The Magic Skin (tran Ellen Marriage)
by Honore de Balzac
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman

Translator
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.

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