael after a pause. “Family ties, weak ones, it is
true, bound me to a few wealthy houses, but my own pride would have kept
me aloof from them if contempt and indifference had not shut their
doors on me in the first place. I was related to people who were very
influential, and who lavished their patronage on strangers; but I found
neither relations nor patrons in them. Continually circumscribed in my
affections, they recoiled upon me. Unreserved and simple by nature, I
must have appeared frigid and sophisticated. My father’s discipline had
destroyed all confidence in myself. I was shy and awkward; I could not
believe that my opinion carried any weight whatever; I took no pleasure
in myself; I thought myself ugly, and was ashamed to meet my own
eyes. In spite of the inward voice that must be the stay of a man with
anything in him, in all his struggles, the voice that cries, ‘Courage!
Go forward!’ in spite of sudden revelations of my own strength in my
solitude; in spite of the hopes that thrilled me as I compared new
works, that the public admired so much, with the schemes that hovered in
my brain,--in spite of all this, I had a childish mistrust of myself.

“An overweening ambition preyed upon me; I believed that I was meant for
great things, and yet I felt myself to be nothing. I had need of other
men, and I was friendless. I found I must make my way in the world,
where I was quite alone, and bashful, rather than afraid.

“All through the year in which, by my father’s wish, I threw myself into
the whirlpool of fashionable society, I came away with an inexperienced
heart, and fresh in mind. Like every grown child, I sighed in secret for
a love affair. I met, among young men of my own age, a set of swaggerers
who held their heads high, and talked about trifles as they seated
themselves without a tremor beside women who inspired awe in me. They
chattered nonsense, sucked the heads of their canes, gave themselves
affected airs, appropriated the fairest women, and laid, or pretended
that they had laid their heads on every pillow. Pleasure, seemingly, was
at their beck and call; they looked on the most virtuous and prudish as
an easy prey, ready to surrender at a word, at the slightest impudent
gesture or insolent look. I declare, on my soul and conscience, that the
attainment of power, or of a great name in literature, seemed to me an
easier victory than a success with some young, witty, and gracious lady
of high degree.

“So I found the tumult of my heart, my feelings, and my creeds all at
variance with the axioms of society. I had plenty of audacity in my
character, but none in my manner. Later, I found out that women did
not like to be implored. I have from afar adored many a one to whom I
devoted a soul proof against all tests, a heart to break, energy that
shrank from no sacrifice and from no torture; _they_ accepted fools
whom I would not have engaged as hall porters. How often, mute and
motionless, have I not admired the lady of my dreams, swaying in the
dance; given up my life in thought to one eternal caress, expressed all
my hopes in a look, and laid before her, in my rapture, a young man’s
love, which should outstrip all fables. At some moments I was ready to
barter my whole life for one single night. Well, as I could never find a
listener for my impassioned proposals, eyes to rest my own upon, a heart
made for my heart, I lived on in all the sufferings of impotent
force that consumes itself; lacking either opportunity or courage or
experience. I despaired, maybe, of making myself understood, or I feared
to be understood but too well; and yet the storm within me was ready to
burst at every chance courteous look. In spite of my readiness to take
the semblance of interest in look or word for a tenderer solicitude,
I dared neither to speak nor to be silent seasonably. My words grew
insignificant, and my silence stupid, by sheer stress of emotion. I was
too ingenuous, no doubt, for that artificial life, led by candle-light,
where every thought is expressed in conventional phrases, or by words
that fashion dictates; and not only so, I had not learned how to employ
speech that says nothing, and silence that says a great deal. In short,
I concealed the fires that consumed me, and with such a soul as women
wish to find, with all the elevation of soul that they long for, and
a mettle that fools plume themselves upon, all women have been cruelly
treacherous to me.

“So in my simplicity I admired the heroes of this set when they bragged
about their conquests, and never suspected them of lying. No doubt it
was a mistake to wish for a love that springs for a word’s sake; to
expect to find in the heart of a vain, frivolous woman, greedy for
luxury and intoxicated with vanity, the great sea of passion that surged
tempestuously in my own breast. Oh! to feel that you were born to love,
to make some woman’s happiness, and yet to find not one, not even a
noble and courageous Marceline, not so much as an old Marquise! Oh!
to carry a treasure in your wallet, and not find even some child, or
inquisitive young girl, to admire it! In my despair I often wished to
kill myself.”

“Finely tragical to-night!” cried Emile.

“Let me pass sentence on my life,” Raphael answered. “If your friendship
is not strong enough to bear with my elegy, if you cannot put up with
half an hour’s tedium for my sake, go to sleep! But, then, never ask
again for the reason of suicide that hangs over me, that comes nearer
and calls to me, that I bow myself before. If you are to judge a man,
you must know his secret thoughts, sorrows, and feelings; to know
merely the outward events of a man’s life would only serve to make a
chronological table--a fool’s notion of history.”

Emile was so much struck with the bitter tones in which these words were
spoken, that he began to pay close attention to Raphael, whom he watched
with a bewildered expression.

“Now,” continued the speaker, “all these things that befell me appear in
a new light. The sequence of events that I once thought so unfortunate
created the splendid powers of which, later, I became so proud. If I may
believe you, I possess the power of readily expressing my thoughts, and
I could take a forward place in the great field of knowledge; and is not
this the result of scientific curiosity, of excessive application, and
a love of reading which possessed me from the age of seven till my entry
on life? The very neglect in which I was left, and the consequent habits
of self-repression and self-concentration; did not these things teach me
how to consider and reflect? Nothing in me was squandered in obedience
to the exactions of the world, which humble the proudest soul and
reduce it to a mere husk; and was it not this very fact that refined the
emotional part of my nature till it became the perfected instrument of
a loftier purpose than passionate desires? I remember watching the women
who mistook me with all the insight of contemned love.

“I can see now that my natural sincerity must have been displeasing to
them; women, perhaps, even require a little hypocrisy. And I, who in
the same hour’s space am alternately a man and a child, frivolous and
thoughtful, free from bias and brimful of superstition, and oftentimes
myself as much a woman as any of them; how should they do otherwise than
take my simplicity for cynicism, my innocent candor for impudence? They
found my knowledge tiresome; my feminine languor, weakness. I was held
to be listless and incapable of love or of steady purpose; a too active
imagination, that curse of poets, was no doubt the cause. My silence was
idiotic; and as I daresay I alarmed them by my efforts to please, women
one and all have condemned me. With tears and mortification, I bowed
before the decision of the world; but my distress was not barren. I
determined to revenge myself on society; I would dominate the feminine
intellect, and so have the feminine soul at my mercy; all eyes should
be fixed upon me, when the servant at the door announced my name. I had
determined from my childhood that I would be a great man; I said with
Andre Chenier, as I struck my forehead, ‘There is something underneath
that!’ I felt, I believed, the thought within me that I must express,
the system I must establish, the knowledge I must interpret.

“Let me pour out my follies, dear Emile; to-day I am barely twenty-six
years old, certain of dying unrecognized, and I have never been the
lover of the woman I dreamed of possessing. Have we not all of us, more
or less, believed in the reality of a thing because we wished it? I
would never have a young man for my friend who did not place himself in
dreams upon a pedestal, weave crowns for his head, and have complaisant
mistresses. I myself would often be a general, nay, emperor; I have been
a Byron, and then a nobody. After this sport on these pinnacles of human
achievement, I became aware that all the difficulties and steeps of life
were yet to face. My exuberant self-esteem came to my aid; I had that
intense belief in my destiny, which perhaps amounts to genius in those
who will not permit themselves to be distracted by contact with the
world, as sheep that leave their wool on the briars of every thicket
they pass by. I meant to cover myself with glory, and to work in silence
for the mistress I hoped to have one day. Women for me were resumed into
a single type, and this woman I looked to meet in the first that met
my eyes; but in each and all I saw a queen, and as queens must make the
first advances to their lovers, they must draw near to me--to me, so
sickly, shy, and poor. For her, who should take pity on me, my heart
held in store such gratitude over and beyond love, that I had worshiped
her her whole life long. Later, my observations have taught me bitter
truths.

“In this way, dear Emile, I ran the risk of remaining companionless for
good. The incomprehensible bent of women’s minds appears to lead them to
see nothing but the weak points in a clever man, and the strong points
of a fool. They feel the liveliest sympathy with the fool’s good
qualities, which perpetually flatter their own defects; while they
find the man of talent hardly agreeable enough to compensate for his
shortcomings. All capacity is a sort of intermittent fever, and no woman
is anxious to share in its discomforts only; they look to find in their
lovers the wherewithal to gratify their own vanity. It is themselves
that they love in us! But the artist, poor and proud, along with his
endowment of creative power, is furnished with an aggressive egotism!
Everything about him is involved in I know not what whirlpool of his
ideas, and even his mistress must gyrate along with them. How is a
woman, spoilt with praise, to believe in the love of a man like that?
Will she go to seek him out? That sort of lover has not the leisure to
sit beside a sofa and give himself up to the sentimental simperings
that women are so fond of, and on which the false and unfeeling pride
themselves. He cannot spare the time from his work, and how can he
afford to humble himself and go a-masquerading! I was ready to give my
life once and for all, but I could not degrade it in detail. Besides,
there is something indescribably paltry in a stockbroker’s tactics, who
runs on errands for some insipid affected woman; all this disgusts an
artist. Love in the abstract is not enough for a great man in poverty;
he has need of its utmost devotion. The frivolous creatures who spend
their lives in trying on cashmeres, or make themselves into clothes-pegs
to hang the fashions from, exact the devotion which is not theirs to
give; for them, love means the pleasure of ruling and not of obeying.
She who is really a wife, one in heart, flesh, and bone, must follow
wherever he leads, in whom her life, her strength, her pride, and
happiness are centered. Ambitious men need those Oriental women
whose whole thought is given to the study of their requirements; for
unhappiness means for them the incompatibility of their means with their
desires. But I, who took myself for a man of genius, must needs feel
attracted by these very she-coxcombs. So, as I cherished ideas so
different from those generally received; as I wished to scale the
heavens without a ladder, was possessed of wealth that could not
circulate, and of knowledge so wide and so imperfectly arranged and
digested that it overtaxed my memory; as I had neither relations nor
friends in the midst of this lonely and ghastly desert, a desert of
paving stones, full of animation, life, and thought, wherein every one
is worse than inimical, indifferent to wit; I made a very natural if
foolish resolve, which required such unknown impossibilities, that my
spirits rose. It was as if I had laid a wager with myself, for I was at
once the player and the cards.

“This was my plan. The eleven hundred francs must keep life in me for
three years--the time I allowed myself in which to bring to light a
work which should draw attention to me, and make me either a name or a
fortune. I exulted at the thought of living on bread and milk, like
a hermit in the Thebaid, while I plunged into the world of books and
ideas, and so reached a lofty sphere beyond the tumult of Paris, a
sphere of silent labor where I would entomb myself like a chrysalis to
await a brilliant and splendid new birth. I imperiled my life in order
to live. By reducing my requirements to real needs and the barest
necessaries, I found that three hundred and sixty-five francs sufficed
for a year of penury; and, in fact, I managed to exist on that slender
sum, so long as I submitted to my own claustral discipline.”

“Impossible!” cried Emile.

“I lived for nearly three years in that way,” Raphael answered, with
a kind of pride. “Let us reckon it out. Three sous for bread, two for
milk, and three for cold meat, kept me from dying of hunger, and my
mind in a state of peculiar lucidity. I have observed, as you know, the
wonderful effects produced by diet upon the imagination. My lodgings
cost me three sous daily; I burnt three sous more in oil at night; I did
my own housework, and wore flannel shirts so as to reduce the laundress’
bill to two sous per day. The money I spent yearly in coal, if divided
up, never cost more than two sous for each day. I had three years’
supply of clothing, and I only dressed when going out to some library
or public lecture. These expenses, all told, only amounted to eighteen
sous, so two were left over for emergencies. I cannot recollect, during
that long period of toil, either crossing the Pont des Arts, or paying
for water; I went out to fetch it every morning from the fountain in
the Place Saint Michel, at the corner of the Rue de Gres. Oh, I wore my
poverty proudly. A man urged on towards a fair future walks through life
like an innocent person to his death; he feels no shame about it.

“I would not think of illness. Like Aquilina, I faced the hospital
without terror. I had not a moment’s doubt of my health, and besides,
the poor can only take to their beds to die. I cut my own hair till
the day when an angel of love and kindness... But I do not want to
anticipate the state of things that I shall reach later. You must simply
know that I lived with one grand thought for a mistress, a dream, an
illusion which deceives us all more or less at first. To-day I laugh at
myself, at that self, holy perhaps and heroic, which is now no more. I
have since had a closer view of society and the world, of our manners
and customs, and seen the dangers of my innocent credulity and the
superfluous nature of my fervent toil. Stores of that sort are quite
useless to aspirants for fame. Light should be the baggage of seekers
after fortune!

“Ambitious men spend their youth in rendering themselves worthy of
patronage; it is their great mistake. While the foolish creatures are
laying in stores of knowledge and energy, so that they shall not sink
under the weight of responsible posts that recede from them, schemers
come and go who are wealthy in words and destitute in ideas, astonish
the ignorant, and creep into the confidence of those who have a little
knowledge. While the first kind study, the second march ahead; the one
sort is modest, and the other impudent; the man of genius is silent
about his own merits, but these schemers make a flourish of theirs, and
they are bound to get on. It is so strongly to the interest of men in
office to believe in ready-made capacity, and in brazen-faced merit,
that it is downright childish of the learned to expect material rewards.
I do not seek to paraphrase the commonplace moral, the song of songs
that obscure genius is for ever singing; I want to come, in a logical
manner, by the reason of the frequent successes of mediocrity. Alas!
study shows us such a mother’s kindness that it would be a sin perhaps
to ask any other reward of her than the pure and delightful pleasures
with which she sustains her children.

“Often I remember soaking my bread in milk, as I sat by the window to
take the fresh air; while my eyes wandered over a view of roofs--brown,
gray, or red, slated or tiled, and covered with yellow or green mosses.
At first the prospect may have seemed monotonous, but I very soon found
peculiar beauties in it. Sometimes at night, streams of light through
half-closed shutters would light up and color the dark abysses of this
strange landscape. Sometimes the feeble lights of the street lamps sent
up yellow gleams through the fog, and in each street dimly outlined the
undulations of a crowd of roofs, like billows in a motionless sea.
Very occasionally, too, a face appeared in this gloomy waste; above
the flowers in some skyey garden I caught a glimpse of an old woman’s
crooked angular profile as she watered her nasturtiums; or, in a crazy
attic window, a young girl, fancying herself quite alone as she dressed
herself--a view of nothing more than a fair forehead and long tresses
held above her by a pretty white arm.

“I liked to see the short-lived plant-life in the gutters--poor weeds
that a storm soon washed away. I studied the mosses, with their colors
revived by showers, or transformed by the sun into a brown velvet
that fitfully caught the light. Such things as these formed my
recreations--the passing poetic moods of daylight, the melancholy mists,
sudden gleams of sunlight, the silence and the magic of night, the
mysteries of dawn, the smoke wreaths from each chimney; every chance
event, in fact, in my curious world became familiar to me. I came to
love this prison of my own choosing. This level Parisian prairie
of roofs, beneath which lay populous abysses, suited my humor, and
harmonized with my thoughts.

“Sudden descents into the world from the divine height of scientific
meditation are very exhausting; and, besides, I had apprehended
perfectly the bare life of the cloister. When I made up my mind to
carry out this new plan of life, I looked for quarters in the most
out-of-the-way parts of Paris. One evening, as I returned home to the
Rue des Cordiers from the Place de l’Estrapade, I saw a girl of fourteen
playing with a battledore at the corner of the Rue de Cluny, her winsome
ways and laughter amused the neighbors. September was not yet over; it
was warm and fine, so that women sat chatting before their doors as if
it were a fete-day in some country town. At first I watched the charming
expression of the girl’s face and her graceful attitudes, her pose fit
for a painter. It was a pretty sight. I looked about me, seeking to
understand this blithe simplicity in the midst of Paris, and saw that
the street was a blind alley and but little frequented. I remembered
that Jean Jacques had once lived here, and looked up the Hotel
Saint-Quentin. Its dilapidated condition awakened hopes of a cheap
lodging, and I determined to enter.

“I found myself in a room with a low ceiling; the candles, in
classic-looking copper candle-sticks, were set in a row under each key.
The predominating cleanliness of the room made a striking contrast to
the usual state of such places. This one was as neat as a bit of genre;
there was a charming trimness about the blue coverlet, the cooking pots
and furniture. The mistress of the house rose and came to me. She seemed
to be about forty years of age; sorrows had left their traces on her
features, and weeping had dimmed her eyes. I deferentially mentioned the
amount I could pay; it seemed to cause her no surprise; she sought out
a key from the row, went up to the attics with me, and showed me a room
that looked out on the neighboring roofs and courts; long poles with
linen drying on them hung out of the window.

“Nothing could be uglier than this garret, awaiting its scholar, with
its dingy yellow walls and odor of poverty. The roofing fell in a steep
slope, and the sky was visible through chinks in the tiles. There was
room for a bed, a table, and a few chairs, and beneath the highest point
of the roof my piano could stand. Not being rich enough to furnish this
cage (that might have been one of the _Piombi_ of Venice), the poor
woman had never been able to let it; and as I had saved from the recent
sale the furniture that was in a fashion peculiarly mine, I very soon
came to terms with my landlady, and moved in on the following day.

“For three years I lived in this airy sepulchre, and worked unflaggingly
day and night; and so great was the pleasure that study seemed to me the
fairest theme and the happiest solution of life. The tranquillity and
peace that a scholar needs is something as sweet and exhilarating as
love. Unspeakable joys are showered on us by the exertion of our
mental faculties; the quest of ideas, and the tranquil contemplation
of knowledge; delights indescribable, because purely intellectual and
impalpable to our senses. So we are obliged to use material terms to
express the mysteries of the soul. The pleasure of striking out in some
lonely lake of clear water, with forests, rocks, and flowers around, and
the soft stirring of the warm breeze,--all this would give, to those who
knew them not, a very faint idea of the exultation with which my soul
bathed itself in the beams of an unknown light, hearkened to the awful
and uncertain voice of inspiration, as vision upon vision poured from
some unknown source through my throbbing brain.

“No earthly pleasure can compare with the divine delight of watching
the dawn of an idea in the space of abstractions as it rises like the
morning sun; an idea that, better still, attains gradually like a child
to puberty and man’s estate. Study lends a kind of enchantment to all
our surroundings. The wretched desk covered with brown leather at which
I wrote, my piano, bed, and armchair, the odd wall-paper and furniture
seemed to have for me a kind of life in them, and to be humble friends
of mine and mute partakers of my destiny. How often have I confided my
soul to them in a glance! A warped bit of beading often met my eyes,
and suggested new developments,--a striking proof of my system, or a
felicitous word by which to render my all but inexpressible thought. By
sheer contemplation of the things about me I discerned an expression and
a character in each. If the setting sun happened to steal in through my
narrow window, they would take new colors, fade or shine, grow dull or
gay, and always amaze me with some new effect. These trifling incidents
of a solitary life, which escape those preoccupied with outward affairs,
make the solace of prisoners. And what was I but the captive of an
idea, imprisoned in my system, but sustained also by the prospect of a
brilliant future? At each obstacle that I overcame, I seemed to kiss the
soft hands of a woman with a fair face, a wealthy, well-dressed woman,
who should some day say softly, while she caressed my hair:

“‘Poor Angel, how thou hast suffered!’

“I had undertaken two great works--one a comedy that in a very short
time must bring me wealth and fame, and an entry into those circles
whither I wished to return, to exercise the royal privileges of a man
of genius. You all saw nothing in that masterpiece but the blunder of a
young man fresh from college, a babyish fiasco. Your jokes clipped the
wings of a throng of illusions, which have never stirred since within
me. You, dear Emile, alone brought soothing to the deep wounds that
others had made in my heart. You alone will admire my ‘Theory of the
Will.’ I devoted most of my time to that long work, for which I studied
Oriental languages, physiology and anatomy. If I do not deceive myself,
my labors will complete the task begun by Mesmer, Lavater, Gall, and
Bichat, and open up new paths in science.

“There ends that fair life of mine, the daily sacrifice, the
unrecognized silkworm’s toil, that is, perhaps, its own sole recompense.
Since attaining years of discretion, until the day when I finished my
‘Theory,’ I observed, learned, wrote, and read unintermittingly; my
life was one long imposition, as schoolboys say. Though by nature
effeminately attached to Oriental indolence, sensual in tastes, and a
wooer of dreams, I worked incessantly, and refused to taste any of the
enjoyments of Parisian life. Though a glutton, I became abstemious; and
loving exercise and sea voyages as I did, and haunted by the wish to
visit many countries, still child enough to play at ducks and drakes
with pebbles over a pond, I led a sedentary life with a pen in my
fingers. I liked talking, but I went to sit and mutely listen to
professors who gave public lectures at the _Bibliotheque_ or the Museum.
I slept upon my solitary pallet like a Benedictine brother, though woman
was my one chimera, a chimera that fled from me as I wooed it! In short,
my life has been a cruel contradiction, a perpetual cheat. After that,
judge a man!

“Sometimes my natural propensities broke out like a fire long smothered.
I was debarred from the women whose society I desired, stripped of
everything and lodged in an artist’s garret, and by a sort of mirage or
calenture I was surrounded by captivating mistresses. I drove through
the streets of Paris, lolling on the soft cushions of a fine equipage.
I plunged into dissipation, into corroding vice, I desired and possessed
everything, for fasting had made me light-headed like the tempted Saint
Anthony. Slumber, happily, would put an end at last to these devastating
trances; and on the morrow science would beckon me, smiling, and I was
faithful to her. I imagine that women reputed virtuous, must often fall
a prey to these insane tempests of desire and passion, which rise in us
in spite of ourselves. Such dreams have a charm of their own; they are
something akin to evening gossip round the winter fire, when one sets
out for some voyage in China. But what becomes of virtue during these
delicious excursions, when fancy overleaps all difficulties?

“During the first ten months of seclusion I led the life of poverty and
solitude that I have described to you; I used to steal out unobserved
every morning to buy my own provisions for the day; I tidied my room; I
was at once master and servant, and played the Diogenes with incredible
spirit. But afterwards, while my hostess and her daughter watched my
ways and behavior, scrutinized my appearance and divined my poverty,
there could not but be some bonds between us; perhaps because they were
themselves so very poor. Pauline, the charming child, whose latent
and unconscious grace had, in a manner, brought me there, did me many
services that I could not well refuse. All women fallen on evil days
are sisters; they speak a common language; they have the same
generosity--the generosity that possesses nothing, and so is lavish of
its affection, of its time, and of its very self.

“Imperceptibly Pauline took me under her protection, and would do
things for me. No kind of objection was made by her mother, whom I even
surprised mending my linen; she blushed for the charitable occupation.
In spite of myself, they took charge of me, and I accepted their
services.

“In order to understand the peculiar condition of my mind, my
preoccupation with work must be remembered, the tyranny of ideas, and
the instinctive repugnance that a man who leads an intellectual life
must ever feel for the material details of existence. Could I well
repulse the delicate attentions of Pauline, who would noiselessly bring
me my frugal repast, when she noticed that I had taken nothing for seven
or eight hours? She had the tact of a woman and the inventiveness of a
child; she would smile as she made sign to me that I must not see her.
Ariel glided under my roof in the form of a sylph who foresaw every want
of mine.

“One evening Pauline told me her story with touching simplicity. Her
father had been a major in the horse grenadiers of the Imperial Guard.
He had been taken prisoner by the Cossacks, at the passage of Beresina;
and when Napoleon later on proposed an exchange, the Russian authorities
made search for him in Siberia in vain; he had escaped with a view of
reaching India, and since then Mme. Gaudin, my landlady, could hear no
news of her husband. Then came the disasters of 1814 and 1815; and, left
alone and without resource, she had decided to let furnished lodgings in
order to keep herself and her daughter.

“She always hoped to see her husband again. Her greatest trouble was
about her daughter’s education; the Princess Borghese was her Pauline’s
godmother; and Pauline must not be unworthy of the fair future promised
by her imperial protectress. When Mme. Gaudin confided to me this heavy
trouble that preyed upon her, she said, with sharp pain in her voice,
‘I would give up the property and the scrap of paper that makes Gaudin
a baron of the empire, and all our rights to the endowment of Wistchnau,
if only Pauline could be brought up at Saint-Denis?’ Her words struck
me; now I could show my gratitude for the kindnesses expended on me
by the two women; all at once the idea of offering to finish Pauline’s
education occurred to me; and the offer was made and accepted in the
most perfect simplicity. In this way I came to have some hours of
recreation. Pauline had natural aptitude; she learned so quickly, that
she soon surpassed me at the piano. As she became accustomed to think
aloud in my presence, she unfolded all the sweet refinements of a heart
that was opening itself out to life, as some flower-cup opens slowly to
the sun. She listened to me, pleased and thoughtful, letting her dark
velvet eyes rest upon me with a half smile in them; she repeated her
lessons in soft and gentle tones, and showed childish glee when I was
satisfied with her. Her mother grew more and more anxious every day to
shield the young girl from every danger (for all the beauty promised in
early life was developing in the crescent moon), and was glad to see her
spend whole days indoors in study. My piano was the only one she could
use, and while I was out she practised on it. When I came home, Pauline
would be in my room, in her shabby dress, but her slightest movement
revealed her slender figure in its attractive grace, in spite of the
coarse materials that she wore. As with the heroine of the fable of
‘_Peau-d’Ane_,’ a dainty foot peeped out of the clumsy shoes. But all
her wealth of girlish beauty was as lost upon me. I had laid commands
upon myself to see a sister only in Pauline. I dreaded lest I should
betray her mother’s faith in me. I admired the lovely girl as if she had
been a picture, or as the portrait of a dead mistress; she was at once
my child and my statue. For me, another Pygmalion, the maiden with the
hues of life and the living voice was to become a form of inanimate
marble. I was very strict with her, but the more I made her feel my
pedagogue’s severity, the more gentle and submissive she grew.

“If a generous feeling strengthened me in my reserve and self-restraint,
prudent considerations were not lacking beside. Integrity of purpose
cannot, I think, fail to accompany integrity in money matters. To my
mind, to become insolvent or to betray a woman is the same sort of
thing. If you love a young girl, or allow yourself to be beloved by
her, a contract is implied, and its conditions should be thoroughly
understood. We are free to break with the woman who sells herself, but
not with the young girl who has given herself to us and does not know
the extent of her sacrifice. I must have married Pauline, and that would
have been madness. Would it not have given over that sweet girlish heart
to terrible misfortunes? My poverty made its selfish voice heard, and
set an iron barrier between that gentle nature and mine. Besides, I
am ashamed to say, that I cannot imagine love in the midst of poverty.
Perhaps this is a vitiation due to that malady of mankind called
civilization; but a woman in squalid poverty would exert no fascination
over me, were she attractive as Homer’s Galatea, the fair Helen.

“Ah, _vive l’amour_! But let it be in silk and cashmere, surrounded with
the luxury which so marvelously embellishes it; for is it not perhaps
itself a luxury? I enjoy making havoc with an elaborate erection of
scented hair; I like to crush flowers, to disarrange and crease a smart
toilette at will. A bizarre attraction lies for me in burning eyes that
blaze through a lace veil, like flame through cannon smoke. My way of
love would be to mount by a silken ladder, in the silence of a winter
night. And what bliss to reach, all powdered with snow, a perfumed
room, with hangings of painted silk, to find a woman there, who likewise
shakes away the snow from her; for what other name can be found for the
white muslin wrappings that vaguely define her, like some angel form
issuing from a cloud! And then I wish for furtive joys, for the security
of audacity. I want to see once more that woman of mystery, but let it
be in the throng, dazzling, unapproachable, adored on all sides, dressed
in laces and ablaze with diamonds, laying her commands upon every one;
so exalted above us, that she inspires awe, and none dares to pay his
homage to her.

“She gives me a stolen glance, amid her court, a look that exposes the
unreality of all this; that resigns for me the world and all men in
it! Truly I have scorned myself for a passion for a few yards of lace,
velvet, and fine lawn, and the hairdresser’s feats of skill; a love of
wax-lights, a carriage and a title, a heraldic coronet painted on window
panes, or engraved by a jeweler; in short, a liking for all that is
adventitious and least woman in woman. I have scorned and reasoned with
myself, but all in vain.

“A woman of rank with her subtle smile, her high-born air, and
self-esteem captivates me. The barriers she erects between herself and
the world awaken my vanity, a good half of love. There would be more
relish for me in bliss that all others envied. If my mistress does
nothing that other women do, and neither lives nor conducts herself like
them, wears a cloak that they cannot attain, breathes a perfume of her
own, then she seems to rise far above me. The further she rises from
earth, even in the earthlier aspects of love, the fairer she becomes for
me.

“Luckily for me we have had no queen in France these twenty years, for I
should have fallen in love with her. A woman must be wealthy to
acquire the manners of a princess. What place had Pauline among these
far-fetched imaginings? Could she bring me the love that is death, that
brings every faculty into play, the nights that are paid for by life? We
hardly die, I think, for an insignificant girl who gives herself to us;
and I could never extinguish these feelings and poet’s dreams within
me. I was born for an inaccessible love, and fortune has overtopped my
desire.

“How often have I set satin shoes on Pauline’s tiny feet, confined her
form, slender as a young poplar, in a robe of gauze, and thrown a loose
scarf about her as I saw her tread the carpets in her mansion and led
her out to her splendid carriage! In such guise I should have adored
her. I endowed her with all the pride she lacked, stripped her of her
virtues, her natural simple charm, and frank smile, in order to plunge
her heart in our Styx of depravity that makes invulnerable, load her
with our crimes, make of her the fantastical doll of our drawing-rooms,
the frail being who lies about in the morning and comes to life again
at night with the dawn of tapers. Pauline was fresh-hearted and
affectionate--I would have had her cold and formal.

“In the last days of my frantic folly, memory brought Pauline before me,
as it brings the scenes of our childhood, and made me pause to muse over
past delicious moments that softened my heart. I sometimes saw her,
the adorable girl who sat quietly sewing at my table, wrapped in her
meditations; the faint light from my window fell upon her and was
reflected back in silvery rays from her thick black hair; sometimes I
heard her young laughter, or the rich tones of her voice singing some
canzonet that she composed without effort. And often my Pauline seemed
to grow greater, as music flowed from her, and her face bore a striking
resemblance to the noble one that Carlo Dolci chose for the type of
Italy. My cruel memory brought her back athwart the dissipations of my
existence, like a remorse, or a symbol of purity. But let us leave the
poor child to her own fate. Whatever her troubles may have been, at any
rate I protected her from a menacing tempest--I did not drag her down
into my hell.

“Until last winter I led the uneventful studious life of which I have
given you some faint picture. In the earliest days of December 1829,
I came across Rastignac, who, in spite of the shabby condition of my
wardrobe, linked his arm in mine, and inquired into my affairs with a
quite brotherly interest. Caught by his engaging manner, I gave him a
brief account of my life and hopes; he began to laugh, and treated me as
a mixture of a man of genius and a fool. His Gascon accent and knowledge
of the world, the easy life his clever management procured for him, all
produced an irresistible effect upon me. I should die an unrecognized
failure in a hospital, Rastignac said, and be buried in a pauper’s
grave. He talked of charlatanism. Every man of genius was a charlatan,
he plainly showed me in that pleasant way of his that makes him so
fascinating. He insisted that I must be out of my senses, and would be
my own death, if I lived on alone in the Rue des Cordiers. According to
him, I ought to go into society, to accustom people to the sound of my
name, and to rid myself of the simple title of ‘monsieur’ which sits but
ill on a great man in his lifetime.

“‘Those who know no better,’ he cried, ‘call this sort of business
_scheming_, and moral people condemn it for a “dissipated life.” We need
not stop to look at what people think, but see the results. You work,
you say? Very good, but nothing will ever come of that. Now, I am ready
for anything and fit for nothing. As lazy as a lobster? Very likely, but
I succeed everywhere. I go out into society, I push myself forward, the
others make way before me; I brag and am believed; I incur debts which
somebody else pays! Dissipation, dear boy, is a methodical policy. The
life of a man who deliberately runs through his fortune often becomes
a business speculation; his friends, his pleasures, patrons, and
acquaintances are his capital. Suppose a merchant runs a risk of a
million, for twenty years he can neither sleep, eat, nor amuse himself,
he is brooding over his million, it makes him run about all over
Europe; he worries himself, goes to the devil in every way that man has
invented. Then comes a liquidation, such as I have seen myself, which
very often leaves him penniless and without a reputation or a friend.
The spendthrift, on the other hand, takes life as a serious game and
sees his horses run. He loses his capital, perhaps, but he stands
a chance of being nominated Receiver-General, of making a wealthy
marriage, or of an appointment of attache to a minister or ambassador;
and he has his friends left and his name, and he never wants money. He
knows the standing of everybody, and uses every one for his own benefit.
Is this logical, or am I a madman after all? Haven’t you there all the
moral of the comedy that goes on every day in this world?... Your work
is completed’ he went on after a pause; ‘you are immensely clever! Well,
you have only arrived at my starting-point. Now, you had better look
after its success yourself; it is the surest way. You will make allies
in every clique, and secure applause beforehand. I mean to go halves in
your glory myself; I shall be the jeweler who set the diamonds in
your crown. Come here to-morrow evening, by way of a beginning. I will
introduce you to a house where all Paris goes, all OUR Paris, that
is--the Paris of exquisites, millionaires, celebrities, all the folk
who talk gold like Chrysostom. When they have taken up a book, that book
becomes the fashion; and if it is something really good for once, they
will have declared it to be a work of genius without knowing it. If
you have any sense, my dear fellow, you will ensure the success of your
“Theory,” by a better understanding of the theory of success. To-morrow
evening you shall go to see that queen of the moment--the beautiful
Countess Foedora....’

“‘I have never heard of her....’

“‘You Hottentot!’ laughed Rastignac; ‘you do not know Foedora? A great
match with an income of nearly eighty thousand livres, who has taken
a fancy to nobody, or else no one has taken a fancy to her. A sort of
feminine enigma, a half Russian Parisienne, or a half Parisian Russian.
All the romantic productions that never get published are brought out at
her house; she is the handsomest woman in Paris, and the most gracious!
You are not even a Hottentot; you are something between the Hottentot
and the beast.... Good-bye till to-morrow.’

“He swung round on his heel and made off without waiting for my
answer. It never occurred to him that a reasoning being could refuse an
introduction to Foedora. How can the fascination of a name be explained?
FOEDORA haunted me like some evil thought, with which you seek to come
to terms. A voice said in me, ‘You are going to see Foedora!’ In vain
I reasoned with that voice, saying that it lied to me; all my arguments
were defeated by the name ‘Foedora.’ Was not the name, and even the
woman herself, the symbol of all my desires, and the object of my life?

“The name called up recollections of the conventional glitter of the
world, the upper world of Paris with its brilliant fetes and the tinsel
of its vanities. The woman brought before me all the problems of passion
on which my mind continually ran. Perhaps it was neither the woman nor
the name, but my own propensities, that sprang up within me and tempted
me afresh. Here was the Countess Foedora, rich and loveless, proof
against the temptations of Paris; was not this woman the very
incarnation of my hopes and visions? I fashioned her for myself, drew
her in fancy, and dreamed of her. I could not sleep that night; I became
her lover; I overbrimmed a few hours with a whole lifetime--a lover’s
lifetime; the experience of its prolific delights burned me.

“The next day I could not bear the tortures of delay; I borrowed a
novel, and spent the whole day over it, so that I could not possibly
think nor keep account of the time till night. Foedora’s name echoed
through me even as I read, but only as a distant sound; though it
could be heard, it was not troublesome. Fortunately, I owned a fairly
creditable black coat and a white waistcoat; of all my fortune there
now remained abut thirty francs, which I had distributed about among
my clothes and in my drawers, so as to erect between my whims and
the spending of a five-franc piece a thorny barrier of search, and an
adventurous peregrination round my room. While I as dressing, I dived
about for my money in an ocean of papers. This scarcity of specie will
give you some idea of the value of that squandered upon gloves and
cab-hire; a month’s bread disappeared at one fell swoop. Alas! money is
always forthcoming for our caprices; we only grudge the cost of
things that are useful or necessary. We recklessly fling gold to an
opera-dancer, and haggle with a tradesman whose hungry family must wait
for the settlement of our bill. How many men are there that wear a coat
that cost a hundred francs, and carry a diamond in the head of their
cane, and dine for twenty-five SOUS for all that! It seems as though we
could never pay enough for the pleasures of vanity.

“Rastignac, punctual to his appointment, smiled at the transformation,
and joked about it. On the way he gave me benevolent advice as to
my conduct with the countess; he described her as mean, vain, and
suspicious; but though mean, she was ostentatious, her vanity was
transparent, and her mistrust good-humored.

“‘You know I am pledged,’ he said, ‘and what I should lose, too, if I
tried a change in love. So my observation of Foedora has been quite cool
and disinterested, and my remarks must have some truth in them. I was
looking to your future when I thought of introducing you to her; so mind
very carefully what I am about to say. She has a terrible memory. She is
clever enough to drive a diplomatist wild; she would know it at once if
he spoke the truth. Between ourselves, I fancy that her marriage was
not recognized by the Emperor, for the Russian ambassador began to smile
when I spoke of her; he does not receive her either, and only bows very
coolly if he meets her in the Bois. For all that, she is in Madame de
Serizy’s set, and visits Mesdames de Nucingen and de Restaud. There
is no cloud over her here in France; the Duchesse de Carigliano, the
most-strait-laced marechale in the whole Bonapartist coterie, often goes
to spend the summer with her at her country house. Plenty of young fops,
sons of peers of France, have offered her a title in exchange for her
fortune, and she has politely declined them all. Her susceptibilities,
maybe, are not to be touched by anything less than a count. Aren’t you a
marquis? Go ahead if you fancy her. This is what you may call receiving
your instructions.’

“His raillery made me think that Rastignac wished to joke and excite my
curiosity, so that I was in a paroxysm of my extemporized passion by the
time that we stopped before a peristyle full of flowers. My heart beat
and my color rose as we went up the great carpeted staircase, and I
noticed about me all the studied refinements of English comfort; I
was infatuatedly bourgeois; I forgot my origin and all my personal and
family pride. Alas! I had but just left a garret, after three years
of poverty, and I could not just then set the treasures there acquired
above such trifles as these. Nor could I rightly estimate the worth of
the vast intellectual capital which turns to riches at the moment when
opportunity comes within our reach, opportunity that does not overwhelm,
because study has prepared us for the struggles of public life.

“I found a woman of about twenty-two years of age; she was of average
height, was dressed in white, and held a feather fire-screen in
her hand; a group of men stood around her. She rose at the sight
of Rastignac, and came towards us with a gracious smile and a
musically-uttered compliment, prepared no doubt beforehand, for me. Our
friend had spoken of me as a rising man, and his clever way of making
the most of me had procured me this flattering reception. I was confused
by the attention that every one paid to me; but Rastignac had luckily
mentioned my modesty. I was brought in contact with scholars, men
of letters, ex-ministers, and peers of France. The conversation,
interrupted a while by my coming, was resumed. I took courage, feeling
that I had a reputation to maintain, and without abusing my privilege,
I spoke when it fell to me to speak, trying to state the questions at
issue in words more or less profound, witty or trenchant, and I made a
certain sensation. Rastignac was a prophet for the thousandth time in
his life. As soon as the gathering was large enough to restore freedom
to individuals, he took my arm, and we went round the rooms.

“‘Don’t look as if you were too much struck by the princess,’ he said,
‘or she will guess your object in coming to visit her.’

“The rooms were furnished in excellent taste. Each apartment had a
character of its own, as in wealthy English houses; and the silken
hangings, the style of the furniture, and the ornaments, even the
most trifling, were all subordinated to the original idea. In a gothic
boudoir the doors were concealed by tapestried curtains, and the
paneling by hangings; the clock and the pattern of the carpet were made
to harmonize with the gothic surroundings. The ceiling, with its carved
cross-beams of brown wood, was full of charm and originality; the panels
were beautifully wrought; nothing disturbed the general harmony of
the scheme of decoration, not even the windows with their rich colored
glass. I was surprised by the extensive knowledge of decoration that
some artist had brought to bear on a little modern room, it was so
pleasant and fresh, and not heavy, but subdued with its dead gold hues.
It had all the vague sentiment of a German ballad; it was a retreat fit
for some romance of 1827, perfumed by the exotic flowers set in their
stands. Another apartment in the suite was a gilded reproduction of the
Louis Quatorze period, with modern paintings on the walls in odd but
pleasant contrast.

“‘You would not be so badly lodged,’ was Rastignac’s slightly sarcastic
comment. ‘It is captivating, isn’t it?’ he added, smiling as he sat
down. Then suddenly he rose, and led me by the hand into a bedroom,
where the softened light fell upon the bed under its canopy of muslin
and white watered silk--a couch for a young fairy betrothed to one of
the genii.

“‘Isn’t it wantonly bad taste, insolent and unbounded coquetry,’ he
said, lowering his voice, ‘that allows us to see this throne of love?
She gives herself to no one, and anybody may leave his card here. If I
were not committed, I should like to see her at my feet all tears and
submission.’

“‘Are you so certain of her virtue?’

“‘The boldest and even the cleverest adventurers among us, acknowledge
themselves defeated, and continue to be her lovers and devoted friends.
Isn’t that woman a puzzle?’

“His words seemed to intoxicate me; I had jealous fears already of the
past. I leapt for joy, and hurried back to the countess, whom I had seen
in the gothic boudoir. She stopped me by a smile, made me sit beside
her, and talked about my work, seeming to take the greatest interest in
it, and all the more when I set forth my theories amusingly, instead of
adopting the formal language of a professor for their explanation. It
seemed to divert her to be told that the human will was a material force
like steam; that in the moral world nothing could resist its power if
a man taught himself to concentrate it, to economize it, and to project
continually its fluid mass in given directions upon other souls. Such
a man, I said, could modify all things relatively to man, even the
peremptory laws of nature. The questions Foedora raised showed a certain
keenness of intellect. I took a pleasure in deciding some of them in her
favor, in order to flatter her; then I confuted her feminine reasoning
with a word, and roused her curiosity by drawing her attention to an
everyday matter--to sleep, a thing so apparently commonplace, that in
reality is an insoluble problem for science. The countess sat in silence
for a moment when I told her that our ideas were complete organic
beings, existing in an invisible world, and influencing our destinies;
and for witnesses I cited the opinions of Descartes, Diderot, and
Napoleon, who had directed, and still directed, all the currents of the
age.

“So I had the honor of amusing this woman; who asked me to come to see
her when she left me; giving me _les grande entrees_, in the language
of the court. Whether it was by dint of substituting polite formulas for
genuine expressions of feeling, a commendable habit of mine, or because
Foedora hailed in me a coming celebrity, an addition to her learned
menagerie; for some reason I thought that I had pleased her. I called
all my previous physiological studies and knowledge of woman to my aid,
and minutely scrutinized this singular person and her ways all evening.
I concealed myself in the embrasure of a window, and sought to discover
her thoughts from her bearing. I studied the tactics of the mistress of
the house, as she came and went, sat and chatted, beckoned to this one
or that, asked questions, listened to the answers, as she leaned against
the frame of the door; I detected a languid charm in her movements,
a grace in the flutterings of her dress, remarked the nature of the
feelings she so powerfully excited, and became very incredulous as to
her virtue. If Foedora would none of love to-day, she had had strong
passions at some time; past experience of pleasure showed itself in the
attitudes she chose in conversation, in her coquettish way of leaning
against the panel behind her; she seemed scarcely able to stand alone,
and yet ready for flight from too bold a glance. There was a kind of
eloquence about her lightly folded arms, which, even for benevolent
eyes, breathed sentiment. Her fresh red lips sharply contrasted with her
brilliantly pale complexion. Her brown hair brought out all the golden
color in her eyes, in which blue streaks mingled as in Florentine
marble; their expression seemed to increase the significance of her
words. A studied grace lay in the charms of her bodice. Perhaps a rival
might have found the lines of the thick eyebrows, which almost met, a
little hard; or found a fault in the almost invisible down that covered
her features. I saw the signs of passion everywhere, written on those
Italian eyelids, on the splendid shoulders worthy of the Venus of Milo,
on her features, in the darker shade of down above a somewhat thick
under-lip. She was not merely a woman, but a romance. The whole
blended harmony of lines, the feminine luxuriance of her frame, and its
passionate promise, were subdued by a constant inexplicable reserve
and modesty at variance with everything else about her. It needed an
observation as keen as my own to detect such signs as these in her
character. To explain myself more clearly; there were two women in
Foedora, divided perhaps by the line between head and body: the one,
the head alone, seemed to be susceptible, and the other phlegmatic.
She prepared her glance before she looked at you, something unspeakably
mysterious, some inward convulsion seemed revealed by her glittering
eyes.

“So, to be brief, either my imperfect moral science had left me a good
deal to learn in the moral world, or a lofty soul dwelt in the countess,
lent to her face those charms that fascinated and subdued us, and gave
her an ascendency only the more complete because it comprehended a
sympathy of desire.

“I went away completely enraptured with this woman, dazzled by the
luxury around her, gratified in every faculty of my soul--noble and
base, good and evil. When I felt myself so excited, eager, and elated,
I thought I understood the attraction that drew thither those artists,
diplomatists, men in office, those stock-jobbers encased in triple
brass. They came, no doubt, to find in her society the delirious emotion
that now thrilled through every fibre in me, throbbing through my brain,
setting the blood a-tingle in every vein, fretting even the tiniest
nerve. And she had given herself to none, so as to keep them all. A
woman is a coquette so long as she knows not love.

“‘Well,’ I said to Rastignac, ‘they married her, or sold her perhaps,
to some old man, and recollections of her first marriage have caused her
aversion for love.’

“I walked home from the Faubourg St. Honore, where Foedora lived.
Almost all the breadth of Paris lies between her mansion and the Rue des
Cordiers, but the distance seemed short, in spite of the cold. And I was
to lay siege to Foedora’s heart, in winter, and a bitter winter, with
only thirty francs in my possession, and such a distance as that lay
between us! Only a poor man knows what such a passion costs in cab-hire,
gloves, linen, tailor’s bills, and the like. If the Platonic stage lasts
a little too long, the affair grows ruinous. As a matter of fact, there
is many a Lauzun among students of law, who finds it impossible to
approach a ladylove living on a first floor. And I, sickly, thin, poorly
dressed, wan and pale as any artist convalescent after a work, how could
I compete with other young men, curled, handsome, smart, outcravatting
Croatia; wealthy men, equipped with tilburys, and armed with assurance?

“‘Bah, death or Foedora!’ I cried, as I went round by a bridge; ‘my
fortune lies in Foedora.’

“That gothic boudoir and Louis Quatorze salon came before my eyes. I saw
the countess again in her white dress with its large graceful sleeves,
and all the fascinations of her form and movements. These pictures of
Foedora and her luxurious surroundings haunted me even in my bare, cold
garret, when at last I reached it, as disheveled as any naturalist’s
wig. The contrast suggested evil counsel; in such a way crimes are
conceived. I cursed my honest, self-respecting poverty, my garret where
such teeming fancies had stirred within me. I trembled with fury, I
reproached God, the devil, social conditions, my own father, the whole
universe, indeed, with my fate and my misfortunes. I went hungry to bed,
muttering ludicrous imprecations, but fully determined to win Foedora.
Her heart was my last ticket in the lottery, my fortune depended upon
it.

“I spare you the history of my earlier visits, to reach the drama
the sooner. In my efforts to appeal to her, I essayed to engage her
intellect and her vanity on my side; in order to secure her love, I gave
her any quantity of reasons for increasing her self-esteem; I never left
her in a state of indifference; women like emotions at any cost, I gave
them to her in plenty; I would rather have had her angry with me than
indifferent.

“At first, urged by a strong will and a desire for her love, I assumed
a little authority, but my own feelings grew stronger and mastered me; I
relapsed into truth, I lost my head, and fell desperately in love.

“I am not very sure what we mean by the word love in our poetry and our
talk; but I know that I have never found in all the ready rhetorical
phrases of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in whose room perhaps I was lodging;
nor among the feeble inventions of two centuries of our literature, nor
in any picture that Italy has produced, a representation of the feelings
that expanded all at once in my double nature. The view of the lake of
Bienne, some music of Rossini’s, the Madonna of Murillo’s now in
the possession of General Soult, Lescombat’s letters, a few sayings
scattered through collections of anecdotes; but most of all the prayers
of religious ecstatics, and passages in our _fabliaux_,--these things
alone have power to carry me back to the divine heights of my first
love.

“Nothing expressed in human language, no thought reproducible in color,
marble, sound, or articulate speech, could ever render the force, the
truth, the completeness, the suddenness with which love awoke in me.
To speak of art, is to speak of illusion. Love passes through endless
transformations before it passes for ever into our existence and makes
it glow with its own color of flame. The process is imperceptible, and
baffles the artist’s analysis. Its moans and complaints are tedious to
an uninterested spectator. One would need to be very much in love
to share the furious transports of Lovelace, as one reads _Clarissa
Harlowe_. Love is like some fresh spring, that leaves its cresses,
its gravel bed and flowers to become first a stream and then a river,
changing its aspect and its nature as it flows to plunge itself in some
boundless ocean, where restricted natures only find monotony, but where
great souls are engulfed in endless contemplation.

“How can I dare to describe the hues of fleeting emotions, the nothings
beyond all price, the spoken accents that beggar language, the looks
that hold more than all the wealth of poetry? Not one of the mysterious
scenes that draw us insensibly nearer and nearer to a woman, but has
depths in it which can swallow up all the poetry that ever was written.
How can the inner life and mystery that stirs in our souls penetrate
through our glozes, when we have not even words to describe the visible
and outward mysteries of beauty? What enchantment steeped me for how
many hours in unspeakable rapture, filled with the sight of Her! What
made me happy? I know not. That face of hers overflowed with light at
such times; it seemed in some way to glow with it; the outlines of her
face, with the scarcely perceptible down on its delicate surface, shone
with a beauty belonging to the far distant horizon that melts into the
sunlight. The light of day seemed to caress her as she mingled in
it; rather it seemed that the light of her eyes was brighter than the
daylight itself; or some shadow passing over that fair face made a kind
of change there, altering its hues and its expression. Some thought
would often seem to glow on her white brows; her eyes appeared to
dilate, and her eyelids trembled; a smile rippled over her features;
the living coral of her lips grew full of meaning as they closed and
unclosed; an indistinguishable something in her hair made brown shadows
on her fair temples; in each new phase Foedora spoke. Every slight
variation in her beauty made a new pleasure for my eyes, disclosed
charms my heart had never known before; I tried to read a separate
emotion or a hope in every change that passed over her face. This mute
converse passed between soul and soul, like sound and answering echo;
and the short-lived delights then showered upon me have left indelible
impressions behind. Her voice would cause a frenzy in me that I could
hardly understand. I could have copied the example of some prince of
Lorraine, and held a live coal in the hollow of my hand, if her fingers
passed caressingly through my hair the while. I felt no longer mere
admiration and desire: I was under the spell; I had met my destiny. When
back again under my own roof, I still vaguely saw Foedora in her own
home, and had some indefinable share in her life; if she felt ill, I
suffered too. The next day I used to say to her:

“‘You were not well yesterday.’

“How often has she not stood before me, called by the power of ecstasy,
in the silence of the night! Sometimes she would break in upon me like
a ray of light, make me drop my pen, and put science and study to flight
in grief and alarm, as she compelled my admiration by the alluring pose
I had seen but a short time before. Sometimes I went to seek her in the
spirit world, and would bow down to her as to a hope, entreating her to
let me hear the silver sounds of her voice, and I would wake at length
in tears.

“Once, when she had promised to go to the theatre with me, she took it
suddenly into her head to refuse to go out, and begged me to leave her
alone. I was in such despair over the perversity which cost me a day’s
work, and (if I must confess it) my last shilling as well, that I went
alone where she was to have been, desiring to see the play she had
wished to see. I had scarcely seated myself when an electric shock went
through me. A voice told me, ‘She is here!’ I looked round, and saw the
countess hidden in the shadow at the back of her box in the first
tier. My look did not waver; my eyes saw her at once with incredible
clearness; my soul hovered about her life like an insect above its
flower. How had my senses received this warning? There is something
in these inward tremors that shallow people find astonishing, but the
phenomena of our inner consciousness are produced as simple as those of
external vision; so I was not surprised, but much vexed. My studies of
our mental faculties, so little understood, helped me at any rate to
find in my own excitement some living proofs of my theories. There
was something exceedingly odd in this combination of lover and man of
science, of downright idolatry of a woman with the love of knowledge.
The causes of the lover’s despair were highly interesting to the man of
science; and the exultant lover, on the other hand, put science far away
from him in his joy. Foedora saw me, and grew grave: I annoyed her.
I went to her box during the first interval, and finding her alone,
I stayed there. Although we had not spoken of love, I foresaw an
explanation. I had not told her my secret, still there was a kind of
understanding between us. She used to tell me her plans for amusement,
and on the previous evening had asked with friendly eagerness if I meant
to call the next day. After any witticism of hers, she would give me
an inquiring glance, as if she had sought to please me alone by it. She
would soothe me if I was vexed; and if she pouted, I had in some sort
a right to ask an explanation. Before she would pardon any blunder,
she would keep me a suppliant for long. All these things that we so
relished, were so many lovers’ quarrels. What arch grace she threw into
it all! and what happiness it was to me!

“But now we stood before each other as strangers, with the close
relation between us both suspended. The countess was glacial: a
presentiment of trouble filled me.

“‘Will you come home with me?’ she said, when the play was over.

“There had been a sudden change in the weather, and sleet was falling
in showers as we went out. Foedora’s carriage was unable to reach the
doorway of the theatre. At the sight of a well-dressed woman about to
cross the street, a commissionaire held an umbrella above us, and stood
waiting at the carriage-door for his tip. I would have given ten years
of life just then for a couple of halfpence, but I had not a penny. All
the man in me and all my vainest susceptibilities were wrung with an
infernal pain. The words, ‘I haven’t a penny about me, my good fellow!’
came from me in the hard voice of thwarted passion; and yet I was that
man’s brother in misfortune, as I knew too well; and once I had so
lightly paid away seven hundred thousand francs! The footman pushed the
man aside, and the horses sprang forward. As we returned, Foedora, in
real or feigned abstraction, answered all my questions curtly and by
monosyllables. I said no more; it was a hateful moment. When we reached
her house, we seated ourselves by the hearth, and when the servant had
stirred the fire and left us alone, the countess turned to me with an
inexplicable expression, and spoke. Her manner was almost solemn.

“‘Since my return to France, more than one young man, tempted by my
money, has made proposals to me which would have satisfied my pride. I
have come across men, too, whose attachment was so deep and sincere that
they might have married me even if they had found me the penniless girl
I used to be. Besides these, Monsieur de Valentin, you must know that
new titles and newly-acquired wealth have been also offered to me, and
that I have never received again any of those who were so ill-advised as
to mention love to me. If my regard for you was but slight, I would not
give you this warning, which is dictated by friendship rather than
by pride. A woman lays herself open to a rebuff of some kind, if she
imagines herself to be loved, and declines, before it is uttered, to
listen to language which in its nature implies a compliment. I am well
acquainted with the parts played by Arsinoe and Araminta, and with the
sort of answer I might look for under such circumstances; but I hope
to-day that I shall not find myself misconstrued by a man of no ordinary
character, because I have frankly spoken my mind.’

“She spoke with the cool self-possession of some attorney or solicitor
explaining the nature of a contract or the conduct of a lawsuit to a
client. There was not the least sign of feeling in the clear soft tones
of her voice. Her steady face and dignified bearing seemed to me now
full of diplomatic reserve and coldness. She had planned this scene, no
doubt, and carefully chosen her words beforehand. Oh, my friend, there
are women who take pleasure in piercing hearts, and deliberately plunge
the dagger back again into the wound; such women as these cannot but
be worshiped, for such women either love or would fain be loved. A day
comes when they make amends for all the pain they gave us; they repay
us for the pangs, the keenness of which they recognize, in joys a
hundred-fold, even as God, they tell us, recompenses our good works.
Does not their perversity spring from the strength of their feelings?
But to be so tortured by a woman, who slaughters you with indifference!
was not the suffering hideous?

“Foedora did not know it, but in that minute she trampled all my hopes
beneath her feet; she maimed my life and she blighted my future with the
cool indifference and unconscious barbarity of an inquisitive child who
plucks its wings from a butterfly.

“‘Later on,’ resumed Foedora, ‘you will learn, I hope, the stability of
the affection that I keep for my friends. You will always find that I
have devotion and kindness for them. I would give my life to serve my
friends; but you could only despise me, if I allowed them to make love
to me without return. That is enough. You are the only man to whom I
have spoken such words as these last.’

“At first I could not speak, or master the tempest that arose within me;
but I soon repressed my emotions in the depths of my soul, and began to
smile.

“‘If I own that I love you,’ I said, ‘you will banish me at once; if
I plead guilty to indifference, you will make me suffer for it. Women,
magistrates, and priests never quite lay the gown aside. Silence is
non-committal; be pleased then, madame, to approve my silence. You must
have feared, in some degree, to lose me, or I should not have received
this friendly admonition; and with that thought my pride ought to be
satisfied. Let us banish all personal considerations. You are perhaps
the only woman with whom I could discuss rationally a resolution so
contrary to the laws of nature. Considered with regard to your species,
you are a prodigy. Now let us investigate, in good faith, the causes of
this psychological anomaly. Does there exist in you, as in many women,
a certain pride in self, a love of your own loveliness, a refinement of
egoism which makes you shudder at the idea of belonging to another;
is it the thought of resigning your own will and submitting to a
superiority, though only of convention, which displeases you? You
would seem to me a thousand times fairer for it. Can love formerly have
brought you suffering? You probably set some value on your dainty
figure and graceful appearance, and may perhaps wish to avoid the
disfigurements of maternity. Is not this one of your strongest reasons
for refusing a too importunate love? Some natural defect perhaps makes
you insusceptible in spite of yourself? Do not be angry; my study, my
inquiry is absolutely dispassionate. Some are born blind, and nature may
easily have formed women who in like manner are blind, deaf, and dumb to
love. You are really an interesting subject for medical investigation.
You do not know your value. You feel perhaps a very legitimate distaste
for mankind; in that I quite concur--to me they all seem ugly and
detestable. And you are right,’ I added, feeling my heart swell within
me; ‘how can you do otherwise than despise us? There is not a man living
who is worthy of you.’

“I will not repeat all the biting words with which I ridiculed her. In
vain; my bitterest sarcasms and keenest irony never made her wince nor
elicited a sign of vexation. She heard me, with the customary smile
upon her lips and in her eyes, the smile that she wore as a part of her
clothing, and that never varied for friends, for mere acquaintances, or
for strangers.

“‘Isn’t it very nice of me to allow you to dissect me like this?’ she
said at last, as I came to a temporary standstill, and looked at her
in silence. ‘You see,’ she went on, laughing, ‘that I have no foolish
over-sensitiveness about my friendship. Many a woman would shut her door
on you by way of punishing you for your impertinence.’

“‘You could banish me without needing to give me the reasons for your
harshness.’ As I spoke I felt that I could kill her if she dismissed me.

“‘You are mad,’ she said, smiling still.

“‘Did you never think,’ I went on, ‘of the effects of passionate love? A
desperate man has often murdered his mistress.’

“‘It is better to die than to live in misery,’ she said coolly. ‘Such
a man as that would run through his wife’s money, desert her, and leave
her at last in utter wretchedness.’

“This calm calculation dumfounded me. The gulf between us was made
plain; we could never understand each other.

“‘Good-bye,’ I said proudly.

“‘Good-bye, till to-morrow,’ she answered, with a little friendly bow.

“For a moment’s space I hurled at her in a glance all the love I must
forego; she stood there with than banal smile of hers, the detestable
chill smile of a marble statue, with none of the warmth in it that it
seemed to express. Can you form any idea, my friend, of the pain that
overcame me on the way home through rain and snow, across a league of
icy-sheeted quays, without a hope left? Oh, to think that she not only
had not guessed my poverty, but believed me to be as wealthy as she was,
and likewise borne as softly over the rough ways of life! What failure
and deceit! It was no mere question of money now, but of the fate of all
that lay within me.

“I went at haphazard, going over the words of our strange conversation
with myself. I got so thoroughly lost in my reflections that I ended by
doubts as to the actual value of words and ideas. But I loved her
all the same; I loved this woman with the untouched heart that might
surrender at any moment--a woman who daily disappointed the expectations
of the previous evening, by appearing as a new mistress on the morrow.

“As I passed under the gateway of the Institute, a fevered thrill ran
through me. I remembered that I was fasting, and that I had not a penny.
To complete the measure of my misfortune, my hat was spoiled by the
rain. How was I to appear in the drawing-room of a woman of fashion with
an unpresentable hat? I had always cursed the inane and stupid custom
that compels us to exhibit the lining of our hats, and to keep them
always in our hands, but with anxious care I had so far kept mine in a
precarious state of efficiency. It had been neither strikingly new, nor
utterly shabby, neither napless nor over-glossy, and might have passed
for the hat of a frugally given owner, but its artificially prolonged
existence had now reached the final stage, it was crumpled, forlorn, and
completely ruined, a downright rag, a fitting emblem of its master. My
painfully preserved elegance must collapse for want of thirty sous.

“What unrecognized sacrifices I had made in the past three months for
Foedora! How often I had given the price of a week’s sustenance to see
her for a moment! To leave my work and go without food was the least of
it! I must traverse the streets of Paris without getting splashed, run
to escape showers, and reach her rooms at last, as neat and spruce as
any of the coxcombs about her. For a poet and a distracted wooer the
difficulties of this task were endless. My happiness, the course of my
love, might be affected by a speck of mud upon my only white waistcoat!
Oh, to miss the sight of her because I was wet through and bedraggled,
and had not so much as five sous to give to a shoeblack for removing the
least little spot of mud from my boot! The petty pangs of these nameless
torments, which an irritable man finds so great, only strengthened my
passion.

“The unfortunate must make sacrifices which they may not mention to
women who lead refined and luxurious lives. Such women see things
through a prism that gilds all men and their surroundings. Egoism leads
them to take cheerful views, and fashion makes them cruel; they do
not wish to reflect, lest they lose their happiness, and the absorbing
nature of their pleasures absolves their indifference to the misfortunes
of others. A penny never means millions to them; millions, on the
contrary, seem a mere trifle. Perhaps love must plead his cause by great
sacrifices, but a veil must be lightly drawn across them, they must go
down into silence. So when wealthy men pour out their devotion,
their fortunes, and their lives, they gain somewhat by these commonly
entertained opinions, an additional lustre hangs about their lovers’
follies; their silence is eloquent; there is a grace about the drawn
veil; but my terrible distress bound me over to suffer fearfully or ever
I might speak of my love or of dying for her sake.

“Was it a sacrifice after all? Was I not richly rewarded by the joy I
took in sacrificing everything to her? There was no commonest event of
my daily life to which the countess had not given importance, had not
overfilled with happiness. I had been hitherto careless of my clothes,
now I respected my coat as if it had been a second self. I should not
have hesitated between bodily harm and a tear in that garment. You must
enter wholly into my circumstances to understand the stormy thoughts,
the gathering frenzy, that shook me as I went, and which, perhaps, were
increased by my walk. I gloated in an infernal fashion which I cannot
describe over the absolute completeness of my wretchedness. I would
have drawn from it an augury of my future, but there is no limit to the
possibilities of misfortune. The door of my lodging-house stood ajar.
A light streamed from the heart-shaped opening cut in the shutters.
Pauline and her mother were sitting up for me and talking. I heard my
name spoken, and listened.

“‘Raphael is much nicer-looking than the student in number seven,’ said
Pauline; ‘his fair hair is such a pretty color. Don’t you think there is
something in his voice, too, I don’t know what it is, that gives you a
sort of a thrill? And, then, though he may be a little proud, he is very
kind, and he has such fine manners; I am sure that all the ladies must
be quite wild about him.’

“‘You might be fond of him yourself, to hear you talk,’ was Madame
Gaudin’s comment.

“‘He is just as dear to me as a brother,’ she laughed. ‘I should be
finely ungrateful if I felt no friendship for him. Didn’t he teach me
music and drawing and grammar, and everything I know in fact? You don’t
much notice how I get on, dear mother; but I shall know enough, in a
while, to give lessons myself, and then we can keep a servant.’

“I stole away softly, made some noise outside, and went into their room
to take the lamp, that Pauline tried to light for me. The dear child had
just poured soothing balm into my wounds. Her outspoken admiration had
given me fresh courage. I so needed to believe in myself and to come
by a just estimate of my advantages. This revival of hope in me perhaps
colored my surroundings. Perhaps also I had never before really looked
at the picture that so often met my eyes, of the two women in their
room; it was a scene such as Flemish painters have reproduced so
faithfully for us, that I admired in its delightful reality. The mother,
with the kind smile upon her lips, sat knitting stockings by the dying
fire; Pauline was painting hand-screens, her brushes and paints, strewn
over the tiny table, made bright spots of color for the eye to dwell
on. When she had left her seat and stood lighting my lamp, one must
have been under the yoke of a terrible passion indeed, not to admire her
faintly flushed transparent hands, the girlish charm of her attitude,
the ideal grace of her head, as the lamplight fell full on her pale
face. Night and silence added to the charms of this industrious vigil
and peaceful interior. The light-heartedness that sustained such
continuous toil could only spring from devout submission and the lofty
feelings that it brings.

“There was an indescribable harmony between them and their possessions.
The splendor of Foedora’s home did not satisfy; it called out all my
worst instincts; something in this lowly poverty and unfeigned goodness
revived me. It may have been that luxury abased me in my own eyes,
while here my self-respect was restored to me, as I sought to extend the
protection that a man is so eager to make felt, over these two women,
who in the bare simplicity of the existence in their brown room seemed
to live wholly in the feelings of their hearts. As I came up to Pauline,
she looked at me in an almost motherly way; her hands shook a little as
she held the lamp, so that the light fell on me and cried:

“‘_Dieu_! how pale you are! and you are wet through! My mother will try
to wipe you dry. Monsieur Raphael,’ she went on, after a little pause,
‘you are so very fond of milk, and to-night we happen to have some
cream. Here, will you not take some?’

“She pounced like a kitten, on a china bowl full of milk. She did it so
quickly, and put it before me so prettily, that I hesitated.

“‘You are going to refuse me?’ she said, and her tones changed.

“The pride in each felt for the other’s pride. It was Pauline’s poverty
that seemed to humiliate her, and to reproach me with my want of
consideration, and I melted at once and accepted the cream that might
have been meant for her morning’s breakfast. The poor child tried not to
show her joy, but her eyes sparkled.

“‘I needed it badly,’ I said as I sat down. (An anxious look passed over
her face.) ‘Do you remember that passage, Pauline, where Bossuet tells
how God gave more abundant reward for a cup of cold water than for a
victory?’

“‘Yes,’ she said, her heart beating like some wild bird’s in a child’s
hands.

“‘Well, as we shall part very soon, now,’ I went on in an unsteady
voice, ‘you must let me show my gratitude to you and to your mother for
all the care you have taken of me.’

“‘Oh, don’t let us cast accounts,’ she said laughing. But her laughter
covered an agitation that gave me pain. I went on without appearing to
hear her words:

“‘My piano is one of Erard’s best instruments; and you must take it.
Pray accept it without hesitation; I really could not take it with me on
the journey I am about to make.’

“Perhaps the melancholy tones in which I spoke enlightened the two
women, for they seemed to understand, and eyed me with curiosity and
alarm. Here was the affection that I had looked for in the glacial
regions of the great world, true affection, unostentatious but tender,
and possibly lasting.

“‘Don’t take it to heart so,’ the mother said; ‘stay on here. My husband
is on his way towards us even now,’ she went on. ‘I looked into the
Gospel of St. John this evening while Pauline hung our door-key in a
Bible from her fingers. The key turned; that means that Gaudin is in
health and doing well. Pauline began again for you and for the young man
in number seven--it turned for you, but not for him. We are all going to
be rich. Gaudin will come back a millionaire. I dreamed once that I saw
him in a ship full of serpents; luckily the water was rough, and that
means gold or precious stones from over-sea.’

“The silly, friendly words were like the crooning lullaby with which a
mother soothes her sick child; they in a manner calmed me. There was a
pleasant heartiness in the worthy woman’s looks and tones, which, if
it could not remove trouble, at any rate soothed and quieted it, and
deadened the pain. Pauline, keener-sighted than her mother, studied me
uneasily; her quick eyes seemed to read my life and my future. I thanked
the mother and daughter by an inclination of the head, and hurried away;
I was afraid I should break down.

“I found myself alone under my roof, and laid myself down in my misery.
My unhappy imagination suggested numberless baseless projects, and
prescribed impossible resolutions. When a man is struggling in the wreck
of his fortunes, he is not quite without resources, but I was engulfed.
Ah, my dear fellow, we are too ready to blame the wretched. Let us be
less harsh on the results of the most powerful of all social solvents.
Where poverty is absolute there exist no such things as shame or crime,
or virtue or intelligence. I knew not what to do; I was as defenceless
as a maiden on her knees before a beast of prey. A penniless man who
has no ties to bind him is master of himself at any rate, but a luckless
wretch who is in love no longer belongs to himself, and may not take his
own life. Love makes us almost sacred in our own eyes; it is the life
of another that we revere within us; then and so it begins for us the
cruelest trouble of all--the misery with a hope in it, a hope for which
we must even bear our torments. I thought I would go to Rastignac on the
morrow to confide Foedora’s strange resolution to him, and with that I
slept.

“‘Ah, ha!’ cried Rastignac, as he saw me enter his lodging at nine
o’clock in the morning. ‘I know what brings you here. Foedora has
dismissed you. Some kind souls, who were jealous of your ascendency over
the countess, gave out that you were going to be married. Heaven only
knows what follies your rivals have equipped you with, and what slanders
have been directed at you.’

“‘That explains everything!’ I exclaimed. I remembered all my
presumptuous speeches, and gave the countess credit for no little
magnanimity. It pleased me to think that I was a miscreant who had not
been punished nearly enough, and I saw nothing in her indulgence but the
long-suffering charity of love.

“‘Not quite so fast,’ urged the prudent Gascon; ‘Foedora has all the
sagacity natural to a profoundly selfish woman; perhaps she may have
taken your measure while you still coveted only her money and her
splendor; in spite of all your care, she could have read you through and
through. She can dissemble far too well to let any dissimulation pass
undetected. I fear,’ he went on, ‘that I have brought you into a
bad way. In spite of her cleverness and her tact, she seems to me a
domineering sort of person, like every woman who can only feel pleasure
through her brain. Happiness for her lies entirely in a comfortable life
and in social pleasures; her sentiment is only assumed; she will make
you miserable; you will be her head footman.’

“He spoke to the deaf. I broke in upon him, disclosing, with an
affectation of light-heartedness, the state of my finances.

“‘Yesterday evening,’ he rejoined, ‘luck ran against me, and that
carried off all my available cash. But for that trivial mishap, I would
gladly have shared my purse with you. But let us go and breakfast at the
restaurant; perhaps there is good counsel in oysters.’

“He dressed, and had his tilbury brought round. We went to the Cafe
de Paris like a couple of millionaires, armed with all the audacious
impertinence of the speculator whose capital is imaginary. That devil
of a Gascon quite disconcerted me by the coolness of his manners and his
absolute self-possession. While we were taking coffee after an excellent
and well-ordered repast, a young dandy entered, who did not escape
Rastignac. He had been nodding here and there among the crowd to this or
that young man, distinguished both by personal attractions and elegant
attire, and now he said to me:

“‘Here’s your man,’ as he beckoned to this gentleman with a wonderful
cravat, who seemed to be looking for a table that suited his ideas.

“‘That rogue has been decorated for bringing out books that he doesn’t
understand a word of,’ whispered Rastignac; ‘he is a chemist, a
historian, a novelist, and a political writer; he has gone halves,
thirds, or quarters in the authorship of I don’t know how many plays,
and he is as ignorant as Dom Miguel’s mule. He is not a man so much as
a name, a label that the public is familiar with. So he would do well to
avoid shops inscribed with the motto, “_Ici l’on peut ecrire soi-meme_.”
 He is acute enough to deceive an entire congress of diplomatists. In
a couple of words, he is a moral half-caste, not quite a fraud, nor
entirely genuine. But, hush! he has succeeded already; nobody asks
anything further, and every one calls him an illustrious man.’

“‘Well, my esteemed and excellent friend, and how may Your Intelligence
be?’ So Rastignac addressed the stranger as he sat down at a neighboring
table.

“‘Neither well nor ill; I am overwhelmed with work. I have all the
necessary materials for some very curious historical memoirs in my
hands, and I cannot find any one to whom I can ascribe them. It worries
me, for I shall have to be quick about it. Memoirs are falling out of
fashion.’

“‘What are the memoirs--contemporaneous, ancient, or memoirs of the
court, or what?’

“‘They relate to the Necklace affair.’

“‘Now, isn’t that a coincidence?’ said Rastignac, turning to me and
laughing. He looked again to the literary speculation, and said,
indicating me:

“‘This is M. de Valentin, one of my friends, whom I must introduce to
you as one of our future literary celebrities. He had formerly an aunt,
a marquise, much in favor once at court, and for about two years he has
been writing a Royalist history of the Revolution.’

“Then, bending over this singular man of business, he went on:

“‘He is a man of talent, and a simpleton that will do your memoirs for
you, in his aunt’s name, for a hundred crowns a volume.’

“‘It’s a bargain,’ said the other, adjusting his cravat. ‘Waiter, my
oysters.’

“‘Yes, but you must give me twenty-five louis as commission, and you
will pay him in advance for each volume,’ said Rastignac.

“‘No, no. He shall only have fifty crowns on account, and then I shall
be sure of having my manuscript punctually.’

“Rastignac repeated this business conversation to me in low tones; and
then, without giving me any voice in the matter, he replied:

“‘We agree to your proposal. When can we call upon you to arrange the
affair?’

“‘Oh, well! Come and dine here to-morrow at seven o’clock.’

“We rose. Rastignac flung some money to the waiter, put the bill in his
pocket, and we went out. I was quite stupified by the flippancy and ease
with which he had sold my venerable aunt, la Marquise de Montbauron.

“‘I would sooner take ship for the Brazils, and give the Indians lessons
in algebra, though I don’t know a word of it, than tarnish my family
name.’

“Rastignac burst out laughing.

“‘How dense you are! Take the fifty crowns in the first instance, and
write the memoirs. When you have finished them, you will decline to
publish them in your aunt’s name, imbecile! Madame de Montbauron, with
her hooped petticoat, her rank and beauty, rouge and slippers, and her
death upon the scaffold, is worth a great deal more than six hundred
francs. And then, if the trade will not give your aunt her due, some old
adventurer, or some shady countess or other, will be found to put her
name to the memoirs.’

“‘Oh,’ I groaned; ‘why did I quit the blameless life in my garret? This
world has aspects that are very vilely dishonorable.’

“‘Yes,’ said Rastignac, ‘that is all very poetical, but this is a matter
of business. What a child you are! Now, listen to me. As to your work,
the public will decide upon it; and as for my literary middle-man,
hasn’t he devoted eight years of his life to obtaining a footing in the
book-trade, and paid heavily for his experience? You divide the money
and the labor of the book with him very unequally, but isn’t yours the
better part? Twenty-five louis means as much to you as a thousand francs
does to him. Come, you can write historical memoirs, a work of art
such as never was, since Diderot once wrote six sermons for a hundred
crowns!’

“‘After all,’ I said, in agitation, ‘I cannot choose but do it. So,
my dear friend, my thanks are due to you. I shall be quite rich with
twenty-five louis.’

“‘Richer than you think,’ he laughed. ‘If I have my commission from
Finot in this matter, it goes to you, can’t you see? Now let us go to
the Bois de Boulogne,’ he said; ‘we shall see your countess there, and
I will show you the pretty little widow that I am to marry--a charming
woman, an Alsacienne, rather plump. She reads Kant, Schiller, Jean Paul,
and a host of lachrymose books. She has a mania for continually asking
my opinion, and I have to look as if I entered into all this German
sensibility, and to know a pack of ballads--drugs, all of them, that
my doctor absolutely prohibits. As yet I have not been able to wean her
from her literary enthusiasms; she sheds torrents of tears as she reads
Goethe, and I have to weep a little myself to please her, for she has an
income of fifty thousand livres, my dear boy, and the prettiest little
hand and foot in the world. Oh, if she would only say _mon ange_
and _brouiller_ instead of _mon anche_ and _prouiller_, she would be
perfection!’

“We saw the countess, radiant amid the splendors of her equipage. The
coquette bowed very graciously to us both, and the smile she gave me
seemed to me to be divine and full of love. I was very happy; I fancied
myself beloved; I had money, a wealth of love in my heart, and my
troubles were over. I was light-hearted, blithe, and content. I found
my friend’s lady-love charming. Earth and air and heaven--all
nature--seemed to reflect Foedora’s smile for me.

“As we returned through the Champs-Elysees, we paid a visit
to Rastignac’s hatter and tailor. Thanks to the ‘Necklace,’ my
insignificant peace-footing was to end, and I made formidable
preparations for a campaign. Henceforward I need not shrink from a
contest with the spruce and fashionable young men who made Foedora’s
circle. I went home, locked myself in, and stood by my dormer window,
outwardly calm enough, but in reality I bade a last good-bye to the
roofs without. I began to live in the future, rehearsed my life drama,
and discounted love and its happiness. Ah, how stormy life can grow
to be within the four walls of a garret! The soul within us is like a
fairy; she turns straw into diamonds for us; and for us, at a touch of
her wand, enchanted palaces arise, as flowers in the meadows spring up
towards the sun.

“Towards noon, next day, Pauline knocked gently at my door, and brought
me--who could guess it?--a note from Foedora. The countess asked me to
take her to the Luxembourg, and to go thence to see with her the Museum
and Jardin des Plantes.

“‘The man is waiting for an answer,’ said Pauline, after quietly waiting
for a moment.

“I hastily scrawled my acknowledgements, and Pauline took the note. I
changed my dress. When my toilette was ended, and I looked at myself
with some complaisance, an icy shiver ran through me as I thought:

“‘Will Foedora walk or drive? Will it rain or shine?--No matter,
though,’ I said to myself; ‘whichever it is, can one ever reckon with
feminine caprice? She will have no money about her, and will want
to give a dozen francs to some little Savoyard because his rags are
picturesque.’

“I had not a brass farthing, and should have no money till the evening
came. How dearly a poet pays for the intellectual prowess that method
and toil have brought him, at such crises of our youth! Innumerable
painfully vivid thoughts pierced me like barbs. I looked out of my
window; the weather was very unsettled. If things fell out badly, I
might easily hire a cab for the day; but would not the fear lie on me
every moment that I might not meet Finot in the evening? I felt too weak
to endure such fears in the midst of my felicity. Though I felt sure
that I should find nothing, I began a grand search through my room;
I looked for imaginary coins in the recesses of my mattress; I hunted
about everywhere--I even shook out my old boots. A nervous fever seized
me; I looked with wild eyes at the furniture when I had ransacked it
all. Will you understand, I wonder, the excitement that possessed
me when, plunged deep in the listlessness of despair, I opened my
writing-table drawer, and found a fair and splendid ten-franc piece
that shone like a rising star, new and sparkling, and slily hiding in
a cranny between two boards? I did not try to account for its previous
reserve and the cruelty of which it had been guilty in thus lying
hidden; I kissed it for a friend faithful in adversity, and hailed it
with a cry that found an echo, and made me turn sharply, to find Pauline
with a face grown white.

“‘I thought,’ she faltered, ‘that you had hurt yourself! The man who
brought the letter----’ (she broke off as if something smothered her
voice). ‘But mother has paid him,’ she added, and flitted away like a
wayward, capricious child. Poor little one! I wanted her to share in
my happiness. I seemed to have all the happiness in the world within
me just then; and I would fain have returned to the unhappy, all that I
felt as if I had stolen from them.

“The intuitive perception of adversity is sound for the most part; the
countess had sent away her carriage. One of those freaks that pretty
women can scarcely explain to themselves had determined her to go on
foot, by way of the boulevards, to the Jardin des Plantes.

“‘It will rain,’ I told her, and it pleased her to contradict me.

“As it fell out, the weather was fine while we went through the
Luxembourg; when we came out, some drops fell from a great cloud, whose
progress I had watched uneasily, and we took a cab. At the Museum I was
about to dismiss the vehicle, and Foedora (what agonies!) asked me not
to do so. But it was like a dream in broad daylight for me, to chat
with her, to wander in the Jardin des Plantes, to stray down the shady
alleys, to feel her hand upon my arm; the secret transports repressed
in me were reduced, no doubt, to a fixed and foolish smile upon my
lips; there was something unreal about it all. Yet in all her movements,
however alluring, whether we stood or whether we walked, there was
nothing either tender or lover-like. When I tried to share in a measure
the action of movement prompted by her life, I became aware of a check,
or of something strange in her that I cannot explain, or an inner
activity concealed in her nature. There is no suavity about the
movements of women who have no soul in them. Our wills were opposed,
and we did not keep step together. Words are wanting to describe this
outward dissonance between two beings; we are not accustomed to read
a thought in a movement. We instinctively feel this phenomenon of our
nature, but it cannot be expressed.

“I did not dissect my sensations during those violent seizures of
passion,” Raphael went on, after a moment of silence, as if he were
replying to an objection raised by himself. “I did not analyze my
pleasures nor count my heartbeats then, as a miser scrutinizes and
weighs his gold pieces. No; experience sheds its melancholy light over
the events of the past to-day, and memory brings these pictures back,
as the sea-waves in fair weather cast up fragment after fragment of the
debris of a wrecked vessel upon the strand.

“‘It is in your power to render me a rather important service,’ said the
countess, looking at me in an embarrassed way. ‘After confiding in you
my aversion to lovers, I feel myself more at liberty to entreat your
good offices in the name of friendship. Will there not be very much more
merit in obliging me to-day?’ she asked, laughing.

“I looked at her in anguish. Her manner was coaxing, but in no wise
affectionate; she felt nothing for me; she seemed to be playing a part,
and I thought her a consummate actress. Then all at once my hopes awoke
once more, at a single look and word. Yet if reviving love expressed
itself in my eyes, she bore its light without any change in the
clearness of her own; they seemed, like a tiger’s eyes, to have a sheet
of metal behind them. I used to hate her in such moments.

“‘The influence of the Duc de Navarreins would be very useful to me,
with an all-powerful person in Russia,’ she went on, persuasion in every
modulation of her voice, ‘whose intervention I need in order to have
justice done me in a matter that concerns both my fortune and my
position in the world, that is to say, the recognition of my marriage
by the Emperor. Is not the Duc de Navarreins a cousin of yours? A letter
from him would settle everything.’

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

“‘You are very nice,’ she said, pressing my hand. ‘Come and have dinner
with me, and I will tell you everything, as if you were my confessor.’

“So this discreet, suspicious woman, who had never been heard to speak a
word about her affairs to any one, was going to consult me.

“‘Oh, how dear to me is this silence that you have imposed on me!’ I
cried; ‘but I would rather have had some sharper ordeal still.’ And
she smiled upon the intoxication in my eyes; she did not reject my
admiration in any way; surely she loved me!

“Fortunately, my purse held just enough to satisfy her cab-man. The day
spent in her house, alone with her, was delicious; it was the first time
that I had seen her in this way. Hitherto we had always been kept apart
by the presence of others, and by her formal politeness and reserved
manners, even during her magnificent dinners; but now it was as if I
lived beneath her own roof--I had her all to myself, so to speak. My
wandering fancy broke down barriers, arranged the events of life to my
liking, and steeped me in happiness and love. I seemed to myself her
husband, I liked to watch her busied with little details; it was a
pleasure to me even to see her take off her bonnet and shawl. She left
me alone for a little, and came back, charming, with her hair newly
arranged; and this dainty change of toilette had been made for me!

“During the dinner she lavished attention upon me, and put charm without
end into those numberless trifles to all seeming, that make up half of
our existence nevertheless. As we sat together before a crackling
fire, on silken cushions surrounded by the most desirable creations
of Oriental luxury; as I saw this woman whose famous beauty made every
heart beat, so close to me; an unapproachable woman who was talking and
bringing all her powers of coquetry to bear upon me; then my blissful
pleasure rose almost to the point of suffering. To my vexation, I
recollected the important business to be concluded; I determined to go
to keep the appointment made for me for this evening.

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

“She loved me, then! or I thought so at least, from the bland tones in
which those two words were uttered. I would then have bartered a couple
of years of life for every hour she chose to grant to me, and so prolong
my ecstasy. My happiness was increased by the extent of the money I
sacrificed. It was midnight before she dismissed me. But on the morrow,
for all that, my heroism cost me a good many remorseful pangs; I was
afraid the affair of the Memoirs, now of such importance for me, might
have fallen through, and rushed off to Rastignac. We found the nominal
author of my future labors just getting up.

“Finot read over a brief agreement to me, in which nothing whatever was
said about my aunt, and when it had been signed he paid me down fifty
crowns, and the three of us breakfasted together. I had only thirty
francs left over, when I had paid for my new hat, for sixty tickets at
thirty sous each, and settled my debts; but for some days to come the
difficulties of living were removed. If I had but listened to Rastignac,
I might have had abundance by frankly adopting the ‘English system.’ He
really wanted to establish my credit by setting me to raise loans, on
the theory that borrowing is the basis of credit. To hear him talk, the
future was the largest and most secure kind of capital in the world.
My future luck was hypothecated for the benefit of my creditors, and he
gave my custom to his tailor, an artist, and a young man’s tailor, who
was to leave me in peace until I married.

“The monastic life of study that I had led for three years past ended
on this day. I frequented Foedora’s house very diligently, and tried to
outshine the heroes or the swaggerers to be found in her circle. When
I believed that I had left poverty for ever behind me, I regained my
freedom of mind, humiliated my rivals, and was looked upon as a very
attractive, dazzling, and irresistible sort of man. But acute folk used
to say with regard to me, ‘A fellow as clever as that will keep all his
enthusiasms in his brain,’ and charitably extolled my faculties at
the expense of my feelings. ‘Isn’t he lucky, not to be in love!’ they
exclaimed. ‘If he were, could he be so light-hearted and animated?’ Yet
in Foedora’s presence I was as dull as love could make me. When I was
alone with her, I had not a word to say, or if I did speak, I renounced
love; and I affected gaiety but ill, like a courtier who has a bitter
mortification to hide. I tried in every way to make myself indispensable
in her life, and necessary to her vanity and to her comfort; I was a
plaything at her pleasure, a slave always at her side. And when I had
frittered away the day in this way, I went back to my work at night,
securing merely two or three hours’ sleep in the early morning.

“But I had not, like Rastignac, the ‘English system’ at my finger-ends,
and I very soon saw myself without a penny. I fell at once into that
precarious way of life which industriously hides cold and miserable
depths beneath an elusive surface of luxury; I was a coxcomb without
conquests, a penniless fop, a nameless gallant. The old sufferings were
renewed, but less sharply; no doubt I was growing used to the painful
crisis. Very often my sole diet consisted of the scanty provision of
cakes and tea that is offered in drawing-rooms, or one of the countess’
great dinners must sustain me for two whole days. I used all my time,
and exerted every effort and all my powers of observation, to penetrate
the impenetrable character of Foedora. Alternate hope and despair had
swayed my opinions; for me she was sometimes the tenderest, sometimes
the most unfeeling of women. But these transitions from joy to sadness
became unendurable; I sought to end the horrible conflict within me by
extinguishing love. By the light of warning gleams my soul sometimes
recognized the gulfs that lay between us. The countess confirmed all my
fears; I had never yet detected any tear in her eyes; an affecting scene
in a play left her smiling and unmoved. All her instincts were selfish;
she could not divine another’s joy or sorrow. She had made a fool of me,
in fact!

“I had rejoiced over a sacrifice to make for her, and almost humiliated
myself in seeking out my kinsman, the Duc de Navarreins, a selfish man
who was ashamed of my poverty, and had injured me too deeply not to hate
me. He received me with the polite coldness that makes every word and
gesture seem an insult; he looked so ill at ease that I pitied him. I
blushed for this pettiness amid grandeur, and penuriousness surrounded
by luxury. He began to talk to me of his heavy losses in the three per
cents, and then I told him the object of my visit. The change in his
manners, hitherto glacial, which now gradually, became affectionate,
disgusted me.

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

“On him Foedora exercised spells and witcheries unheard of; she drew him
into her power, and arranged her whole mysterious business with him; I
was left out, I heard not a word of it; she had made a tool of me! She
did not seem to be aware of my existence while my cousin was present;
she received me less cordially perhaps than when I was first presented
to her. One evening she chose to mortify me before the duke by a look, a
gesture, that it is useless to try to express in words. I went away with
tears in my eyes, planning terrible and outrageous schemes of vengeance
without end.

“I often used to go with her to the theatre. Love utterly absorbed me
as I sat beside her; as I looked at her I used to give myself up to the
pleasure of listening to the music, putting all my soul into the double
joy of love and of hearing every emotion of my heart translated into
musical cadences. It was my passion that filled the air and the stage,
that was triumphant everywhere but with my mistress. Then I would take
Foedora’s hand. I used to scan her features and her eyes, imploring of
them some indication that one blended feeling possessed us both, seeking
for the sudden harmony awakened by the power of music, which makes
our souls vibrate in unison; but her hand was passive, her eyes said
nothing.

“When the fire that burned in me glowed too fiercely from the face
I turned upon her, she met it with that studied smile of hers, the
conventional expression that sits on the lips of every portrait in every
exhibition. She was not listening to the music. The divine pages of
Rossini, Cimarosa, or Zingarelli called up no emotion, gave no voice to
any poetry in her life; her soul was a desert.

“Foedora presented herself as a drama before a drama. Her lorgnette
traveled restlessly over the boxes; she was restless too beneath the
apparent calm; fashion tyrannized over her; her box, her bonnet, her
carriage, her own personality absorbed her entirely. My merciless
knowledge thoroughly tore away all my illusions. If good breeding
consists in self-forgetfulness and consideration for others, in
constantly showing gentleness in voice and bearing, in pleasing others,
and in making them content in themselves, all traces of her plebeian
origin were not yet obliterated in Foedora, in spite of her cleverness.
Her self-forgetfulness was a sham, her manners were not innate but
painfully acquired, her politeness was rather subservient. And yet for
those she singled out, her honeyed words expressed natural kindness, her
pretentious exaggeration was exalted enthusiasm. I alone had scrutinized
her grimacings, and stripped away the thin rind that sufficed to conceal
her real nature from the world; her trickery no longer deceived me; I
had sounded the depths of that feline nature. I blushed for her when
some donkey or other flattered and complimented her. And yet I loved her
through it all! I hoped that her snows would melt with the warmth of a
poet’s love. If I could only have made her feel all the greatness that
lies in devotion, then I should have seen her perfected, she would have
been an angel. I loved her as a man, a lover, and an artist; if it had
been necessary not to love her so that I might win her, some cool-headed
coxcomb, some self-possessed calculator would perhaps have had an
advantage over me. She was so vain and sophisticated, that the language
of vanity would appeal to her; she would have allowed herself to be
taken in the toils of an intrigue; a hard, cold nature would have gained
a complete ascendency over her. Keen grief had pierced me to my very
soul, as she unconsciously revealed her absolute love of self. I seemed
to see her as she one day would be, alone in the world, with no one to
whom she could stretch her hand, with no friendly eyes for her own
to meet and rest upon. I was bold enough to set this before her one
evening; I painted in vivid colors her lonely, sad, deserted old age.
Her comment on this prospect of so terrible a revenge of thwarted nature
was horrible.

“‘I shall always have money,’ she said; ‘and with money we can always
inspire such sentiments as are necessary for our comfort in those about
us.’

“I went away confounded by the arguments of luxury, by the reasoning
of this woman of the world in which she lived; and blamed myself for
my infatuated idolatry. I myself had not loved Pauline because she
was poor; and had not the wealthy Foedora a right to repulse Raphael?
Conscience is our unerring judge until we finally stifle it. A specious
voice said within me, ‘Foedora is neither attracted to nor repulses any
one; she has her liberty, but once upon a time she sold herself to the
Russian count, her husband or her lover, for gold. But temptation is
certain to enter into her life. Wait till that moment comes!’ She lived
remote from humanity, in a sphere apart, in a hell or a heaven of
her own; she was neither frail nor virtuous. This feminine enigma in
embroideries and cashmeres had brought into play every emotion of the
human heart in me--pride, ambition, love, curiosity.

“There was a craze just then for praising a play at a little Boulevard
theatre, prompted perhaps by a wish to appear original that besets us
all, or due to some freak of fashion. The countess showed some signs of
a wish to see the floured face of the actor who had so delighted several
people of taste, and I obtained the honor of taking her to a first
presentation of some wretched farce or other. A box scarcely cost five
francs, but I had not a brass farthing. I was but half-way through
the volume of Memoirs; I dared not beg for assistance of Finot, and
Rastignac, my providence, was away. These constant perplexities were the
bane of my life.

“We had once come out of the theatre when it was raining heavily,
Foedora had called a cab for me before I could escape from her show
of concern; she would not admit any of my excuses--my liking for wet
weather, and my wish to go to the gaming-table. She did not read my
poverty in my embarrassed attitude, or in my forced jests. My eyes would
redden, but she did not understand a look. A young man’s life is at the
mercy of the strangest whims! At every revolution of the wheels during
the journey, thoughts that burned stirred in my heart. I tried to pull
up a plank from the bottom of the vehicle, hoping to slip through the
hole into the street; but finding insuperable obstacles, I burst into a
fit of laughter, and then sat stupefied in calm dejection, like a man in
a pillory. When I reached my lodging, Pauline broke in through my first
stammering words with:

“‘If you haven’t any money----?’

“Ah, the music of Rossini was as nothing compared with those words. But
to return to the performance at the Funambules.

“I thought of pawning the circlet of gold round my mother’s portrait
in order to escort the countess. Although the pawnbroker loomed in
my thoughts as one of the doors of a convict’s prison, I would rather
myself have carried my bed thither than have begged for alms. There is
something so painful in the expression of a man who asks money of you!
There are loans that mulct us of our self-respect, just as some rebuffs
from a friend’s lips sweep away our last illusion.

“Pauline was working; her mother had gone to bed. I flung a stealthy
glance over the bed; the curtains were drawn back a little; Madame
Gaudin was in a deep sleep, I thought, when I saw her quiet, sallow
profile outlined against the pillow.

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

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

“The gladness in her eyes frightened me.

“‘Is it possible that she loves me?’ I thought. ‘Pauline,’ I began.
I went and sat near to her, so as to study her. My tones had been so
searching that she read my thought; her eyes fell, and I scrutinized
her face. It was so pure and frank that I fancied I could see as clearly
into her heart as into my own.

“‘Do you love me?’ I asked.

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

“Then she did not love me. Her jesting tones, and a little gleeful
movement that escaped her, expressed nothing beyond a girlish, blithe
goodwill. I told her about my distress and the predicament in which I
found myself, and asked her to help me.

“‘You do not wish to go to the pawnbroker’s yourself, M. Raphael,’ she
answered, ‘and yet you would send me!’

“I blushed in confusion at the child’s reasoning. She took my hand in
hers as if she wanted to compensate for this home-truth by her light
touch upon it.

“‘Oh, I would willingly go,’ she said, ‘but it is not necessary. I found
two five-franc pieces at the back of the piano, that had slipped without
your knowledge between the frame and the keyboard, and I laid them on
your table.’

“‘You will soon be coming into some money, M. Raphael,’ said the kind
mother, showing her face between the curtains, ‘and I can easily lend
you a few crowns meanwhile.’

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

“‘Bah! why should you?’ she said petulantly. Her hand shook in mine with
the throbbing of her pulse; she snatched it away, and looked at both of
mine.

“‘You will marry a rich wife,’ she said, ‘but she will give you a great
deal of trouble. Ah, _Dieu_! she will be your death,--I am sure of it.’

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

“‘You are very credulous, Pauline!’

“‘The woman whom you will love is going to kill you--there is no doubt
of it,’ she said, looking at me with alarm.

“She took up her brush again and dipped it in the color; her great
agitation was evident; she looked at me no longer. I was ready to give
credence just then to superstitious fancies; no man is utterly wretched
so long as he is superstitious; a belief of that kind is often in
reality a hope.

“I found that those two magnificent five-franc pieces were lying, in
fact, upon my table when I reached my room. During the first confused
thoughts of early slumber, I tried to audit my accounts so as to explain
this unhoped-for windfall; but I lost myself in useless calculations,
and slept. Just as I was leaving my room to engage a box the next
morning, Pauline came to see me.

“‘Perhaps your ten francs is not enough,’ said the amiable, kind-hearted
girl; ‘my mother told me to offer you this money. Take it, please, take
it!’

“She laid three crowns upon the table, and tried to escape, but I would
not let her go. Admiration dried the tears that sprang to my eyes.

“‘You are an angel, Pauline,’ I said. ‘It is not the loan that touches
me so much as the delicacy with which it is offered. I used to wish for
a rich wife, a fashionable woman of rank; and now, alas! I would
rather possess millions, and find some girl, as poor as you are, with
a generous nature like your own; and I would renounce a fatal passion
which will kill me. Perhaps what you told me will come true.’

“‘That is enough,’ she said, and fled away; the fresh trills of her
birdlike voice rang up the staircase.

“‘She is very happy in not yet knowing love,’ I said to myself, thinking
of the torments I had endured for many months past.

“Pauline’s fifteen francs were invaluable to me. Foedora, thinking of
the stifling odor of the crowded place where we were to spend several
hours, was sorry that she had not brought a bouquet; I went in search of
flowers for her, as I had laid already my life and my fate at her feet.
With a pleasure in which compunction mingled, I gave her a bouquet. I
learned from its price the extravagance of superficial gallantry in
the world. But very soon she complained of the heavy scent of a Mexican
jessamine. The interior of the theatre, the bare bench on which she
was to sit, filled her with intolerable disgust; she upbraided me for
bringing her there. Although she sat beside me, she wished to go, and
she went. I had spent sleepless nights, and squandered two months of
my life for her, and I could not please her. Never had that tormenting
spirit been more unfeeling or more fascinating.

“I sat beside her in the cramped back seat of the vehicle; all the way I
could feel her breath on me and the contact of her perfumed glove; I
saw distinctly all her exceeding beauty; I inhaled a vague scent of
orris-root; so wholly a woman she was, with no touch of womanhood. Just
then a sudden gleam of light lit up the depths of this mysterious life
for me. I thought all at once of a book just published by a poet,
a genuine conception of the artist, in the shape of the statue of
Polycletus.

“I seemed to see that monstrous creation, at one time an officer,
breaking in a spirited horse; at another, a girl, who gives herself up
to her toilette and breaks her lovers’ hearts; or again, a false lover
driving a timid and gentle maid to despair. Unable to analyze Foedora
by any other process, I told her this fanciful story; but no hint of
her resemblance to this poetry of the impossible crossed her--it simply
diverted her; she was like a child over a story from the _Arabian
Nights_.

“‘Foedora must be shielded by some talisman,’ I thought to myself as
I went back, ‘or she could not resist the love of a man of my age, the
infectious fever of that splendid malady of the soul. Is Foedora, like
Lady Delacour, a prey to a cancer? Her life is certainly an unnatural
one.’

“I shuddered at the thought. Then I decided on a plan, at once the
wildest and the most rational that lover ever dreamed of. I would study
this woman from a physical point of view, as I had already studied her
intellectually, and to this end I made up my mind to spend a night in
her room without her knowledge. This project preyed upon me as a thirst
for revenge gnaws at the heart of a Corsican monk. This is how I carried
it out. On the days when Foedora received, her rooms were far too
crowded for the hall-porter to keep the balance even between goers and
comers; I could remain in the house, I felt sure, without causing a
scandal in it, and I waited the countess’ coming soiree with impatience.
As I dressed I put a little English penknife into my waistcoat pocket,
instead of a poniard. That literary implement, if found upon me, could
awaken no suspicion, but I knew not whither my romantic resolution might
lead, and I wished to be prepared.

“As soon as the rooms began to fill, I entered the bedroom and examined
the arrangements. The inner and outer shutters were closed; this was
a good beginning; and as the waiting-maid might come to draw back the
curtains that hung over the windows, I pulled them together. I was
running great risks in venturing to manoeuvre beforehand in this way,
but I had accepted the situation, and had deliberately reckoned with its
dangers.

“About midnight I hid myself in the embrasure of the window. I tried to
scramble on to a ledge of the wainscoting, hanging on by the fastening
of the shutters with my back against the wall, in such a position that
my feet could not be visible. When I had carefully considered my points
of support, and the space between me and the curtains, I had become
sufficiently acquainted with all the difficulties of my position to
stay in it without fear of detection if undisturbed by cramp, coughs,
or sneezings. To avoid useless fatigue, I remained standing until the
critical moment, when I must hang suspended like a spider in its web.
The white-watered silk and muslin of the curtains spread before me in
great pleats like organ-pipes. With my penknife I cut loopholes in them,
through which I could see.

“I heard vague murmurs from the salons, the laughter and the louder
tones of the speakers. The smothered commotion and vague uproar lessened
by slow degrees. One man and another came for his hat from the countess’
chest of drawers, close to where I stood. I shivered, if the curtains
were disturbed, at the thought of the mischances consequent on the
confused and hasty investigations made by the men in a hurry to depart,
who were rummaging everywhere. When I experienced no misfortunes of this
kind, I augured well of my enterprise. An old wooer of Foedora’s came
for the last hat; he thought himself quite alone, looked at the bed,
and heaved a great sigh, accompanied by some inaudible exclamation, into
which he threw sufficient energy. In the boudoir close by, the countess,
finding only some five or six intimate acquaintances about her, proposed
tea. The scandals for which existing society has reserved the little
faculty of belief that it retains, mingled with epigrams and trenchant
witticisms, and the clatter of cups and spoons. Rastignac drew roars of
laughter by merciless sarcasms at the expense of my rivals.

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

“‘I am quite of that opinion,’ was his candid reply. ‘I have always
been right about my aversions--and my friendships as well,’ he added.
‘Perhaps my enemies are quite as useful to me as my friends. I have made
a particular study of modern phraseology, and of the natural craft
that is used in all attack or defence. Official eloquence is one of our
perfect social products.

“‘One of your friends is not clever, so you speak of his integrity and
his candor. Another’s work is heavy; you introduce it as a piece of
conscientious labor; and if the book is ill written, you extol the ideas
it contains. Such an one is treacherous and fickle, slips through
your fingers every moment; bah! he is attractive, bewitching, he is
delightful! Suppose they are enemies, you fling every one, dead or
alive, in their teeth. You reverse your phraseology for their benefit,
and you are as keen in detecting their faults as you were before adroit
in bringing out the virtues of your friends. This way of using the
mental lorgnette is the secret of conversation nowadays, and the whole
art of the complete courtier. If you neglect it, you might as well go
out as an unarmed knight-banneret to fight against men in armor. And I
make use of it, and even abuse it at times. So we are respected--I and
my friends; and, moreover, my sword is quite as sharp as my tongue.’

“One of Foedora’s most fervid worshipers, whose presumption was
notorious, and who even made it contribute to his success, took up the
glove thrown down so scornfully by Rastignac. He began an unmeasured
eulogy of me, my performances, and my character. Rastignac had
overlooked this method of detraction. His sarcastic encomiums misled
the countess, who sacrificed without mercy; she betrayed my secrets, and
derided my pretensions and my hopes, to divert her friends.

“‘There is a future before him,’ said Rastignac. ‘Some day he may be in
a position to take a cruel revenge; his talents are at least equal to
his courage; and I should consider those who attack him very rash, for
he has a good memory----’

“‘And writes Memoirs,’ put in the countess, who seemed to object to the
deep silence that prevailed.

“‘Memoirs of a sham countess, madame,’ replied Rastignac. ‘Another sort
of courage is needed to write that sort of thing.’

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

“I was greatly tempted to show myself suddenly among the railers, like
the shade of Banquo in Macbeth. I should have lost a mistress, but I
had a friend! But love inspired me all at once, with one of those
treacherous and fallacious subtleties that it can use to soothe all our
pangs.

“If Foedora loved me, I thought, she would be sure to disguise her
feelings by some mocking jest. How often the heart protests against a
lie on the lips!

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

“‘What! already?’ asked she in a coaxing voice that set my heart
beating. ‘Will you not give me a few more minutes? Have you nothing more
to say to me? will you never sacrifice any of your pleasures for me?’

“He went away.

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

“She pulled a cord energetically till the sound of a bell rang through
the place; then, humming a few notes of _Pria che spunti_, the countess
entered her room. No one had ever heard her sing; her muteness had
called forth the wildest explanations. She had promised her first lover,
so it was said, who had been held captive by her talent, and whose
jealousy over her stretched beyond his grave, that she would never allow
others to experience a happiness that he wished to be his and his alone.

“I exerted every power of my soul to catch the sounds. Higher and higher
rose the notes; Foedora’s life seemed to dilate within her; her throat
poured forth all its richest tones; something well-nigh divine entered
into the melody. There was a bright purity and clearness of tone in the
countess’ voice, a thrilling harmony which reached the heart and stirred
its pulses. Musicians are seldom unemotional; a woman who could sing
like that must know how to love indeed. Her beautiful voice made one
more puzzle in a woman mysterious enough before. I beheld her then, as
plainly as I see you at this moment. She seemed to listen to herself, to
experience a secret rapture of her own; she felt, as it were, an ecstasy
like that of love.

“She stood before the hearth during the execution of the principal theme
of the _rondo_; and when she ceased her face changed. She looked tired;
her features seemed to alter. She had laid the mask aside; her part as
an actress was over. Yet the faded look that came over her beautiful
face, a result either of this performance or of the evening’s fatigues,
had its charms, too.

“‘This is her real self,’ I thought.

“She set her foot on a bronze bar of the fender as if to warm it, took
off her gloves, and drew over her head the gold chain from which her
bejeweled scent-bottle hung. It gave me a quite indescribable pleasure
to watch the feline grace of every movement; the supple grace a cat
displays as it adjusts its toilette in the sun. She looked at herself
in the mirror and said aloud ill-humoredly--‘I did not look well this
evening, my complexion is going with alarming rapidity; perhaps I
ought to keep earlier hours, and give up this life of dissipation. Does
Justine mean to trifle with me?’ She rang again; her maid hurried in.
Where she had been I cannot tell; she came in by a secret staircase.
I was anxious to make a study of her. I had lodged accusations, in
my romantic imaginings, against this invisible waiting-woman, a tall,
well-made brunette.

“‘Did madame ring?’

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

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

“Justine knelt down before her, unlaced her sandals and drew them off,
while her mistress lay carelessly back on her cushioned armchair beside
the fire, yawned, and scratched her head. Every movement was perfectly
natural; there was nothing whatever to indicate the secret sufferings or
emotions with which I had credited her.

“‘George must be in love!’ she remarked. ‘I shall dismiss him. He has
drawn the curtains again to-night. What does he mean by it?’

“All the blood in my veins rushed to my heart at this observation, but
no more was said about curtains.

“‘Life is very empty,’ the countess went on. ‘Ah! be careful not to
scratch me as you did yesterday. Just look here, I still have the marks
of your nails about me,’ and she held out a silken knee. She thrust her
bare feet into velvet slippers bound with swan’s-down, and unfastened
her dress, while Justine prepared to comb her hair.

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

“‘Children!’ she cried; ‘it wants no more than that to finish me at
once; and a husband! What man is there to whom I could----? Was my hair
well arranged to-night?’

“‘Not particularly.’

“‘You are a fool!’

“‘That way of crimping your hair too much is the least becoming way
possible for you. Large, smooth curls suit you a great deal better.’

“‘Really?’

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

“‘Marriage? never, never! Marriage is a commercial arrangement, for
which I was never made.’

“What a disheartening scene for a lover! Here was a lonely woman,
without friends or kin, without the religion of love, without faith in
any affection. Yet however slightly she might feel the need to pour
out her heart, a craving that every human being feels, it could only
be satisfied by gossiping with her maid, by trivial and indifferent
talk.... I grieved for her.

“Justine unlaced her. I watched her carefully when she was at last
unveiled. Her maidenly form, in its rose-tinged whiteness, was visible
through her shift in the taper light, as dazzling as some silver statue
behind its gauze covering. No, there was no defect that need shrink from
the stolen glances of love. Alas, a fair form will overcome the stoutest
resolutions!

“The maid lighted the taper in the alabaster sconce that hung before
the bed, while her mistress sat thoughtful and silent before the fire.
Justine went for a warming-pan, turned down the bed, and helped to lay
her mistress in it; then, after some further time spent in punctiliously
rendering various services that showed how seriously Foedora respected
herself, her maid left her. The countess turned to and fro several
times, and sighed; she was ill at ease; faint, just perceptible sounds,
like sighs of impatience, escaped from her lips. She reached out a hand
to the table, and took a flask from it, from which she shook four or
five drops of some brown liquid into some milk before taking it; again
there followed some painful sighs, and the exclamation, ‘_Mon Dieu_!’

“The cry, and the tone in which it was uttered, wrung my heart. By
degrees she lay motionless. This frightened me; but very soon I heard
a sleeper’s heavy, regular breathing. I drew the rustling silk curtains
apart, left my post, went to the foot of the bed, and gazed at her with
feelings that I cannot define. She was so enchanting as she lay like a
child, with her arm above her head; but the sweetness of the fair,
quiet visage, surrounded by the lace, only irritated me. I had not been
prepared for the torture to which I was compelled to submit.

“‘_Mon Dieu_!’ that scrap of a thought which I understood not, but must
even take as my sole light, had suddenly modified my opinion of Foedora.
Trite or profoundly significant, frivolous or of deep import, the words
might be construed as expressive of either pleasure or pain, of physical
or of mental suffering. Was it a prayer or a malediction, a forecast or
a memory, a fear or a regret? A whole life lay in that utterance, a life
of wealth or of penury; perhaps it contained a crime!

“The mystery that lurked beneath this fair semblance of womanhood grew
afresh; there were so many ways of explaining Foedora, that she became
inexplicable. A sort of language seemed to flow from between her lips.
I put thoughts and feelings into the accidents of her breathing, whether
weak or regular, gentle, or labored. I shared her dreams; I would
fain have divined her secrets by reading them through her slumber. I
hesitated among contradictory opinions and decisions without number.
I could not deny my heart to the woman I saw before me, with the calm,
pure beauty in her face. I resolved to make one more effort. If I told
her the story of my life, my love, my sacrifices, might I not awaken
pity in her or draw a tear from her who never wept?

“As I set all my hopes on this last experiment, the sounds in the
streets showed that day was at hand. For a moment’s space I pictured
Foedora waking to find herself in my arms. I could have stolen softly
to her side and slipped them about her in a close embrace. Resolved
to resist the cruel tyranny of this thought, I hurried into the salon,
heedless of any sounds I might make; but, luckily, I came upon a secret
door leading to a little staircase. As I expected, the key was in the
lock; I slammed the door, went boldly out into the court, and gained
the street in three bounds, without looking round to see whether I was
observed.

“A dramatist was to read a comedy at the countess’ house in two days’
time; I went thither, intending to outstay the others, so as to make a
rather singular request to her; I meant to ask her to keep the following
evening for me alone, and to deny herself to other comers; but when I
found myself alone with her, my courage failed. Every tick of the clock
alarmed me. It wanted only a quarter of an hour of midnight.

“‘If I do not speak,’ I thought to myself, ‘I must smash my head against
the corner of the mantelpiece.’

“I gave myself three minutes’ grace; the three minutes went by, and
I did not smash my head upon the marble; my heart grew heavy, like a
sponge with water.

“‘You are exceedingly amusing,’ said she.

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

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

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

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

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

“‘To be candid with you, I ought to explain the full scope of your
promise: I want to spend this evening by your side, as if we were
brother and sister. Have no fear; I am aware of your antipathies; you
must have divined me sufficiently to feel sure that I should wish you
to do nothing that could be displeasing to you; presumption, moreover,
would not thus approach you. You have been a friend to me, you have
shown me kindness and great indulgence; know, therefore, that to-morrow
I must bid you farewell.--Do not take back your word,’ I exclaimed,
seeing her about to speak, and I went away.

“At eight o’clock one evening towards the end of May, Foedora and I were
alone together in her gothic boudoir. I feared no longer; I was secure
of happiness. My mistress should be mine, or I would seek a refuge in
death. I had condemned my faint-hearted love, and a man who acknowledges
his weakness is strong indeed.

“The countess, in her blue cashmere gown, was reclining on a sofa, with
her feet on a cushion. She wore an Oriental turban such as painters
assign to early Hebrews; its strangeness added an indescribable
coquettish grace to her attractions. A transitory charm seemed to have
laid its spell on her face; it might have furnished the argument that
at every instant we become new and unparalleled beings, without any
resemblance to the _us_ of the future or of the past. I had never yet
seen her so radiant.

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

“‘I will not disappoint it,’ I said quietly, as I seated myself near
to her and took the hand that she surrendered to me. ‘You have a very
beautiful voice!’

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

“‘I will prove that it is quite otherwise, whenever it is necessary. Is
your delightful singing still to remain a mystery? Have no fear, I do
not wish to penetrate it.’

“We spent about an hour in familiar talk. While I adopted the attitude
and manner of a man to whom Foedora must refuse nothing, I showed her
all a lover’s deference. Acting in this way, I received a favor--I was
allowed to kiss her hand. She daintily drew off the glove, and my whole
soul was dissolved and poured forth in that kiss. I was steeped in the
bliss of an illusion in which I tried to believe.

“Foedora lent herself most unexpectedly to my caress and my flatteries.
Do not accuse me of faint-heartedness; if I had gone a step beyond these
fraternal compliments, the claws would have been out of the sheath and
into me. We remained perfectly silent for nearly ten minutes. I was
admiring her, investing her with the charms she had not. She was mine
just then, and mine only,--this enchanting being was mine, as was
permissible, in my imagination; my longing wrapped her round and
held her close; in my soul I wedded her. The countess was subdued and
fascinated by my magnetic influence. Ever since I have regretted that
this subjugation was not absolute; but just then I yearned for her soul,
her heart alone, and for nothing else. I longed for an ideal and perfect
happiness, a fair illusion that cannot last for very long. At last I
spoke, feeling that the last hours of my frenzy were at hand.

“‘Hear me, madame. I love you, and you know it; I have said so a hundred
times; you must have understood me. I would not take upon me the airs
of a coxcomb, nor would I flatter you, nor urge myself upon you like a
fool; I would not owe your love to such arts as these! so I have been
misunderstood. What sufferings have I not endured for your sake! For
these, however, you were not to blame; but in a few minutes you shall
decide for yourself. There are two kinds of poverty, madame. One kind
openly walks the street in rags, an unconscious imitator of Diogenes,
on a scanty diet, reducing life to its simplest terms; he is happier,
maybe, than the rich; he has fewer cares at any rate, and accepts such
portions of the world as stronger spirits refuse. Then there is poverty
in splendor, a Spanish pauper, concealing the life of a beggar by his
title, his bravery, and his pride; poverty that wears a white waistcoat
and yellow kid gloves, a beggar with a carriage, whose whole career will
be wrecked for lack of a halfpenny. Poverty of the first kind belongs to
the populace; the second kind is that of blacklegs, of kings, and of men
of talent. I am neither a man of the people, nor a king, nor a swindler;
possibly I have no talent either, I am an exception. With the name I
bear I must die sooner than beg. Set your mind at rest, madame,’ I
said; ‘to-day I have abundance, I possess sufficient of the clay for my
needs’; for the hard look passed over her face which we wear whenever a
well-dressed beggar takes us by surprise. ‘Do you remember the day
when you wished to go to the Gymnase without me, never believing that I
should be there?’ I went on.

“She nodded.

“‘I had laid out my last five-franc piece that I might see you
there.--Do you recollect our walk in the Jardin des Plantes? The hire of
your cab took everything I had.’

“I told her about my sacrifices, and described the life I led; heated
not with wine, as I am to-day, but by the generous enthusiasm of my
heart, my passion overflowed in burning words; I have forgotten how the
feelings within me blazed forth; neither memory nor skill of mine
could possibly reproduce it. It was no colorless chronicle of blighted
affections; my love was strengthened by fair hopes; and such words came
to me, by love’s inspiration, that each had power to set forth a whole
life--like echoes of the cries of a soul in torment. In such tones the
last prayers ascend from dying men on the battlefield. I stopped, for
she was weeping. _Grand Dieu_! I had reaped an actor’s reward, the
success of a counterfeit passion displayed at the cost of five francs
paid at the theatre door. I had drawn tears from her.

“‘If I had known----’ she said.

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

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

“‘Do not call any one,’ I said. ‘I shall leave you to finish your life
in peace. It would be a blundering kind of hatred that would murder you!
You need not fear violence of any kind; I have spent a whole night at
the foot of your bed without----’

“‘Monsieur----’ she said, blushing; but after that first impulse of
modesty that even the most hardened women must surely own, she flung a
scornful glance at me, and said:

“‘You must have been very cold.’

“‘Do you think that I set such value on your beauty, madame,’ I
answered, guessing the thoughts that moved her. ‘Your beautiful face is
for me a promise of a soul yet more beautiful. Madame, those to whom
a woman is merely a woman can always purchase odalisques fit for the
seraglio, and achieve their happiness at a small cost. But I aspired
to something higher; I wanted the life of close communion of heart
and heart with you that have no heart. I know that now. If you were to
belong to another, I could kill him. And yet, no; for you would love
him, and his death might hurt you perhaps. What agony this is!’ I cried.

“‘If it is any comfort to you,’ she retorted cheerfully, ‘I can assure
you that I shall never belong to any one----’

“‘So you offer an affront to God Himself,’ I interrupted; ‘and you
will be punished for it. Some day you will lie upon your sofa suffering
unheard-of ills, unable to endure the light or the slightest sound,
condemned to live as it were in the tomb. Then, when you seek the causes
of those lingering and avenging torments, you will remember the woes
that you distributed so lavishly upon your way. You have sown curses,
and hatred will be your reward. We are the real judges, the executioners
of a justice that reigns here below, which overrules the justice of man
and the laws of God.’

“‘No doubt it is very culpable in me not to love you,’ she said,
laughing. ‘Am I to blame? No. I do not love you; you are a man, that is
sufficient. I am happy by myself; why should I give up my way of living,
a selfish way, if you will, for the caprices of a master? Marriage is a
sacrament by virtue of which each imparts nothing but vexations to the
other. Children, moreover, worry me. Did I not faithfully warn you about
my nature? Why are you not satisfied to have my friendship? I wish I
could make you amends for all the troubles I have caused you, through
not guessing the value of your poor five-franc pieces. I appreciate the
extent of your sacrifices; but your devotion and delicate tact can be
repaid by love alone, and I care so little for you, that this scene has
a disagreeable effect upon me.’

“‘I am fully aware of my absurdity,’ I said, unable to restrain my
tears. ‘Pardon me,’ I went on, ‘it was a delight to hear those cruel
words you have just uttered, so well I love you. O, if I could testify
my love with every drop of blood in me!’

“‘Men always repeat these classic formulas to us, more or less
effectively,’ she answered, still smiling. ‘But it appears very
difficult to die at our feet, for I see corpses of that kind about
everywhere. It is twelve o’clock. Allow me to go to bed.’

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

“‘Like the day before yesterday! Yes,’ she said, ‘I was thinking of my
stockbroker; I had forgotten to tell him to convert my five per cent
stock into threes, and the three per cents had fallen during the day.’

“I looked at her, and my eyes glittered with anger. Sometimes a
crime may be a whole romance; I understood that just then. She was so
accustomed, no doubt, to the most impassioned declarations of this kind,
that my words and my tears were forgotten already.

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

“‘If he were a duke, I might.’

“I seized my hat and made her a bow.

“‘Permit me to accompany you to the door,’ she said, cutting irony in
her tones, in the poise of her head, and in her gesture.

“‘Madame----’

“‘Monsieur?’

“‘I shall never see you again.’

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

“‘You wish to be a duchess?’ I cried, excited by a sort of madness that
her insolence roused in me. ‘You are wild for honors and titles? Well,
only let me love you; bid my pen write and my voice speak for you alone;
be the inmost soul of my life, my guiding star! Then, only accept me
for your husband as a minister, a peer of France, a duke. I will make of
myself whatever you would have me be!’

“‘You made good use of the time you spent with the advocate,’ she said
smiling. ‘There is a fervency about your pleadings.’

“‘The present is yours,’ I cried, ‘but the future is mine! I only lose a
woman; you are losing a name and a family. Time is big with my revenge;
time will spoil your beauty, and yours will be a solitary death; and
glory waits for me!’

“‘Thanks for your peroration!’ she said, repressing a yawn; the wish
that she might never see me again was expressed in her whole bearing.

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

“Foedora must be forgotten; I must cure myself of my infatuation, and
betake myself once more to my lonely studies, or die. So I set myself
tremendous tasks; I determined to complete my labors. For fifteen days I
never left my garret, spending whole nights in pallid thought. I worked
with difficulty, and by fits and starts, despite my courage and the
stimulation of despair. The music had fled. I could not exorcise the
brilliant mocking image of Foedora. Something morbid brooded over
every thought, a vague longing as dreadful as remorse. I imitated the
anchorites of the Thebaid. If I did not pray as they did, I lived a life
in the desert like theirs, hewing out my ideas as they were wont to hew
their rocks. I could at need have girdled my waist with spikes, that
physical suffering might quell mental anguish.

“One evening Pauline found her way into my room.

“‘You are killing yourself,’ she said imploringly; ‘you should go out
and see your friends----’

“‘Pauline, you were a true prophet; Foedora is killing me, I want to
die. My life is intolerable.’

“‘Is there only one woman in the world?’ she asked, smiling. ‘Why make
yourself so miserable in so short a life?’

“I looked at Pauline in bewilderment. She left me before I noticed her
departure; the sound of her words had reached me, but not their
sense. Very soon I had to take my Memoirs in manuscript to my
literary-contractor. I was so absorbed by my passion, that I could not
remember how I had managed to live without money; I only knew that the
four hundred and fifty francs due to me would pay my debts. So I went
to receive my salary, and met Rastignac, who thought me changed and
thinner.

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

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

“‘You had much better kill her, then perhaps you would think no more of
her,’ he said, laughing.

“‘I have often thought of it,’ I replied; ‘but though sometimes the
thought of a crime revives my spirits, of violence and murder, either or
both, I am really incapable of carrying out the design. The countess is
an admirable monster who would crave for pardon, and not every man is an
Othello.’

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

“‘I am mad,’ I cried; ‘I can feel the madness raging at times in my
brain. My ideas are like shadows; they flit before me, and I cannot
grasp them. Death would be preferable to this life, and I have carefully
considered the best way of putting an end to the struggle. I am not
thinking of the living Foedora in the Faubourg Saint Honore, but of my
Foedora here,’ and I tapped my forehead. ‘What to you say to opium?’

“‘Pshaw! horrid agonies,’ said Rastignac.

“‘Or charcoal fumes?’

“‘A low dodge.’

“‘Or the Seine?’

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

“‘A pistol-shot?’

“‘And if you miscalculate, you disfigure yourself for life. Listen to
me,’ he went on, ‘like all young men, I have pondered over suicide.
Which of us hasn’t killed himself two or three times before he is
thirty? I find there is no better course than to use existence as a
means of pleasure. Go in for thorough dissipation, and your passion or
you will perish in it. Intemperance, my dear fellow, commands all forms
of death. Does she not wield the thunderbolt of apoplexy? Apoplexy is
a pistol-shot that does not miscalculate. Orgies are lavish in all
physical pleasures; is not that the small change for opium? And the riot
that makes us drink to excess bears a challenge to mortal combat with
wine. That butt of Malmsey of the Duke of Clarence’s must have had a
pleasanter flavor than Seine mud. When we sink gloriously under the
table, is not that a periodical death by drowning on a small scale? If
we are picked up by the police and stretched out on those chilly benches
of theirs at the police-station, do we not enjoy all the pleasures of
the Morgue? For though we are not blue and green, muddy and swollen
corpses, on the other hand we have the consciousness of the climax.

“‘Ah,’ he went on, ‘this protracted suicide has nothing in common with
the bankrupt grocer’s demise. Tradespeople have brought the river into
disrepute; they fling themselves in to soften their creditors’ hearts.
In your place I should endeavor to die gracefully; and if you wish
to invent a novel way of doing it, by struggling with life after this
manner, I will be your second. I am disappointed and sick of everything.
The Alsacienne, whom it was proposed that I should marry, had six toes
on her left foot; I cannot possibly live with a woman who has six toes!
It would get about to a certainty, and then I should be ridiculous.
Her income was only eighteen thousand francs; her fortune diminished
in quantity as her toes increased. The devil take it; if we begin an
outrageous sort of life, we may come on some bit of luck, perhaps!’

“Rastignac’s eloquence carried me away. The attractions of the plan
shone too temptingly, hopes were kindled, the poetical aspects of the
matter appealed to a poet.

“‘How about money?’ I said.

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

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

“‘You would pay your tailor? You will never be anything whatever, not so
much as a minister.’

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

“‘Go to the gaming-table.’

“I shuddered.

“‘You are going to launch out into what I call systematic dissipation,’
said he, noticing my scruples, ‘and yet you are afraid of a green
table-cloth.’

“‘Listen to me,’ I answered. ‘I promised my father never to set foot in
a gaming-house. Not only is that a sacred promise, but I still feel an
unconquerable disgust whenever I pass a gambling-hell; take the money
and go without me. While our fortune is at stake, I will set my own
affairs straight, and then I will go to your lodgings and wait for you.’

“That was the way I went to perdition. A young man has only to come
across a woman who will not love him, or a woman who loves him too well,
and his whole life becomes a chaos. Prosperity swallows up our energy
just as adversity obscures our virtues. Back once more in my Hotel de
Saint-Quentin, I gazed about me a long while in the garret where I had
led my scholar’s temperate life, a life which would perhaps have been
a long and honorable one, and that I ought not to have quitted for
the fevered existence which had urged me to the brink of a precipice.
Pauline surprised me in this dejected attitude.

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

“I rose and quietly counted out the money owing to her mother, and added
to it sufficient to pay for six months’ rent in advance. She watched me
in some alarm.

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

“‘I knew it!’ she exclaimed.

“‘Listen, my child. I have not given up the idea of coming back. Keep
my room for me for six months. If I do not return by the fifteenth of
November, you will come into possession of my things. This sealed packet
of manuscript is the fair copy of my great work on “The Will,”’ I went
on, pointing to a package. ‘Will you deposit it in the King’s Library?
And you may do as you wish with everything that is left here.’

“Her look weighed heavily on my heart; Pauline was an embodiment of
conscience there before me.

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

“I did not answer that.

“‘Will you write to me?’

“‘Good-bye, Pauline.’

“I gently drew her towards me, and set a kiss on that innocent fair brow
of hers, like snow that has not yet touched the earth--a father’s or a
brother’s kiss. She fled. I would not see Madame Gaudin, hung my key in
its wonted place, and departed. I was almost at the end of the Rue de
Cluny when I heard a woman’s light footstep behind me.

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

“By the light of the street lamp I thought I saw tears in Pauline’s
eyes, and I groaned. Moved perhaps by a common impulse, we parted in
haste like people who fear the contagion of the plague.

“As I waited with dignified calmness for Rastignac’s return, his room
seemed a grotesque interpretation of the sort of life I was about to
enter upon. The clock on the chimney-piece was surmounted by a Venus
resting on her tortoise; a half-smoked cigar lay in her arms. Costly
furniture of various kinds--love tokens, very likely--was scattered
about. Old shoes lay on a luxurious sofa. The comfortable armchair into
which I had thrown myself bore as many scars as a veteran; the arms were
gnashed, the back was overlaid with a thick, stale deposit of pomade and
hair-oil from the heads of all his visitors. Splendor and squalor were
oddly mingled, on the walls, the bed, and everywhere. You might have
thought of a Neapolitan palace and the groups of lazzaroni about it. It
was the room of a gambler or a mauvais sujet, where the luxury exists
for one individual, who leads the life of the senses and does not
trouble himself over inconsistencies.

“There was a certain imaginative element about the picture it presented.
Life was suddenly revealed there in its rags and spangles as
the incomplete thing it really is, of course, but so vividly and
picturesquely; it was like a den where a brigand has heaped up all the
plunder in which he delights. Some pages were missing from a copy of
Byron’s poems: they had gone to light a fire of a few sticks for this
young person, who played for stakes of a thousand francs, and had not
a faggot; he kept a tilbury, and had not a whole shirt to his back. Any
day a countess or an actress or a run of luck at ecarte might set him up
with an outfit worthy of a king. A candle had been stuck into the green
bronze sheath of a vestaholder; a woman’s portrait lay yonder, torn out
of its carved gold setting. How was it possible that a young man, whose
nature craved excitement, could renounce a life so attractive by reason
of its contradictions; a life that afforded all the delights of war in
the midst of peace? I was growing drowsy when Rastignac kicked the door
open and shouted:

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

“He held out his hat filled with gold to me, and put it down on the
table; then we pranced round it like a pair of cannibals about to eat a
victim; we stamped, and danced, and yelled, and sang; we gave each other
blows fit to kill an elephant, at sight of all the pleasures of the
world contained in that hat.

“‘Twenty-seven thousand francs,’ said Rastignac, adding a few bank-notes
to the pile of gold. ‘That would be enough for other folk to live upon;
will it be sufficient for us to die on? Yes! we will breathe our last in
a bath of gold--hurrah!’ and we capered afresh.

“We divided the windfall. We began with double-napoleons, and came down
to the smaller coins, one by one. ‘This for you, this for me,’ we kept
saying, distilling our joy drop by drop.

“‘We won’t go to sleep,’ cried Rastignac. ‘Joseph! some punch!’

“He threw gold to his faithful attendant.

“‘There is your share,’ he said; ‘go and bury yourself if you can.’

“Next day I went to Lesage and chose my furniture, took the rooms that
you know in the Rue Taitbout, and left the decoration to one of the best
upholsterers. I bought horses. I plunged into a vortex of pleasures, at
once hollow and real. I went in for play, gaining and losing
enormous sums, but only at friends’ houses and in ballrooms; never in
gaming-houses, for which I still retained the holy horror of my early
days. Without meaning it, I made some friends, either through quarrels
or owing to the easy confidence established among those who are going
to the bad together; nothing, possibly, makes us cling to one another so
tightly as our evil propensities.

“I made several ventures in literature, which were flatteringly
received. Great men who followed the profession of letters, having
nothing to fear from me, belauded me, not so much on account of my
merits as to cast a slur on those of their rivals.

“I became a ‘free-liver,’ to make use of the picturesque expression
appropriated by the language of excess. I made it a point of honor not
to be long about dying, and that my zeal and prowess should eclipse
those displayed by all others in the jolliest company. I was always
spruce and carefully dressed. I had some reputation for cleverness.
There was no sign about me of the fearful way of living which makes a
man into a mere disgusting apparatus, a funnel, a pampered beast.

“Very soon Debauch rose before me in all the majesty of its horror, and
I grasped all that it meant. Those prudent, steady-going characters who
are laying down wine in bottles for their heirs, can barely conceive,
it is true, of so wide a theory of life, nor appreciate its normal
condition; but when will you instill poetry into the provincial
intellect? Opium and tea, with all their delights, are merely drugs to
folk of that calibre.

“Is not the imperfect sybarite to be met with even in Paris itself, that
intellectual metropolis? Unfit to endure the fatigues of pleasure, this
sort of person, after a drinking bout, is very much like those worthy
bourgeois who fall foul of music after hearing a new opera by Rossini.
Does he not renounce these courses in the same frame of mind that leads
an abstemious man to forswear Ruffec pates, because the first one,
forsooth, gave him the indigestion?

“Debauch is as surely an art as poetry, and is not for craven spirits.
To penetrate its mysteries and appreciate its charms, conscientious
application is required; and as with every path of knowledge, the way is
thorny and forbidding at the outset. The great pleasures of humanity are
hedged about with formidable obstacles; not its single enjoyments, but
enjoyment as a system, a system which establishes seldom experienced
sensations and makes them habitual, which concentrates and multiplies
them for us, creating a dramatic life within our life, and imperatively
demanding a prompt and enormous expenditure of vitality. War, Power,
Art, like Debauch, are all forms of demoralization, equally remote from
the faculties of humanity, equally profound, and all are alike difficult
of access. But when man has once stormed the heights of these grand
mysteries, does he not walk in another world? Are not generals,
ministers, and artists carried, more or less, towards destruction by
the need of violent distractions in an existence so remote from ordinary
life as theirs?

“War, after all, is the Excess of bloodshed, as the Excess of
self-interest produces Politics. Excesses of every sort are brothers.
These social enormities possess the attraction of the abyss; they draw
towards themselves as St. Helena beckoned Napoleon; we are fascinated,
our heads swim, we wish to sound their depths though we cannot
account for the wish. Perhaps the thought of Infinity dwells in these
precipices, perhaps they contain some colossal flattery for the soul of
man; for is he not, then, wholly absorbed in himself?

“The wearied artist needs a complete contrast to his paradise of
imaginings and of studious hours; he either craves, like God, the
seventh day of rest, or with Satan, the pleasures of hell; so that
his senses may have free play in opposition to the employment of his
faculties. Byron could never have taken for his relaxation to the
independent gentleman’s delights of boston and gossip, for he was a
poet, and so must needs pit Greece against Mahmoud.

“In war, is not man an angel of extirpation, a sort of executioner on
a gigantic scale? Must not the spell be strong indeed that makes us
undergo such horrid sufferings so hostile to our weak frames, sufferings
that encircle every strong passion with a hedge of thorns? The tobacco
smoker is seized with convulsions, and goes through a kind of agony
consequent upon his excesses; but has he not borne a part in delightful
festivals in realms unknown? Has Europe ever ceased from wars? She
has never given herself time to wipe the stains from her feet that are
steeped in blood to the ankle. Mankind at large is carried away by fits
of intoxication, as nature has its accessions of love.

“For men in private life, for a vegetating Mirabeau dreaming of storms
in a time of calm, Excess comprises all things; it perpetually embraces
the whole sum of life; it is something better still--it is a duel with
an antagonist of unknown power, a monster, terrible at first sight, that
must be seized by the horns, a labor that cannot be imagined.

“Suppose that nature has endowed you with a feeble stomach or one of
limited capacity; you acquire a mastery over it and improve it; you
learn to carry your liquor; you grow accustomed to being drunk; you pass
whole nights without sleep; at last you acquire the constitution of a
colonel of cuirassiers; and in this way you create yourself afresh, as
if to fly in the face of Providence.

“A man transformed after this sort is like a neophyte who has at last
become a veteran, has accustomed his mind to shot and shell and his legs
to lengthy marches. When the monster’s hold on him is still uncertain,
and it is not yet known which will have the better of it, they roll over
and over, alternately victor and vanquished, in a world where everything
is wonderful, where every ache of the soul is laid to sleep, where only
the shadows of ideas are revived.

“This furious struggle has already become a necessity for us. The
prodigal has struck a bargain for all the enjoyments with which life
teems abundantly, at the price of his own death, like the mythical
persons in legends who sold themselves to the devil for the power of
doing evil. For them, instead of flowing quietly on in its monotonous
course in the depths of some counting-house or study, life is poured out
in a boiling torrent.

“Excess is, in short, for the body what the mystic’s ecstasy is for
the soul. Intoxication steeps you in fantastic imaginings every whit as
strange as those of ecstatics. You know hours as full of rapture as a
young girl’s dreams; you travel without fatigue; you chat pleasantly
with your friends; words come to you with a whole life in each, and
fresh pleasures without regrets; poems are set forth for you in a few
brief phrases. The coarse animal satisfaction, in which science has
tried to find a soul, is followed by the enchanted drowsiness that men
sigh for under the burden of consciousness. Is it not because they all
feel the need of absolute repose? Because Excess is a sort of toll that
genius pays to pain?

“Look at all great men; nature made them pleasure-loving or base, every
one. Some mocking or jealous power corrupted them in either soul or
body, so as to make all their powers futile, and their efforts of no
avail.

“All men and all things appear before you in the guise you choose,
in those hours when wine has sway. You are lord of all creation; you
transform it at your pleasure. And throughout this unceasing delirium,
Play may pour, at your will, its molten lead into your veins.

“Some day you will fall into the monster’s power. Then you will have, as
I had, a frenzied awakening, with impotence sitting by your pillow. Are
you an old soldier? Phthisis attacks you. A diplomatist? An aneurism
hangs death in your heart by a thread. It will perhaps be consumption
that will cry out to me, ‘Let us be going!’ as to Raphael of Urbino, in
old time, killed by an excess of love.

“In this way I have existed. I was launched into the world too early or
too late. My energy would have been dangerous there, no doubt, if I had
not have squandered it in such ways as these. Was not the world rid of
an Alexander, by the cup of Hercules, at the close of a drinking bout?

“There are some, the sport of Destiny, who must either have heaven or
hell, the hospice of St. Bernard or riotous excess. Only just now
I lacked the heart to moralize about those two,” and he pointed to
Euphrasia and Aquilina. “They are types of my own personal history,
images of my life! I could scarcely reproach them; they stood before me
like judges.

“In the midst of this drama that I was enacting, and while my
distracting disorder was at its height, two crises supervened; each
brought me keen and abundant pangs. The first came a few days after I
had flung myself, like Sardanapalus, on my pyre. I met Foedora under the
peristyle of the Bouffons. We both were waiting for our carriages.

“‘Ah! so you are living yet?’

“That was the meaning of her smile, and probably of the spiteful words
she murmured in the ear of her cicisbeo, telling him my history no
doubt, rating mine as a common love affair. She was deceived, yet she
was applauding her perspicacity. Oh, that I should be dying for her,
must still adore her, always see her through my potations, see her still
when I was overcome with wine, or in the arms of courtesans; and know
that I was a target for her scornful jests! Oh, that I should be unable
to tear the love of her out of my breast and to fling it at her feet!

“Well, I quickly exhausted my funds, but owing to those three years
of discipline, I enjoyed the most robust health, and on the day that I
found myself without a penny I felt remarkably well. In order to carry
on the process of dying, I signed bills at short dates, and the day came
when they must be met. Painful excitements! but how they quicken the
pulses of youth! I was not prematurely aged; I was young yet, and full
of vigor and life.

“At my first debt all my virtues came to life; slowly and despairingly
they seemed to pace towards me; but I could compound with them--they
were like aged aunts that begin with a scolding and end by bestowing
tears and money upon you.

“Imagination was less yielding; I saw my name bandied about through
every city in Europe. ‘One’s name is oneself’ says Eusebe Salverte.
After these excursions I returned to the room I had never quitted, like
a doppelganger in a German tale, and came to myself with a start.

“I used to see with indifference a banker’s messenger going on his
errands through the streets of Paris, like a commercial Nemesis, wearing
his master’s livery--a gray coat and a silver badge; but now I hated the
species in advance. One of them came one morning to ask me to meet some
eleven bills that I had scrawled my name upon. My signature was worth
three thousand francs! Taking me altogether, I myself was not worth
that amount. Sheriff’s deputies rose up before me, turning their callous
faces upon my despair, as the hangman regards the criminal to whom he
says, ‘It has just struck half-past three.’ I was in the power of their
clerks; they could scribble my name, drag it through the mire, and jeer
at it. I was a defaulter. Has a debtor any right to himself? Could
not other men call me to account for my way of living? Why had I eaten
puddings _a la chipolata_? Why had I iced my wine? Why had I slept, or
walked, or thought, or amused myself when I had not paid them?

“At any moment, in the middle of a poem, during some train of thought,
or while I was gaily breakfasting in the pleasant company of my friends,
I might look to see a gentleman enter in a coat of chestnut-brown, with
a shabby hat in his hand. This gentleman’s appearance would signify my
debt, the bill I had drawn; the spectre would compel me to leave the
table to speak to him, blight my spirits, despoil me of my cheerfulness,
of my mistress, of all I possessed, down to my very bedstead.

“Remorse itself is more easily endured. Remorse does not drive us into
the street nor into the prison of Sainte-Pelagie; it does not force
us into the detestable sink of vice. Remorse only brings us to the
scaffold, where the executioner invests us with a certain dignity; as we
pay the extreme penalty, everybody believes in our innocence; but people
will not credit a penniless prodigal with a single virtue.

“My debts had other incarnations. There is the kind that goes about on
two feet, in a green cloth coat, and blue spectacles, carrying umbrellas
of various hues; you come face to face with him at the corner of
some street, in the midst of your mirth. These have the detestable
prerogative of saying, ‘M. de Valentin owes me something, and does
not pay. I have a hold on him. He had better not show me any offensive
airs!’ You must bow to your creditors, and moreover bow politely. ‘When
are you going to pay me?’ say they. And you must lie, and beg money of
another man, and cringe to a fool seated on his strong-box, and receive
sour looks in return from these horse-leeches; a blow would be less
hateful; you must put up with their crass ignorance and calculating
morality. A debt is a feat of the imaginative that they cannot
appreciate. A borrower is often carried away and over-mastered by
generous impulses; nothing great, nothing magnanimous can move or
dominate those who live for money, and recognize nothing but money. I
myself held money in abhorrence.

“Or a bill may undergo a final transformation into some meritorious
old man with a family dependent upon him. My creditor might be a living
picture for Greuze, a paralytic with his children round him, a soldier’s
widow, holding out beseeching hands to me. Terrible creditors are
these with whom we are forced to sympathize, and when their claims are
satisfied we owe them a further debt of assistance.

“The night before the bills fell due, I lay down with the false calm of
those who sleep before their approaching execution, or with a duel in
prospect, rocked as they are by delusive hopes. But when I woke, when
I was cool and collected, when I found myself imprisoned in a banker’s
portfolio, and floundering in statements covered with red ink--then my
debts sprang up everywhere, like grasshoppers, before my eyes. There
were my debts, my clock, my armchairs; my debts were inlaid in the very
furniture which I liked best to use. These gentle inanimate slaves were
to fall prey to the harpies of the Chatelet, were to be carried off by
the broker’s men, and brutally thrown on the market. Ah, my property was
a part of myself!

“The sound of the door-bell rang through my heart; while it seemed to
strike at me, where kings should be struck at--in the head. Mine was a
martyrdom, without heaven for its reward. For a magnanimous nature, debt
is a hell, and a hell, moreover, with sheriff’s officers and brokers in
it. An undischarged debt is something mean and sordid; it is a beginning
of knavery; it is something worse, it is a lie; it prepares the way for
crime, and brings together the planks for the scaffold. My bills
were protested. Three days afterwards I met them, and this is how it
happened.

“A speculator came, offering to buy the island in the Loire belonging
to me, where my mother lay buried. I closed with him. When I went to
his solicitor to sign the deeds, I felt a cavern-like chill in the dark
office that made me shudder; it was the same cold dampness that had laid
hold upon me at the brink of my father’s grave. I looked upon this as
an evil omen. I seemed to see the shade of my mother, and to hear her
voice. What power was it that made my own name ring vaguely in my ears,
in spite of the clamor of bells?

“The money paid down for my island, when all my debts were discharged,
left me in possession of two thousand francs. I could now have returned
to the scholar’s tranquil life, it is true; I could have gone back to
my garret after having gained an experience of life, with my head filled
with the results of extensive observation, and with a certain sort of
reputation attaching to me. But Foedora’s hold upon her victim was not
relaxed. We often met. I compelled her admirers to sound my name in her
ears, by dint of astonishing them with my cleverness and success, with
my horses and equipages. It all found her impassive and uninterested; so
did an ugly phrase of Rastignac’s, ‘He is killing himself for you.’

“I charged the world at large with my revenge, but I was not happy.
While I was fathoming the miry depths of life, I only recognized the
more keenly at all times the happiness of reciprocal affection; it was
a shadow that I followed through all that befell me in my extravagance,
and in my wildest moments. It was my misfortune to be deceived in my
fairest beliefs, to be punished by ingratitude for benefiting others,
and to receive uncounted pleasures as the reward of my errors--a
sinister doctrine, but a true one for the prodigal!

“The contagious leprosy of Foedora’s vanity had taken hold of me at
last. I probed my soul, and found it cankered and rotten. I bore the
marks of the devil’s claw upon my forehead. It was impossible to me
thenceforward to do without the incessant agitation of a life fraught
with danger at every moment, or to dispense with the execrable
refinements of luxury. If I had possessed millions, I should still have
gambled, reveled, and racketed about. I wished never to be alone with
myself, and I must have false friends and courtesans, wine and good
cheer to distract me. The ties that attach a man to family life had been
permanently broken for me. I had become a galley-slave of pleasure,
and must accomplish my destiny of suicide. During the last days of my
prosperity, I spent every night in the most incredible excesses; but
every morning death cast me back upon life again. I would have taken
a conflagration with as little concern as any man with a life annuity.
However, I at last found myself alone with a twenty-franc piece; I
bethought me then of Rastignac’s luck----

“Eh, eh!----” Raphael exclaimed, interrupting himself, as he remembered
the talisman and drew it from his pocket. Perhaps he was wearied by the
long day’s strain, and had no more strength left wherewith to pilot his
head through the seas of wine and punch; or perhaps, exasperated by this
symbol of his own existence, the torrent of his own eloquence gradually
overwhelmed him. Raphael became excited and elated and like one
completely deprived of reason.

“The devil take death!” he shouted, brandishing the skin; “I mean to
live! I am rich, I have every virtue; nothing will withstand me. Who
would not be generous, when everything is in his power? Aha! Aha! I
wished for two hundred thousand livres a year, and I shall have them.
Bow down before me, all of you, wallowing on the carpets like swine in
the mire! You all belong to me--a precious property truly! I am rich; I
could buy you all, even the deputy snoring over there. Scum of society,
give me your benediction! I am the Pope.”

Raphael’s vociferations had been hitherto drowned by a thorough-bass
of snores, but now they became suddenly audible. Most of the sleepers
started up with a cry, saw the cause of the disturbance on his feet,
tottering uncertainly, and cursed him in concert for a drunken brawler.

“Silence!” shouted Raphael. “Back to your kennels, you dogs! Emile, I
have riches, I will give you Havana cigars!”

“I am listening,” the poet replied. “Death or Foedora! On with you! That
silky Foedora deceived you. Women are all daughters of Eve. There is
nothing dramatic about that rigmarole of yours.”

“Ah, but you were sleeping, slyboots.”

“No--‘Death or Foedora!’--I have it!”

“Wake up!” Raphael shouted, beating Emile with the piece of shagreen as
if he meant to draw electric fluid out of it.

“_Tonnerre_!” said Emile, springing up and flinging his arms round
Raphael; “my friend, remember the sort of women you are with.”

“I am a millionaire!”

“If you are not a millionaire, you are most certainly drunk.”

“Drunk with power. I can kill you!--Silence! I am Nero! I am
Nebuchadnezzar!”

“But, Raphael, we are in queer company, and you ought to keep quiet for
the sake of your own dignity.”

“My life has been silent too long. I mean to have my revenge now on the
world at large. I will not amuse myself by squandering paltry five-franc
pieces; I will reproduce and sum up my epoch by absorbing human
lives, human minds, and human souls. There are the treasures of
pestilence--that is no paltry kind of wealth, is it? I will wrestle with
fevers--yellow, blue, or green--with whole armies, with gibbets. I can
possess Foedora--Yet no, I do not want Foedora; she is a disease; I am
dying of Foedora. I want to forget Foedora.”

“If you keep on calling out like this, I shall take you into the
dining-room.”

“Do you see this skin? It is Solomon’s will. Solomon belongs to me--a
little varlet of a king! Arabia is mine, Arabia Petraea to boot; and the
universe, and you too, if I choose. If I choose--Ah! be careful. I can
buy up all our journalist’s shop; you shall be my valet. You shall be
my valet, you shall manage my newspaper. Valet! _valet_, that is to say,
free from aches and pains, because he has no brains.”

At the word, Emile carried Raphael off into the dining-room.

“All right,” he remarked; “yes, my friend, I am your valet. But you
are about to be editor-in-chief of a newspaper; so be quiet, and behave
properly, for my sake. Have you no regard for me?”

“Regard for you! You shall have Havana cigars, with this bit of
shagreen: always with this skin, this supreme bit of shagreen. It is
a cure for corns, and efficacious remedy. Do you suffer? I will remove
them.”

“Never have I known you so senseless----”

“Senseless, my friend? Not at all. This skin contracts whenever I form a
wish--‘tis a paradox. There is a Brahmin underneath it! The Brahmin must
be a droll fellow, for our desires, look you, are bound to expand----”

“Yes, yes----”

“I tell you----”

“Yes, yes, very true, I am quite of your opinion--our desires
expand----”

“The skin, I tell you.”

“Yes.”

“You don’t believe me. I know you, my friend; you are as full of lies as
a new-made king.”

“How can you expect me to follow your drunken maunderings?”

“I will bet you I can prove it. Let us measure it----”

“Goodness! he will never get off to sleep,” exclaimed Emile, as he
watched Raphael rummaging busily in the dining-room.

Thanks to the peculiar clearness with which external objects are
sometimes projected on an inebriated brain, in sharp contrast to its own
obscure imaginings, Valentin found an inkstand and a table-napkin, with
the quickness of a monkey, repeating all the time:

“Let us measure it! Let us measure it!”

“All right,” said Emile; “let us measure it!”

The two friends spread out the table-napkin and laid the Magic Skin upon
it. As Emile’s hand appeared to be steadier than Raphael’s, he drew a
line with pen and ink round the talisman, while his friend said:

“I wished for an income of two hundred thousand livres, didn’t I? Well,
when that comes, you will observe a mighty diminution of my chagrin.”

“Yes--now go to sleep. Shall I make you comfortable on that sofa? Now
then, are you all right?”

“Yes, my nursling of the press. You shall amuse me; you shall drive
the flies away from me. The friend of adversity should be the friend of
prosperity. So I will give you some Hava--na--cig----”

“Come, now, sleep. Sleep off your gold, you millionaire!”

“You! sleep off your paragraphs! Good-night! Say good-night to
Nebuchadnezzar!--Love! Wine! France!--glory and tr--treas----”

Very soon the snorings of the two friends were added to the music with
which the rooms resounded--an ineffectual concert! The lights went out
one by one, their crystal sconces cracking in the final flare. Night
threw dark shadows over this prolonged revelry, in which Raphael’s
narrative had been a second orgy of speech, of words without ideas, of
ideas for which words had often been lacking.

Towards noon, next day, the fair Aquilina bestirred herself. She yawned
wearily. She had slept with her head upon a painted velvet footstool,
and her cheeks were mottled over by contact with the surface. Her
movement awoke Euphrasia, who suddenly sprang up with a hoarse cry; her
pretty face, that had been so fresh and fair in the evening, was sallow
now and pallid; she looked like a candidate for the hospital. The rest
awoke also by degrees, with portentous groanings, to feel themselves
over in every stiffened limb, and to experience the infinite varieties
of weariness that weighed upon them.

A servant came in to throw back the shutters and open the windows.
There they all stood, brought back to consciousness by the warm rays
of sunlight that shone upon the sleepers’ heads. Their movements during
slumber had disordered the elaborately arranged hair and toilettes of
the women. They presented a ghastly spectacle in the bright daylight.
Their hair fell ungracefully about them; their eyes, lately so
brilliant, were heavy and dim; the expression of their faces was
entirely changed. The sickly hues, which daylight brings out so
strongly, were frightful. An olive tint had crept over the lymphatic
faces, so fair and soft when in repose; the dainty red lips were
grown pale and dry, and bore tokens of the degradation of excess. Each
disowned his mistress of the night before; the women looked wan and
discolored, like flowers trampled under foot by a passing procession.

The men who scorned them looked even more horrible. Those human faces
would have made you shudder. The hollow eyes with the dark circles round
them seemed to see nothing; they were dull with wine and stupefied with
heavy slumbers that had been exhausting rather than refreshing. There
was an indescribable ferocious and stolid bestiality about these haggard
faces, where bare physical appetite appeared shorn of all the poetical
illusion with which the intellect invests it. Even these fearless
champions, accustomed to measure themselves with excess, were struck
with horror at this awakening of vice, stripped of its disguises, at
being confronted thus with sin, the skeleton in rags, lifeless and
hollow, bereft of the sophistries of the intellect and the enchantments
of luxury. Artists and courtesans scrutinized in silence and with
haggard glances the surrounding disorder, the rooms where everything had
been laid waste, at the havoc wrought by heated passions.

Demoniac laughter broke out when Taillefer, catching the smothered
murmurs of his guests, tried to greet them with a grin. His darkly
flushed, perspiring countenance loomed upon this pandemonium, like the
image of a crime that knows no remorse (see _L’Auberge rouge_). The
picture was complete. A picture of a foul life in the midst of luxury, a
hideous mixture of the pomp and squalor of humanity; an awakening after
the frenzy of Debauch has crushed and squeezed all the fruits of life in
her strong hands, till nothing but unsightly refuse is left to her, and
lies in which she believes no longer. You might have thought of Death
gloating over a family stricken with the plague.

The sweet scents and dazzling lights, the mirth and the excitement
were all no more; disgust with its nauseous sensations and searching
philosophy was there instead. The sun shone in like truth, the pure
outer air was like virtue; in contrast with the heated atmosphere, heavy
with the fumes of the previous night of revelry.

Accustomed as they were to their life, many of the girls thought of
other days and other wakings; pure and innocent days when they looked
out and saw the roses and honeysuckle about the casement, and the fresh
countryside without enraptured by the glad music of the skylark; while
earth lay in mists, lighted by the dawn, and in all the glittering
radiance of dew. Others imagined the family breakfast, the father and
children round the table, the innocent laughter, the unspeakable charm
that pervaded it all, the simple hearts and their meal as simple.

An artist mused upon his quiet studio, on his statue in its severe
beauty, and the graceful model who was waiting for him. A young man
recollected a lawsuit on which the fortunes of a family hung, and an
important transaction that needed his presence. The scholar regretted
his study and that noble work that called for him. Emile appeared just
then as smiling, blooming, and fresh as the smartest assistant in a
fashionable shop.

“You are all as ugly as bailiffs. You won’t be fit for anything to-day,
so this day is lost, and I vote for breakfast.”

At this Taillefer went out to give some orders. The women went languidly
up to the mirrors to set their toilettes in order. Each one shook
herself. The wilder sort lectured the steadier ones. The courtesans made
fun of those who looked unable to continue the boisterous festivity;
but these wan forms revived all at once, stood in groups, and talked
and smiled. Some servants quickly and adroitly set the furniture and
everything else in its place, and a magnificent breakfast was got ready.

The guests hurried into the dining-room. Everything there bore indelible
marks of yesterday’s excess, it is true, but there were at any rate some
traces of ordinary, rational existence, such traces as may be found in a
sick man’s dying struggles. And so the revelry was laid away and buried,
like carnival of a Shrove Tuesday, by masks wearied out with dancing,
drunk with drunkenness, and quite ready to be persuaded of the pleasures
of lassitude, lest they should be forced to admit their exhaustion.

As soon as these bold spirits surrounded the capitalist’s
breakfast-table, Cardot appeared. He had left the rest to make a night
of it after the dinner, and finished the evening after his own fashion
in the retirement of domestic life. Just now a sweet smile wandered over
his features. He seemed to have a presentiment that there would be some
inheritance to sample and divide, involving inventories and engrossing;
an inheritance rich in fees and deeds to draw up, and something as juicy
as the trembling fillet of beef in which their host had just plunged his
knife.

“Oh, ho! we are to have breakfast in the presence of a notary,” cried
Cursy.

“You have come here just at the right time,” said the banker, indicating
the breakfast; “you can jot down the numbers, and initial off all the
dishes.”

“There is no will to make here, but contracts of marriage there may be,
perhaps,” said the scholar, who had made a satisfactory arrangement for
the first time in twelve months.

“Oh! Oh!”

“Ah! Ah!”

“One moment,” cried Cardot, fairly deafened by a chorus of wretched
jokes. “I came here on serious business. I am bringing six millions for
one of you.” (Dead silence.) “Monsieur,” he went on, turning to Raphael,
who at the moment was unceremoniously wiping his eyes on a corner of the
table-napkin, “was not your mother a Mlle. O’Flaharty?”

“Yes,” said Raphael mechanically enough; “Barbara Marie.”

“Have you your certificate of birth about you,” Cardot went on, “and
Mme. de Valentin’s as well?”

“I believe so.”

“Very well then, monsieur; you are the sole heir of Major O’Flaharty,
who died in August 1828 at Calcutta.”

“An _incalcuttable_ fortune,” said the critic.

“The Major having bequeathed several amounts to public institutions in
his will, the French Government sent in a claim for the remainder to
the East India Company,” the notary continued. “The estate is clear and
ready to be transferred at this moment. I have been looking in vain for
the heirs and assigns of Mlle. Barbara Marie O’Flaharty for a fortnight
past, when yesterday at dinner----”

Just then Raphael suddenly staggered to his feet; he looked like a man
who has just received a blow. Acclamation took the form of silence, for
stifled envy had been the first feeling in every breast, and all eyes
devoured him like flames. Then a murmur rose, and grew like the voice of
a discontented audience, or the first mutterings of a riot, as everybody
made some comment on this news of great wealth brought by the notary.

This abrupt subservience of fate brought Raphael thoroughly to his
senses. He immediately spread out the table-napkin with which he had
lately taken the measure of the piece of shagreen. He heeded nothing as
he laid the talisman upon it, and shuddered involuntarily at the sight
of a slight difference between the present size of the skin and the
outline traced upon the linen.

“Why, what is the matter with him?” Taillefer cried. “He comes by his
fortune very cheaply.”

“_Soutiens-le Chatillon_!” said Bixiou to Emile. “The joy will kill
him.”

A ghastly white hue overspread every line of the wan features of the
heir-at-law. His face was drawn, every outline grew haggard; the hollows
in his livid countenance grew deeper, and his eyes were fixed and
staring. He was facing Death.

The opulent banker, surrounded by faded women, and faces with satiety
written on them, the enjoyment that had reached the pitch of agony, was
a living illustration of his own life.

Raphael looked thrice at the talisman, which lay passively within the
merciless outlines on the table-napkin; he tried not to believe it,
but his incredulity vanished utterly before the light of an inner
presentiment. The whole world was his; he could have all things, but the
will to possess them was utterly extinct. Like a traveler in the midst
of the desert, with but a little water left to quench his thirst, he
must measure his life by the draughts he took of it. He saw what every
desire of his must cost him in the days of his life. He believed in the
powers of the Magic Skin at last, he listened to every breath he drew;
he felt ill already; he asked himself:

“Am I not consumptive? Did not my mother die of a lung complaint?”

“Aha, Raphael! what fun you will have! What will you give me?” asked
Aquilina.

“Here’s to the death of his uncle, Major O’Flaharty! There is a man for
you.”

“He will be a peer of France.”

“Pooh! what is a peer of France since July?” said the amateur critic.

“Are you going to take a box at the Bouffons?”

“You are going to treat us all, I hope?” put in Bixiou.

“A man of his sort will be sure to do things in style,” said Emile.

The hurrah set up by the jovial assembly rang in Valentin’s ears, but he
could not grasp the sense of a single word. Vague thoughts crossed him
of the Breton peasant’s life of mechanical labor, without a wish of any
kind; he pictured him burdened with a family, tilling the soil, living
on buckwheat meal, drinking cider out of a pitcher, believing in the
Virgin and the King, taking the sacrament at Easter, dancing of a Sunday
on the green sward, and understanding never a word of the rector’s
sermon. The actual scene that lay before him, the gilded furniture, the
courtesans, the feast itself, and the surrounding splendors, seemed to
catch him by the throat and made him cough.

“Do you wish for some asparagus?” the banker cried.

“_I wish for nothing_!” thundered Raphael.

“Bravo!” Taillefer exclaimed; “you understand your position; a
fortune confers the privilege of being impertinent. You are one of us.
Gentlemen, let us drink to the might of gold! M. Valentin here, six
times a millionaire, has become a power. He is a king, like all the
rich; everything is at his disposal, everything lies under his feet.
From this time forth the axiom that ‘all Frenchmen are alike in the eyes
of the law,’ is for him a fib at the head of the Constitutional Charter.
He is not going to obey the law--the law is going to obey him. There are
neither scaffolds nor executioners for millionaires.”

“Yes, there are,” said Raphael; “they are their own executioners.”

“Here is another victim of prejudices!” cried the banker.

“Let us drink!” Raphael said, putting the talisman into his pocket.

“What are you doing?” said Emile, checking his movement. “Gentlemen,” he
added, addressing the company, who were rather taken aback by Raphael’s
behavior, “you must know that our friend Valentin here--what am I
saying?--I mean my Lord Marquis de Valentin--is in the possession of
a secret for obtaining wealth. His wishes are fulfilled as soon as he
knows them. He will make us all rich together, or he is a flunkey, and
devoid of all decent feeling.”

“Oh, Raphael dear, I should like a set of pearl ornaments!” Euphrasia
exclaimed.

“If he has any gratitude in him, he will give me a couple of carriages
with fast steppers,” said Aquilina.

“Wish for a hundred thousand a year for me!”

“Indian shawls!”

“Pay my debts!”

“Send an apoplexy to my uncle, the old stick!”

“Ten thousand a year in the funds, and I’ll cry quits with you,
Raphael!”

“Deeds of gift and no mistake,” was the notary’s comment.

“He ought, at least, to rid me of the gout!”

“Lower the funds!” shouted the banker.

These phrases flew about like the last discharge of rockets at the end
of a display of fireworks; and were uttered, perhaps, more in earnest
than in jest.

“My good friend,” Emile said solemnly, “I shall be quite satisfied with
an income of two hundred thousand livres. Please to set about it at
once.”

“Do you not know the cost, Emile?” asked Raphael.

“A nice excuse!” the poet cried; “ought we not to sacrifice ourselves
for our friends?”

“I have almost a mind to wish that you all were dead,” Valentin made
answer, with a dark, inscrutable look at his boon companions.

“Dying people are frightfully cruel,” said Emile, laughing. “You are
rich now,” he went on gravely; “very well, I will give you two months at
most before you grow vilely selfish. You are so dense already that
you cannot understand a joke. You have only to go a little further to
believe in your Magic Skin.”

Raphael kept silent, fearing the banter of the company; but he drank
immoderately, trying to drown in intoxication the recollection of his
fatal power.



III. THE AGONY

In the early days of December an old man of some seventy years of age
pursued his way along the Rue de Varenne, in spite of the falling rain.
He peered up at the door of each house, trying to discover the address
of the Marquis Raphael de Valentin, in a simple, childlike fashion,
and with the abstracted look peculiar to philosophers. His face plainly
showed traces of a struggle between a heavy mortification and an
authoritative nature; his long, gray hair hung in disorder about a face
like a piece of parchment shriveling in the fire. If a painter had come
upon this curious character, he would, no doubt, have transferred him
to his sketchbook on his return, a thin, bony figure, clad in black, and
have inscribed beneath it: “Classical poet in search of a rhyme.”
 When he had identified the number that had been given to him, this
reincarnation of Rollin knocked meekly at the door of a splendid
mansion.

“Is Monsieur Raphael in?” the worthy man inquired of the Swiss in
livery.

“My Lord the Marquis sees nobody,” said the servant, swallowing a huge
morsel that he had just dipped in a large bowl of coffee.

“There is his carriage,” said the elderly stranger, pointing to a fine
equipage that stood under the wooden canopy that sheltered the steps
before the house, in place of a striped linen awning. “He is going out;
I will wait for him.”

“Then you might wait here till to-morrow morning, old boy,” said the
Swiss. “A carriage is always waiting for monsieur. Please to go away. If
I were to let any stranger come into the house without orders, I should
lose an income of six hundred francs.”

A tall old man, in a costume not unlike that of a subordinate in the
Civil Service, came out of the vestibule and hurried part of the
way down the steps, while he made a survey of the astonished elderly
applicant for admission.

“What is more, here is M. Jonathan,” the Swiss remarked; “speak to him.”

Fellow-feeling of some kind, or curiosity, brought the two old men
together in a central space in the great entrance-court. A few blades of
grass were growing in the crevices of the pavement; a terrible silence
reigned in that great house. The sight of Jonathan’s face would have
made you long to understand the mystery that brooded over it, and that
was announced by the smallest trifles about the melancholy place.

When Raphael inherited his uncle’s vast estate, his first care had been
to seek out the old and devoted servitor of whose affection he knew that
he was secure. Jonathan had wept tears of joy at the sight of his young
master, of whom he thought he had taken a final farewell; and when the
marquis exalted him to the high office of steward, his happiness could
not be surpassed. So old Jonathan became an intermediary power between
Raphael and the world at large. He was the absolute disposer of his
master’s fortune, the blind instrument of an unknown will, and a sixth
sense, as it were, by which the emotions of life were communicated to
Raphael.

“I should like to speak with M. Raphael, sir,” said the elderly person
to Jonathan, as he climbed up the steps some way, into a shelter from
the rain.

“To speak with my Lord the Marquis?” the steward cried. “He scarcely
speaks even to me, his foster-father!”

“But I am likewise his foster-father,” said the old man. “If your wife
was his foster-mother, I fed him myself with the milk of the Muses. He
is my nursling, my child, carus alumnus! I formed his mind, cultivated
his understanding, developed his genius, and, I venture to say it, to
my own honor and glory. Is he not one of the most remarkable men of our
epoch? He was one of my pupils in two lower forms, and in rhetoric. I am
his professor.”

“Ah, sir, then you are M. Porriquet?”

“Exactly, sir, but----”

“Hush! hush!” Jonathan called to two underlings, whose voices broke the
monastic silence that shrouded the house.

“But is the Marquis ill, sir?” the professor continued.

“My dear sir,” Jonathan replied, “Heaven only knows what is the matter
with my master. You see, there are not a couple of houses like ours
anywhere in Paris. Do you understand? Not two houses. Faith, that
there are not. My Lord the Marquis had this hotel purchased for him; it
formerly belonged to a duke and a peer of France; then he spent three
hundred thousand francs over furnishing it. That’s a good deal, you
know, three hundred thousand francs! But every room in the house is a
perfect wonder. ‘Good,’ said I to myself when I saw this magnificence;
‘it is just like it used to be in the time of my lord, his late
grandfather; and the young marquis is going to entertain all Paris
and the Court!’ Nothing of the kind! My lord refused to see any one
whatever. ‘Tis a funny life that he leads, M. Porriquet, you understand.
An _inconciliable_ life. He rises every day at the same time. I am the
only person, you see, that may enter his room. I open all the shutters
at seven o’clock, summer or winter. It is all arranged very oddly. As I
come in I say to him:

“‘You must get up and dress, my Lord Marquis.’

“Then he rises and dresses himself. I have to give him his
dressing-gown, and it is always after the same pattern, and of the same
material. I am obliged to replace it when it can be used no longer,
simply to save him the trouble of asking for a new one. A queer fancy!
As a matter of fact, he has a thousand francs to spend every day, and
he does as he pleases, the dear child. And besides, I am so fond of him
that if he gave me a box on the ear on one side, I should hold out the
other to him! The most difficult things he will tell me to do, and yet I
do them, you know! He gives me a lot of trifles to attend to, that I
am well set to work! He reads the newspapers, doesn’t he? Well, my
instructions are to put them always in the same place, on the same
table. I always go at the same hour and shave him myself; and don’t I
tremble! The cook would forfeit the annuity of a thousand crowns that
he is to come into after my lord’s death, if breakfast is not served
_inconciliably_ at ten o’clock precisely. The menus are drawn up for the
whole year round, day after day. My Lord the Marquis has not a thing
to wish for. He has strawberries whenever there are any, and he has the
earliest mackerel to be had in Paris. The programme is printed every
morning. He knows his dinner by rote. In the next place, he dresses
himself at the same hour, in the same clothes, the same linen, that
I always put on the same chair, you understand? I have to see that he
always has the same cloth; and if it should happen that his coat came
to grief (a mere supposition), I should have to replace it by another
without saying a word about it to him. If it is fine, I go in and say to
my master:

“‘You ought to go out, sir.’

“He says Yes, or No. If he has a notion that he will go out, he doesn’t
wait for his horses; they are always ready harnessed; the coachman stops
there _inconciliably_, whip in hand, just as you see him out there.
In the evening, after dinner, my master goes one day to the Opera, the
other to the Ital----no, he hasn’t yet gone to the Italiens, though,
for I could not find a box for him until yesterday. Then he comes in at
eleven o’clock precisely, to go to bed. At any time in the day when
he has nothing to do, he reads--he is always reading, you see--it is a
notion he has. My instructions are to read the _Journal de la Librairie_
before he sees it, and to buy new books, so that he finds them on his
chimney-piece on the very day that they are published. I have orders to
go into his room every hour or so, to look after the fire and everything
else, and to see that he wants nothing. He gave me a little book, sir,
to learn off by heart, with all my duties written in it--a regular
catechism! In summer I have to keep a cool and even temperature with
blocks of ice and at all seasons to put fresh flowers all about. He is
rich! He has a thousand francs to spend every day; he can indulge his
fancies! And he hadn’t even necessaries for so long, poor child! He
doesn’t annoy anybody; he is as good as gold; he never opens his mouth,
for instance; the house and garden are absolutely silent. In short, my
master has not a single wish left; everything comes in the twinkling
of an eye, if he raises his hand, and _instanter_. Quite right, too.
If servants are not looked after, everything falls into confusion. You
would never believe the lengths he goes about things. His rooms are
all--what do you call it?--er--er--_en suite_. Very well; just suppose,
now, that he opens his room door or the door of his study; presto! all
the other doors fly open of themselves by a patent contrivance; and then
he can go from one end of the house to the other and not find a single
door shut; which is all very nice and pleasant and convenient for us
great folk! But, on my word, it cost us a lot of money! And, after all,
M. Porriquet, he said to me at last:

“‘Jonathan, you will look after me as if I were a baby in long clothes,’
Yes, sir, ‘long clothes!’ those were his very words. ‘You will think of
all my requirements for me.’ I am the master, so to speak, and he is
the servant, you understand? The reason of it? Ah, my word, that is just
what nobody on earth knows but himself and God Almighty. It is quite
_inconciliable_!”

“He is writing a poem!” exclaimed the old professor.

“You think he is writing a poem, sir? It’s a very absorbing affair,
then! But, you know, I don’t think he is. He often tells me that he
wants to live like a _vergetation_; he wants to _vergetate_. Only
yesterday he was looking at a tulip while he was dressing, and he said
to me:

“‘There is my own life--I am _vergetating_, my poor Jonathan.’ Now, some
of them insist that that is monomania. It is _inconciliable_!”

“All this makes it very clear to me, Jonathan,” the professor answered,
with a magisterial solemnity that greatly impressed the old servant,
“that your master is absorbed in a great work. He is deep in
vast meditations, and has no wish to be distracted by the petty
preoccupations of ordinary life. A man of genius forgets everything
among his intellectual labors. One day the famous Newton----”

“Newton?--oh, ah! I don’t know the name,” said Jonathan.

“Newton, a great geometrician,” Porriquet went on, “once sat for
twenty-four hours leaning his elbow on the table; when he emerged from
his musings, he was a day out in his reckoning, just as if he had been
sleeping. I will go to see him, dear lad; I may perhaps be of some use
to him.”

“Not for a moment!” Jonathan cried. “Not though you were King of
France--I mean the real old one. You could not go in unless you forced
the doors open and walked over my body. But I will go and tell him you
are here, M. Porriquet, and I will put it to him like this, ‘Ought he
to come up?’ And he will say Yes or No. I never say, ‘Do you wish?’
or ‘Will you?’ or ‘Do you want?’ Those words are scratched out of the
dictionary. He let out at me once with a ‘Do you want to kill me?’ he
was so very angry.”

Jonathan left the old schoolmaster in the vestibule, signing to him to
come no further, and soon returned with a favorable answer. He led the
old gentleman through one magnificent room after another, where every
door stood open. At last Porriquet beheld his pupil at some distance
seated beside the fire.

Raphael was reading the paper. He sat in an armchair wrapped in a
dressing-gown with some large pattern on it. The intense melancholy that
preyed upon him could be discerned in his languid posture and feeble
frame; it was depicted on his brow and white face; he looked like some
plant bleached by darkness. There was a kind of effeminate grace about
him; the fancies peculiar to wealthy invalids were also noticeable. His
hands were soft and white, like a pretty woman’s; he wore his fair hair,
now grown scanty, curled about his temples with a refinement of vanity.

The Greek cap that he wore was pulled to one side by the weight of its
tassel; too heavy for the light material of which it was made. He
had let the paper-knife fall at his feet, a malachite blade with gold
mounting, which he had used to cut the leaves of the book. The amber
mouthpiece of a magnificent Indian hookah lay on his knee; the enameled
coils lay like a serpent in the room, but he had forgotten to draw out
its fresh perfume. And yet there was a complete contradiction between
the general feebleness of his young frame and the blue eyes, where all
his vitality seemed to dwell; an extraordinary intelligence seemed to
look out from them and to grasp everything at once.

That expression was painful to see. Some would have read despair in
it, and others some inner conflict terrible as remorse. It was the
inscrutable glance of helplessness that must perforce consign its
desires to the depths of its own heart; or of a miser enjoying in
imagination all the pleasures that his money could procure for him,
while he declines to lessen his hoard; the look of a bound Prometheus,
of the fallen Napoleon of 1815, when he learned at the Elysee the
strategical blunder that his enemies had made, and asked for twenty-four
hours of command in vain; or rather it was the same look that Raphael
had turned upon the Seine, or upon his last piece of gold at the
gaming-table only a few months ago.

He was submitting his intelligence and his will to the homely
common-sense of an old peasant whom fifty years of domestic service had
scarcely civilized. He had given up all the rights of life in order to
live; he had despoiled his soul of all the romance that lies in a wish;
and almost rejoiced at thus becoming a sort of automaton. The better to
struggle with the cruel power that he had challenged, he had followed
Origen’s example, and had maimed and chastened his imagination.

The day after he had seen the diminution of the Magic Skin, at his
sudden accession of wealth, he happened to be at his notary’s house. A
well-known physician had told them quite seriously, at dessert, how
a Swiss attacked by consumption had cured himself. The man had never
spoken a word for ten years, and had compelled himself to draw six
breaths only, every minute, in the close atmosphere of a cow-house,
adhering all the time to a regimen of exceedingly light diet. “I will be
like that man,” thought Raphael to himself. He wanted life at any price,
and so he led the life of a machine in the midst of all the luxury
around him.

The old professor confronted this youthful corpse and shuddered; there
seemed something unnatural about the meagre, enfeebled frame. In the
Marquis, with his eager eyes and careworn forehead, he could hardly
recognize the fresh-cheeked and rosy pupil with the active limbs,
whom he remembered. If the worthy classicist, sage critic, and general
preserver of the traditions of correct taste had read Byron, he would
have thought that he had come on a Manfred when he looked to find Childe
Harold.

“Good day, pere Porriquet,” said Raphael, pressing the old
schoolmaster’s frozen fingers in his own damp ones; “how are you?”

“I am very well,” replied the other, alarmed by the touch of that
feverish hand. “But how about you?”

“Oh, I am hoping to keep myself in health.”

“You are engaged in some great work, no doubt?”

“No,” Raphael answered. “Exegi monumemtum, pere Porriquet; I have
contributed an important page to science, and have now bidden her
farewell for ever. I scarcely know where my manuscript is.”

“The style is no doubt correct?” queried the schoolmaster. “You, I hope,
would never have adopted the barbarous language of the new school, which
fancies it has worked such wonders by discovering Ronsard!”

“My work treats of physiology pure and simple.”

“Oh, then, there is no more to be said,” the schoolmaster answered.
“Grammar must yield to the exigencies of discovery. Nevertheless, young
man, a lucid and harmonious style--the diction of Massillon, of M. de
Buffon, of the great Racine--a classical style, in short, can never
spoil anything----But, my friend,” the schoolmaster interrupted
himself, “I was forgetting the object of my visit, which concerns my own
interests.”

Too late Raphael recalled to mind the verbose eloquence and elegant
circumlocutions which in a long professorial career had grown habitual
to his old tutor, and almost regretted that he had admitted him; but
just as he was about to wish to see him safely outside, he promptly
suppressed his secret desire with a stealthy glance at the Magic Skin.
It hung there before him, fastened down upon some white material,
surrounded by a red line accurately traced about its prophetic outlines.
Since that fatal carouse, Raphael had stifled every least whim, and
had lived so as not to cause the slightest movement in the terrible
talisman. The Magic Skin was like a tiger with which he must live
without exciting its ferocity. He bore patiently, therefore, with the
old schoolmaster’s prolixity.

Porriquet spent an hour in telling him about the persecutions directed
against him ever since the Revolution of July. The worthy man, having
a liking for strong governments, had expressed the patriotic wish that
grocers should be left to their counters, statesmen to the management of
public business, advocates to the Palais de Justice, and peers of France
to the Luxembourg; but one of the popularity-seeking ministers of the
Citizen King had ousted him from his chair, on an accusation of Carlism,
and the old man now found himself without pension or post, and with no
bread to eat. As he played the part of guardian angel to a poor nephew,
for whose schooling at Saint Sulpice he was paying, he came less on his
own account than for his adopted child’s sake, to entreat his former
pupil’s interest with the new minister. He did not ask to be reinstated,
but only for a position at the head of some provincial school.

QRaphael had fallen a victim to unconquerable drowsiness by the time
that the worthy man’s monotonous voice ceased to sound in his ears.
Civility had compelled him to look at the pale and unmoving eyes of
the deliberate and tedious old narrator, till he himself had reached
stupefaction, magnetized in an inexplicable way by the power of inertia.

“Well, my dear pere Porriquet,” he said, not very certain what the
question was to which he was replying, “but I can do nothing for you,
nothing at all. _I wish very heartily_ that you may succeed----”

All at once, without seeing the change wrought on the old man’s sallow
and wrinkled brow by these conventional phrases, full of indifference
and selfishness, Raphael sprang to his feet like a startled roebuck.
He saw a thin white line between the black piece of hide and the red
tracing about it, and gave a cry so fearful that the poor professor was
frightened by it.

“Old fool! Go!” he cried. “You will be appointed as headmaster! Couldn’t
you have asked me for an annuity of a thousand crowns rather than a
murderous wish? Your visit would have cost me nothing. There are a
hundred thousand situations to be had in France, but I have only
one life. A man’s life is worth more than all the situations in the
world.--Jonathan!”

Jonathan appeared.

“This is your doing, double-distilled idiot! What made you suggest
that I should see M. Porriquet?” and he pointed to the old man, who was
petrified with fright. “Did I put myself in your hands for you to tear
me in pieces? You have just shortened my life by ten years! Another
blunder of this kind, and you will lay me where I have laid my father.
Would I not far rather have possessed the beautiful Foedora? And I have
obliged that old hulk instead--that rag of humanity! I had money enough
for him. And, moreover, if all the Porriquets in the world were dying of
hunger, what is that to me?”

Raphael’s face was white with anger; a slight froth marked his trembling
lips; there was a savage gleam in his eyes. The two elders shook with
terror in his presence like two children at the sight of a snake. The
young man fell back in his armchair, a kind of reaction took place in
him, the tears flowed fast from his angry eyes.

“Oh, my life!” he cried, “that fair life of mine. Never to know a kindly
thought again, to love no more; nothing is left to me!”

He turned to the professor and went on in a gentle voice--“The harm
is done, my old friend. Your services have been well repaid; and my
misfortune has at any rate contributed to the welfare of a good and
worthy man.”

His tones betrayed so much feeling that the almost unintelligible
words drew tears from the two old men, such tears as are shed over some
pathetic song in a foreign tongue.

“He is epileptic,” muttered Porriquet.

“I understand your kind intentions, my friend,” Raphael answered
gently. “You would make excuses for me. Ill-health cannot be helped, but
ingratitude is a grievous fault. Leave me now,” he added. “To-morrow or
the next day, or possibly to-night, you will receive your appointment;
Resistance has triumphed over Motion. Farewell.”

The old schoolmaster went away, full of keen apprehension as to
Valentin’s sanity. A thrill of horror ran through him; there had been
something supernatural, he thought, in the scene he had passed through.
He could hardly believe his own impressions, and questioned them like
one awakened from a painful dream.

“Now attend to me, Jonathan,” said the young man to his old servant.
“Try to understand the charge confided to you.”

“Yes, my Lord Marquis.”

“I am as a man outlawed from humanity.”

“Yes, my Lord Marquis.”

“All the pleasures of life disport themselves round my bed of death,
and dance about me like fair women; but if I beckon to them, I must die.
Death always confronts me. You must be the barrier between the world and
me.”

“Yes, my Lord Marquis,” said the old servant, wiping the drops of
perspiration from his wrinkled forehead. “But if you don’t wish to
see pretty women, how will you manage at the Italiens this evening? An
English family is returning to London, and I have taken their box for
the rest of the season, and it is in a splendid position--superb; in the
first row.”

Raphael, deep in his own deep musings, paid no attention to him.

“Do you see that splendid equipage, a brougham painted a dark brown
color, but with the arms of an ancient and noble family shining from
the panels? As it rolls past, all the shop-girls admire it, and look
longingly at the yellow satin lining, the rugs from la Savonnerie,
the daintiness and freshness of every detail, the silken cushions and
tightly-fitting glass windows. Two liveried footmen are mounted behind
this aristocratic carriage; and within, a head lies back among
the silken cushions, the feverish face and hollow eyes of Raphael,
melancholy and sad. Emblem of the doom of wealth! He flies across Paris
like a rocket, and reaches the peristyle of the Theatre Favart. The
passers-by make way for him; the two footmen help him to alight, an
envious crowd looking on the while.”

“What has that fellow done to be so rich?” asks a poor law-student, who
cannot listen to the magical music of Rossini for lack of a five-franc
piece.

Raphael walked slowly along the gangway; he expected no enjoyment from
these pleasures he had once coveted so eagerly. In the interval before
the second act of Semiramide he walked up and down in the lobby, and
along the corridors, leaving his box, which he had not yet entered, to
look after itself. The instinct of property was dead within him already.
Like all invalids, he thought of nothing but his own sufferings. He was
leaning against the chimney-piece in the greenroom. A group had gathered
about it of dandies, young and old, of ministers, of peers without
peerages, and peerages without peers, for so the Revolution of July had
ordered matters. Among a host of adventurers and journalists, in fact,
Raphael beheld a strange, unearthly figure a few paces away among
the crowd. He went towards this grotesque object to see it better,
half-closing his eyes with exceeding superciliousness.

“What a wonderful bit of painting!” he said to himself. The stranger’s
hair and eyebrows and a Mazarin tuft on the chin had been dyed black,
but the result was a spurious, glossy, purple tint that varied its hues
according to the light; the hair had been too white, no doubt, to
take the preparation. Anxiety and cunning were depicted in the narrow,
insignificant face, with its wrinkles incrusted by thick layers of red
and white paint. This red enamel, lacking on some portions of his face,
strongly brought out his natural feebleness and livid hues. It was
impossible not to smile at this visage with the protuberant forehead
and pointed chin, a face not unlike those grotesque wooden figures that
German herdsmen carve in their spare moments.

An attentive observer looking from Raphael to this elderly Adonis would
have remarked a young man’s eyes set in a mask of age, in the case of
the Marquis, and in the other case the dim eyes of age peering forth
from behind a mask of youth. Valentin tried to recollect when and
where he had seen this little old man before. He was thin, fastidiously
cravatted, booted and spurred like one-and-twenty; he crossed his arms
and clinked his spurs as if he possessed all the wanton energy of
youth. He seemed to move about without constraint or difficulty. He
had carefully buttoned up his fashionable coat, which disguised his
powerful, elderly frame, and gave him the appearance of an antiquated
coxcomb who still follows the fashions.

For Raphael this animated puppet possessed all the interest of an
apparition. He gazed at it as if it had been some smoke-begrimed
Rembrandt, recently restored and newly framed. This idea found him a
clue to the truth among his confused recollections; he recognized the
dealer in antiquities, the man to whom he owed his calamities!

A noiseless laugh broke just then from the fantastical personage,
straightening the line of his lips that stretched across a row of
artificial teeth. That laugh brought out, for Raphael’s heated fancy, a
strong resemblance between the man before him and the type of head
that painters have assigned to Goethe’s Mephistopheles. A crowd
of superstitious thoughts entered Raphael’s sceptical mind; he
was convinced of the powers of the devil and of all the sorcerer’s
enchantments embodied in mediaeval tradition, and since worked up by
poets. Shrinking in horror from the destiny of Faust, he prayed for the
protection of Heaven with all the ardent faith of a dying man in God and
the Virgin. A clear, bright radiance seemed to give him a glimpse of
the heaven of Michael Angelo or of Raphael of Urbino: a venerable
white-bearded man, a beautiful woman seated in an aureole above the
clouds and winged cherub heads. Now he had grasped and received the
meaning of those imaginative, almost human creations; they seemed to
explain what had happened to him, to leave him yet one hope.

But when the greenroom of the Italiens returned upon his sight he
beheld, not the Virgin, but a very handsome young person. The execrable
Euphrasia, in all the splendor of her toilette, with its orient pearls,
had come thither, impatient for her ardent, elderly admirer. She was
insolently exhibiting herself with her defiant face and glittering
eyes to an envious crowd of stockbrokers, a visible testimony to the
inexhaustible wealth that the old dealer permitted her to squander.

Raphael recollected the mocking wish with which he had accepted the old
man’s luckless gift, and tasted all the sweets of revenge when he beheld
the spectacle of sublime wisdom fallen to such a depth as this,
wisdom for which such humiliation had seemed a thing impossible. The
centenarian greeted Euphrasia with a ghastly smile, receiving her
honeyed words in reply. He offered her his emaciated arm, and went
twice or thrice round the greenroom with her; the envious glances and
compliments with which the crowd received his mistress delighted him; he
did not see the scornful smiles, nor hear the caustic comments to which
he gave rise.

“In what cemetery did this young ghoul unearth that corpse of hers?”
 asked a dandy of the Romantic faction.

Euphrasia began to smile. The speaker was a slender, fair-haired youth,
with bright blue eyes, and a moustache. His short dress coat, hat tilted
over one ear, and sharp tongue, all denoted the species.

“How many old men,” said Raphael to himself, “bring an upright,
virtuous, and hard-working life to a close in folly! His feet are cold
already, and he is making love.”

“Well, sir,” exclaimed Valentin, stopping the merchant’s progress, while
he stared hard at Euphrasia, “have you quite forgotten the stringent
maxims of your philosophy?”

“Ah, I am as happy now as a young man,” said the other, in a cracked
voice. “I used to look at existence from a wrong standpoint. One hour of
love has a whole life in it.”

The playgoers heard the bell ring, and left the greenroom to take their
places again. Raphael and the old merchant separated. As he entered
his box, the Marquis saw Foedora sitting exactly opposite to him on the
other side of the theatre. The Countess had probably only just come, for
she was just flinging off her scarf to leave her throat uncovered, and
was occupied with going through all the indescribable manoeuvres of a
coquette arranging herself. All eyes were turned upon her. A young peer
of France had come with her; she asked him for the lorgnette she had
given him to carry. Raphael knew the despotism to which his successor
had resigned himself, in her gestures, and in the way she treated her
companion. He was also under the spell no doubt, another dupe beating
with all the might of a real affection against the woman’s cold
calculations, enduring all the tortures from which Valentin had luckily
freed himself.

Foedora’s face lighted up with indescribable joy. After directing her
lorgnette upon every box in turn, to make a rapid survey of all the
dresses, she was conscious that by her toilette and her beauty she had
eclipsed the loveliest and best-dressed women in Paris. She laughed
to show her white teeth; her head with its wreath of flowers was never
still, in her quest of admiration. Her glances went from one box to
another, as she diverted herself with the awkward way in which a Russian
princess wore her bonnet, or over the utter failure of a bonnet with
which a banker’s daughter had disfigured herself.

All at once she met Raphael’s steady gaze and turned pale, aghast at the
intolerable contempt in her rejected lover’s eyes. Not one of her exiled
suitors had failed to own her power over them; Valentin alone was proof
against her attractions. A power that can be defied with impunity is
drawing to its end. This axiom is as deeply engraved on the heart of
woman as in the minds of kings. In Raphael, therefore, Foedora saw the
deathblow of her influence and her ability to please. An epigram of his,
made at the Opera the day before, was already known in the salons of
Paris. The biting edge of that terrible speech had already given the
Countess an incurable wound. We know how to cauterize a wound, but we
know of no treatment as yet for the stab of a phrase. As every other
woman in the house looked by turns at her and at the Marquis, Foedora
would have consigned them all to the oubliettes of some Bastille; for in
spite of her capacity for dissimulation, her discomfiture was discerned
by her rivals. Her unfailing consolation had slipped from her at last.
The delicious thought, “I am the most beautiful,” the thought that at
all times had soothed every mortification, had turned into a lie.

At the opening of the second act a woman took up her position not very
far from Raphael, in a box that had been empty hitherto. A murmur of
admiration went up from the whole house. In that sea of human faces
there was a movement of every living wave; all eyes were turned upon the
stranger lady. The applause of young and old was so prolonged, that when
the orchestra began, the musicians turned to the audience to request
silence, and then they themselves joined in the plaudits and swelled the
confusion. Excited talk began in every box, every woman equipped herself
with an opera glass, elderly men grew young again, and polished the
glasses of their lorgnettes with their gloves. The enthusiasm subsided
by degrees, the stage echoed with the voices of the singers, and order
reigned as before. The aristocratic section, ashamed of having yielded
to a spontaneous feeling, again assumed their wonted politely frigid
manner. The well-to-do dislike to be astonished at anything; at the
first sight of a beautiful thing it becomes their duty to discover the
defect in it which absolves them from admiring it,--the feeling of all
ordinary minds. Yet a few still remained motionless and heedless of the
music, artlessly absorbed in the delight of watching Raphael’s neighbor.

Valentin noticed Taillefer’s mean, obnoxious countenance by Aquilina’s
side in a lower box, and received an approving smirk from him. Then he
saw Emile, who seemed to say from where he stood in the orchestra, “Just
look at that lovely creature there, close beside you!” Lastly, he saw
Rastignac, with Mme. de Nucingen and her daughter, twisting his gloves
like a man in despair, because he was tethered to his place, and could
not leave it to go any nearer to the unknown fair divinity.

Raphael’s life depended upon a covenant that he had made with himself,
and had hitherto kept sacred. He would give no special heed to any
woman whatever; and the better to guard against temptation, he used
a cunningly contrived opera-glass which destroyed the harmony of the
fairest features by hideous distortions. He had not recovered from the
terror that had seized on him in the morning when, at a mere expression
of civility, the Magic Skin had contracted so abruptly. So Raphael was
determined not to turn his face in the direction of his neighbor. He sat
imperturbable as a duchess with his back against the corner of the box,
thereby shutting out half of his neighbor’s view of the stage, appearing
to disregard her, and even to be unaware that a pretty woman sat there
just behind him.

His neighbor copied Valentin’s position exactly; she leaned her elbow
on the edge of her box and turned her face in three-quarter profile upon
the singers on the stage, as if she were sitting to a painter. These
two people looked like two estranged lovers still sulking, still turning
their backs upon each other, who will go into each other’s arms at the
first tender word.

Now and again his neighbor’s ostrich feathers or her hair came in
contact with Raphael’s head, giving him a pleasurable thrill, against
which he sternly fought. In a little while he felt the touch of the
soft frill of lace that went round her dress; he could hear the gracious
sounds of the folds of her dress itself, light rustling noises full of
enchantment; he could even feel her movements as she breathed; with the
gentle stir thus imparted to her form and to her draperies, it seemed
to Raphael that all her being was suddenly communicated to him in
an electric spark. The lace and tulle that caressed him imparted
the delicious warmth of her bare, white shoulders. By a freak in
the ordering of things, these two creatures, kept apart by social
conventions, with the abysses of death between them, breathed together
and perhaps thought of one another. Finally, the subtle perfume of aloes
completed the work of Raphael’s intoxication. Opposition heated his
imagination, and his fancy, become the wilder for the limits imposed
upon it, sketched a woman for him in outlines of fire. He turned
abruptly, the stranger made a similar movement, startled no doubt at
being brought in contact with a stranger; and they remained face to
face, each with the same thought.

“Pauline!”

“M. Raphael!”

Each surveyed the other, both of them petrified with astonishment.
Raphael noticed Pauline’s daintily simple costume. A woman’s experienced
eyes would have discerned and admired the outlines beneath the modest
gauze folds of her bodice and the lily whiteness of her throat. And
then her more than mortal clearness of soul, her maidenly modesty, her
graceful bearing, all were unchanged. Her sleeve was quivering with
agitation, for the beating of her heart was shaking her whole frame.

“Come to the Hotel de Saint-Quentin to-morrow for your papers,” she
said. “I will be there at noon. Be punctual.”

She rose hastily, and disappeared. Raphael thought of following Pauline,
feared to compromise her, and stayed. He looked at Foedora; she seemed
to him positively ugly. Unable to understand a single phrase of the
music, and feeling stifled in the theatre, he went out, and returned
home with a full heart.

“Jonathan,” he said to the old servant, as soon as he lay in bed,
“give me half a drop of laudanum on a piece of sugar, and don’t wake me
to-morrow till twenty minutes to twelve.”

“I want Pauline to love me!” he cried next morning, looking at the
talisman the while in unspeakable anguish.

The skin did not move in the least; it seemed to have lost its power to
shrink; doubtless it could not fulfil a wish fulfilled already.

“Ah!” exclaimed Raphael, feeling as if a mantle of lead had fallen away,
which he had worn ever since the day when the talisman had been given to
him; “so you are playing me false, you are not obeying me, the pact is
broken! I am free; I shall live. Then was it all a wretched joke?” But
he did not dare to believe in his own thought as he uttered it.

He dressed himself as simply as had formerly been his wont, and set out
on foot for his old lodging, trying to go back in fancy to the happy
days when he abandoned himself without peril to vehement desires, the
days when he had not yet condemned all human enjoyment. As he walked
he beheld Pauline--not the Pauline of the Hotel Saint-Quentin, but the
Pauline of last evening. Here was the accomplished mistress he had so
often dreamed of, the intelligent young girl with the loving nature and
artistic temperament, who understood poets, who understood poetry, and
lived in luxurious surroundings. Here, in short, was Foedora,
gifted with a great soul; or Pauline become a countess, and twice a
millionaire, as Foedora had been. When he reached the worn threshold,
and stood upon the broken step at the door, where in the old days he had
had so many desperate thoughts, an old woman came out of the room within
and spoke to him.

“You are M. Raphael de Valentin, are you not?”

“Yes, good mother,” he replied.

“You know your old room then,” she replied; “you are expected up there.”

“Does Mme. Gaudin still own the house?” Raphael asked.

“Oh no, sir. Mme. Gaudin is a baroness now. She lives in a fine house
of her own on the other side of the river. Her husband has come back.
My goodness, he brought back thousands and thousands. They say she could
buy up all the Quartier Saint-Jacques if she liked. She gave me her
basement room for nothing, and the remainder of her lease. Ah, she’s
a kind woman all the same; she is no more proud to-day than she was
yesterday.”

Raphael hurried up the staircase to his garret; as he reached the last
few steps he heard the sounds of a piano. Pauline was there, simply
dressed in a cotton gown, but the way that it was made, like the gloves,
hat, and shawl that she had thrown carelessly upon the bed, revealed a
change of fortune.

“Ah, there you are!” cried Pauline, turning her head, and rising with
unconcealed delight.

Raphael went to sit beside her, flushed, confused, and happy; he looked
at her in silence.

“Why did you leave us then?” she asked, dropping her eyes as the flush
deepened on his face. “What became of you?”

“Ah, I have been very miserable, Pauline; I am very miserable still.”

“Alas!” she said, filled with pitying tenderness. “I guessed your fate
yesterday when I saw you so well dressed, and apparently so wealthy; but
in reality? Eh, M. Raphael, is it as it always used to be with you?”

Valentin could not restrain the tears that sprang to his eyes.

“Pauline,” he exclaimed, “I----”

He went no further, love sparkled in his eyes, and his emotion
overflowed his face.

“Oh, he loves me! he loves me!” cried Pauline.

Raphael felt himself unable to say one word; he bent his head. The young
girl took his hand at this; she pressed it as she said, half sobbing and
half laughing:--

“Rich, rich, happy and rich! Your Pauline is rich. But I? Oh, I ought
to be very poor to-day. I have said, times without number, that I would
give all the wealth upon this earth for those words, ‘He loves me!’ O
my Raphael! I have millions. You like luxury, you will be glad; but you
must love me and my heart besides, for there is so much love for you
in my heart. You don’t know? My father has come back. I am a wealthy
heiress. Both he and my mother leave me completely free to decide my own
fate. I am free--do you understand?”

Seized with a kind of frenzy, Raphael grasped Pauline’s hands and kissed
them eagerly and vehemently, with an almost convulsive caress. Pauline
drew her hands away, laid them on Raphael’s shoulders, and drew him
towards her. They understood one another--in that close embrace, in
the unalloyed and sacred fervor of that one kiss without an
afterthought--the first kiss by which two souls take possession of each
other.

“Ah, I will not leave you any more,” said Pauline, falling back in her
chair. “I do not know how I come to be so bold!” she added, blushing.

“Bold, my Pauline? Do not fear it. It is love, love true and deep and
everlasting like my own, is it not?”

“Speak!” she cried. “Go on speaking, so long your lips have been dumb
for me.”

“Then you have loved me all along?”

“Loved you? _Mon Dieu_! How often I have wept here, setting your room
straight, and grieving for your poverty and my own. I would have sold
myself to the evil one to spare you one vexation! You are MY Raphael
to-day, really my own Raphael, with that handsome head of yours, and
your heart is mine too; yes, that above all, your heart--O wealth
inexhaustible! Well, where was I?” she went on after a pause. “Oh yes!
We have three, four, or five millions, I believe. If I were poor, I
should perhaps desire to bear your name, to be acknowledged as your
wife; but as it is, I would give up the whole world for you, I would
be your servant still, now and always. Why, Raphael, if I give you my
fortune, my heart, myself to-day, I do no more than I did that day when
I put a certain five-franc piece in the drawer there,” and she pointed
to the table. “Oh, how your exultation hurt me then!”

“Oh, why are you rich?” Raphael cried; “why is there no vanity in you? I
can do nothing for you.”

He wrung his hands in despair and happiness and love.

“When you are the Marquise de Valentin, I know that the title and the
fortune for thee, heavenly soul, will not be worth----”

“One hair of your head,” she cried.

“I have millions too. But what is wealth to either of us now? There is
my life--ah, that I can offer, take it.”

“Your love, Raphael, your love is all the world to me. Are your thoughts
of me? I am the happiest of the happy!”

“Can any one overhear us?” asked Raphael.

“Nobody,” she replied, and a mischievous gesture escaped her.

“Come, then!” cried Valentin, holding out his arms.

She sprang upon his knees and clasped her arms about his neck.

“Kiss me!” she cried, “after all the pain you have given me; to blot out
the memory of the grief that your joys have caused me; and for the sake
of the nights that I spent in painting hand-screens----”

“Those hand-screens of yours?”

“Now that we are rich, my darling, I can tell you all about it. Poor
boy! how easy it is to delude a clever man! Could you have had white
waistcoats and clean shirts twice a week for three francs every month to
the laundress? Why, you used to drink twice as much milk as your money
would have paid for. I deceived you all round--over firing, oil, and
even money. O Raphael mine, don’t have me for your wife, I am far too
cunning!” she said laughing.

“But how did you manage?”

“I used to work till two o’clock in the morning; I gave my mother half
the money made by my screens, and the other half went to you.”

They looked at one another for a moment, both bewildered by love and
gladness.

“Some day we shall have to pay for this happiness by some terrible
sorrow,” cried Raphael.

“Perhaps you are married?” said Pauline. “Oh, I will not give you up to
any other woman.”

“I am free, my beloved.”

“Free!” she repeated. “Free, and mine!”

She slipped down upon her knees, clasped her hands, and looked at
Raphael in an enthusiasm of devotion.

“I am afraid I shall go mad. How handsome you are!” she went on, passing
her fingers through her lover’s fair hair. “How stupid your Countess
Foedora is! How pleased I was yesterday with the homage they all paid to
me! SHE has never been applauded. Dear, when I felt your arm against my
back, I heard a vague voice within me that cried, ‘He is there!’ and I
turned round and saw you. I fled, for I longed so to throw my arms about
you before them all.”

“How happy you are--you can speak!” Raphael exclaimed. “My heart is
overwhelmed; I would weep, but I cannot. Do not draw your hand away.
I could stay here looking at you like this for the rest of my life, I
think; happy and content.”

“O my love, say that once more!”

“Ah, what are words?” answered Valentin, letting a hot tear fall on
Pauline’s hands. “Some time I will try to tell you of my love; just now
I can only feel it.”

“You,” she said, “with your lofty soul and your great genius, with that
heart of yours that I know so well; are you really mine, as I am yours?”

“For ever and ever, my sweet creature,” said Raphael in an uncertain
voice. “You shall be my wife, my protecting angel. My griefs have always
been dispelled by your presence, and my courage revived; that angelic
smile now on your lips has purified me, so to speak. A new life seems
about to begin for me. The cruel past and my wretched follies are hardly
more to me than evil dreams. At your side I breathe an atmosphere of
happiness, and I am pure. Be with me always,” he added, pressing her
solemnly to his beating heart.

“Death may come when it will,” said Pauline in ecstasy; “I have lived!”

Happy he who shall divine their joy, for he must have experienced it.

“I wish that no one might enter this dear garret again, my Raphael,”
 said Pauline, after two hours of silence.

“We must have the door walled up, put bars across the window, and buy
the house,” the Marquis answered.

“Yes, we will,” she said. Then a moment later she added: “Our search for
your manuscripts has been a little lost sight of,” and they both laughed
like children.

“Pshaw! I don’t care a jot for the whole circle of the sciences,”
 Raphael answered.

“Ah, sir, and how about glory?”

“I glory in you alone.”

“You used to be very miserable as you made these little scratches and
scrawls,” she said, turning the papers over.

“My Pauline----”

“Oh yes, I am your Pauline--and what then?”

“Where are you living now?”

“In the Rue Saint Lazare. And you?”

“In the Rue de Varenne.”

“What a long way apart we shall be until----” She stopped, and looked at
her lover with a mischievous and coquettish expression.

“But at the most we need only be separated for a fortnight,” Raphael
answered.

“Really! we are to be married in a fortnight?” and she jumped for joy
like a child.

“I am an unnatural daughter!” she went on. “I give no more thought to my
father or my mother, or to anything in the world. Poor love, you don’t
know that my father is very ill? He returned from the Indies in very
bad health. He nearly died at Havre, where we went to find him. Good
heavens!” she cried, looking at her watch; “it is three o’clock already!
I ought to be back again when he wakes at four. I am mistress of the
house at home; my mother does everything that I wish, and my father
worships me; but I will not abuse their kindness, that would be wrong.
My poor father! He would have me go to the Italiens yesterday. You will
come to see him to-morrow, will you not?”

“Will Madame la Marquise de Valentin honor me by taking my arm?”

“I am going to take the key of this room away with me,” she said. “Isn’t
our treasure-house a palace?”

“One more kiss, Pauline.”

“A thousand, _mon Dieu_!” she said, looking at Raphael. “Will it always
be like this? I feel as if I were dreaming.”

They went slowly down the stairs together, step for step, with arms
closely linked, trembling both of them beneath their load of joy. Each
pressing close to the other’s side, like a pair of doves, they reached
the Place de la Sorbonne, where Pauline’s carriage was waiting.

“I want to go home with you,” she said. “I want to see your own room and
your study, and to sit at the table where you work. It will be like old
times,” she said, blushing.

She spoke to the servant. “Joseph, before returning home I am going to
the Rue de Varenne. It is a quarter-past three now, and I must be back
by four o’clock. George must hurry the horses.” And so in a few moments
the lovers came to Valentin’s abode.

“How glad I am to have seen all this for myself!” Pauline cried,
creasing the silken bed-curtains in Raphael’s room between her fingers.
“As I go to sleep, I shall be here in thought. I shall imagine your dear
head on the pillow there. Raphael, tell me, did no one advise you about
the furniture of your hotel?”

“No one whatever.”

“Really? It was not a woman who----”

“Pauline!”

“Oh, I know I am fearfully jealous. You have good taste. I will have a
bed like yours to-morrow.”

Quite beside himself with happiness, Raphael caught Pauline in his arms.

“Oh, my father!” she said; “my father----”

“I will take you back to him,” cried Valentin, “for I want to be away
from you as little as possible.”

“How loving you are! I did not venture to suggest it----”

“Are you not my life?”

It would be tedious to set down accurately the charming prattle of the
lovers, for tones and looks and gestures that cannot be rendered alone
gave it significance. Valentin went back with Pauline to her own door,
and returned with as much happiness in his heart as mortal man can know.

When he was seated in his armchair beside the fire, thinking over the
sudden and complete way in which his wishes had been fulfilled, a cold
shiver went through him, as if the blade of a dagger had been plunged
into his breast--he thought of the Magic Skin, and saw that it had
shrunk a little. He uttered the most tremendous of French oaths, without
any of the Jesuitical reservations made by the Abbess of Andouillettes,
leant his head against the back of the chair, and sat motionless, fixing
his unseeing eyes upon the bracket of the curtain pole.

“Good God!” he cried; “every wish! Every desire of mine! Poor
Pauline!----”

He took a pair of compasses and measured the extent of existence that
the morning had cost him.

“I have scarcely enough for two months!” he said.

A cold sweat broke out over him; moved by an ungovernable spasm of rage,
he seized the Magic Skin, exclaiming:

“I am a perfect fool!”

He rushed out of the house and across the garden, and flung the talisman
down a well.

“_Vogue la galere_,” cried he. “The devil take all this nonsense.”

So Raphael gave himself up to the happiness of being beloved, and led
with Pauline the life of heart and heart. Difficulties which it would
be somewhat tedious to describe had delayed their marriage, which was to
take place early in March. Each was sure of the other; their affection
had been tried, and happiness had taught them how strong it was. Never
has love made two souls, two natures, so absolutely one. The more they
came to know of each other, the more they loved. On either side there
was the same hesitating delicacy, the same transports of joy such as
angels know; there were no clouds in their heaven; the will of either
was the other’s law.

Wealthy as they both were, they had not a caprice which they could not
gratify, and for that reason had no caprices. A refined taste, a feeling
for beauty and poetry, was instinct in the soul of the bride; her
lover’s smile was more to her than all the pearls of Ormuz. She
disdained feminine finery; a muslin dress and flowers formed her most
elaborate toilette.

Pauline and Raphael shunned every one else, for solitude was abundantly
beautiful to them. The idlers at the Opera, or at the Italiens, saw this
charming and unconventional pair evening after evening. Some gossip
went the round of the salons at first, but the harmless lovers were
soon forgotten in the course of events which took place in Paris; their
marriage was announced at length to excuse them in the eyes of the
prudish; and as it happened, their servants did not babble; so their
bliss did not draw down upon them any very severe punishment.

One morning towards the end of February, at the time when the
brightening days bring a belief in the nearness of the joys of spring,
Pauline and Raphael were breakfasting together in a small conservatory,
a kind of drawing-room filled with flowers, on a level with the garden.
The mild rays of the pale winter sunlight, breaking through the thicket
of exotic plants, warmed the air somewhat. The vivid contrast made by
the varieties of foliage, the colors of the masses of flowering shrubs,
the freaks of light and shadow, gladdened the eyes. While all the rest
of Paris still sought warmth from its melancholy hearth, these two were
laughing in a bower of camellias, lilacs, and blossoming heath. Their
happy faces rose above lilies of the valley, narcissus blooms, and
Bengal roses. A mat of plaited African grass, variegated like a carpet,
lay beneath their feet in this luxurious conservatory. The walls,
covered with a green linen material, bore no traces of damp. The
surfaces of the rustic wooden furniture shone with cleanliness. A
kitten, attracted by the odor of milk, had established itself upon the
table; it allowed Pauline to bedabble it in coffee; she was playing
merrily with it, taking away the cream that she had just allowed the
kitten to sniff at, so as to exercise its patience, and keep up the
contest. She burst out laughing at every antic, and by the comical
remarks she constantly made, she hindered Raphael from perusing the
paper; he had dropped it a dozen times already. This morning picture
seemed to overflow with inexpressible gladness, like everything that is
natural and genuine.

Raphael, still pretending to read his paper, furtively watched Pauline
with the cat--his Pauline, in the dressing-gown that hung carelessly
about her; his Pauline, with her hair loose on her shoulders, with a
tiny, white, blue-veined foot peeping out of a velvet slipper. It was
pleasant to see her in this negligent dress; she was delightful as some
fanciful picture by Westall; half-girl, half-woman, as she seemed to
be, or perhaps more of a girl than a woman, there was no alloy in
the happiness she enjoyed, and of love she knew as yet only its first
ecstasy. When Raphael, absorbed in happy musing, had forgotten the
existence of the newspaper, Pauline flew upon it, crumpled it up into
a ball, and threw it out into the garden; the kitten sprang after the
rotating object, which spun round and round, as politics are wont to do.
This childish scene recalled Raphael to himself. He would have gone on
reading, and felt for the sheet he no longer possessed. Joyous laughter
rang out like the song of a bird, one peal leading to another.

“I am quite jealous of the paper,” she said, as she wiped away the tears
that her childlike merriment had brought into her eyes. “Now, is it not
a heinous offence,” she went on, as she became a woman all at once, “to
read Russian proclamations in my presence, and to attend to the prosings
of the Emperor Nicholas rather than to looks and words of love!”

“I was not reading, my dear angel; I was looking at you.”

Just then the gravel walk outside the conservatory rang with the sound
of the gardener’s heavily nailed boots.

“I beg your pardon, my Lord Marquis--and yours, too, madame--if I am
intruding, but I have brought you a curiosity the like of which I never
set eyes on. Drawing a bucket of water just now, with due respect, I
got out this strange salt-water plant. Here it is. It must be thoroughly
used to water, anyhow, for it isn’t saturated or even damp at all. It is
as dry as a piece of wood, and has not swelled a bit. As my Lord Marquis
certainly knows a great deal more about things than I do, I thought I
ought to bring it, and that it would interest him.”

Therewith the gardener showed Raphael the inexorable piece of skin;
there were barely six square inches of it left.

“Thanks, Vaniere,” Raphael said. “The thing is very curious.”

“What is the matter with you, my angel; you are growing quite white!”
 Pauline cried.

“You can go, Vaniere.”

“Your voice frightens me,” the girl went on; “it is so strangely
altered. What is it? How are you feeling? Where is the pain? You are in
pain!--Jonathan! here! call a doctor!” she cried.

“Hush, my Pauline,” Raphael answered, as he regained composure. “Let us
get up and go. Some flower here has a scent that is too much for me. It
is that verbena, perhaps.”

Pauline flew upon the innocent plant, seized it by the stalk, and flung
it out into the garden; then, with all the might of the love between
them, she clasped Raphael in a close embrace, and with languishing
coquetry raised her red lips to his for a kiss.

“Dear angel,” she cried, “when I saw you turn so white, I understood
that I could not live on without you; your life is my life too. Lay your
hand on my back, Raphael mine; I feel a chill like death. The feeling
of cold is there yet. Your lips are burning. How is your hand?--Cold as
ice,” she added.

“Mad girl!” exclaimed Raphael.

“Why that tear? Let me drink it.”

“O Pauline, Pauline, you love me far too much!”

“There is something very extraordinary going on in your mind, Raphael!
Do not dissimulate. I shall very soon find out your secret. Give that to
me,” she went on, taking the Magic Skin.

“You are my executioner!” the young man exclaimed, glancing in horror at
the talisman.

“How changed your voice is!” cried Pauline, as she dropped the fatal
symbol of destiny.

“Do you love me?” he asked.

“Do I love you? Is there any doubt?”

“Then, leave me, go away!”

The poor child went.

“So!” cried Raphael, when he was alone. “In an enlightened age, when we
have found out that diamonds are a crystallized form of charcoal, at
a time when everything is made clear, when the police would hale a new
Messiah before the magistrates, and submit his miracles to the Academie
des Sciences--in an epoch when we no longer believe in anything but a
notary’s signature--that I, forsooth, should believe in a sort of _Mene,
Tekel, Upharsin_! No, by Heaven, I will not believe that the Supreme
Being would take pleasure in torturing a harmless creature.--Let us see
the learned about it.”

Between the Halle des Vins, with its extensive assembly of barrels, and
the Salpetriere, that extensive seminary of drunkenness, lies a small
pond, which Raphael soon reached. All sorts of ducks of rare varieties
were there disporting themselves; their colored markings shone in the
sun like the glass in cathedral windows. Every kind of duck in the
world was represented, quacking, dabbling, and moving about--a kind
of parliament of ducks assembled against its will, but luckily without
either charter or political principles, living in complete immunity from
sportsmen, under the eyes of any naturalist that chanced to see them.

“That is M. Lavrille,” said one of the keepers to Raphael, who had asked
for that high priest of zoology.

The Marquis saw a short man buried in profound reflections, caused by
the appearance of a pair of ducks. The man of science was middle-aged;
he had a pleasant face, made pleasanter still by a kindly expression,
but an absorption in scientific ideas engrossed his whole person. His
peruke was strangely turned up, by being constantly raised to scratch
his head; so that a line of white hair was left plainly visible, a
witness to an enthusiasm for investigation, which, like every other
strong passion, so withdraws us from mundane considerations, that we
lose all consciousness of the “I” within us. Raphael, the student and
man of science, looked respectfully at the naturalist, who devoted his
nights to enlarging the limits of human knowledge, and whose very errors
reflected glory upon France; but a she-coxcomb would have laughed,
no doubt, at the break of continuity between the breeches and striped
waistcoat worn by the man of learning; the interval, moreover, was
modestly filled by a shirt which had been considerably creased, for
he stooped and raised himself by turns, as his zoological observations
required.

After the first interchange of civilities, Raphael thought it necessary
to pay M. Lavrille a banal compliment upon his ducks.

“Oh, we are well off for ducks,” the naturalist replied. “The genus,
moreover, as you doubtless know, is the most prolific in the order
of palmipeds. It begins with the swan and ends with the zin-zin duck,
comprising in all one hundred and thirty-seven very distinct varieties,
each having its own name, habits, country, and character, and every one
no more like another than a white man is like a negro. Really, sir,
when we dine off a duck, we have no notion for the most part of the vast
extent----”

He interrupted himself as he saw a small pretty duck come up to the
surface of the pond.

“There you see the cravatted swan, a poor native of Canada; he has come
a very long way to show us his brown and gray plumage and his little
black cravat! Look, he is preening himself. That one is the famous eider
duck that provides the down, the eider-down under which our fine ladies
sleep; isn’t it pretty? Who would not admire the little pinkish white
breast and the green beak? I have just been a witness, sir,” he went on,
“to a marriage that I had long despaired of bringing about; they have
paired rather auspiciously, and I shall await the results very eagerly.
This will be a hundred and thirty-eighth species, I flatter myself, to
which, perhaps, my name will be given. That is the newly matched pair,”
 he said, pointing out two of the ducks; “one of them is a laughing goose
(_anas albifrons_), and the other the great whistling duck, Buffon’s
_anas ruffina_. I have hesitated a long while between the whistling
duck, the duck with white eyebrows, and the shoveler duck (_anas
clypeata_). Stay, that is the shoveler--that fat, brownish black rascal,
with the greenish neck and that coquettish iridescence on it. But the
whistling duck was a crested one, sir, and you will understand that I
deliberated no longer. We only lack the variegated black-capped duck
now. These gentlemen here, unanimously claim that that variety of
duck is only a repetition of the curve-beaked teal, but for my own
part,”--and the gesture he made was worth seeing. It expressed at once
the modesty and pride of a man of science; the pride full of obstinacy,
and the modesty well tempered with assurance.

“I don’t think it is,” he added. “You see, my dear sir, that we are not
amusing ourselves here. I am engaged at this moment upon a monograph on
the genus duck. But I am at your disposal.”

While they went towards a rather pleasant house in the Rue du Buffon,
Raphael submitted the skin to M. Lavrille’s inspection.

“I know the product,” said the man of science, when he had turned his
magnifying glass upon the talisman. “It used to be used for covering
boxes. The shagreen is very old. They prefer to use skate’s skin
nowadays for making sheaths. This, as you are doubtless aware, is the
hide of the _raja sephen_, a Red Sea fish.”

“But this, sir, since you are so exceedingly good----”

“This,” the man of science interrupted, as he resumed, “this is quite
another thing; between these two shagreens, sir, there is a difference
just as wide as between sea and land, or fish and flesh. The fish’s skin
is harder, however, than the skin of the land animal. This,” he said, as
he indicated the talisman, “is, as you doubtless know, one of the most
curious of zoological products.”

“But to proceed----” said Raphael.

“This,” replied the man of science, as he flung himself down into his
armchair, “is an ass’ skin, sir.”

“Yes, I know,” said the young man.

“A very rare variety of ass found in Persia,” the naturalist continued,
“the onager of the ancients, equus asinus, the _koulan_ of the Tartars;
Pallas went out there to observe it, and has made it known to science,
for as a matter of fact the animal for a long time was believed to be
mythical. It is mentioned, as you know, in Holy Scripture; Moses forbade
that it should be coupled with its own species, and the onager is yet
more famous for the prostitutions of which it was the object, and which
are often mentioned by the prophets of the Bible. Pallas, as you know
doubtless, states in his _Act. Petrop._ tome II., that these bizarre
excesses are still devoutly believed in among the Persians and the
Nogais as a sovereign remedy for lumbago and sciatic gout. We poor
Parisians scarcely believe that. The Museum has no example of the
onager.

“What a magnificent animal!” he continued. “It is full of mystery;
its eyes are provided with a sort of burnished covering, to which the
Orientals attribute the powers of fascination; it has a glossier and
finer coat than our handsomest horses possess, striped with more or less
tawny bands, very much like the zebra’s hide. There is something pliant
and silky about its hair, which is sleek to the touch. Its powers of
sight vie in precision and accuracy with those of man; it is rather
larger than our largest domestic donkeys, and is possessed of
extraordinary courage. If it is surprised by any chance, it defends
itself against the most dangerous wild beasts with remarkable success;
the rapidity of its movements can only be compared with the flight of
birds; an onager, sir, would run the best Arab or Persian horses to
death. According to the father of the conscientious Doctor Niebuhr,
whose recent loss we are deploring, as you doubtless know, the ordinary
average pace of one of these wonderful creatures would be seven thousand
geometric feet per hour. Our own degenerate race of donkeys can give no
idea of the ass in his pride and independence. He is active and spirited
in his demeanor; he is cunning and sagacious; there is grace about the
outlines of his head; every movement is full of attractive charm. In
the East he is the king of beasts. Turkish and Persian superstition even
credits him with a mysterious origin; and when stories of the prowess
attributed to him are told in Thibet or in Tartary, the speakers mingle
Solomon’s name with that of this noble animal. A tame onager, in short,
is worth an enormous amount; it is well-nigh impossible to catch them
among the mountains, where they leap like roebucks, and seem as if they
could fly like birds. Our myth of the winged horse, our Pegasus, had its
origin doubtless in these countries, where the shepherds could see the
onager springing from one rock to another. In Persia they breed asses
for the saddle, a cross between a tamed onager and a she-ass, and they
paint them red, following immemorial tradition. Perhaps it was this
custom that gave rise to our own proverb, ‘Surely as a red donkey.’ At
some period when natural history was much neglected in France, I think a
traveler must have brought over one of these strange beasts that endures
servitude with such impatience. Hence the adage. The skin that you
have laid before me is the skin of an onager. Opinions differ as to the
origin of the name. Some claim that _Chagri_ is a Turkish word; others
insist that _Chagri_ must be the name of the place where this animal
product underwent the chemical process of preparation so clearly
described by Pallas, to which the peculiar graining that we admire is
due; Martellens has written to me saying that _Chaagri_ is a river----”

“I thank you, sir, for the information that you have given me; it would
furnish an admirable footnote for some Dom Calmet or other, if such
erudite hermits yet exist; but I have had the honor of pointing out to
you that this scrap was in the first instance quite as large as that
map,” said Raphael, indicating an open atlas to Lavrille; “but it has
shrunk visibly in three months’ time----”

“Quite so,” said the man of science. “I understand. The remains of any
substance primarily organic are naturally subject to a process of
decay. It is quite easy to understand, and its progress depends upon
atmospherical conditions. Even metals contract and expand appreciably,
for engineers have remarked somewhat considerable interstices between
great blocks of stone originally clamped together with iron bars. The
field of science is boundless, but human life is very short, so that we
do not claim to be acquainted with all the phenomena of nature.”

“Pardon the question that I am about to ask you, sir,” Raphael began,
half embarrassed, “but are you quite sure that this piece of skin is
subject to the ordinary laws of zoology, and that it can be stretched?”

“Certainly----oh, bother!----” muttered M. Lavrille, trying to stretch
the talisman. “But if you, sir, will go to see Planchette,” he added,
“the celebrated professor of mechanics, he will certainly discover some
method of acting upon this skin, of softening and expanding it.”

“Ah, sir, you are the preserver of my life,” and Raphael took leave of
the learned naturalist and hurried off to Planchette, leaving the worthy
Lavrille in his study, all among the bottles and dried plants that
filled it up.

Quite unconsciously Raphael brought away with him from this visit,
all of science that man can grasp, a terminology to wit. Lavrille, the
worthy man, was very much like Sancho Panza giving to Don Quixote the
history of the goats; he was entertaining himself by making out a list
of animals and ticking them off. Even now that his life was nearing its
end, he was scarcely acquainted with a mere fraction of the countless
numbers of the great tribes that God has scattered, for some unknown
end, throughout the ocean of worlds.

Raphael was well pleased. “I shall keep my ass well in hand,” cried he.
Sterne had said before his day, “Let us take care of our ass, if we wish
to live to old age.” But it is such a fantastic brute!

Planchette was a tall, thin man, a poet of a surety, lost in one
continual thought, and always employed in gazing into the bottomless
abyss of Motion. Commonplace minds accuse these lofty intellects of
madness; they form a misinterpreted race apart that lives in a wonderful
carelessness of luxuries or other people’s notions. They will spend
whole days at a stretch, smoking a cigar that has gone out, and enter
a drawing-room with the buttons on their garments not in every case
formally wedded to the button-holes. Some day or other, after a long
time spent in measuring space, or in accumulating Xs under Aa-Gg, they
succeed in analyzing some natural law, and resolve it into its elemental
principles, and all on a sudden the crowd gapes at a new machine; or it
is a handcart perhaps that overwhelms us with astonishment by the apt
simplicity of its construction. The modest man of science smiles at
his admirers, and remarks, “What is that invention of mine? Nothing
whatever. Man cannot create a force; he can but direct it; and science
consists in learning from nature.”

The mechanician was standing bolt upright, planted on both feet, like
some victim dropped straight from the gibbet, when Raphael broke in upon
him. He was intently watching an agate ball that rolled over a sun-dial,
and awaited its final settlement. The worthy man had received neither
pension nor decoration; he had not known how to make the right use of
his ability for calculation. He was happy in his life spent on the watch
for a discovery; he had no thought either of reputation, of the outer
world, nor even of himself, and led the life of science for the sake of
science.

“It is inexplicable,” he exclaimed. “Ah, your servant, sir,” he went on,
becoming aware of Raphael’s existence. “How is your mother? You must go
and see my wife.”

“And I also could have lived thus,” thought Raphael, as he recalled the
learned man from his meditations by asking of him how to produce any
effect on the talisman, which he placed before him.

“Although my credulity must amuse you, sir,” so the Marquis ended, “I
will conceal nothing from you. That skin seems to me to be endowed with
an insuperable power of resistance.”

“People of fashion, sir, always treat science rather superciliously,”
 said Planchette. “They all talk to us pretty much as the _incroyable_
did when he brought some ladies to see Lalande just after an eclipse,
and remarked, ‘Be so good as to begin it over again!’ What effect do you
want to produce? The object of the science of mechanics is either the
application or the neutralization of the laws of motion. As for motion
pure and simple, I tell you humbly, that we cannot possibly define it.
That disposed of, unvarying phenomena have been observed which accompany
the actions of solids and fluids. If we set up the conditions by
which these phenomena are brought to pass, we can transport bodies or
communicate locomotive power to them at a predetermined rate of speed.
We can project them, divide them up in a few or an infinite number of
pieces, accordingly as we break them or grind them to powder; we can
twist bodies or make them rotate, modify, compress, expand, or extend
them. The whole science, sir, rests upon a single fact.

“You see this ball,” he went on; “here it lies upon this slab. Now,
it is over there. What name shall we give to what has taken place,
so natural from a physical point of view, so amazing from a moral?
Movement, locomotion, changing of place? What prodigious vanity lurks
underneath the words. Does a name solve the difficulty? Yet it is the
whole of our science for all that. Our machines either make direct use
of this agency, this fact, or they convert it. This trifling phenomenon,
applied to large masses, would send Paris flying. We can increase speed
by an expenditure of force, and augment the force by an increase of
speed. But what are speed and force? Our science is as powerless to tell
us that as to create motion. Any movement whatever is an immense power,
and man does not create power of any kind. Everything is movement,
thought itself is a movement, upon movement nature is based. Death is a
movement whose limitations are little known. If God is eternal, be
sure that He moves perpetually; perhaps God is movement. That is
why movement, like God is inexplicable, unfathomable, unlimited,
incomprehensible, intangible. Who has ever touched, comprehended, or
measured movement? We feel its effects without seeing it; we can even
deny them as we can deny the existence of a God. Where is it? Where
is it not? Whence comes it? What is its source? What is its end? It
surrounds us, it intrudes upon us, and yet escapes us. It is evident as
a fact, obscure as an abstraction; it is at once effect and cause. It
requires space, even as we, and what is space? Movement alone recalls
it to us; without movement, space is but an empty meaningless word.
Like space, like creation, like the infinite, movement is an insoluble
problem which confounds human reason; man will never conceive it,
whatever else he may be permitted to conceive.

“Between each point in space occupied in succession by that ball,”
 continued the man of science, “there is an abyss confronting human
reason, an abyss into which Pascal fell. In order to produce any
effect upon an unknown substance, we ought first of all to study that
substance; to know whether, in accordance with its nature, it will be
broken by the force of a blow, or whether it will withstand it; if it
breaks in pieces, and you have no wish to split it up, we shall not
achieve the end proposed. If you want to compress it, a uniform impulse
must be communicated to all the particles of the substance, so as to
diminish the interval that separates them in an equal degree. If you
wish to expand it, we should try to bring a uniform eccentric force to
bear on every molecule; for unless we conform accurately to this law,
we shall have breaches in continuity. The modes of motion, sir, are
infinite, and no limit exists to combinations of movement. Upon what
effect have you determined?”

“I want any kind of pressure that is strong enough to expand the skin
indefinitely,” began Raphael, quite of out patience.

“Substance is finite,” the mathematician put in, “and therefore will not
admit of indefinite expansion, but pressure will necessarily increase
the extent of surface at the expense of the thickness, which will be
diminished until the point is reached when the material gives out----”

“Bring about that result, sir,” Raphael cried, “and you will have earned
millions.”

“Then I should rob you of your money,” replied the other, phlegmatic as
a Dutchman. “I am going to show you, in a word or two, that a machine
can be made that is fit to crush Providence itself in pieces like a fly.
It would reduce a man to the conditions of a piece of waste paper; a
man--boots and spurs, hat and cravat, trinkets and gold, and all----”

“What a fearful machine!”

“Instead of flinging their brats into the water, the Chinese ought
to make them useful in this way,” the man of science went on, without
reflecting on the regard man has for his progeny.

Quite absorbed by his idea, Planchette took an empty flower-pot, with a
hole in the bottom, and put it on the surface of the dial, then he
went to look for a little clay in a corner of the garden. Raphael stood
spellbound, like a child to whom his nurse is telling some wonderful
story. Planchette put the clay down upon the slab, drew a pruning-knife
from his pocket, cut two branches from an elder tree, and began to
clean them of pith by blowing through them, as if Raphael had not been
present.

“There are the rudiments of the apparatus,” he said. Then he connected
one of the wooden pipes with the bottom of the flower-pot by way of
a clay joint, in such a way that the mouth of the elder stem was just
under the hole of the flower-pot; you might have compared it to a big
tobacco-pipe. He spread a bed of clay over the surface of the slab, in a
shovel-shaped mass, set down the flower-pot at the wider end of it, and
laid the pipe of the elder stem along the portion which represented the
handle of the shovel. Next he put a lump of clay at the end of the elder
stem and therein planted the other pipe, in an upright position, forming
a second elbow which connected it with the first horizontal pipe in such
a manner that the air, or any given fluid in circulation, could flow
through this improvised piece of mechanism from the mouth of the
vertical tube, along the intermediate passages, and so into the large
empty flower-pot.

“This apparatus, sir,” he said to Raphael, with all the gravity of an
academician pronouncing his initiatory discourse, “is one of the great
Pascal’s grandest claims upon our admiration.”

“I don’t understand.”

The man of science smiled. He went up to a fruit-tree and took down a
little phial in which the druggist had sent him some liquid for catching
ants; he broke off the bottom and made a funnel of the top, carefully
fitting it to the mouth of the vertical hollowed stem that he had set in
the clay, and at the opposite end to the great reservoir, represented
by the flower-pot. Next, by means of a watering-pot, he poured in
sufficient water to rise to the same level in the large vessel and in
the tiny circular funnel at the end of the elder stem.

Raphael was thinking of his piece of skin.

“Water is considered to-day, sir, to be an incompressible body,” said
the mechanician; “never lose sight of that fundamental principle; still
it can be compressed, though only so very slightly that we should regard
its faculty for contracting as a zero. You see the amount of surface
presented by the water at the brim of the flower-pot?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very good; now suppose that that surface is a thousand times larger
than the orifice of the elder stem through which I poured the liquid.
Here, I am taking the funnel away----”

“Granted.”

“Well, then, if by any method whatever I increase the volume of that
quantity of water by pouring in yet more through the mouth of the little
tube; the water thus compelled to flow downwards would rise in the
reservoir, represented by the flower-pot, until it reached the same
level at either end.”

“That is quite clear,” cried Raphael.

“But there is this difference,” the other went on. “Suppose that the
thin column of water poured into the little vertical tube there exerts
a force equal, say, to a pound weight, for instance, its action will
be punctually communicated to the great body of the liquid, and will be
transmitted to every part of the surface represented by the water in the
flower-pot so that at the surface there will be a thousand columns of
water, every one pressing upwards as if they were impelled by a force
equal to that which compels the liquid to descend in the vertical tube;
and of necessity they reproduce here,” said Planchette, indicating to
Raphael the top of the flower-pot, “the force introduced over there, a
thousand-fold,” and the man of science pointed out to the marquis the
upright wooden pipe set in the clay.

“That is quite simple,” said Raphael.

Planchette smiled again.

“In other words,” he went on, with the mathematician’s natural stubborn
propensity for logic, “in order to resist the force of the incoming
water, it would be necessary to exert, upon every part of the large
surface, a force equal to that brought into action in the vertical
column, but with this difference--if the column of liquid is a foot in
height, the thousand little columns of the wide surface will only have a
very slight elevating power.

“Now,” said Planchette, as he gave a fillip to his bits of stick,
“let us replace this funny little apparatus by steel tubes of suitable
strength and dimensions; and if you cover the liquid surface of the
reservoir with a strong sliding plate of metal, and if to this metal
plate you oppose another, solid enough and strong enough to resist any
test; if, furthermore, you give me the power of continually adding water
to the volume of liquid contents by means of the little vertical tube,
the object fixed between the two solid metal plates must of necessity
yield to the tremendous crushing force which indefinitely compresses it.
The method of continually pouring in water through a little tube, like
the manner of communicating force through the volume of the liquid to a
small metal plate, is an absurdly primitive mechanical device. A brace
of pistons and a few valves would do it all. Do you perceive, my dear
sir,” he said taking Valentin by the arm, “there is scarcely a substance
in existence that would not be compelled to dilate when fixed in between
these two indefinitely resisting surfaces?”

“What! the author of the _Lettres provinciales_ invented it?” Raphael
exclaimed.

“He and no other, sir. The science of mechanics knows no simpler nor
more beautiful contrivance. The opposite principle, the capacity of
expansion possessed by water, has brought the steam-engine into
being. But water will only expand up to a certain point, while its
incompressibility, being a force in a manner negative, is, of necessity,
infinite.”

“If this skin is expanded,” said Raphael, “I promise you to erect a
colossal statue to Blaise Pascal; to found a prize of a hundred thousand
francs to be offered every ten years for the solution of the grandest
problem of mechanical science effected during the interval; to find
dowries for all your cousins and second cousins, and finally to build an
asylum on purpose for impoverished or insane mathematicians.”

“That would be exceedingly useful,” Planchette replied. “We will go to
Spieghalter to-morrow, sir,” he continued, with the serenity of a man
living on a plane wholly intellectual. “That distinguished mechanic has
just completed, after my own designs, an improved mechanical arrangement
by which a child could get a thousand trusses of hay inside his cap.”

“Then good-bye till to-morrow.”

“Till to-morrow, sir.”

“Talk of mechanics!” cried Raphael; “isn’t it the greatest of the
sciences? The other fellow with his onagers, classifications, ducks, and
species, and his phials full of bottled monstrosities, is at best only
fit for a billiard-marker in a saloon.”

The next morning Raphael went off in great spirits to find Planchette,
and together they set out for the Rue de la Sante--auspicious
appellation! Arrived at Spieghalter’s, the young man found himself in a
vast foundry; his eyes lighted upon a multitude of glowing and roaring
furnaces. There was a storm of sparks, a deluge of nails, an ocean
of pistons, vices, levers, valves, girders, files, and nuts; a sea of
melted metal, baulks of timber and bar-steel. Iron filings filled your
throat. There was iron in the atmosphere; the men were covered with it;
everything reeked of iron. The iron seemed to be a living organism; it
became a fluid, moved, and seemed to shape itself intelligently after
every fashion, to obey the worker’s every caprice. Through the uproar
made by the bellows, the crescendo of the falling hammers, and the
shrill sounds of the lathes that drew groans from the steel, Raphael
passed into a large, clean, and airy place where he was able to inspect
at his leisure the great press that Planchette had told him about. He
admired the cast-iron beams, as one might call them, and the twin bars
of steel coupled together with indestructible bolts.

“If you were to give seven rapid turns to that crank,” said Spieghalter,
pointing out a beam of polished steel, “you would make a steel bar spurt
out in thousands of jets, that would get into your legs like needles.”

“The deuce!” exclaimed Raphael.

Planchette himself slipped the piece of skin between the metal plates
of the all-powerful press; and, brimful of the certainty of a scientific
conviction, he worked the crank energetically.

“Lie flat, all of you; we are dead men!” thundered Spieghalter, as he
himself fell prone on the floor.

A hideous shrieking sound rang through the workshops. The water in
the machine had broken the chamber, and now spouted out in a jet of
incalculable force; luckily it went in the direction of an old furnace,
which was overthrown, enveloped and carried away by a waterspout.

“Ha!” remarked Planchette serenely, “the piece of skin is as safe and
sound as my eye. There was a flaw in your reservoir somewhere, or a
crevice in the large tube----”

“No, no; I know my reservoir. The devil is in your contrivance, sir; you
can take it away,” and the German pounced upon a smith’s hammer, flung
the skin down on an anvil, and, with all the strength that rage gives,
dealt the talisman the most formidable blow that had ever resounded
through his workshops.

“There is not so much as a mark on it!” said Planchette, stroking the
perverse bit of skin.

The workmen hurried in. The foreman took the skin and buried it in the
glowing coal of a forge, while, in a semi-circle round the fire, they
all awaited the action of a huge pair of bellows. Raphael, Spieghalter,
and Professor Planchette stood in the midst of the grimy expectant
crowd. Raphael, looking round on faces dusted over with iron filings,
white eyes, greasy blackened clothing, and hairy chests, could have
fancied himself transported into the wild nocturnal world of German
ballad poetry. After the skin had been in the fire for ten minutes, the
foreman pulled it out with a pair of pincers.

“Hand it over to me,” said Raphael.

The foreman held it out by way of a joke. The Marquis readily handled
it; it was cool and flexible between his fingers. An exclamation of
alarm went up; the workmen fled in terror. Valentin was left alone with
Planchette in the empty workshop.

“There is certainly something infernal in the thing!” cried Raphael,
in desperation. “Is no human power able to give me one more day of
existence?”

“I made a mistake, sir,” said the mathematician, with a penitent
expression; “we ought to have subjected that peculiar skin to the action
of a rolling machine. Where could my eyes have been when I suggested
compression!”

“It was I that asked for it,” Raphael answered.

The mathematician heaved a sigh of relief, like a culprit acquitted by a
dozen jurors. Still, the strange problem afforded by the skin interested
him; he meditated a moment, and then remarked:

“This unknown material ought to be treated chemically by re-agents. Let
us call on Japhet--perhaps the chemist may have better luck than the
mechanic.”

Valentin urged his horse into a rapid trot, hoping to find the chemist,
the celebrated Japhet, in his laboratory.

“Well, old friend,” Planchette began, seeing Japhet in his armchair,
examining a precipitate; “how goes chemistry?”

“Gone to sleep. Nothing new at all. The Academie, however, has
recognized the existence of salicine, but salicine, asparagine,
vauqueline, and digitaline are not really discoveries----”

“Since you cannot invent substances,” said Raphael, “you are obliged to
fall back on inventing names.”

“Most emphatically true, young man.”

“Here,” said Planchette, addressing the chemist, “try to analyze this
composition; if you can extract any element whatever from it, I christen
it diaboline beforehand, for we have just smashed a hydraulic press in
trying to compress it.”

“Let’s see! let’s have a look at it!” cried the delighted chemist; “it
may, perhaps, be a fresh element.”

“It is simply a piece of the skin of an ass, sir,” said Raphael.

“Sir!” said the illustrious chemist sternly.

“I am not joking,” the Marquis answered, laying the piece of skin before
him.

Baron Japhet applied the nervous fibres of his tongue to the skin; he
had skill in thus detecting salts, acids, alkalis, and gases. After
several experiments, he remarked:

“No taste whatever! Come, we will give it a little fluoric acid to
drink.”

Subjected to the influence of this ready solvent of animal tissue, the
skin underwent no change whatsoever.

“It is not shagreen at all!” the chemist cried. “We will treat this
unknown mystery as a mineral, and try its mettle by dropping it in a
crucible where I have at this moment some red potash.”

Japhet went out, and returned almost immediately.

“Allow me to cut away a bit of this strange substance, sir,” he said to
Raphael; “it is so extraordinary----”

“A bit!” exclaimed Raphael; “not so much as a hair’s-breadth. You may
try, though,” he added, half banteringly, half sadly.

The chemist broke a razor in his desire to cut the skin; he tried to
break it by a powerful electric shock; next he submitted it to the
influence of a galvanic battery; but all the thunderbolts his science
wotted of fell harmless on the dreadful talisman.

It was seven o’clock in the evening. Planchette, Japhet, and Raphael,
unaware of the flight of time, were awaiting the outcome of a final
experiment. The Magic Skin emerged triumphant from a formidable
encounter in which it had been engaged with a considerable quantity of
chloride of nitrogen.

“It is all over with me,” Raphael wailed. “It is the finger of God! I
shall die!----” and he left the two amazed scientific men.

“We must be very careful not to talk about this affair at the Academie;
our colleagues there would laugh at us,” Planchette remarked to the
chemist, after a long pause, in which they looked at each other without
daring to communicate their thoughts. The learned pair looked like
two Christians who had issued from their tombs to find no God in the
heavens. Science had been powerless; acids, so much clear water; red
potash had been discredited; the galvanic battery and electric shock had
been a couple of playthings.

“A hydraulic press broken like a biscuit!” commented Planchette.

“I believe in the devil,” said the Baron Japhet, after a moment’s
silence.

“And I in God,” replied Planchette.

Each spoke in character. The universe for a mechanician is a machine
that requires an operator; for chemistry--that fiendish employment of
decomposing all things--the world is a gas endowed with the power of
movement.

“We cannot deny the fact,” the chemist replied.

“Pshaw! those gentlemen the doctrinaires have invented a nebulous
aphorism for our consolation--Stupid as a fact.”

“Your aphorism,” said the chemist, “seems to me as a fact very stupid.”

They began to laugh, and went off to dine like folk for whom a miracle
is nothing more than a phenomenon.

Valentin reached his own house shivering with rage and consumed with
anger. He had no more faith in anything. Conflicting thoughts shifted
and surged to and fro in his brain, as is the case with every man
brought face to face with an inconceivable fact. He had readily
believed in some hidden flaw in Spieghalter’s apparatus; he had not been
surprised by the incompetence and failure of science and of fire;
but the flexibility of the skin as he handled it, taken with its
stubbornness when all means of destruction that man possesses had
been brought to bear upon it in vain--these things terrified him. The
incontrovertible fact made him dizzy.

“I am mad,” he muttered. “I have had no food since the morning, and yet
I am neither hungry nor thirsty, and there is a fire in my breast that
burns me.”

He put back the skin in the frame where it had been enclosed but lately,
drew a line in red ink about the actual configuration of the talisman,
and seated himself in his armchair.

“Eight o’clock already!” he exclaimed. “To-day has gone like a dream.”

He leaned his elbow on the arm of the chair, propped his head with
his left hand, and so remained, lost in secret dark reflections and
consuming thoughts that men condemned to die bear away with them.

“O Pauline!” he cried. “Poor child! there are gulfs that love can never
traverse, despite the strength of his wings.”

Just then he very distinctly heard a smothered sigh, and knew by one
of the most tender privileges of passionate love that it was Pauline’s
breathing.

“That is my death warrant,” he said to himself. “If she were there, I
should wish to die in her arms.”

A burst of gleeful and hearty laughter made him turn his face towards
the bed; he saw Pauline’s face through the transparent curtains, smiling
like a child for gladness over a successful piece of mischief. Her
pretty hair fell over her shoulders in countless curls; she looked like
a Bengal rose upon a pile of white roses.

“I cajoled Jonathan,” said she. “Doesn’t the bed belong to me, to me who
am your wife? Don’t scold me, darling; I only wanted to surprise you, to
sleep beside you. Forgive me for my freak.”

She sprang out of bed like a kitten, showed herself gleaming in her lawn
raiment, and sat down on Raphael’s knee.

“Love, what gulf were you talking about?” she said, with an anxious
expression apparent upon her face.

“Death.”

“You hurt me,” she answered. “There are some thoughts upon which we,
poor women that we are, cannot dwell; they are death to us. Is it
strength of love in us, or lack of courage? I cannot tell. Death does
not frighten me,” she began again, laughingly. “To die with you, both
together, to-morrow morning, in one last embrace, would be joy. It seems
to me that even then I should have lived more than a hundred years.
What does the number of days matter if we have spent a whole lifetime of
peace and love in one night, in one hour?”

“You are right; Heaven is speaking through that pretty mouth of yours.
Grant that I may kiss you, and let us die,” said Raphael.

“Then let us die,” she said, laughing.

Towards nine o’clock in the morning the daylight streamed through the
chinks of the window shutters. Obscured somewhat by the muslin curtains,
it yet sufficed to show clearly the rich colors of the carpet, the silks
and furniture of the room, where the two lovers were lying asleep. The
gilding sparkled here and there. A ray of sunshine fell and faded upon
the soft down quilt that the freaks of live had thrown to the ground.
The outlines of Pauline’s dress, hanging from a cheval glass, appeared
like a shadowy ghost. Her dainty shoes had been left at a distance from
the bed. A nightingale came to perch upon the sill; its trills repeated
over again, and the sounds of its wings suddenly shaken out for flight,
awoke Raphael.

“For me to die,” he said, following out a thought begun in his dream,
“my organization, the mechanism of flesh and bone, that is quickened
by the will in me, and makes of me an individual MAN, must display some
perceptible disease. Doctors ought to understand the symptoms of any
attack on vitality, and could tell me whether I am sick or sound.”

He gazed at his sleeping wife. She had stretched her head out to him,
expressing in this way even while she slept the anxious tenderness of
love. Pauline seemed to look at him as she lay with her face turned
towards him in an attitude as full of grace as a young child’s, with her
pretty, half-opened mouth held out towards him, as she drew her light,
even breath. Her little pearly teeth seemed to heighten the redness of
the fresh lips with the smile hovering over them. The red glow in her
complexion was brighter, and its whiteness was, so to speak, whiter
still just then than in the most impassioned moments of the waking day.
In her unconstrained grace, as she lay, so full of believing trust,
the adorable attractions of childhood were added to the enchantments of
love.

Even the most unaffected women still obey certain social conventions,
which restrain the free expansion of the soul within them during their
waking hours; but slumber seems to give them back the spontaneity of
life which makes infancy lovely. Pauline blushed for nothing; she was
like one of those beloved and heavenly beings, in whom reason has not
yet put motives into their actions and mystery into their glances.
Her profile stood out in sharp relief against the fine cambric of the
pillows; there was a certain sprightliness about her loose hair in
confusion, mingled with the deep lace ruffles; but she was sleeping in
happiness, her long lashes were tightly pressed against her cheeks, as
if to secure her eyes from too strong a light, or to aid an effort of
her soul to recollect and to hold fast a bliss that had been perfect but
fleeting. Her tiny pink and white ear, framed by a lock of her hair and
outlined by a wrapping of Mechlin lace, would have made an artist, a
painter, an old man, wildly in love, and would perhaps have restored a
madman to his senses.

Is it not an ineffable bliss to behold the woman that you love,
sleeping, smiling in a peaceful dream beneath your protection, loving
you even in dreams, even at the point where the individual seems to
cease to exist, offering to you yet the mute lips that speak to you in
slumber of the latest kiss? Is it not indescribable happiness to see
a trusting woman, half-clad, but wrapped round in her love as by a
cloak--modesty in the midst of dishevelment--to see admiringly her
scattered clothing, the silken stocking hastily put off to please you
last evening, the unclasped girdle that implies a boundless faith in
you. A whole romance lies there in that girdle; the woman that it
used to protect exists no longer; she is yours, she has become _you_;
henceforward any betrayal of her is a blow dealt at yourself.

In this softened mood Raphael’s eyes wandered over the room, now filled
with memories and love, and where the very daylight seemed to take
delightful hues. Then he turned his gaze at last upon the outlines of
the woman’s form, upon youth and purity, and love that even now had no
thought that was not for him alone, above all things, and longed to live
for ever. As his eyes fell upon Pauline, her own opened at once as if a
ray of sunlight had lighted on them.

“Good-morning,” she said, smiling. “How handsome you are, bad man!”

The grace of love and youth, of silence and dawn, shone in their faces,
making a divine picture, with the fleeting spell over it all that
belongs only to the earliest days of passion, just as simplicity and
artlessness are the peculiar possession of childhood. Alas! love’s
springtide joys, like our own youthful laughter, must even take flight,
and live for us no longer save in memory; either for our despair, or
to shed some soothing fragrance over us, according to the bent of our
inmost thoughts.

“What made me wake you?” said Raphael. “It was so great a pleasure to
watch you sleeping that it brought tears to my eyes.”

“And to mine, too,” she answered. “I cried in the night while I watched
you sleeping, but not with happiness. Raphael, dear, pray listen to me.
Your breathing is labored while you sleep, and something rattles in
your chest that frightens me. You have a little dry cough when you are
asleep, exactly like my father’s, who is dying of phthisis. In those
sounds from your lungs I recognized some of the peculiar symptoms of
that complaint. Then you are feverish; I know you are; your hand was
moist and burning----Darling, you are young,” she added with a shudder,
“and you could still get over it if unfortunately----But, no,” she cried
cheerfully, “there is no ‘unfortunately,’ the disease is contagious, so
the doctors say.”

She flung both arms about Raphael, drawing in his breath through one of
those kisses in which the soul reaches its end.

“I do not wish to live to old age,” she said. “Let us both die young,
and go to heaven while flowers fill our hands.”

“We always make such designs as those when we are well and strong,”
 Raphael replied, burying his hands in Pauline’s hair. But even then a
horrible fit of coughing came on, one of those deep ominous coughs
that seem to come from the depths of the tomb, a cough that leaves the
sufferer ghastly pale, trembling, and perspiring; with aching sides and
quivering nerves, with a feeling of weariness pervading the very marrow
of the spine, and unspeakable languor in every vein. Raphael slowly laid
himself down, pale, exhausted, and overcome, like a man who has spent
all the strength in him over one final effort. Pauline’s eyes, grown
large with terror, were fixed upon him; she lay quite motionless, pale,
and silent.

“Let us commit no more follies, my angel,” she said, trying not to let
Raphael see the dreadful forebodings that disturbed her. She covered her
face with her hands, for she saw Death before her--the hideous skeleton.
Raphael’s face had grown as pale and livid as any skull unearthed from
a churchyard to assist the studies of some scientific man. Pauline
remembered the exclamation that had escaped from Valentin the previous
evening, and to herself she said:

“Yes, there are gulfs that love can never cross, and therein love must
bury itself.”

On a March morning, some days after this wretched scene, Raphael found
himself seated in an armchair, placed in the window in the full light
of day. Four doctors stood round him, each in turn trying his pulse,
feeling him over, and questioning him with apparent interest. The
invalid sought to guess their thoughts, putting a construction on every
movement they made, and on the slightest contractions of their brows.
His last hope lay in this consultation. This court of appeal was about
to pronounce its decision--life or death.

Valentin had summoned the oracles of modern medicine, so that he might
have the last word of science. Thanks to his wealth and title, there
stood before him three embodied theories; human knowledge fluctuated
round the three points. Three of the doctors brought among them the
complete circle of medical philosophy; they represented the points of
conflict round which the battle raged, between Spiritualism, Analysis,
and goodness knows what in the way of mocking eclecticism.

The fourth doctor was Horace Bianchon, a man of science with a future
before him, the most distinguished man of the new school in medicine, a
discreet and unassuming representative of a studious generation that
is preparing to receive the inheritance of fifty years of experience
treasured up by the Ecole de Paris, a generation that perhaps will erect
the monument for the building of which the centuries behind us have
collected the different materials. As a personal friend of the Marquis
and of Rastignac, he had been in attendance on the former for some
days past, and was helping him to answer the inquiries of the three
professors, occasionally insisting somewhat upon those symptoms which,
in his opinion, pointed to pulmonary disease.

“You have been living at a great pace, leading a dissipated life, no
doubt, and you have devoted yourself largely to intellectual work?”
 queried one of the three celebrated authorities, addressing Raphael. He
was a square-headed man, with a large frame and energetic organization,
which seemed to mark him out as superior to his two rivals.

“I made up my mind to kill myself with debauchery, after spending three
years over an extensive work, with which perhaps you may some day occupy
yourselves,” Raphael replied.

The great doctor shook his head, and so displayed his satisfaction. “I
was sure of it,” he seemed to say to himself. He was the illustrious
Brisset, the successor of Cabanis and Bichat, head of the Organic
School, a doctor popular with believers in material and positive
science, who see in man a complete individual, subject solely to the
laws of his own particular organization; and who consider that his
normal condition and abnormal states of disease can both be traced to
obvious causes.

After this reply, Brisset looked, without speaking, at a middle-sized
person, whose darkly flushed countenance and glowing eyes seemed to
belong to some antique satyr; and who, leaning his back against the
corner of the embrasure, was studying Raphael, without saying a word.
Doctor Cameristus, a man of creeds and enthusiasms, the head of the
“Vitalists,” a romantic champion of the esoteric doctrines of Van
Helmont, discerned a lofty informing principle in human life, a
mysterious and inexplicable phenomenon which mocks at the scalpel,
deceives the surgeon, eludes the drugs of the pharmacopoeia, the
formulae of algebra, the demonstrations of anatomy, and derides all
our efforts; a sort of invisible, intangible flame, which, obeying some
divinely appointed law, will often linger on in a body in our opinion
devoted to death, while it takes flight from an organization well fitted
for prolonged existence.

A bitter smile hovered upon the lips of the third doctor, Maugredie, a
man of acknowledged ability, but a Pyrrhonist and a scoffer, with the
scalpel for his one article of faith. He would consider, as a concession
to Brisset, that a man who, as a matter of fact, was perfectly well was
dead, and recognize with Cameristus that a man might be living on after
his apparent demise. He found something sensible in every theory, and
embraced none of them, claiming that the best of all systems of medicine
was to have none at all, and to stick to facts. This Panurge of the
Clinical Schools, the king of observers, the great investigator, a great
sceptic, the man of desperate expedients, was scrutinizing the Magic
Skin.

“I should very much like to be a witness of the coincidence of its
retrenchment with your wish,” he said to the Marquis.

“Where is the use?” cried Brisset.

“Where is the use?” echoed Cameristus.

“Ah, you are both of the same mind,” replied Maugredie.

“The contraction is perfectly simple,” Brisset went on.

“It is supernatural,” remarked Cameristus.

“In short,” Maugredie made answer, with affected solemnity, and handing
the piece of skin to Raphael as he spoke, “the shriveling faculty of the
skin is a fact inexplicable, and yet quite natural, which, ever since
the world began, has been the despair of medicine and of pretty women.”

All Valentin’s observation could discover no trace of a feeling for his
troubles in any of the three doctors. The three received every answer
in silence, scanned him unconcernedly, and interrogated him
unsympathetically. Politeness did not conceal their indifference;
whether deliberation or certainty was the cause, their words at any
rate came so seldom and so languidly, that at times Raphael thought
that their attention was wandering. From time to time Brisset, the
sole speaker, remarked, “Good! just so!” as Bianchon pointed out the
existence of each desperate symptom. Cameristus seemed to be deep in
meditation; Maugredie looked like a comic author, studying two queer
characters with a view to reproducing them faithfully upon the stage.
There was deep, unconcealed distress, and grave compassion in Horace
Bianchon’s face. He had been a doctor for too short a time to be
untouched by suffering and unmoved by a deathbed; he had not learned to
keep back the sympathetic tears that obscure a man’s clear vision
and prevent him from seizing like the general of an army, upon the
auspicious moment for victory, in utter disregard of the groans of dying
men.

After spending about half an hour over taking in some sort the measure
of the patient and the complaint, much as a tailor measures a young man
for a coat when he orders his wedding outfit, the authorities uttered
several commonplaces, and even talked of politics. Then they decided to
go into Raphael’s study to exchange their ideas and frame their verdict.

“May I not be present during the discussion, gentlemen?” Valentin had
asked them, but Brisset and Maugredie protested against this, and, in
spite of their patient’s entreaties, declined altogether to deliberate
in his presence.

Raphael gave way before their custom, thinking that he could slip into
a passage adjoining, whence he could easily overhear the medical
conference in which the three professors were about to engage.

“Permit me, gentlemen,” said Brisset, as they entered, “to give you my
own opinion at once. I neither wish to force it upon you nor to have it
discussed. In the first place, it is unbiased, concise, and based on
an exact similarity that exists between one of my own patients and the
subject that we have been called in to examine; and, moreover, I am
expected at my hospital. The importance of the case that demands my
presence there will excuse me for speaking the first word. The subject
with which we are concerned has been exhausted in an equal degree by
intellectual labors--what did he set about, Horace?” he asked of the
young doctor.

“A ‘Theory of the Will,’”

“The devil! but that’s a big subject. He is exhausted, I say, by too
much brain-work, by irregular courses, and by the repeated use of too
powerful stimulants. Violent exertion of body and mind has demoralized
the whole system. It is easy, gentlemen, to recognize in the symptoms
of the face and body generally intense irritation of the stomach, an
affection of the great sympathetic nerve, acute sensibility of the
epigastric region, and contraction of the right and left hypochondriac.
You have noticed, too, the large size and prominence of the liver. M.
Bianchon has, besides, constantly watched the patient, and he tells us
that digestion is troublesome and difficult. Strictly speaking, there is
no stomach left, and so the man has disappeared. The brain is atrophied
because the man digests no longer. The progressive deterioration wrought
in the epigastric region, the seat of vitality, has vitiated the whole
system. Thence, by continuous fevered vibrations, the disorder has
reached the brain by means of the nervous plexus, hence the excessive
irritation in that organ. There is monomania. The patient is burdened
with a fixed idea. That piece of skin really contracts, to his way of
thinking; very likely it always has been as we have seen it; but whether
it contracts or no, that thing is for him just like the fly that some
Grand Vizier or other had on his nose. If you put leeches at once on the
epigastrium, and reduce the irritation in that part, which is the very
seat of man’s life, and if you diet the patient, the monomania will
leave him. I will say no more to Dr. Bianchon; he should be able to
grasp the whole treatment as well as the details. There may be, perhaps,
some complication of the disease--the bronchial tubes, possibly, may be
also inflamed; but I believe that treatment for the intestinal organs is
very much more important and necessary, and more urgently required than
for the lungs. Persistent study of abstract matters, and certain violent
passions, have induced serious disorders in that vital mechanism.
However, we are in time to set these conditions right. Nothing is too
seriously affected. You will easily get your friend round again,” he
remarked to Bianchon.

“Our learned colleague is taking the effect for the cause,” Cameristus
replied. “Yes, the changes that he has observed so keenly certainly
exist in the patient; but it is not the stomach that, by degrees, has
set up nervous action in the system, and so affected the brain, like a
hole in a window pane spreading cracks round about it. It took a blow
of some kind to make a hole in the window; who gave the blow? Do we
know that? Have we investigated the patient’s case sufficiently? Are we
acquainted with all the events of his life?

“The vital principle, gentlemen,” he continued, “the Archeus of Van
Helmont, is affected in his case--the very essence and centre of life is
attacked. The divine spark, the transitory intelligence which holds the
organism together, which is the source of the will, the inspiration of
life, has ceased to regulate the daily phenomena of the mechanism and
the functions of every organ; thence arise all the complications which
my learned colleague has so thoroughly appreciated. The epigastric
region does not affect the brain but the brain affects the epigastric
region. No,” he went on, vigorously slapping his chest, “no, I am not
a stomach in the form of a man. No, everything does not lie there. I do
not feel that I have the courage to say that if the epigastric region is
in good order, everything else is in a like condition----

“We cannot trace,” he went on more mildly, “to one physical cause the
serious disturbances that supervene in this or that subject which has
been dangerously attacked, nor submit them to a uniform treatment.
No one man is like another. We have each peculiar organs, differently
affected, diversely nourished, adapted to perform different functions,
and to induce a condition necessary to the accomplishment of an order
of things which is unknown to us. The sublime will has so wrought that
a little portion of the great All is set within us to sustain the
phenomena of living; in every man it formulates itself distinctly,
making each, to all appearance, a separate individual, yet in one point
co-existent with the infinite cause. So we ought to make a separate
study of each subject, discover all about it, find out in what its life
consists, and wherein its power lies. From the softness of a wet sponge
to the hardness of pumice-stone there are infinite fine degrees of
difference. Man is just like that. Between the sponge-like organizations
of the lymphatic and the vigorous iron muscles of such men as are
destined for a long life, what a margin for errors for the single
inflexible system of a lowering treatment to commit; a system that
reduces the capacities of the human frame, which you always conclude
have been over-excited. Let us look for the origin of the disease in the
mental and not in the physical viscera. A doctor is an inspired being,
endowed by God with a special gift--the power to read the secrets of
vitality; just as the prophet has received the eyes that foresee the
future, the poet his faculty of evoking nature, and the musician the
power of arranging sounds in an harmonious order that is possibly a copy
of an ideal harmony on high.”

“There is his everlasting system of medicine, arbitrary, monarchical,
and pious,” muttered Brisset.

“Gentlemen,” Maugredie broke in hastily, to distract attention from
Brisset’s comment, “don’t let us lose sight of the patient.”

“What is the good of science?” Raphael moaned. “Here is my recovery
halting between a string of beads and a rosary of leeches, between
Dupuytren’s bistoury and Prince Hohenlohe’s prayer. There is Maugredie
suspending his judgment on the line that divides facts from words, mind
from matter. Man’s ‘it is,’ and ‘it is not,’ is always on my track;
it is the _Carymary Carymara_ of Rabelais for evermore: my disorder is
spiritual, _Carymary_, or material, _Carymara_. Shall I live? They have
no idea. Planchette was more straightforward with me, at any rate, when
he said, ‘I do not know.’”

Just then Valentin heard Maugredie’s voice.

“The patient suffers from monomania; very good, I am quite of that
opinion,” he said, “but he has two hundred thousand a year; monomaniacs
of that kind are very uncommon. As for knowing whether his epigastric
region has affected his brain, or his brain his epigastric region, we
shall find that out, perhaps, whenever he dies. But to resume. There
is no disputing the fact that he is ill; some sort of treatment he must
have. Let us leave theories alone, and put leeches on him, to counteract
the nervous and intestinal irritation, as to the existence of which we
all agree; and let us send him to drink the waters, in that way we shall
act on both systems at once. If there really is tubercular disease, we
can hardly expect to save his life; so that----”

Raphael abruptly left the passage, and went back to his armchair. The
four doctors very soon came out of the study; Horace was the spokesman.

“These gentlemen,” he told him, “have unanimously agreed that leeches
must be applied to the stomach at once, and that both physical and
moral treatment are imperatively needed. In the first place, a carefully
prescribed rule of diet, so as to soothe the internal irritation”--here
Brisset signified his approval; “and in the second, a hygienic regimen,
to set your general condition right. We all, therefore, recommend you
to go to take the waters in Aix in Savoy; or, if you like it better, at
Mont Dore in Auvergne; the air and the situation are both pleasanter in
Savoy than in the Cantal, but you will consult your own taste.”

Here it was Cameristus who nodded assent.

“These gentlemen,” Bianchon continued, “having recognized a slight
affection of the respiratory organs, are agreed as to the utility of
the previous course of treatment that I have prescribed. They think
that there will be no difficulty about restoring you to health, and that
everything depends upon a wise and alternate employment of these various
means. And----”

“And that is the cause of the milk in the cocoanut,” said Raphael,
with a smile, as he led Horace into his study to pay the fees for this
useless consultation.

“Their conclusions are logical,” the young doctor replied. “Cameristus
feels, Brisset examines, Maugredie doubts. Has not man a soul, a body,
and an intelligence? One of these three elemental constituents always
influences us more or less strongly; there will always be the personal
element in human science. Believe me, Raphael, we effect no cures; we
only assist them. Another system--the use of mild remedies while Nature
exerts her powers--lies between the extremes of theory of Brisset and
Cameristus, but one ought to have known the patient for some ten years
or so to obtain a good result on these lines. Negation lies at the
back of all medicine, as in every other science. So endeavor to live
wholesomely; try a trip to Savoy; the best course is, and always will
be, to trust to Nature.”

It was a month later, on a fine summer-like evening, that several
people, who were taking the waters at Aix, returned from the promenade
and met together in the salons of the Club. Raphael remained alone by a
window for a long time. His back was turned upon the gathering, and he
himself was deep in those involuntary musings in which thoughts arise in
succession and fade away, shaping themselves indistinctly, passing over
us like thin, almost colorless clouds. Melancholy is sweet to us then,
and delight is shadowy, for the soul is half asleep. Valentin gave
himself up to this life of sensations; he was steeping himself in the
warm, soft twilight, enjoying the pure air with the scent of the
hills in it, happy in that he felt no pain, and had tranquilized his
threatening Magic Skin at last. It grew cooler as the red glow of the
sunset faded on the mountain peaks; he shut the window and left his
place.

“Will you be so kind as not to close the windows, sir?” said an old
lady; “we are being stifled----”

The peculiarly sharp and jarring tones in which the phrase was uttered
grated on Raphael’s ears; it fell on them like an indiscreet remark let
slip by some man in whose friendship we would fain believe, a word which
reveals unsuspected depths of selfishness and destroys some pleasing
sentimental illusion of ours. The Marquis glanced, with the cool
inscrutable expression of a diplomatist, at the old lady, called a
servant, and, when he came, curtly bade him:

“Open that window.”

Great surprise was clearly expressed on all faces at the words. The
whole roomful began to whisper to each other, and turned their eyes upon
the invalid, as though he had given some serious offence. Raphael, who
had never quite managed to rid himself of the bashfulness of his early
youth, felt a momentary confusion; then he shook off his torpor, exerted
his faculties, and asked himself the meaning of this strange scene.

A sudden and rapid impulse quickened his brain; the past weeks appeared
before him in a clear and definite vision; the reasons for the feelings
he inspired in others stood out for him in relief, like the veins of
some corpse which a naturalist, by some cunningly contrived injection,
has colored so as to show their least ramifications.

He discerned himself in this fleeting picture; he followed out his
own life in it, thought by thought, day after day. He saw himself, not
without astonishment, an absent gloomy figure in the midst of these
lively folk, always musing over his own fate, always absorbed by his own
sufferings, seemingly impatient of the most harmless chat. He saw how
he had shunned the ephemeral intimacies that travelers are so ready to
establish--no doubt because they feel sure of never meeting each other
again--and how he had taken little heed of those about him. He saw
himself like the rocks without, unmoved by the caresses or the stormy
surgings of the waves.

Then, by a gift of insight seldom accorded, he read the thoughts of all
those about him. The light of a candle revealed the sardonic profile
and yellow cranium of an old man; he remembered now that he had won from
him, and had never proposed that the other should have his revenge; a
little further on he saw a pretty woman, whose lively advances he
had met with frigid coolness; there was not a face there that did not
reproach him with some wrong done, inexplicably to all appearance, but
the real offence in every case lay in some mortification, some invisible
hurt dealt to self-love. He had unintentionally jarred on all the small
susceptibilities of the circle round about him.

His guests on various occasions, and those to whom he had lent his
horses, had taken offence at his luxurious ways; their ungraciousness
had been a surprise to him; he had spared them further humiliations of
that kind, and they had considered that he looked down upon them, and
had accused him of haughtiness ever since. He could read their inmost
thoughts as he fathomed their natures in this way. Society with its
polish and varnish grew loathsome to him. He was envied and hated for
his wealth and superior ability; his reserve baffled the inquisitive;
his humility seemed like haughtiness to these petty superficial natures.
He guessed the secret unpardonable crime which he had committed against
them; he had overstepped the limits of the jurisdiction of their
mediocrity. He had resisted their inquisitorial tyranny; he could
dispense with their society; and all of them, therefore, had
instinctively combined to make him feel their power, and to take revenge
upon this incipient royalty by submitting him to a kind of ostracism,
and so teaching him that they in their turn could do without him.

Pity came over him, first of all, at this aspect of mankind, but very
soon he shuddered at the thought of the power that came thus, at will,
and flung aside for him the veil of flesh under which the moral nature
is hidden away. He closed his eyes, so as to see no more. A black
curtain was drawn all at once over this unlucky phantom show of truth;
but still he found himself in the terrible loneliness that surrounds
every power and dominion. Just then a violent fit of coughing seized
him. Far from receiving one single word--indifferent, and meaningless,
it is true, but still containing, among well-bred people brought
together by chance, at least some pretence of civil commiseration--he
now heard hostile ejaculations and muttered complaints. Society there
assembled disdained any pantomime on his account, perhaps because he had
gauged its real nature too well.

“His complaint is contagious.”

“The president of the Club ought to forbid him to enter the salon.”

“It is contrary to all rules and regulations to cough in that way!”

“When a man is as ill as that, he ought not to come to take the
waters----”

“He will drive me away from the place.”

Raphael rose and walked about the rooms to screen himself from their
unanimous execrations. He thought to find a shelter, and went up to a
young pretty lady who sat doing nothing, minded to address some pretty
speeches to her; but as he came towards her, she turned her back upon
him, and pretended to be watching the dancers. Raphael feared lest he
might have made use of the talisman already that evening; and feeling
that he had neither the wish nor the courage to break into the
conversation, he left the salon and took refuge in the billiard-room.
No one there greeted him, nobody spoke to him, no one sent so much as
a friendly glance in his direction. His turn of mind, naturally
meditative, had discovered instinctively the general grounds and
reasons for the aversion he inspired. This little world was obeying,
unconsciously perhaps, the sovereign law which rules over polite
society; its inexorable nature was becoming apparent in its entirety
to Raphael’s eyes. A glance into the past showed it to him, as a type
completely realized in Foedora.

He would no more meet with sympathy here for his bodily ills than he had
received it at her hands for the distress in his heart. The fashionable
world expels every suffering creature from its midst, just as the body
of a man in robust health rejects any germ of disease. The world holds
suffering and misfortune in abhorrence; it dreads them like the plague;
it never hesitates between vice and trouble, for vice is a luxury.
Ill-fortune may possess a majesty of its own, but society can belittle
it and make it ridiculous by an epigram. Society draws caricatures, and
in this way flings in the teeth of fallen kings the affronts which it
fancies it has received from them; society, like the Roman youth at the
circus, never shows mercy to the fallen gladiator; mockery and money are
its vital necessities. “Death to the weak!” That is the oath taken by
this kind of Equestrian order, instituted in their midst by all the
nations of the world; everywhere it makes for the elevation of the
rich, and its motto is deeply graven in hearts that wealth has turned to
stone, or that have been reared in aristocratic prejudices.

Assemble a collection of school-boys together. That will give you a
society in miniature, a miniature which represents life more truly,
because it is so frank and artless; and in it you will always find poor
isolated beings, relegated to some place in the general estimations
between pity and contempt, on account of their weakness and suffering.
To these the Evangel promises heaven hereafter. Go lower yet in the
scale of organized creation. If some bird among its fellows in the
courtyard sickens, the others fall upon it with their beaks, pluck
out its feathers, and kill it. The whole world, in accordance with its
character of egotism, brings all its severity to bear upon wretchedness
that has the hardihood to spoil its festivities, and to trouble its
joys.

Any sufferer in mind or body, any helpless or poor man, is a pariah. He
had better remain in his solitude; if he crosses the boundary-line, he
will find winter everywhere; he will find freezing cold in other men’s
looks, manners, words, and hearts; and lucky indeed is he if he does not
receive an insult where he expected that sympathy would be expended upon
him. Let the dying keep to their bed of neglect, and age sit lonely
by its fireside. Portionless maids, freeze and burn in your solitary
attics. If the world tolerates misery of any kind, it is to turn it to
account for its own purposes, to make some use of it, saddle and bridle
it, put a bit in its mouth, ride it about, and get some fun out of it.

Crotchety spinsters, ladies’ companions, put a cheerful face upon it,
endure the humors of your so-called benefactress, carry her lapdogs for
her; you have an English poodle for your rival, and you must seek to
understand the moods of your patroness, and amuse her, and--keep silence
about yourselves. As for you, unblushing parasite, uncrowned king
of unliveried servants, leave your real character at home, let your
digestion keep pace with your host’s laugh when he laughs, mingle your
tears with his, and find his epigrams amusing; if you want to relieve
your mind about him, wait till he is ruined. That is the way the world
shows its respect for the unfortunate; it persecutes them, or slays them
in the dust.

Such thoughts as these welled up in Raphael’s heart with the suddenness
of poetic inspiration. He looked around him, and felt the influence of
the forbidding gloom that society breathes out in order to rid itself of
the unfortunate; it nipped his soul more effectually than the east wind
grips the body in December. He locked his arms over his chest, set his
back against the wall, and fell into a deep melancholy. He mused upon
the meagre happiness that this depressing way of living can give. What
did it amount to? Amusement with no pleasure in it, gaiety without
gladness, joyless festivity, fevered dreams empty of all delight,
firewood or ashes on the hearth without a spark of flame in them. When
he raised his head, he found himself alone, all the billiard players had
gone.

“I have only to let them know my power to make them worship my coughing
fits,” he said to himself, and wrapped himself against the world in the
cloak of his contempt.

Next day the resident doctor came to call upon him, and took an anxious
interest in his health. Raphael felt a thrill of joy at the friendly
words addressed to him. The doctor’s face, to his thinking, wore an
expression that was kind and pleasant; the pale curls of his wig seemed
redolent of philanthropy; the square cut of his coat, the loose folds
of his trousers, his big Quaker-like shoes, everything about him down
to the powder shaken from his queue and dusted in a circle upon his
slightly stooping shoulders, revealed an apostolic nature, and spoke of
Christian charity and of the self-sacrifice of a man, who, out of sheer
devotion to his patients, had compelled himself to learn to play whist
and tric-trac so well that he never lost money to any of them.

“My Lord Marquis,” said he, after a long talk with Raphael, “I can
dispel your uneasiness beyond all doubt. I know your constitution well
enough by this time to assure you that the doctors in Paris, whose great
abilities I know, are mistaken as to the nature of your complaint.
You can live as long as Methuselah, my Lord Marquis, accidents only
excepted. Your lungs are as sound as a blacksmith’s bellows, your
stomach would put an ostrich to the blush; but if you persist in living
at high altitude, you are running the risk of a prompt interment in
consecrated soil. A few words, my Lord Marquis, will make my meaning
clear to you.

“Chemistry,” he began, “has shown us that man’s breathing is a real
process of combustion, and the intensity of its action varies according
to the abundance or scarcity of the phlogistic element stored up by
the organism of each individual. In your case, the phlogistic, or
inflammatory element is abundant; if you will permit me to put it so,
you generate superfluous oxygen, possessing as you do the inflammatory
temperament of a man destined to experience strong emotions. While
you breath the keen, pure air that stimulates life in men of lymphatic
constitution, you are accelerating an expenditure of vitality already
too rapid. One of the conditions for existence for you is the heavier
atmosphere of the plains and valleys. Yes, the vital air for a man
consumed by his genius lies in the fertile pasture-lands of Germany, at
Toplitz or Baden-Baden. If England is not obnoxious to you, its misty
climate would reduce your fever; but the situation of our baths, a
thousand feet above the level of the Mediterranean, is dangerous for
you. That is my opinion at least,” he said, with a deprecatory gesture,
“and I give it in opposition to our interests, for, if you act upon it,
we shall unfortunately lose you.”

But for these closing words of his, the affable doctor’s seeming
good-nature would have completely won Raphael over; but he was too
profoundly observant not to understand the meaning of the tone, the
look and gesture that accompanied that mild sarcasm, not to see that
the little man had been sent on this errand, no doubt, by a flock of his
rejoicing patients. The florid-looking idlers, tedious old women, nomad
English people, and fine ladies who had given their husbands the slip,
and were escorted hither by their lovers--one and all were in a plot to
drive away a wretched, feeble creature to die, who seemed unable to hold
out against a daily renewed persecution! Raphael accepted the challenge,
he foresaw some amusement to be derived from their manoeuvres.

“As you would be grieved at losing me,” said he to the doctor, “I will
endeavor to avail myself of your good advice without leaving the place.
I will set about having a house built to-morrow, and the atmosphere
within it shall be regulated by your instructions.”

The doctor understood the sarcastic smile that lurked about Raphael’s
mouth, and took his leave without finding another word to say.

The Lake of Bourget lies seven hundred feet above the Mediterranean, in
a great hollow among the jagged peaks of the hills; it sparkles there,
the bluest drop of water in the world. From the summit of the Cat’s
Tooth the lake below looks like a stray turquoise. This lovely sheet of
water is about twenty-seven miles round, and in some places is nearly
five hundred feet deep.

Under the cloudless sky, in your boat in the midst of the great expanse
of water, with only the sound of the oars in your ears, only the
vague outline of the hills on the horizon before you; you admire the
glittering snows of the French Maurienne; you pass, now by masses of
granite clad in the velvet of green turf or in low-growing shrubs, now
by pleasant sloping meadows; there is always a wilderness on the one
hand and fertile lands on the other, and both harmonies and dissonances
compose a scene for you where everything is at once small and vast,
and you feel yourself to be a poor onlooker at a great banquet.
The configuration of the mountains brings about misleading optical
conditions and illusions of perspective; a pine-tree a hundred feet in
height looks to be a mere weed; wide valleys look as narrow as meadow
paths. The lake is the only one where the confidences of heart and heart
can be exchanged. There one can live; there one can meditate. Nowhere on
earth will you find a closer understanding between the water, the
sky, the mountains, and the fields. There is a balm there for all the
agitations of life. The place keeps the secrets of sorrow to itself, the
sorrow that grows less beneath its soothing influence; and to love, it
gives a grave and meditative cast, deepening passion and purifying it.
A kiss there becomes something great. But beyond all other things it is
the lake for memories; it aids them by lending to them the hues of its
own waves; it is a mirror in which everything is reflected. Only here,
with this lovely landscape all around him, could Raphael endure the
burden laid upon him; here he could remain as a languid dreamer, without
a wish of his own.

He went out upon the lake after the doctor’s visit, and was landed at a
lonely point on the pleasant slope where the village of Saint-Innocent
is situated. The view from this promontory, as one may call it,
comprises the heights of Bugey with the Rhone flowing at their foot,
and the end of the lake; but Raphael liked to look at the opposite
shore from thence, at the melancholy looking Abbey of Haute-Combe, the
burying-place of the Sardinian kings, who lie prostrate there before the
hills, like pilgrims come at last to their journey’s end. The silence of
the landscape was broken by the even rhythm of the strokes of the oar;
it seemed to find a voice for the place, in monotonous cadences like the
chanting of monks. The Marquis was surprised to find visitors to this
usually lonely part of the lake; and as he mused, he watched the people
seated in the boat, and recognized in the stern the elderly lady who had
spoken so harshly to him the evening before.

No one took any notice of Raphael as the boat passed, except the elderly
lady’s companion, a poor old maid of noble family, who bowed to him,
and whom it seemed to him that he saw for the first time. A few seconds
later he had already forgotten the visitors, who had rapidly disappeared
behind the promontory, when he heard the fluttering of a dress and the
sound of light footsteps not far from him. He turned about and saw the
companion; and, guessing from her embarrassed manner that she wished to
speak with him, he walked towards her.

She was somewhere about thirty-six years of age, thin and tall, reserved
and prim, and, like all old maids, seemed puzzled to know which way to
look, an expression no longer in keeping with her measured, springless,
and hesitating steps. She was both young and old at the same time, and,
by a certain dignity in her carriage, showed the high value which she
set upon her charms and perfections. In addition, her movements were
all demure and discreet, like those of women who are accustomed to take
great care of themselves, no doubt because they desire not to be cheated
of love, their destined end.

“Your life is in danger, sir; do not come to the Club again!” she said,
stepping back a pace or two from Raphael, as if her reputation had
already been compromised.

“But, mademoiselle,” said Raphael, smiling, “please explain yourself
more clearly, since you have condescended so far----”

“Ah,” she answered, “unless I had had a very strong motive, I should
never have run the risk of offending the countess, for if she ever came
to know that I had warned you----”

“And who would tell her, mademoiselle?” cried Raphael.

“True,” the old maid answered. She looked at him, quaking like an owl
out in the sunlight. “But think of yourself,” she went on; “several
young men, who want to drive you away from the baths, have agreed to
pick a quarrel with you, and to force you into a duel.”

The elderly lady’s voice sounded in the distance.

“Mademoiselle,” began the Marquis, “my gratitude----” But his
protectress had fled already; she had heard the voice of her mistress
squeaking afresh among the rocks.

“Poor girl! unhappiness always understands and helps the unhappy,”
 Raphael thought, and sat himself down at the foot of a tree.

The key of every science is, beyond cavil, the mark of interrogation; we
owe most of our greatest discoveries to a _Why_? and all the wisdom in
the world, perhaps, consists in asking _Wherefore_? in every connection.
But, on the other hand, this acquired prescience is the ruin of our
illusions.

So Valentin, having taken the old maid’s kindly action for the text of
his wandering thoughts, without the deliberate promptings of philosophy,
must find it full of gall and wormwood.

“It is not at all extraordinary that a gentlewoman’s gentlewoman should
take a fancy to me,” said he to himself. “I am twenty-seven years old,
and I have a title and an income of two hundred thousand a year. But
that her mistress, who hates water like a rabid cat--for it would be
hard to give the palm to either in that matter--that her mistress should
have brought her here in a boat! Is not that very strange and wonderful?
Those two women came into Savoy to sleep like marmots; they ask if day
has dawned at noon; and to think that they could get up this morning
before eight o’clock, to take their chances in running after me!”

Very soon the old maid and her elderly innocence became, in his eyes, a
fresh manifestation of that artificial, malicious little world. It was a
paltry device, a clumsy artifice, a piece of priest’s or woman’s craft.
Was the duel a myth, or did they merely want to frighten him? But
these petty creatures, impudent and teasing as flies, had succeeded in
wounding his vanity, in rousing his pride, and exciting his curiosity.
Unwilling to become their dupe, or to be taken for a coward, and even
diverted perhaps by the little drama, he went to the Club that very
evening.

He stood leaning against the marble chimney-piece, and stayed there
quietly in the middle of the principal saloon, doing his best to give no
one any advantage over him; but he scrutinized the faces about him, and
gave a certain vague offence to those assembled, by his inspection. Like
a dog aware of his strength, he awaited the contest on his own ground,
without necessary barking. Towards the end of the evening he strolled
into the cardroom, walking between the door and another that opened into
the billiard-room, throwing a glance from time to time over a group of
young men that had gathered there. He heard his name mentioned after a
turn or two. Although they lowered their voices, Raphael easily guessed
that he had become the topic of their debate, and he ended by catching a
phrase or two spoken aloud.

“You?”

“Yes, I.”

“I dare you to do it!”

“Let us make a bet on it!”

“Oh, he will do it.”

Just as Valentin, curious to learn the matter of the wager, came up
to pay closer attention to what they were saying, a tall, strong,
good-looking young fellow, who, however, possessed the impertinent stare
peculiar to people who have material force at their back, came out of
the billiard-room.

“I am deputed, sir,” he said coolly addressing the Marquis, “to make you
aware of something which you do not seem to know; your face and person
generally are a source of annoyance to every one here, and to me in
particular. You have too much politeness not to sacrifice yourself to
the public good, and I beg that you will not show yourself in the Club
again.”

“This sort of joke has been perpetrated before, sir, in garrison towns
at the time of the Empire; but nowadays it is exceedingly bad form,”
 said Raphael drily.

“I am not joking,” the young man answered; “and I repeat it: your health
will be considerably the worse for a stay here; the heat and light, the
air of the saloon, and the company are all bad for your complaint.”

“Where did you study medicine?” Raphael inquired.

“I took my bachelor’s degree on Lepage’s shooting-ground in Paris, and
was made a doctor at Cerizier’s, the king of foils.”

“There is one last degree left for you to take,” said Valentin; “study
the ordinary rules of politeness, and you will be a perfect gentlemen.”

The young men all came out of the billiard-room just then, some disposed
to laugh, some silent. The attention of other players was drawn to the
matter; they left their cards to watch a quarrel that rejoiced their
instincts. Raphael, alone among this hostile crowd, did his best to keep
cool, and not to put himself in any way in the wrong; but his adversary
having ventured a sarcasm containing an insult couched in unusually keen
language, he replied gravely:

“We cannot box men’s ears, sir, in these days, but I am at a loss for
any word by which to stigmatize such cowardly behavior as yours.”

“That’s enough, that’s enough. You can come to an explanation
to-morrow,” several young men exclaimed, interposing between the two
champions.

Raphael left the room in the character of aggressor, after he had
accepted a proposal to meet near the Chateau de Bordeau, in a little
sloping meadow, not very far from the newly made road, by which the man
who came off victorious could reach Lyons. Raphael must now either take
to his bed or leave the baths. The visitors had gained their point. At
eight o’clock next morning his antagonist, followed by two seconds and a
surgeon, arrived first on the ground.

“We shall do very nicely here; glorious weather for a duel!” he cried
gaily, looking at the blue vault of sky above, at the waters of the
lake, and the rocks, without a single melancholy presentiment or doubt
of the issue. “If I wing him,” he went on, “I shall send him to bed for
a month; eh, doctor?”

“At the very least,” the surgeon replied; “but let that willow twig
alone, or you will weary your wrist, and then you will not fire
steadily. You might kill your man instead of wounding him.”

The noise of a carriage was heard approaching.

“Here he is,” said the seconds, who soon descried a caleche coming along
the road; it was drawn by four horses, and there were two postilions.

“What a queer proceeding!” said Valentin’s antagonist; “here he comes
post-haste to be shot.”

The slightest incident about a duel, as about a stake at cards, makes an
impression on the minds of those deeply concerned in the results of the
affair; so the young man awaited the arrival of the carriage with a
kind of uneasiness. It stopped in the road; old Jonathan laboriously
descended from it, in the first place, to assist Raphael to alight;
he supported him with his feeble arms, and showed him all the minute
attentions that a lover lavishes upon his mistress. Both became lost to
sight in the footpath that lay between the highroad and the field where
the duel was to take place; they were walking slowly, and did not appear
again for some time after. The four onlookers at this strange spectacle
felt deeply moved by the sight of Valentin as he leaned on his servant’s
arm; he was wasted and pale; he limped as if he had the gout, went with
his head bowed down, and said not a word. You might have taken them
for a couple of old men, one broken with years, the other worn out with
thought; the elder bore his age visibly written in his white hair, the
younger was of no age.

“I have not slept all night, sir;” so Raphael greeted his antagonist.

The icy tone and terrible glance that went with the words made the real
aggressor shudder; he know that he was in the wrong, and felt in secret
ashamed of his behavior. There was something strange in Raphael’s
bearing, tone, and gesture; the Marquis stopped, and every one else was
likewise silent. The uneasy and constrained feeling grew to a height.

“There is yet time,” he went on, “to offer me some slight apology;
and offer it you must, or you will die sir! You rely even now on your
dexterity, and do not shrink from an encounter in which you believe all
the advantage to be upon your side. Very good, sir; I am generous, I am
letting you know my superiority beforehand. I possess a terrible power.
I have only to wish to do so, and I can neutralize your skill, dim your
eyesight, make your hand and pulse unsteady, and even kill you outright.
I have no wish to be compelled to exercise my power; the use of it costs
me too dear. You would not be the only one to die. So if you refuse to
apologize to me, not matter what your experience in murder, your ball
will go into the waterfall there, and mine will speed straight to your
heart though I do not aim it at you.”

Confused voices interrupted Raphael at this point. All the time that he
was speaking, the Marquis had kept his intolerably keen gaze fixed upon
his antagonist; now he drew himself up and showed an impassive face,
like that of a dangerous madman.

“Make him hold his tongue,” the young man had said to one of his
seconds; “that voice of his is tearing the heart out of me.”

“Say no more, sir; it is quite useless,” cried the seconds and the
surgeon, addressing Raphael.

“Gentlemen, I am fulfilling a duty. Has this young gentleman any final
arrangements to make?”

“That is enough; that will do.”

The Marquis remained standing steadily, never for a moment losing sight
of his antagonist; and the latter seemed, like a bird before a snake, to
be overwhelmed by a well-nigh magical power. He was compelled to endure
that homicidal gaze; he met and shunned it incessantly.

“I am thirsty; give me some water----” he said again to the second.

“Are you nervous?”

“Yes,” he answered. “There is a fascination about that man’s glowing
eyes.”

“Will you apologize?”

“It is too late now.”

The two antagonists were placed at fifteen paces’ distance from each
other. Each of them had a brace of pistols at hand, and, according to
the programme prescribed for them, each was to fire twice when and how
he pleased, but after the signal had been given by the seconds.

“What are you doing, Charles?” exclaimed the young man who acted as
second to Raphael’s antagonist; “you are putting in the ball before the
powder!”

“I am a dead man,” he muttered, by way of answer; “you have put me
facing the sun----”

“The sun lies behind you,” said Valentin sternly and solemnly, while he
coolly loaded his pistol without heeding the fact that the signal had
been given, or that his antagonist was carefully taking aim.

There was something so appalling in this supernatural unconcern, that it
affected even the two postilions, brought thither by a cruel curiosity.
Raphael was either trying his power or playing with it, for he talked
to Jonathan, and looked towards him as he received his adversary’s
fire. Charles’ bullet broke a branch of willow, and ricocheted over the
surface of the water; Raphael fired at random, and shot his antagonist
through the heart. He did not heed the young man as he dropped; he
hurriedly sought the Magic Skin to see what another man’s life had cost
him. The talisman was no larger than a small oak-leaf.

“What are you gaping at, you postilions over there? Let us be off,” said
the Marquis.

That same evening he crossed the French border, immediately set out for
Auvergne, and reached the springs of Mont Dore. As he traveled, there
surged up in his heart, all at once, one of those thoughts that come
to us as a ray of sunlight pierces through the thick mists in some dark
valley--a sad enlightenment, a pitiless sagacity that lights up the
accomplished fact for us, that lays our errors bare, and leaves
us without excuse in our own eyes. It suddenly struck him that the
possession of power, no matter how enormous, did not bring with it the
knowledge how to use it. The sceptre is a plaything for a child, an axe
for a Richelieu, and for a Napoleon a lever by which to move the world.
Power leaves us just as it finds us; only great natures grow greater
by its means. Raphael had had everything in his power, and he had done
nothing.

At the springs of Mont Dore he came again in contact with a little world
of people, who invariably shunned him with the eager haste that animals
display when they scent afar off one of their own species lying dead,
and flee away. The dislike was mutual. His late adventure had given him
a deep distaste for society; his first care, consequently, was to find
a lodging at some distance from the neighborhood of the springs.
Instinctively he felt within him the need of close contact with nature,
of natural emotions, and of the vegetative life into which we sink so
gladly among the fields.

The day after he arrived he climbed the Pic de Sancy, not without
difficulty, and visited the higher valleys, the skyey nooks,
undiscovered lakes, and peasants’ huts about Mont Dore, a country whose
stern and wild features are now beginning to tempt the brushes of our
artists, for sometimes wonderfully fresh and charming views are to be
found there, affording a strong contrast to the frowning brows of those
lonely hills.

Barely a league from the village Raphael discovered a nook where nature
seemed to have taken a pleasure in hiding away all her treasures like
some glad and mischievous child. At the first sight of this unspoiled
and picturesque retreat, he determined to take up his abode in it.
There, life must needs be peaceful, natural, and fruitful, like the life
of a plant.

Imagine for yourself an inverted cone of granite hollowed out on a large
scale, a sort of basin with its sides divided up by queer winding paths.
On one side lay level stretches with no growth upon them, a bluish
uniform surface, over which the rays of the sun fell as upon a mirror;
on the other lay cliffs split open by fissures and frowning ravines;
great blocks of lava hung suspended from them, while the action of rain
slowly prepared their impending fall; a few stunted trees tormented
by the wind, often crowned their summits; and here and there in some
sheltered angle of their ramparts a clump of chestnut-trees grew tall as
cedars, or some cavern in the yellowish rocks showed the dark entrance
into its depths, set about by flowers and brambles, decked by a little
strip of green turf.

At the bottom of this cup, which perhaps had been the crater of an
old-world volcano, lay a pool of water as pure and bright as a diamond.
Granite boulders lay around the deep basin, and willows, mountain-ash
trees, yellow-flag lilies, and numberless aromatic plants bloomed about
it, in a realm of meadow as fresh as an English bowling-green. The fine
soft grass was watered by the streams that trickled through the fissures
in the cliffs; the soil was continually enriched by the deposits of loam
which storms washed down from the heights above. The pool might be
some three acres in extent; its shape was irregular, and the edges were
scalloped like the hem of a dress; the meadow might be an acre or two
acres in extent. The cliffs and the water approached and receded from
each other; here and there, there was scarcely width enough for the cows
to pass between them.

After a certain height the plant life ceased. Aloft in air the granite
took upon itself the most fantastic shapes, and assumed those misty
tints that give to high mountains a dim resemblance to clouds in the
sky. The bare, bleak cliffs, with the fearful rents in their sides,
pictures of wild and barren desolation, contrasted strongly with the
pretty view of the valley; and so strange were the shapes they assumed,
that one of the cliffs had been called “The Capuchin,” because it was so
like a monk. Sometimes these sharp-pointed peaks, these mighty masses
of rock, and airy caverns were lighted up one by one, according to the
direction of the sun or the caprices of the atmosphere; they caught
gleams of gold, dyed themselves in purple; took a tint of glowing
rose-color, or turned dull and gray. Upon the heights a drama of color
was always to be seen, a play of ever-shifting iridescent hues like
those on a pigeon’s breast.

Oftentimes at sunrise or at sunset a ray of bright sunlight would
penetrate between two sheer surfaces of lava, that might have been split
apart by a hatchet, to the very depths of that pleasant little garden,
where it would play in the waters of the pool, like a beam of golden
light which gleams through the chinks of a shutter into a room in Spain,
that has been carefully darkened for a siesta. When the sun rose above
the old crater that some antediluvian revolution had filled with water,
its rocky sides took warmer tones, the extinct volcano glowed again, and
its sudden heat quickened the sprouting seeds and vegetation, gave color
to the flowers, and ripened the fruits of this forgotten corner of the
earth.

As Raphael reached it, he noticed several cows grazing in the
pasture-land; and when he had taken a few steps towards the water, he
saw a little house built of granite and roofed with shingle in the spot
where the meadowland was at its widest. The roof of this little cottage
harmonized with everything about it; for it had long been overgrown with
ivy, moss, and flowers of no recent date. A thin smoke, that did not
scare the birds away, went up from the dilapidated chimney. There was a
great bench at the door between two huge honey-suckle bushes, that were
pink with blossom and full of scent. The walls could scarcely be seen
for branches of vine and sprays of rose and jessamine that interlaced
and grew entirely as chance and their own will bade them; for the
inmates of the cottage seemed to pay no attention to the growth which
adorned their house, and to take no care of it, leaving to it the fresh
capricious charm of nature.

Some clothes spread out on the gooseberry bushes were drying in the
sun. A cat was sitting on a machine for stripping hemp; beneath it lay a
newly scoured brass caldron, among a quantity of potato-parings. On
the other side of the house Raphael saw a sort of barricade of dead
thorn-bushes, meant no doubt to keep the poultry from scratching up
the vegetables and pot-herbs. It seemed like the end of the earth. The
dwelling was like some bird’s-nest ingeniously set in a cranny of the
rocks, a clever and at the same time a careless bit of workmanship. A
simple and kindly nature lay round about it; its rusticity was genuine,
but there was a charm like that of poetry in it; for it grew and throve
at a thousand miles’ distance from our elaborate and conventional
poetry. It was like none of our conceptions; it was a spontaneous
growth, a masterpiece due to chance.

As Raphael reached the place, the sunlight fell across it from right to
left, bringing out all the colors of its plants and trees; the yellowish
or gray bases of the crags, the different shades of the green leaves,
the masses of flowers, pink, blue, or white, the climbing plants
with their bell-like blossoms, and the shot velvet of the mosses, the
purple-tinted blooms of the heather,--everything was either brought
into relief or made fairer yet by the enchantment of the light or by the
contrasting shadows; and this was the case most of all with the sheet of
water, wherein the house, the trees, the granite peaks, and the sky were
all faithfully reflected. Everything had a radiance of its own in this
delightful picture, from the sparkling mica-stone to the bleached tuft
of grass hidden away in the soft shadows; the spotted cow with its
glossy hide, the delicate water-plants that hung down over the pool like
fringes in a nook where blue or emerald colored insects were buzzing
about, the roots of trees like a sand-besprinkled shock of hair above
grotesque faces in the flinty rock surface,--all these things made a
harmony for the eye.

The odor of the tepid water; the scent of the flowers, and the breath of
the caverns which filled the lonely place gave Raphael a sensation that
was almost enjoyment. Silence reigned in majesty over these woods, which
possibly are unknown to the tax-collector; but the barking of a couple
of dogs broke the stillness all at once; the cows turned their heads
towards the entrance of the valley, showing their moist noses to
Raphael, stared stupidly at him, and then fell to browsing again. A
goat and her kid, that seemed to hang on the side of the crags in some
magical fashion, capered and leapt to a slab of granite near to Raphael,
and stayed there a moment, as if to seek to know who he was. The yapping
of the dogs brought out a plump child, who stood agape, and next came a
white-haired old man of middle height. Both of these two beings were in
keeping with the surroundings, the air, the flowers, and the dwelling.
Health appeared to overflow in this fertile region; old age and
childhood thrived there. There seemed to be, about all these types of
existence, the freedom and carelessness of the life of primitive times,
a happiness of use and wont that gave the lie to our philosophical
platitudes, and wrought a cure of all its swelling passions in the
heart.

The old man belonged to the type of model dear to the masculine brush
of Schnetz. The countless wrinkles upon his brown face looked as if
they would be hard to the touch; the straight nose, the prominent
cheek-bones, streaked with red veins like a vine-leaf in autumn, the
angular features, all were characteristics of strength, even where
strength existed no longer. The hard hands, now that they toiled no
longer, had preserved their scanty white hair, his bearing was that of
an absolutely free man; it suggested the thought that, had he been
an Italian, he would have perhaps turned brigand, for the love of the
liberty so dear to him. The child was a regular mountaineer, with the
black eyes that can face the sun without flinching, a deeply
tanned complexion, and rough brown hair. His movements were like a
bird’s--swift, decided, and unconstrained; his clothing was ragged; the
white, fair skin showed through the rents in his garments. There they
both stood in silence, side by side, both obeying the same impulse; in
both faces were clear tokens of an absolutely identical and idle life.
The old man had adopted the child’s amusements, and the child had fallen
in with the old man’s humor; there was a sort of tacit agreement between
two kinds of feebleness, between failing powers well-nigh spent and
powers just about to unfold themselves.

Very soon a woman who seemed to be about thirty years old appeared on
the threshold of the door, spinning as she came. She was an Auvergnate,
a high-colored, comfortable-looking, straightforward sort of person,
with white teeth; her cap and dress, the face, full figure, and general
appearance, were of the Auvergne peasant stamp. So was her dialect; she
was a thorough embodiment of her district; its hardworking ways, its
thrift, ignorance, and heartiness all met in her.

She greeted Raphael, and they began to talk. The dogs quieted down;
the old man went and sat on a bench in the sun; the child followed his
mother about wherever she went, listening without saying a word, and
staring at the stranger.

“You are not afraid to live here, good woman?”

“What should we be afraid of, sir? When we bolt the door, who ever could
get inside? Oh, no, we aren’t afraid at all. And besides,” she said,
as she brought the Marquis into the principal room in the house, “what
should thieves come to take from us here?”

She designated the room as she spoke; the smoke-blackened walls, with
some brilliant pictures in blue, red, and green, an “End of Credit,” a
Crucifixion, and the “Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard” for their
sole ornament; the furniture here and there, the old wooden four-post
bedstead, the table with crooked legs, a few stools, the chest that
held the bread, the flitch that hung from the ceiling, a jar of salt, a
stove, and on the mantleshelf a few discolored yellow plaster figures.
As he went out again Raphael noticed a man half-way up the crags,
leaning on a hoe, and watching the house with interest.

“That’s my man, sir,” said the Auvergnate, unconsciously smiling in
peasant fashion; “he is at work up there.”

“And that old man is your father?”

“Asking your pardon, sir, he is my man’s grandfather. Such as you see
him, he is a hundred and two, and yet quite lately he walked over to
Clermont with our little chap! Oh, he has been a strong man in his time;
but he does nothing now but sleep and eat and drink. He amuses himself
with the little fellow. Sometimes the child trails him up the hillsides,
and he will just go up there along with him.”

Valentin made up his mind immediately. He would live between this child
and old man, breathe the same air; eat their bread, drink the same
water, sleep with them, make the blood in his veins like theirs. It was
a dying man’s fancy. For him the prime model, after which the customary
existence of the individual should be shaped, the real formula for the
life of a human being, the only true and possible life, the life-ideal,
was to become one of the oysters adhering to this rock, to save
his shell a day or two longer by paralyzing the power of death. One
profoundly selfish thought took possession of him, and the whole
universe was swallowed up and lost in it. For him the universe existed
no longer; the whole world had come to be within himself. For the sick,
the world begins at their pillow and ends at the foot of the bed; and
this countryside was Raphael’s sick-bed.

Who has not, at some time or other in his life, watched the comings
and goings of an ant, slipped straws into a yellow slug’s one
breathing-hole, studied the vagaries of a slender dragon-fly, pondered
admiringly over the countless veins in an oak-leaf, that bring the
colors of a rose window in some Gothic cathedral into contrast with the
reddish background? Who has not looked long in delight at the effects
of sun and rain on a roof of brown tiles, at the dewdrops, or at the
variously shaped petals of the flower-cups? Who has not sunk into these
idle, absorbing meditations on things without, that have no conscious
end, yet lead to some definite thought at last. Who, in short, has not
led a lazy life, the life of childhood, the life of the savage without
his labor? This life without a care or a wish Raphael led for some days’
space. He felt a distinct improvement in his condition, a wonderful
sense of ease, that quieted his apprehensions and soothed his
sufferings.

He would climb the crags, and then find a seat high up on some peak
whence he could see a vast expanse of distant country at a glance, and
he would spend whole days in this way, like a plant in the sun, or a
hare in its form. And at last, growing familiar with the appearances
of the plant-life about him, and of the changes in the sky, he minutely
noted the progress of everything working around him in the water, on the
earth, or in the air. He tried to share the secret impulses of nature,
sought by passive obedience to become a part of it, and to lie within
the conservative and despotic jurisdiction that regulates instinctive
existence. He no longer wished to steer his own course.

Just as criminals in olden times were safe from the pursuit of justice,
if they took refuge under the shadow of the altar, so Raphael made an
effort to slip into the sanctuary of life. He succeeded in becoming an
integral part of the great and mighty fruit-producing organization; he
had adapted himself to the inclemency of the air, and had dwelt in every
cave among the rocks. He had learned the ways and habits of growth of
every plant, had studied the laws of the watercourses and their beds,
and had come to know the animals; he was at last so perfectly at
one with this teeming earth, that he had in some sort discerned its
mysteries and caught the spirit of it.

The infinitely varied forms of every natural kingdom were, to his
thinking, only developments of one and the same substance, different
combinations brought about by the same impulse, endless emanations from
a measureless Being which was acting, thinking, moving, and growing, and
in harmony with which he longed to grow, to move, to think, and act.
He had fancifully blended his life with the life of the crags; he had
deliberately planted himself there. During the earliest days of
his sojourn in these pleasant surroundings, Valentin tasted all the
pleasures of childhood again, thanks to the strange hallucination of
apparent convalescence, which is not unlike the pauses of delirium
that nature mercifully provides for those in pain. He went about making
trifling discoveries, setting to work on endless things, and finishing
none of them; the evening’s plans were quite forgotten in the morning;
he had no cares, he was happy; he thought himself saved.

One morning he had lain in bed till noon, deep in the dreams between
sleep and waking, which give to realities a fantastic appearance, and
make the wildest fancies seem solid facts; while he was still uncertain
that he was not dreaming yet, he suddenly heard his hostess giving a
report of his health to Jonathan, for the first time. Jonathan came
to inquire after him daily, and the Auvergnate, thinking no doubt
that Valentin was still asleep, had not lowered the tones of a voice
developed in mountain air.

“No better and no worse,” she said. “He coughed all last night again fit
to kill himself. Poor gentleman, he coughs and spits till it is piteous.
My husband and I often wonder to each other where he gets the strength
from to cough like that. It goes to your heart. What a cursed complaint
it is! He has no strength at all. I am always afraid I shall find him
dead in his bed some morning. He is every bit as pale as a waxen Christ.
_Dame_! I watch him while he dresses; his poor body is as thin as a
nail. And he does not feel well now; but no matter. It’s all the same;
he wears himself out with running about as if he had health and to
spare. All the same, he is very brave, for he never complains at all.
But really he would be better under the earth than on it, for he is
enduring the agonies of Christ. I don’t wish that myself, sir; it is
quite in our interests; but even if he didn’t pay us what he does, I
should be just as fond of him; it is not our own interest that is our
motive.

“Ah, _mon Dieu_!” she continued, “Parisians are the people for these
dogs’ diseases. Where did he catch it, now? Poor young man! And he is so
sure that he is going to get well! That fever just gnaws him, you know;
it eats him away; it will be the death of him. He has no notion whatever
of that; he does not know it, sir; he sees nothing----You mustn’t cry
about him, M. Jonathan; you must remember that he will be happy, and
will not suffer any more. You ought to make a neuvaine for him; I have
seen wonderful cures come of the nine days’ prayer, and I would gladly
pay for a wax taper to save such a gentle creature, so good he is, a
paschal lamb----”

As Raphael’s voice had grown too weak to allow him to make himself
heard, he was compelled to listen to this horrible loquacity. His
irritation, however, drove him out of bed at length, and he appeared
upon the threshold.

“Old scoundrel!” he shouted to Jonathan; “do you mean to put me to
death?”

The peasant woman took him for a ghost, and fled.

“I forbid you to have any anxiety whatever about my health,” Raphael
went on.

“Yes, my Lord Marquis,” said the old servant, wiping away his tears.

“And for the future you had very much better not come here without my
orders.”

Jonathan meant to be obedient, but in the look full of pity and
devotion that he gave the Marquis before he went, Raphael read his own
death-warrant. Utterly disheartened, brought all at once to a sense of
his real position, Valentin sat down on the threshold, locked his arms
across his chest, and bowed his head. Jonathan turned to his master in
alarm, with “My Lord----”

“Go away, go away,” cried the invalid.

In the hours of the next morning, Raphael climbed the crags, and sat
down in a mossy cleft in the rocks, whence he could see the narrow path
along which the water for the dwelling was carried. At the base of the
hill he saw Jonathan in conversation with the Auvergnate. Some malicious
power interpreted for him all the woman’s forebodings, and filled the
breeze and the silence with her ominous words. Thrilled with horror, he
took refuge among the highest summits of the mountains, and stayed
there till the evening; but yet he could not drive away the gloomy
presentiments awakened within him in such an unfortunate manner by a
cruel solicitude on his account.

The Auvergne peasant herself suddenly appeared before him like a shadow
in the dusk; a perverse freak of the poet within him found a vague
resemblance between her black and white striped petticoat and the bony
frame of a spectre.

“The damp is falling now, sir,” said she. “If you stop out there, you
will go off just like rotten fruit. You must come in. It isn’t healthy
to breathe the damp, and you have taken nothing since the morning,
besides.”

“_Tonnerre de Dieu_! old witch,” he cried; “let me live after my own
fashion, I tell you, or I shall be off altogether. It is quite bad
enough to dig my grave every morning; you might let it alone in the
evenings at least----”

“Your grave, sir! I dig your grave!--and where may your grave be? I want
to see you as old as father there, and not in your grave by any
manner of means. The grave! that comes soon enough for us all; in the
grave----”

“That is enough,” said Raphael.

“Take my arm, sir.”

“No.”

The feeling of pity in others is very difficult for a man to bear, and
it is hardest of all when the pity is deserved. Hatred is a tonic--it
quickens life and stimulates revenge; but pity is death to us--it makes
our weakness weaker still. It is as if distress simpered ingratiatingly
at us; contempt lurks in the tenderness, or tenderness in an affront.
In the centenarian Raphael saw triumphant pity, a wondering pity in the
child’s eyes, an officious pity in the woman, and in her husband a pity
that had an interested motive; but no matter how the sentiment declared
itself, death was always its import.

A poet makes a poem of everything; it is tragical or joyful, as things
happen to strike his imagination; his lofty soul rejects all half-tones;
he always prefers vivid and decided colors. In Raphael’s soul this
compassion produced a terrible poem of mourning and melancholy. When
he had wished to live in close contact with nature, he had of course
forgotten how freely natural emotions are expressed. He would think
himself quite alone under a tree, whilst he struggled with an obstinate
coughing fit, a terrible combat from which he never issued victorious
without utter exhaustion afterwards; and then he would meet the clear,
bright eyes of the little boy, who occupied the post of sentinel, like
a savage in a bent of grass; the eyes scrutinized him with a childish
wonder, in which there was as much amusement as pleasure, and an
indescribable mixture of indifference and interest. The awful _Brother,
you must die_, of the Trappists seemed constantly legible in the eyes
of the peasants with whom Raphael was living; he scarcely knew which
he dreaded most, their unfettered talk or their silence; their presence
became torture.

One morning he saw two men in black prowling about in his neighborhood,
who furtively studied him and took observations. They made as though
they had come there for a stroll, and asked him a few indifferent
questions, to which he returned short answers. He recognized them both.
One was the _cure_ and the other the doctor at the springs; Jonathan had
no doubt sent them, or the people in the house had called them in, or
the scent of an approaching death had drawn them thither. He beheld his
own funeral, heard the chanting of the priests, and counted the tall wax
candles; and all that lovely fertile nature around him, in whose lap
he had thought to find life once more, he saw no longer, save through a
veil of crape. Everything that but lately had spoken of length of days
to him, now prophesied a speedy end. He set out the next day for Paris,
not before he had been inundated with cordial wishes, which the people
of the house uttered in melancholy and wistful tones for his benefit.

He traveled through the night, and awoke as they passed through one of
the pleasant valleys of the Bourbonnais. View after view swam before his
gaze, and passed rapidly away like the vague pictures of a dream.
Cruel nature spread herself out before his eyes with tantalizing grace.
Sometimes the Allier, a liquid shining ribbon, meandered through the
distant fertile landscape; then followed the steeples of hamlets, hiding
modestly in the depths of a ravine with its yellow cliffs; sometimes,
after the monotony of vineyards, the watermills of a little valley would
be suddenly seen; and everywhere there were pleasant chateaux, hillside
villages, roads with their fringes of queenly poplars; and the Loire
itself, at last, with its wide sheets of water sparkling like diamonds
amid its golden sands. Attractions everywhere, without end! This nature,
all astir with a life and gladness like that of childhood, scarcely able
to contain the impulses and sap of June, possessed a fatal attraction
for the darkened gaze of the invalid. He drew the blinds of his carriage
windows, and betook himself again to slumber.

Towards evening, after they had passed Cesne, he was awakened by lively
music, and found himself confronted with a village fair. The horses
were changed near the marketplace. Whilst the postilions were engaged
in making the transfer, he saw the people dancing merrily, pretty and
attractive girls with flowers about them, excited youths, and finally
the jolly wine-flushed countenances of old peasants. Children prattled,
old women laughed and chatted; everything spoke in one voice, and there
was a holiday gaiety about everything, down to their clothing and the
tables that were set out. A cheerful expression pervaded the square and
the church, the roofs and windows; even the very doorways of the village
seemed likewise to be in holiday trim.

Raphael could not repress an angry exclamation, nor yet a wish to
silence the fiddles, annihilate the stir and bustle, stop the clamor,
and disperse the ill-timed festival; like a dying man, he felt unable
to endure the slightest sound, and he entered his carriage much annoyed.
When he looked out upon the square from the window, he saw that all the
happiness was scared away; the peasant women were in flight, and the
benches were deserted. Only a blind musician, on the scaffolding of the
orchestra, went on playing a shrill tune on his clarionet. That piping
of his, without dancers to it, and the solitary old man himself, in the
shadow of the lime-tree, with his curmudgeon’s face, scanty hair, and
ragged clothing, was like a fantastic picture of Raphael’s wish. The
heavy rain was pouring in torrents; it was one of those thunderstorms
that June brings about so rapidly, to cease as suddenly. The thing was
so natural, that, when Raphael had looked out and seen some pale clouds
driven over by a gust of wind, he did not think of looking at the piece
of skin. He lay back again in the corner of his carriage, which was very
soon rolling upon its way.

The next day found him back in his home again, in his own room, beside
his own fireside. He had had a large fire lighted; he felt cold.
Jonathan brought him some letters; they were all from Pauline. He opened
the first one without any eagerness, and unfolded it as if it had
been the gray-paper form of application for taxes made by the revenue
collector. He read the first sentence:

“Gone! This really is a flight, my Raphael. How is it? No one can tell
me where you are. And who should know if not I?”

He did not wish to learn any more. He calmly took up the letters
and threw them in the fire, watching with dull and lifeless eyes the
perfumed paper as it was twisted, shriveled, bent, and devoured by the
capricious flames. Fragments that fell among the ashes allowed him to
see the beginning of a sentence, or a half-burnt thought or word; he
took a pleasure in deciphering them--a sort of mechanical amusement.

“Sitting at your door--expected--Caprice--I obey--Rivals--I, never!--thy
Pauline--love--no more of Pauline?--If you had wished to leave me for
ever, you would not have deserted me--Love eternal--To die----”

The words caused him a sort of remorse; he seized the tongs, and rescued
a last fragment of the letter from the flames.

“I have murmured,” so Pauline wrote, “but I have never complained, my
Raphael! If you have left me so far behind you, it was doubtless because
you wished to hide some heavy grief from me. Perhaps you will kill me
one of these days, but you are too good to torture me. So do not go away
from me like this. There! I can bear the worst of torment, if only I
am at your side. Any grief that you could cause me would not be grief.
There is far more love in my heart for you than I have ever yet shown
you. I can endure anything, except this weeping far away from you, this
ignorance of your----”

Raphael laid the scorched scrap on the mantelpiece, then all at once he
flung it into the fire. The bit of paper was too clearly a symbol of his
own love and luckless existence.

“Go and find M. Bianchon,” he told Jonathan.

Horace came and found Raphael in bed.

“Can you prescribe a draught for me--some mild opiate which will always
keep me in a somnolent condition, a draught that will not be injurious
although taken constantly.”

“Nothing is easier,” the young doctor replied; “but you will have to
keep on your feet for a few hours daily, at any rate, so as to take your
food.”

“A few hours!” Raphael broke in; “no, no! I only wish to be out of bed
for an hour at most.”

“What is your object?” inquired Bianchon.

“To sleep; for so one keeps alive, at any rate,” the patient answered.
“Let no one come in, not even Mlle. Pauline de Wistchnau!” he added to
Jonathan, as the doctor was writing out his prescription.

“Well, M. Horace, is there any hope?” the old servant asked, going as
far as the flight of steps before the door, with the young doctor.

“He may live for some time yet, or he may die to-night. The chances of
life and death are evenly balanced in his case. I can’t understand it
at all,” said the doctor, with a doubtful gesture. “His mind ought to be
diverted.”

“Diverted! Ah, sir, you don’t know him! He killed a man the other day
without a word!--Nothing can divert him!”

For some days Raphael lay plunged in the torpor of this artificial
sleep. Thanks to the material power that opium exerts over the
immaterial part of us, this man with the powerful and active imagination
reduced himself to the level of those sluggish forms of animal life that
lurk in the depths of forests, and take the form of vegetable refuse,
never stirring from their place to catch their easy prey. He had
darkened the very sun in heaven; the daylight never entered his room.
About eight o’clock in the evening he would leave his bed, with no very
clear consciousness of his own existence; he would satisfy the claims
of hunger and return to bed immediately. One dull blighted hour after
another only brought confused pictures and appearances before him, and
lights and shadows against a background of darkness. He lay buried in
deep silence; movement and intelligence were completely annihilated for
him. He woke later than usual one evening, and found that his dinner was
not ready. He rang for Jonathan.

“You can go,” he said. “I have made you rich; you shall be happy in
your old age; but I will not let you muddle away my life any longer.
Miserable wretch! I am hungry--where is my dinner? How is it?--Answer
me!”

A satisfied smile stole over Jonathan’s face. He took a candle that
lit up the great dark rooms of the mansion with its flickering light;
brought his master, who had again become an automaton, into a great
gallery, and flung a door suddenly open. Raphael was all at once dazzled
by a flood of light and amazed by an unheard-of scene.

His chandeliers had been filled with wax-lights; the rarest flowers
from his conservatory were carefully arranged about the room; the table
sparkled with silver, gold, crystal, and porcelain; a royal banquet was
spread--the odors of the tempting dishes tickled the nervous fibres of
the palate. There sat his friends; he saw them among beautiful women in
full evening dress, with bare necks and shoulders, with flowers in their
hair; fair women of every type, with sparkling eyes, attractively and
fancifully arrayed. One had adopted an Irish jacket, which displayed
the alluring outlines of her form; one wore the “basquina” of Andalusia,
with its wanton grace; here was a half-clad Dian the huntress, there the
costume of Mlle. de la Valliere, amorous and coy; and all of them alike
were given up to the intoxication of the moment.

As Raphael’s death-pale face showed itself in the doorway, a sudden
outcry broke out, as vehement as the blaze of this improvised banquet.
The voices, perfumes, and lights, the exquisite beauty of the women,
produced their effect upon his senses, and awakened his desires.
Delightful music, from unseen players in the next room, drowned the
excited tumult in a torrent of harmony--the whole strange vision was
complete.

Raphael felt a caressing pressure on is own hand, a woman’s white,
youthful arms were stretched out to grasp him, and the hand was
Aquilina’s. He knew now that this scene was not a fantastic illusion
like the fleeting pictures of his disordered dreams; he uttered a
dreadful cry, slammed the door, and dealt his heartbroken old servant a
blow in the face.

“Monster!” he cried, “so you have sworn to kill me!” and trembling at
the risks he had just now run, he summoned all his energies, reached his
room, took a powerful sleeping draught, and went to bed.

“The devil!” cried Jonathan, recovering himself. “And M. Bianchon most
certainly told me to divert his mind.”

It was close upon midnight. By that time, owing to one of those physical
caprices that are the marvel and the despair of science, Raphael, in his
slumber, became radiant with beauty. A bright color glowed on his pale
cheeks. There was an almost girlish grace about the forehead in which
his genius was revealed. Life seemed to bloom on the quiet face that lay
there at rest. His sleep was sound; a light, even breath was drawn in
between red lips; he was smiling--he had passed no doubt through the
gate of dreams into a noble life. Was he a centenarian now? Did his
grandchildren come to wish him length of days? Or, on a rustic bench set
in the sun and under the trees, was he scanning, like the prophet on the
mountain heights, a promised land, a far-off time of blessing.

“Here you are!”

The words, uttered in silver tones, dispelled the shadowy faces of his
dreams. He saw Pauline, in the lamplight, sitting upon the bed; Pauline
grown fairer yet through sorrow and separation. Raphael remained
bewildered by the sight of her face, white as the petals of some water
flower, and the shadow of her long, dark hair about it seemed to make it
whiter still. Her tears had left a gleaming trace upon her cheeks, and
hung there yet, ready to fall at the least movement. She looked like an
angel fallen from the skies, or a spirit that a breath might waft away,
as she sat there all in white, with her head bowed, scarcely creasing
the quilt beneath her weight.

“Ah, I have forgotten everything!” she cried, as Raphael opened his
eyes. “I have no voice left except to tell you, ‘I am yours.’ There is
nothing in my heart but love. Angel of my life, you have never been so
beautiful before! Your eyes are blazing---- But come, I can guess it
all. You have been in search of health without me; you were afraid of
me---- well----”

“Go! go! leave me,” Raphael muttered at last. “Why do you not go? If you
stay, I shall die. Do you want to see me die?”

“Die?” she echoed. “Can you die without me? Die? But you are young; and
I love you! Die?” she asked, in a deep, hollow voice. She seized his
hands with a frenzied movement. “Cold!” she wailed. “Is it all an
illusion?”

Raphael drew the little bit of skin from under his pillow; it was as
tiny and as fragile as a periwinkle petal. He showed it to her.

“Pauline!” he said, “fair image of my fair life, let us say good-bye?”

“Good-bye?” she echoed, looking surprised.

“Yes. This is a talisman that grants me all my wishes, and that
represents my span of life. See here, this is all that remains of it. If
you look at me any longer, I shall die----”

The young girl thought that Valentin had grown lightheaded; she took the
talisman and went to fetch the lamp. By its tremulous light which she
shed over Raphael and the talisman, she scanned her lover’s face and the
last morsel of the magic skin. As Pauline stood there, in all the beauty
of love and terror, Raphael was no longer able to control his thoughts;
memories of tender scenes, and of passionate and fevered joys,
overwhelmed the soul that had so long lain dormant within him, and
kindled a fire not quite extinct.

“Pauline! Pauline! Come to me----”

A dreadful cry came from the girl’s throat, her eyes dilated with
horror, her eyebrows were distorted and drawn apart by an unspeakable
anguish; she read in Raphael’s eyes the vehement desire in which she had
once exulted, but as it grew she felt a light movement in her hand, and
the skin contracted. She did not stop to think; she fled into the next
room, and locked the door.

“Pauline! Pauline!” cried the dying man, as he rushed after her; “I love
you, I adore you, I want you, Pauline! I wish to die in your arms!”

With unnatural strength, the last effort of ebbing life, he broke down
the door, and saw his mistress writhing upon a sofa. Pauline had vainly
tried to pierce her heart, and now thought to find a rapid death by
strangling herself with her shawl.

“If I die, he will live,” she said, trying to tighten the knot that she
had made.

In her struggle with death her hair hung loose, her shoulders were bare,
her clothing was disordered, her eyes were bathed in tears, her face
was flushed and drawn with the horror of despair; yet as her exceeding
beauty met Raphael’s intoxicated eyes, his delirium grew. He sprang
towards her like a bird of prey, tore away the shawl, and tried to take
her in his arms.

The dying man sought for words to express the wish that was consuming
his strength; but no sounds would come except the choking death-rattle
in his chest. Each breath he drew sounded hollower than the last, and
seemed to come from his very entrails. At the last moment, no longer
able to utter a sound, he set his teeth in Pauline’s breast. Jonathan
appeared, terrified by the cries he had heard, and tried to tear away
the dead body from the grasp of the girl who was crouching with it in a
corner.

“What do you want?” she asked. “He is mine, I have killed him. Did I not
foresee how it would be?”



EPILOGUE

“And what became of Pauline?”

“Pauline? Ah! Do you sometimes spend a pleasant winter evening by your
own fireside, and give yourself up luxuriously to memories of love or
youth, while you watch the glow of the fire where the logs of oak are
burning? Here, the fire outlines a sort of chessboard in red squares,
there it has a sheen like velvet; little blue flames start up and
flicker and play about in the glowing depths of the brasier. A
mysterious artist comes and adapts that flame to his own ends; by
a secret of his own he draws a visionary face in the midst of those
flaming violet and crimson hues, a face with unimaginable delicate
outlines, a fleeting apparition which no chance will ever bring back
again. It is a woman’s face, her hair is blown back by the wind, her
features speak of a rapture of delight; she breathes fire in the midst
of the fire. She smiles, she dies, you will never see her any more.
Farewell, flower of the flame! Farewell, essence incomplete and
unforeseen, come too early or too late to make the spark of some
glorious diamond.”

“But, Pauline?”

“You do not see, then? I will begin again. Make way! make way! She
comes, she is here, the queen of illusions, a woman fleeting as a kiss,
a woman bright as lightning, issuing in a blaze like lightning from the
sky, a being uncreated, of spirit and love alone. She has wrapped her
shadowy form in flame, or perhaps the flame betokens that she exists
but for a moment. The pure outlines of her shape tell you that she
comes from heaven. Is she not radiant as an angel? Can you not hear the
beating of her wings in space? She sinks down beside you more lightly
than a bird, and you are entranced by her awful eyes; there is a magical
power in her light breathing that draws your lips to hers; she flies and
you follow; you feel the earth beneath you no longer. If you could but
once touch that form of snow with your eager, deluded hands, once twine
the golden hair round your fingers, place one kiss on those shining
eyes! There is an intoxicating vapor around, and the spell of a siren
music is upon you. Every nerve in you is quivering; you are filled with
pain and longing. O joy for which there is no name! You have touched the
woman’s lips, and you are awakened at once by a horrible pang. Oh! ah!
yes, you have struck your head against the corner of the bedpost, you
have been clasping its brown mahogany sides, and chilly gilt ornaments;
embracing a piece of metal, a brazen Cupid.”

“But how about Pauline, sir?”

“What, again? Listen. One lovely morning at Tours a young man, who held
the hand of a pretty woman in his, went on board the _Ville d’Angers_.
Thus united they both looked and wondered long at a white form that rose
elusively out of the mists above the broad waters of the Loire, like
some child of the sun and the river, or some freak of air and cloud.
This translucent form was a sylph or a naiad by turns; she hovered in
the air like a word that haunts the memory, which seeks in vain to grasp
it; she glided among the islands, she nodded her head here and there
among the tall poplar trees; then she grew to a giant’s height; she
shook out the countless folds of her drapery to the light; she shot
light from the aureole that the sun had litten about her face; she
hovered above the slopes of the hills and their little hamlets, and
seemed to bar the passage of the boat before the Chateau d’Usse. You
might have thought that _La dame des belles cousines_ sought to protect
her country from modern intrusion.”

“Well, well, I understand. So it went with Pauline. But how about
Foedora?”

“Oh! Foedora, you are sure to meet with her! She was at the Bouffons
last night, and she will go to the Opera this evening, and if you like
to take it so, she is Society.”



ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

     Aquilina
       Melmoth Reconciled

     Bianchon, Horace
       Father Goriot
       The Atheist’s Mass
       Cesar Birotteau
       The Commission in Lunacy
       Lost Illusions
       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
       A Bachelor’s Establishment
       The Secrets of a Princess
       The Government Clerks
       Pierrette
       A Study of Woman
       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
       Honorine
       The Seamy Side of History
       A Second Home
       A Prince of Bohemia
       Letters of Two Brides
       The Muse of the Department
       The Imaginary Mistress
       The Middle Classes
       Cousin Betty
       The Country Parson
     In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following:
       Another Study of Woman
       La Grande Breteche

     Canalis, Constant-Cyr-Melchior, Baron de
       Letters of Two Brides
       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
       Modeste Mignon
       Another Study of Woman
       A Start in Life
       Beatrix
       The Unconscious Humorists
       The Member for Arcis

     Dudley, Lady Arabella
       The Lily of the Valley
       The Ball at Sceaux
       The Secrets of a Princess
       A Daughter of Eve
       Letters of Two Brides

     Euphrasia
       Melmoth Reconciled

     Joseph
       A Study of Woman

     Massol
       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
       A Daughter of Eve
       Cousin Betty
       The Unconscious Humorists

     Navarreins, Duc de
       A Bachelor’s Establishment
       Colonel Chabert
       The Muse of the Department
       The Thirteen
       Jealousies of a Country Town
       The Peasantry
       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
       The Country Parson
       The Gondreville Mystery
       The Secrets of a Princess
       Cousin Betty

     Rastignac, Eugene de
       Father Goriot
       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
       The Ball at Sceaux
       The Interdiction
       A Study of Woman
       Another Study of Woman
       The Secrets of a Princess
       A Daughter of Eve
       The Gondreville Mystery
       The Firm of Nucingen
       Cousin Betty
       The Member for Arcis
       The Unconscious Humorists

     Taillefer, Jean-Frederic
       The Firm of Nucingen
       Father Goriot
       The Red Inn





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